James Cridland: 0:00

It's Friday, the 2nd of June 2023.

Voice Over: 0:04

The last word in podcasting news. This is the Pod News Weekly Review with James Cridland and Sam Suthey.

James Cridland: 0:13

I'm James Cridland, the editor of Pod News.

Sam Sethi: 0:15

And I'm Sam Suthey, the CEO of Podfans.

James Cridland: 0:18

In the chapters today, pod X, acquire Listen. Ai is coming to podcasting. Why are Google, apple and Spotify gaslighting the podcast industry? I see that you've done there, Sam. Is it time for the DOJ to look into Apple And how to see Apple podcasts around the world with just one click And also?

Maxime Piquette: 0:39

it's Maxim Piket, ceo at OSHA, and I will be a later to talk about AI integration on OSHA.

Alban Brooke: 0:46

And I'm Albin Brooke, the head of marketing at Buzzsprout, and I'll be on later to talk about Co-host AI, a new feature to bring AI into your podcasting workflow.

James Cridland: 0:55

They will. This podcast is sponsored and hosted by Buzzsprout. Last week, 3,530 people started a podcast with Buzzsprout, podcast hosting made easy, And with Pod News Live, where podcasting connects. In Manchester on June the 13th Yes, it's not long now. Less than what two weeks. You should get your tickets now if you're in the north of England, or even if you're in the south of England It's only a train ride away at podnewsnet slash live.

Voice Over: 1:26

Pod News Live where the podcast industry connects. Get your tickets now at podnewsnet slash live From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly Review.

Sam Sethi: 1:40

So, James, let's kick off. James, I've had enough.

James Cridland: 1:44

Okay, yes, you don't look like a happy man, sam. What's the problem?

Sam Sethi: 1:49

Well, I feel I'm being gaslit by certain elements of the podcast industry, namely Google, Apple and Spotify. But before I go into why, let's have a look at the positives first before I get into the negatives. Let's start off with the positive note of the podcast show in London. Have you recovered yet, James?

James Cridland: 2:09

I tell you what the first couple of days I mean the jet lag was quite something, plus, of course, all of the tiredness of seeing loads of people and walking around and being on for three days. But yeah, i've just about recovered. Have you recovered? Yeah, it took me two days to recover.

Sam Sethi: 2:23

I actually had to sleep during the day. I was worn out, but according to the organizers, 10,000 attendees, 40 countries, and the event itself was great. If I knew, you opened it with a keynote, we had our drinks, which was great, and then we closed it with our live recording of the show, which was a lot of fun, actually, with the audience as our guest. So, yeah, i thought, overall my opinion, i thought it was a great event. Well done to the chaps who did it.

James Cridland: 2:52

Yeah, i think the Toms who ran it they've both done a really, really good job in organizing that And, of course, jason Carter being the big man. So, yes, very much looking forward to the podcast show 2024, which I assume will be announced very shortly, and I'm guessing it's going to be in the same place, although who knows? But, yeah, really enjoyable time. So, yeah, absolutely.

Sam Sethi: 3:16

I have to say, though, i am a little bit peeved, and that is because, once again, youtube turned up to an event and said nothing. Now, you had a little bit of a exclusive, i guess, before or during the event. What was it?

James Cridland: 3:33

Yeah, so I was talking about YouTube's RSS ingest trial, which we got a leak from from a benefactor. If you listen to other podcasts, you will know exactly who the deep throat was, who gave us that particular leak. It's pretty damning in terms of something that the industry might want. Youtube are basically saying that they're using the RSS feed, frankly, as a shovel to get more content into YouTube And they're not using it for anything else. They want your podcasts to be ad free, so therefore, they don't want any of the ads that other people have sold. Oh, no, because YouTube want to go out and sell those themselves, and so, yeah, the whole thing is just, is just bad, i think, in terms of that.

Sam Sethi: 4:25

Yeah. So what I wanted to do in the next few minutes is lay out a case of why I believe we're being gaslit by these key platforms Google, apple and Spotify for not supporting the wider podcast community, not supporting women in podcasting and not supporting the black podcast community. I'll explain that. But it was the final straw that broke my camel's back this week When I went to watch Google, or let's say, youtube, one more time. I think her name's Alison Lomax, lovely lady, have nothing against Alison packed again, everyone expecting a big announcement from YouTube, given what you would publish that day. What was Alison's response to James?

James Cridland: 5:06

I mean, she basically said absolutely nothing. She stood there. I was there watching this thing, where she was very surprised at how big podcasting was.

Alison Lomax: 5:16

I had no idea that it was going to be quite this fast. So yeah, it's absolutely incredible.

James Cridland: 5:21

Her idea of podcasting. She kept talking about video and people you know watching stuff.

Alison Lomax: 5:26

I think the misconception is that podcasts are quite new on YouTube, whereas actually the reality is that they've been on YouTube for a really long time.

James Cridland: 5:36

And there was someone else, as they usually do. Kai Chuck did this at podcast movement evolutions last year, where they got somebody who makes video shows and talked as if that's podcasting, which it isn't.

Sam Sethi: 5:50

We're a baby podcast, it's just getting burned, but I think you know knowing how much of an opportunity monetization brings on YouTube. Really, there's no one else who can provide what YouTube provides, And that's why creators continue to flock to it more than any other platform. It's almost like the cornerstone.

James Cridland: 6:03

I think of the creator economy really. But Alison Lomax said virtually nothing And the only sort of the nice thing is she gave us a little name check by saying there's no big launch today, by the way, brenn Yorn, who's been reading Bob Muse I hate to disappoint anyone on that. Excellent that she read my story, But why again come to one of these events and say absolutely nothing?

Sam Sethi: 6:28

I know I mean as if they don't know anyone's going to be there, As if they don't know the industry's actually in the room.

Alison Lomax: 6:33

Do we have any creators in the audience? out here, loads of creators, massive respect.

Sam Sethi: 6:38

They just I mean, as you said, kai Chuck room full in LA and said nothing. They came last year to London I even spoke to Kai Chuck by mistake actually, because I didn't realize he was just on the stand And that's the problem I've got. They come along to these events, they don't say anything And then they just walk away, and that, for me, is where it started. I've got a little bit sort of peeved with these companies because they seem to do it at every event. One of the things you said last week that I thought was quite critical was that if they are successful, fundamentally they could kill podcast hosts because there wouldn't be a need for them. And actually our friend Todd Cochran has got a little bit upset, and I tend to agree with me. He said I'm not a fan of what YouTube is doing hijacking.

Todd Cochrane: 7:26

This is dumb. This is dumb to begin with. What they have done is dumb And I'm not going to lose any sleep over it, but I'm not going to do anything on Blueberry's side to facilitate. That Video is a different animal And I say to people that want to do that good luck, But don't get distracted from the price.

James Cridland: 7:47

Oh, yes, and of course he said ownyourowncom at the end of it. And ownyourowncom. He is absolutely right And I think hijacking is a good word. That's exactly what YouTube are doing here. They're trying to hijack RSS feeds, pull in shovel in as much podcast content into their closed platform. It's not just podcasts hosts which will be killed off.

James Cridland: 8:09

If YouTube does this well And if Google doesn't mess it up and frankly, google is pretty good at messing these things up, but if Google doesn't mess it up it will mean an end to all podcast hosts, because there won't be a need for that. It'll be an end for all ad tech companies, because there won't be a need for that. It'll be an end to all attribution companies, which some people might think is a good thing, but not sure it is. So it'll be an end to thousands and thousands of jobs just because YouTube want to grab all of the RSS content which is out there and use RSS as just a shovel to pull in as much podcast content. It's a really bad thing.

James Cridland: 8:47

Somebody was saying to me the other day you know YouTube wants to save podcasting. I don't think YouTube's coming to save podcasting. I think YouTube's coming to kill podcasting And the fact that they can't even be bothered to communicate to the likes of you and me about when they launch stuff, the fact that they can't even be bothered to reply to emails asking for more information. I mean, maybe they fired their other press guy, they fired the first press guy that I was dealing with, maybe they fired this one too. Just don't know. It's just a complete mess And it just it irritates me an awful lot.

Sam Sethi: 9:25

I mean it wouldn't be bad, but at the moment the YouTube numbers are so poor that it's a complete waste of time anyway, I was going to ask you know, given we've been pushing stuff to YouTube via headliner, i don't think it's actually moved the needle in times of number of listeners for us. Anyway, now let's move on to Spotify. One of the things that I noticed was that Amazon and Wondery aka Wondery and Audible had a big open stand at the podcast show And again they got their checkbook out and they sponsor the event along with A-Cast. However, as I pointed out last week, Spotify didn't really sponsor the event. They were named as one of the smallest sponsors I think that's just a media sponsor And they had a stand that they put away out the way and roped off, which I thought was a perfect euphemism for the podcast platform a closed stand. Now, james, have you seen or heard anything from a mayor pro-Hovnick, the VP, head of podcast since she was?

James Cridland: 10:23

appointed? I haven't. She was obviously speaking at the stream on event earlier on in the year. I mean there was a bit of press that came out last week saying that she actually has her own podcast which is talking about becoming a mum for the first time, And that's going to be very, very good and exciting. But as for what she's been saying about podcasting, really I've not heard anything, particularly there.

Sam Sethi: 10:50

Yeah, And do we know how they Spotify subscriptions are doing or their audiobook sales, anything?

James Cridland: 10:56

there. No, I'm not aware of any information on either of those two things now.

Sam Sethi: 11:02

Yeah, and fundamentally I go back to it. they throw parties, they come to these events, but they keep themselves squirreled away. Again, they're not supporting the industry, they really are just doing a YouTube that sort of thing. Now, didn't you tell me that they did what YouTube did in the beginning? they sort of ingested RSS and then that was it.

James Cridland: 11:22

Yeah, and so what Spotify did right at the beginning is that they just pulled in the audio once, and that was that. And of course, the podcast industry said no, that's not how it works, we need pass through and, to their credit, they put pass through in. It was quite a lot of hard work And I'm sure that Todd and Rob would talk rather more about that, but, yeah, that's something that they have at least been a little bit reactive to and have understood that that's not how podcasting really works.

Sam Sethi: 11:58

Okay. So I think YouTube isn't supporting the industry. I don't think Spotify really is. And now let's talk Apple. They are not a poor company. I don't recall ever in the last four or five big events ever seeing Apple supporting the industry. What I do see Apple do and I'm not attacking the individuals because they are really nice people, but they attend these events quietly I mean it's like the men in black. If you ever see someone from Apple, you have to forget you've seen them. You can never tell anyone you've talked about And if you do, you'll be blacklisted. So I just think who are these people? and instead of sneaking around and having these quiet little secret meetings, why don't they actually get a checkbook out? Do something to support the industry Support the podcast movement, support the London podcast show, support women in podcasting. Just do something, Apple, other than nothing, which is what you currently do.

James Cridland: 12:48

Yes And they will say well, we support women in podcasting because we promote the women in podcasting on the app and stuff like that. That's promoting your own app. That's not doing anything more than that, and I think Apple are very good at promoting their own app. But in terms of sponsorship, you know, i mean YouTube. To be fair, youtube were a major sponsor of the podcast show last year. Spotify have been supporting podcast movements and various other things as well. Apple, as far as I'm aware, have supported absolutely nothing financially. They'll turn up to some of these events and have little secret squirrel meetings with people, but that's about as far as it goes. Disappointing really that you don't see financial support being given from one of the most richest companies in the world to some of these events that they turn up to.

Sam Sethi: 13:45

Yeah, now again at the London podcast show, we heard that the head of podcasting globally had come along and the head of international had come along, but again, nothing was done publicly. Apple used to do this at Canline, the big advertising event in the south of France, until the organizers said no more Apple. You can't just turn up, run around and have secret squirrel meetings but not support this event, apple. Oh interesting, apple stopped doing that. They then did support Canline and they did a bigger thing. I think Microsoft does much more than Apple now, but it was put up or shut up Apple. I do think some of the industry needs to push back at Apple and say, hey, enough's enough, chaps. You want everyone to use your platform, but you don't do anything. And talking about using their platform, because I know they delayed a lot of people's plans, how is delegated delivery doing, james? Do we know?

James Cridland: 14:36

Oh, you know, I mean delegated delivery seemingly seems to be working. We don't really know how many people are using it. We don't really know what sort of numbers are being seen there. I find it one of the most frustrating parts of my daily work. I'll be honest with you Uploading the ad-free version to Apple applecocom pod news if you want to go and subscribe to that. It's a frustrating experience because there's no API access to the likes of me. I think it probably works a little bit more because Apple are very keen to promote you. If you do individual things and promote paid subscription within Apple podcasts, i think Apple are rather more keen to then push your show on the front page and in various parts of the app, although they've not done that for us. I can't think why.

Sam Sethi: 15:34

Now look, it's WWDC next week and I'm going to take a bet with you, james that, a they don't announce Apple podcasts for Android and B they give less than 10 seconds to podcasting. That will be my bet.

James Cridland: 15:47

Well, yes, i don't know, It's the quick answer. I mean, it's supposed to be all about virtual reality and stuff like that at Apple WWDC next week, but who knows, they might be surprising us with something exciting. I mean, every minute that they don't have an Android app that gives more traffic to Spotify. If they want to be competitive in this space, if they want to actually make them aware of you know, make other people aware of where podcasting is going, then frankly I think that they should be launching an Android app. But you know, i keep on saying this. I mean, they're not stupid people at Apple. There must be a reason why they're not launching an Android app, and it might be that they can't get the engineering resource. It might be that they've got a problem with Google payments you know in that as well And they need to build a website first. I don't fully really know, but it does seem such a missed opportunity for them. Yeah, it does.

Sam Sethi: 17:00

Now I'm going to conclude with this. When I was at Netscape, we fought for the open web HTML, CSS, JavaScript. Microsoft at the time was the big, bad boogie enemy. They tried to hijack the web. They made IE proprietary. They put proprietary HTML tags in. They used a bastardized version of JavaScript I don't know if you remember JScript And it only worked in IE And they added something called ActiveX. They did everything they could to try and kill the open web.

Sam Sethi: 17:33

Microsoft finally had to change their ways after a much lobbying, and the DOJ in America forced Microsoft to include other browsers in the operating system. They said you can't have an operating system and have the apps access being your only browser. I think it's time the DOJ looked closely at Apple and forced them to include other podcast apps by default, not just within the App Store. The only app you have now by default is the Apple podcast app. And look, this is exactly the same position, or in fact worse, than Microsoft were in. Microsoft didn't own the hardware, but now Apple own the hardware, the operating system, the App Store, and have the default podcasting app. No other app is pre-installed.

Sam Sethi: 18:21

Surely this has to be anti-competitive And I fundamentally believe the DOJ, if it wasn't a puppy, should do something. I think the EU will be a better argument for putting forward a case to Apple that they have to open up the store or at least include more podcasting apps. If they won't support the industry and they don't then I think it's time the industry fights back at them and says okay, let's go and find some regulation that says you own the whole stack, you own the market space, And I think it's anti-competitive. Personally, James And I think something should be done. Wow.

James Cridland: 18:55

What would you do then in that case?

Sam Sethi: 18:57

Well, i think it's a really simple thing. I mean, you know, microsoft was forced to, on the install, provide Netscape, firefox and other browsers that were asked, so the user had a choice. I think, exactly in iOS they should enable it to say would you want Apple podcast, maybe Spotify or fountain, or maybe it's going to be podverse or any other app, but they should be a choice as the default app. I don't think, let's say, fountain wanted to be the default app on my phone. I don't think there can be, even if it's an iOS app.

James Cridland: 19:33

The question is do you want to throw another question to somebody that's never listened to a podcast before? Which of these random podcast apps would you like And let's face it, most people will go to Apple anyway Or do you want to make it really easy and simple for people to already have a podcast app but to be able to download any other podcast app that they want? Yeah, i'm not so sure about this, but I think I can certainly see your point And I'm sure that you know. If you could get pod fans in there as a as a you know, as a default, then that would that, would you know, really change what your business is.

Sam Sethi: 20:13

Well it would, but I mean, i'm not using that for my own other hat I genuinely believe that they own the whole stack And it's really as you said, the user, or the mainstream user, let's say then, not the early adopter or the geek doesn't know any difference. They go default. That's why Apple has such a strong position. Yeah, it is anti competitive And I think somebody somewhere needs to start to tap on Apple's door. So it's time maybe you open up the commoda, maybe, and let others in.

James Cridland: 20:42

There is a difference, isn't there? Because you're not allowed to make web browsers for iOS and what that. What Apple have basically turned around and said it's it's our way or no way. You use the, the web kit browser code, and so Google Chrome on your iPhone is just Apple's Safari with the Chrome, quite literally, the user, the user interface of Chrome around the side. There is a difference here in that they haven't turned around to podcast apps and said no, you're duplicating core functionality of the iOS platform with a podcast app, so therefore you're not allowed to build your own podcast app. So I suppose that there is a kind of that side to it, but certainly you know it would be. It would be good, good, wouldn't it, if Apple were to support the industry, not just their, their own platform, which they do very well, but support the industry a little bit more. Yeah.

Sam Sethi: 21:45

To back up my point Apple, google AKA YouTube now are not sponsoring or exhibiting our podcast movement in Denver. I had a look, i made a check. I mean they may change their mind, but they aren't at the current moment. And Amazon are gold sponsors. I mean, at least, if Amazon are saying you know what guys, we're going to try and at least give you a leg up or support you as an industry And that is not what's happening.

Sam Sethi: 22:10

In my opinion, these close proprietary podcast platforms Google, amazon, spotify, the gas platforms are only out there for themselves, the gas lighting us as an industry, saying they are supporting us. They don't embrace open standards. They know that they could fully support the wider podcast community and don't do it. Now one group could change this. It's the podcast standards group. right? This is what I thought they were brought together to do, and yet, sadly, i've not seen anything from that group either. And that is the group that should be going. Oi, you three, enough's enough, and we as an industry are telling you it's time to do something. But I don't think the PSP is going to be doing it either. That's my only problem.

James Cridland: 22:53

Hmm, yes, i've heard absolutely nothing from that group since launch, and I know that they get very upset when I say I've heard absolutely nothing from them. And there's one really easy way to fix that And that's to do something. Yes, it's really sad. I was talking to one person that worked there about you know, that's part of the PSP about just the idea of week notes, which used to be a big thing, if you remember, you know 15 years or so ago of just. You know, this is what we worked on this week. We haven't got anything to announce, but these are the sorts of things that we've been working on this week, just something, just a weekly blog Justin Jackson will be very good at writing that, i'm sure just to let us know that something is actually going on there.

Sam Sethi: 23:43

Yeah, Well, you know, let's wait. I hope that the PSP does step up to become the body that takes on these larger groups to say you know, the open industry wants you to do more. Yeah, indeed, now let's move on. I think I should get off my soapbox a little bit, but I'm not quite off it yet because it brings me to my other point. Several women-led events have been cancelled or announced that they'll go online only. So Sheepo Cost Life has been cancelled. It's a plan. It was a planned physical event in mid-June. It's the second time this event has been cancelled, and also a couple of days before that there was the postponement of the International Women's Podcast Festival. Now, that led to an open letter to the industry from the organiser, imre El Morgan. She was the founder and CEO of the event and she's called Content is Queen And she's written this open letter. James, have you read the open letter?

James Cridland: 24:40

Yes, i've read the open letter. It's a very emotive open letter all about where is the money? words without action aren't enough and all of that kind of stuff. I think a lot of people have come out and supported it online.

Sam Sethi: 24:59

Yeah, i mean a number of people we know quite well, just Kaufman, Jason Phipps, you've got Alcy Escobar, naomi Meller, all of these people who we know, plus a lot of other people, have come out and said, look, these events can't go on because, again, there's a lack of industry support. Now, i'm not throwing this down totally at the door of the gas companies. I think they have bigger pockets and deeper pockets to do something and still are not doing it. But as an industry, i suppose these female-led events are not being supported And it's really hard to find sponsors. And I think sometimes the industry should again help these groups because there needs to be this uplift in all of us towards female-led podcasting. Otherwise, again, we are saying, look, no, that's not important, we'll just go back to doing what we do in our own proprietary ways, that's all.

James Cridland: 26:02

Well, you can certainly read more about the open letter to the industry and some of the work that they've been doing on pay and stuff like that in the pod newsletter this week. It's been a strange week because there's not been an awful lot of news this week And I think partially that's because ULOT had a public holiday on Monday. There was a public holiday as well in the US, of course, on Monday too, and so therefore quite a lot of people have taken the last couple of months, the last couple of days off. But there has been some news around the Black Podcasting Awards and news about the Black community as well.

Sam Sethi: 26:45

Yeah, the awards are open for entries. Prices are going up on June 1. The global awards are open to shows that are hosted, or majority hosted, by Black people. You can go to the URL applyblackpodawordscom and enter for up to five categories. The organisers are Demetrius Bagley, georgie Ann Getten and Latrice Samson-Richard, and I know they'd love you to enter Again. I did. Because of what I said about the gas companies, i thought I'd go and check who was sponsoring the Black Podcast Awards. Strangely, none of them. In fact, the only people that I know podcast movement are sponsoring it and transistors. So well done to Justin.

James Cridland: 27:31

Yeah, well done to them. That's certainly a good thing. Also, in other Black News, haiti, which is a Black-owned news aggregation app, is now, they say, the largest source of podcasts led by Black hosts. The app lists more than 2,000 shows.

James Cridland: 27:52

And really interesting interview that I had last week with Tom Denapoli in a podcast business journal where he was talking about the really hard work that they've been doing to make sure that they are welcoming more diverse voices to behind the mic and elsewhere as well, and he was saying that one year ago thirty seven percent of the podcasts that a p m studios runs I'm were hosted by people of color. Now that figure has gone up to seventy three percent. So there's a real amount of Change there. You can read that interview in full at podcast business journal dot com. And of course, you know lots of announcements going on with deals audible Company that I still can't quite get into. They've announced a multi project exclusive deal with ash, a audio ventures, which is a podcast label from actor viola davis, who is one of the few performers in the first black actress to be Awarded in Emmy, a Grammy and Oscar and a Tony. So, yeah, so there's certainly movement in terms of that. Again, weirdly, an amazon company Doing quite a lot of the of the hard work there.

Sam Sethi: 29:16

So yeah, yeah, and he got James. Having an egot is very few people it's an egot, is it?

James Cridland: 29:22

yes, you go. There's a thing an exclusive group Right.

Sam Sethi: 29:25

let's move on to more positive news now. bus sprout and Oh sure, and have been announcing a i integrations, james, what, what they said yes, they have both integrations that.

James Cridland: 29:40

There's all kinds of stuff. There's a german company called curmese that is released an AI for podcasting Potscape, if you like, listing all kinds of different companies that exist out there who are doing some interesting work. There's a cap show. Did you from cap show was at the podcast show and very good to see her. But yes, let's start with the buzz sprout, one of our sponsors of this show. They have a new set of tools which automatically build episode titles, descriptions, chapter marks and transcripts. If you see the transcript in this show today and the description and indeed the episode title, all of that has been produced by this new tool from bus sprout, sam caught up with albin brook to find out more details of how it all works co host is a tool that seamlessly integrates AI into your podcasting workflow, and what we do is we automatically generate transcripts for all your podcast episodes.

Alban Brooke: 30:41

We generate title ideas, descriptions, chapter markers, and the whole idea is there's all these things at the end of your podcast. You know you've already gone through the whole process. You've done the interview. You prepped, you scheduled it, you edited it, you mastered it, you put it up on the bus sprout And then we start asking all these fields and some of them can take a little while to put together and you know what I just don't want to do all this extra work.

Alban Brooke: 31:07

And for some podcasters the lucky ones like James cridlin they have a co host that does all this work. Well, on bus sprout now, even if you're solo podcaster, you can have a co host that will go along and do a lot of this work for you. So you just making me redundant. This is what you're doing. I think that you provide a lot of valuable things on the show itself, like the interviews and to be James's foil, but you going through and taking all the time to transcribe episodes or run things through different tools. I think that's something that machines are really good at doing and we should let you focus on all the creative aspects of podcasting.

Sam Sethi: 31:45

I fully agree, thank you. Now let's break that down. First of all, when did you come up with the idea of using AI? I mean, a lot of people are talking about Oh yes, i can see podcasting using AI but very few people have actually done anything. So when did you guys at bus sprout come up with that idea?

Alban Brooke: 32:04

The first time we thought we started talking about AI was probably last year, but the moment that we decided this is something we're going to do And we sat down, said here's how it will look, was probably less than two months ago. So that's where we got together and we say this is what it's going to look like, and we always work in six week cycles at bus sprout. So at the beginning of the cycle we had a really good idea of what it would be And at the end of that six weeks, something was out was out. There must sprout.

Sam Sethi: 32:35

So let's take this in section. So let's start off with So you produce post audio uplift. You produce a number of titles. This is what I think you do. It's not like one title, you give a number of title options. Is that correct? Yeah?

Alban Brooke: 32:52

So maybe the easiest way to talk about it is from the transcript. First, transcripts something been really important to us now for two or three years. We've been talking about transcripts for podcasters And we've always been kind of you know, bummed to see, while podcasting to it Oh, it's done a really good job of pushing transcripts and we've been getting more apps on board. More podcasters are understanding the value. We still see a lot of people not using transcripts And so the first thing we're going to do is run that transcription for you And then, when we have a really good transcription based on what was actually said in the episode So it's still the same content Then we are able to come up with lots of ideas for what the title could be and what the description should be and where there are chapter markers You know where they're actually spots in the episode that coincide with chapters.

Alban Brooke: 33:48

So that's kind of the process we run through. You're right about titles we give five And that was just I think I was just born out of my experience using some other AI tools Where they'd give you one option and especially when it was something as important as a title getting one option, you would feel a little bit like, oh, it missed. And now what am I going to do? Maybe I run this again, like how can I get a second option? And now, when you get five, it may not even be that you pick one of those exactly, but one of those is really close to something that you're going to be excited about. And now you maybe make that tweak and there's your title Yeah, before.

Sam Sethi: 34:29

I ask you a secondary question to titles with the transcript. Is this an in house solution that you've provided or is it a third party you've partnered with? How's that transcript made?

Alban Brooke: 34:42

We're partnering with podium for all of our capabilities. We spent quite a bit of time going through all the different partners trying to figure out if this should be something we do totally in house or we work with others, and I initially, like personally, i thought we'll probably do all this in house, and as we started working with different partners and looking at what we could do ourselves, there is a drastic difference between which partner you use, so we are really excited to work with podium on this. And does it to speak detection, because I haven't had a chance to use it yet.

Sam Sethi: 35:16

So yes, you're right, james, and I record. James edits the audio, he uplifts it to buzz sprout, then I go in afterwards once James has put chapter markers in. But the transcript that we upload tends to already have our speakers against the transcript. So if we don't use that third party service that we were using before and just use buzz sprout, will you do speaker detection as well?

Alban Brooke: 35:40

We're doing speaker detection, depending on when we release this episode. I won't know for sure whether or not you can rename the speaker detection. Whether or not you can rename the speakers on mass, i'll have to check right when we release this. But that's what they were looking at. But the identification of your voice versus James is going to be pretty easy to identify. Those are not the same person.

Sam Sethi: 36:01

Yeah, yeah, that's pretty quick Now with the titles. One of my other questions is a lot of people talk about podcast SEO, right, and you know maximizing the word that you put in. Now, with James and I, when we looked at Apple, we realized that They don't look at description, they don't look at keywords. In fact, stuffing the title is generally the only way that you get any sort of high ranking on Apple With the titles that the AI produces are you? has it got a capability to think of SEO, yeah? Or is this just very early days and it's just picking up some really cool words but not really optimizing it for an SEO type solution, right?

Alban Brooke: 36:45

So two different answers here. One is does AI actually have this ability? Yeah, it does. I mean there's lots of SEO tools that do that Right And you can, as the human pick of the titles, which of them has the most SEO style title you want. You can do that as well.

Alban Brooke: 37:03

But I would really ask people what do they think they mean when they say podcast SEO? I think that's a bit of a red herring. There's not like there's these big search engines that are going through all podcast episodes and are trying to understand it and then you can manipulate those results to show up at the top. Apple is primarily using the keywords in your title. They told us that I think they still use the author tag and then they look at how many people subscribe to the show or listen to the show. I think listen rate might be one of them as well.

Alban Brooke: 37:38

All you're really trying to do is optimize for Spotify and Apple. That are primarily going to be using, like the play type data and subscribe type data. So let's make sure that title is good and it's accurate and it reflects what's in the episode. But sometimes what people think when they say SEO? that means like you'll never believe what number seven is on this list. Like, those kinds of things are just click bait and I think like podcasting is so beautiful because we don't have true SEO in podcasting And so the marketers haven't ruined that yet, and so I'm always hesitant to recommend anybody to be thinking about podcast SEO. I defer to the head of marketing at Buzz Brown.

Sam Sethi: 38:24

Now I D chapter markers. How do they get put in with this? How do they get put in with the dynamic ad insertion that Buzz Brown provides? You've worked out a really smart way of finding in the audio the best place to drop the dynamic ad. Are you automating those chapter markers or is it up to the end user to put those chapter markers in still?

Alban Brooke: 38:46

Nope, that's still. That's 100 percent automatic. So when you drop your new pod I said pod land, pod news weekly into the good days When you upload it and we transcribe, we give you the titles, we give you the description. We're also going to go through and identify. This is a segment and we can see there's a change in the conversation here. Here's what we think that segment's about, and then you'll be able to go in and say, oh, that's perfect. Or you may say, oh, that's almost got what we talked about. But now I know that's the timestamp And so you make a slight tweak.

Alban Brooke: 39:26

So the first time I did it, i think I got six or seven different segments and I looked at them and five of them The exact right name was there for the title and two of them I tweaked. But the big benefit here is those timestamps are right, because what's frustrating is the podcasters you upload to Buzz Brown And now you want to go put in a chapter marker and like you're in your mind cursing yourself saying, when I edited this, why didn't I just write down when I switched segments? And now you don't have to be thinking about that. We will detect, oh, there's a topic change here and here's how we would summarize that segment. Now you have some chapter markers Cool cool Now with image art for chapters.

Sam Sethi: 40:12

are you going to use anything like Dali or any of the other AI tools to create automated image art?

Alban Brooke: 40:18

We have no plans for that. I think that would be an interesting thing to do. I wouldn't be looking at it actually. This is just a totally off the top of my head. I wouldn't be as interested in that for chapter markers, but maybe with YouTube, When people are putting podcasts on YouTube. if you wanted to have some sort of a visual component, maybe somebody could build a tool that would be running a bunch of mid-journey images that were related to what you were talking about, to have some sort of like a slideshow, something interesting there.

Sam Sethi: 40:48

Yeah, or maybe even just the episode art. You know, just change it up. I assume that links still have to be manually added. That last part is still a user-generated link.

Alban Brooke: 41:01

Yeah, so any links that you want to include, anything where you have a call to action, you'll do that. Obviously, your Buzz Brouts has episode footers and so you could just click in and add all your social links And that's added once and now. It's there for every episode. This won't override that. But for most podcasters you're uploading an episode and you want something there And I've noticed if you go read tons of descriptions, you'll see a lot of times they just want a bit of bare bones. Here's what happened in the episode, so that a listener could see it and go oh, i've already listened to that episode, or that sounds exactly like something I'd like to listen to. Just a bit more info. But yes, if you want links, if you want calls to action, those should go in your episode footer or you'll add them in manually, cool.

Sam Sethi: 41:52

So, with this new podcast tool that you've provided, co-host, how much is it? And is it just included for free, or is it an add-on? What is it?

Alban Brooke: 42:01

It depends on which plan you're on in Buzz Brout. Most people are on our $12 a month plan. For them It's a $10 add-on, which for us is a pretty expensive add-ons. It's more of the magic mastering would be, and this is just because to get the very best tools right now it is more expensive than even we expected. Hopefully, over time those costs will all come down and we can be able to pass that on to all our Buzz Brout customers.

Alban Brooke: 42:28

But the way we think about it is. This is work that some podcasters were outsourcing to another person, or they were thinking about joining a podcast network and they were thinking that would be my way to not have to do all this work. If you're thinking I'd like some help in getting past the hurdle of adding these podcast to auto features that are really cool I don't want to be thinking of creative titles and descriptions after I already did all my creative work Then co-host AI will be a wonderful tool for you, and so if anyone tries it out and they see it's not right for me, always reach out to us at support and we'll make it right. We'll take care of you.

Sam Sethi: 43:09

Albin Brooke, head of marketing at Buzz Brout. Thank you so much, Sam.

Alban Brooke: 43:13

thank you so much for having me.

James Cridland: 43:15

Albin Brooke from Buzz Brout, who sponsored this very show, and great to hear what they're planning on doing. It was a real shame not to see anybody from Buzz Brout at the podcast show in London last week. Also, oshia, who were at the podcast show in London. In many people were there. They have been talking about AI as well and Maxime Piket, who was the CEO of Oshia, was there at the show. You caught up with Maxime and Jennifer Han to ask them how they're using chat GPT to produce social media posts.

Maxime Piquette: 43:57

The podcast show was a very amazing event. I think I was very surprised about how this event was big and was very interesting also in terms of confidence, so it was great.

Sam Sethi: 44:10

Yeah, it was very well done. Now let's learn a little about Oshia. first, Oshia stands for audio sharing. Let's give everyone the background to it. When did you start Oshia and what was its original goal? Let's start there.

Maxime Piquette: 44:23

Yeah, so we started in 2018. We are based in France, so basically, we are a podcast hosting and marketing platform. Our platform enables creators to easily share their audio content and reach a wider audience. Maybe just one of our particularities, in more, of course, of our some exclusive marketing and data features, is that all our plans are unlimited in terms of audience, monthly uploads or episode numbers.

Sam Sethi: 45:02

Okay, and now, with the platform itself, you've started to grow internationally as well. Where have you moved into?

Maxime Piquette: 45:10

Yeah, so we opened up to the US market at the end of last year with our first team based mainly in New York. So, yeah, of course it's important for us to develop Oshia in this new market, because friends or French podcast are very small markets, you know. And I think also that the US market talks a lot about monetization. When you look at the innovations announced by the hosting platform in general, of course, most of them concern monetization. I said that to monetize your need and audience, and that is the desert and we've no one to help you with your audience, and that is the mission we have set ourselves at Oshia.

Sam Sethi: 46:05

Cool. Would you look internally into Europe, or maybe into the UK as well, as expanding next?

Maxime Piquette: 46:11

Maybe, but US is already a very huge market. It's difficult because they are not from a long time, so we are new on this market And, yeah, it's not easy for us to develop Oshia on the US, so we are very focused on this. Of course, we will certainly develop OSHA after that on the Europe, because it's where we are.

Sam Sethi: 46:37

Yeah, exactly Now. you wrote a post about AI and AI's effect on podcasting. Can you summarize what that post said?

Maxime Piquette: 46:47

Yeah. So I think it's very important to understand how AI will transform the entire industry of podcasts, and personally, i'm very optimistic about how AI will change our industry Nice And so what I can see is, on every step of creating a podcast, i think AI have a role to play, and even if, for my part, for the hosting and the promoting of the podcast, and it's the reason why we are starting to integrate AI into OSHA.

Sam Sethi: 47:25

So let's distill that down further. What have you exactly done? Let's talk about that. What have you added to OSHA using AI?

Maxime Piquette: 47:34

So we started with our social media manager. The social media manager is the perfect tool to plan your entire communication on social media and from OSHA. So we integrated chat GPT into our social media manager And now, in a single click, you can generate a post for Facebook, twitter, instagram or LinkedIn. It's very easy And we saw good results about this integration, because, thanks to this feature, podcasters have created an average of three times more posts on social media. Certainly because it's easier.

Sam Sethi: 48:16

Now explain how this worked. Do you provide a transcript that the AI then reads to summarise the tweet? Let's say, how does that work, or is it doing something else? So what I would love it to do, or what I'd love OSHA to do, i guess, is auto transcribe the podcast and then pull out the summary of the best bits about using the AI to then promote. And I guess one of the other things is I could send multiple tweets or multiple updates, because I guess the first tweet will be the one hit chat GPT and it'll produce more different styles. maybe, but let's step back. Is it using a transcript to work with?

Maxime Piquette: 48:57

So it's very interesting because what you said just here it's my vision and I love that. So for now, no, we don't use a transcribe. It's what we are working just now. We are working to give free transcripts to our customers. I think it will be available before the end of the year, and today to do this, we use the title, the description and the keywords to give you a good tweet or a good post for LinkedIn. But, of course, like you said, i think transcribe it's a good plan to you know, my vision is, with a single click, to create an entire plan of communication for your social media. You have nothing to do, just to check if what we plan to post for you it's okay or not, and if you want to edit, you can. But yeah, i think a lot of podcasters don't spend a lot of time of promoting and it's a real problem for the audience, and if we can help them with that using AI, it could be just perfect.

Sam Sethi: 50:06

Yeah, I could imagine. If you're using chat, you could use open whisper AI as the transcription or as a party. One of the other areas, then, that maybe AI could help is have you thought about using things like mid journey or darling so to creating cover arts or chapter art? Is that in your thinking?

Maxime Piquette: 50:26

Yes, absolutely Before that. We are actively working so on integrating AI for automatic generation of podcast metadata the title, description, keywords, chapters, even the newsletter, because it's making effortless for creators to optimize their episodes for discoverability. But after that, maybe to create the perfect cover, we can use, of course, a mid-journey. I think also that we can use AI to help on podcast promotion and maybe also but we need to work on this. It's a very difficult part, i think, but I'm pretty sure that AI can help to analyze your audience and maybe to give you some good recommendations about your podcast, because we can also analyze your podcast, but we can also analyze the other podcast, and that is very interesting.

Sam Sethi: 51:25

Yeah, i want to look at A-Cast with a conversational tracking and they go and transcribe every podcast. Look at the keywords, look at the type of podcast and then they're doing dynamic ad insertion. But actually you can also use that to analyze just what the zeitgeist of the conversation is. And this is a podcast very similar to that podcast. So, recommendation engines There's lots of ways that you can use data and machine learning to help podcasters find, i guess, similar podcasts.

Maxime Piquette: 51:57

To be honest with you, i can't say a lot about this, but we are working on very, very nice and, i think, very exclusive features in OSHA, because a lot of listeners have discovered a podcast from the search on listening apps, and I think we have a lot to do on this And more of that. I think that today, again, the search on podcast apps are very simple. So if you want, it's not Google, of course. Apple Podcast or Spotify, it's not Google for now, so we have to profit of this, and so if you want to grow your audience, i think it could be a good point for you to improve your visibility on Apple and Spotify too.

Sam Sethi: 52:44

Yeah, well, today in the podcast I'm having a go at Apple and Spotify for not really helping the industry too much and being slightly monopolistic. Where do you stand on OSHA and integrating with YouTube?

Maxime Piquette: 52:58

So we already integrate YouTube because automatically it's possible for you to publish your podcast on YouTube. It's not, you know, it's a simple video, like you can do with weekly pot news, for example, but, of course, about the recent news, what Ponyo's give us about the plan of YouTube. So we are waiting for the official version, of course, from YouTube. But what is certain is that at OSHA we are fighting to ensure that podcasts remain a free medium for both podcasters and listeners, and we can't upset from that. Any listening platforms should host the content we transmit via RSS feeds. Our priority is to ensure the best experience and value for our users, and this model is definitely not the best for our users.

Sam Sethi: 53:58

Yeah, i think you, todd Cochran and many others are beginning to understand that sending your data to YouTube may not be the best plan, exactly, but we talked, thankfully, at the podcast show. It was lovely to catch up with you and have a coffee and sit down with Jennifer. One of the things we talked about was the podcast namespace and OSHA's support of it. Where are you and what support do you provide already with the namespace?

Maxime Piquette: 54:24

So, firstly, i think it's very important for the podcast industry And it's important to have a standard. So for the variability in the podcasting ecosystem, it's very important, and these standards allows us to work together on the evolution of podcasts and to ensure that it remains free. So, for now, we only support a few times and we definitely need to improve on this. So I am pleased to announce to you that we will be getting started this year with the addition of the chapters and transcription tag as a minimum.

Sam Sethi: 55:07

Brilliant, brilliant. And we talked about maybe you becoming a member of the podcast standard project as well PSP. Is that something still in your thoughts?

Maxime Piquette: 55:18

Yeah, you know, it's something what we are currently thinking, but we have a lot to do OSHA, but step by step.

Sam Sethi: 55:26

Exactly Now, Maxime. Thank you so much for that. A couple of things First of all, is the new AI available, and is it an additional cost or is it part of the existing service?

Maxime Piquette: 55:39

It's very interesting. Now AI it's already available. It's free for all our customers. It's already free for them. You know, i think AI will be so important as a simple copy past on a text editor. So I can't imagine to have a very high price on this type of option. But we will see.

Sam Sethi: 56:02

OK, and now just lastly. Where should everyone go to find more about OSHA? What's the URL?

Maxime Piquette: 56:08

OSHAco, of course, oshaco Excellent.

Sam Sethi: 56:12

Maxime Piquette. Thank you so much for your time. Congratulations for the AI integration.

James Cridland: 56:16

Thank you Rissan, jennifer Han and Maxime Piquette from OSHA, and both OSHA and Buzzsprout services are available to all customers there. So very cool, very, very smart, and I'm sure that we'll see even more AI and stuff like that coming in the future as well.

Sam Sethi: 56:36

Well, the one thing that Albin said that really surprised me was that it's been less than six or seven weeks from planning to implementation. That's really smart. The speed of implementing it is quite cool. I suspect you'll see the likes of Blueberry, captiveairsscom follow quickly, and also, i think apps like Vizzy, headliner and other apps will start to use AI more. I can see this, just you know. I say this look, if people call AI instead of artificial intelligence assisted intelligence, it will set its place alongside humans much better, rather than it's going to be the terminator taking over. That's not, and I think you know the tools that are listed here. you know from CRISP, from Jasper, various other ones. I think we will see. Look, we have used Descript in the past. You have used Adobe. when I think, what was it? your mic wasn't connected to your laptop, but you used Adobe And that was brilliant. You wouldn't have known.

James Cridland: 57:41

Yeah, i used it there. I used it for the conversation that you had in a pub with who was it? now I'm trying to remember Nick Nick Hilton And so, yeah, it's a great tool. In fact I was showing it off to a New Zealand radio group only this morning doing a presentation for them And again, a fantastic tool. So I think that AI certainly has its place not necessarily, you know, all of this clone voice stuff that we keep on hearing an awful lot about, but I think certainly in other bits of workflow. I think it's a good thing.

Sam Sethi: 58:22

Now moving on. big announcement PodX, the group that we interviewed a few weeks ago, has acquired Listen, tell me more, james.

James Cridland: 58:30

Yeah, listen is a massive, massive company, so Listen produces podcasts.

James Cridland: 58:36

It's a large podcast producer. It also produces an awful lot of radio shows within the UK. The way that the BBC works is that they have to produce a bunch of their radio outputs by third party so-called independent producers, and Listen is one of those. Interestingly, goldhawk Productions is also one of those that makes podcasts but also makes radio shows for the BBC. Podx bought Goldhawk Productions last year and has now bought Listen as well.

James Cridland: 59:08

I think Listen used to be known as Wise Buddha. It's the content division of Wise Buddha a while ago And it's been doing some really, really good work. So, yeah, a fantastic deal. No terms were given, as is always the way with PodX, but definitely the largest deal in the UK podcast industry for a while. So great to end up seeing that PodX also own companies in Scandinavia, in Argentina and in France as well. And if you want to learn more, stafan Rossell we spoke to on this very podcast about three or four weeks or so ago, so you can just go back and find that. If you haven't yet found that, skip along in the chapters until you hear Stafan talking about it. It was a great interview that you ended up doing Now, it'd be nice if we were to speak to some of the folks from the lesson on this very show.

Sam Sethi: 1:00:07

Well, we had Darby Doris on a few weeks ago as well. I spoke to Darby yesterday briefly. I think he was a little bit merry and very happy about what's happened. Let's be honest, quite right, exactly. So he wasn't really going to come on for this week's show, but he will be on, hopefully next week, he says, and possibly. I've reached out to Frederick Seid, who's the other co-founder of PodX. I thought it'd be interesting to hear from him, rather than Stafan this time. So hopefully both of those will be on next week. And also next week we have Muckel Debi-Chand from the New York Times to talk about their new podcast app. So, yeah, exciting for next week.

James Cridland: 1:00:46

Yeah, no, indeed, and that's one big announcement. And then there was another really weird announcement that you perhaps could help me with. Liveone, who own podcast One, they are looking to acquire and it's LiveOne, not podcast One are looking to acquire certain assets of Cast Media. Now, cast Media is a company that makes podcasts and does a bunch of those. The weirdest announcement. Did you end up seeing this particular announcement?

Sam Sethi: 1:01:19

I did, yeah, and I was confused, as you. It's very odd to pre-announce a potential deal because, a it either drives up the price from if everyone goes, that's a great deal. Well, if I was Cast Media, i'd be going well, yeah, stick another zero on the end of that one then, mate, or I don't know why you pre-announce it. It's like the weirdest ever.

James Cridland: 1:01:41

So there's a lot of stuff around. Liveone have entered into a letter of intent to acquire certain assets of Cast Media. If completed, the proposed acquisition is expected to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then you read that the letter of intent is non-binding And the contemplated acquisition is subject to all kinds of stuff due diligence and settlement of Cast Media's outstanding obligations, whatever that is, obtaining applicable approvals and consent, whatever that is. And then it says there can be no assurance that the proposed acquisition will be completed and or within the anticipated timeline. Shall we just announce today that we're going to buy Apple?

Alban Brooke: 1:02:25

I don't know We're going to buy Libsyn.

James Cridland: 1:02:27

Yeah, we're going to buy Libsyn, we've written them a letter and we'll press release that. I mean, it just seems the bizarrest things. I have no understanding of what this is about. What we should probably do is we should get somebody that understands business, this sort of random, weird business. I always see the stuff that LiveOne puts out and I'm always there going. Yeah, it's just a bit weird. Don't really understand it, probably since LiveOne is currently supposed to be taking Podcast One off as a separate company. But this isn't Podcast One buying Cast Media, it's LiveOne buying Cast Media. Podcast One, if you remember, was supposed to have been spun off as a separate company in January. That never happened, and then in February and then that never happened. And well, we're still waiting and it's now June. So I'm just looking at this company and it all seems a little bit sort of smoke and mirrors and I'm not quite sure what's going on there.

Sam Sethi: 1:03:34

If LiveOne was a traded stock exchange or a New York stock exchange company, that would be seen as pre-information to the market before the stock exchange got it, and it would be then null and void.

James Cridland: 1:03:49

So very odd. Well, and they are So they are. I mean, i think, yes, they are, They're on NASDAQ And this ends up with this press release, ends up with a lot of guff about forward-looking statements and then more guff about no offer or solicitation and all this kind of stuff. I mean the whole thing looks to me It's just really weird. But there again, liveone is also selling NFTs. It's also doing lots of weird and wonderful things. It's all a strange old company. So, yeah, who knows what's going on there? Surprised, they did that.

Sam Sethi: 1:04:30

Now moving on. Friend of the show, dan Meisner. Saw him at the podcast show Lovely Man that he is from Bumper. Yeah, he's got a radio voice. He has yes And well, maybe you should do a podcast. No, not another one, please. He wrote a book blog post this week about how to change the Apple podcast store with one click. What did you say, james?

James Cridland: 1:04:57

Yeah, so he's basically got a lot of links in this particular blog post which enables you, if you're using a toy phone really a noise Apple whenever I say that if you're using a toy phone it enables you to have a look at the Apple podcasts front pages for any particular country, so you can actually see, you know, what the folks here in Australia are pushing and what the folks in the UK are pushing, and so on and so forth. So really easy. It's not been easy up until this discovery. So it's a pretty cool thing and good that Dan has ended up doing that. It's Apple podcast is in 175 countries and regions around the world, which is quite a thing. So, yeah, some really good work from that regard and also some really good work around explicit podcasts as well.

James Cridland: 1:05:51

You've probably know that you can mark podcasts as explicit, and normally that means that you've sworn a bit, but sometimes it doesn't and it means something entirely different, and so we've never really understood properly understood what that means. If you mark something as explicit, what that actually means in terms of where your podcast is still available. But it turns out that eight countries in the world prohibit explicit content altogether and 35 countries hide explicit content behind a opt-in. So, for example, india is one of those and Indonesia is one of those. Those are two very, very large companies, large countries, which essentially make you opt in if you want some of the filth. So that's basically what's going on there. So, really interesting. We've not seen that data before and that's data that the good folks at Bumper have ended up working out. So, yeah, particularly useful piece of work there.

Sam Sethi: 1:06:58

Yeah, I'll put the links to those two posts in our show notes.

James Cridland: 1:07:03

Now talking about? Well, yes, if the AI has allowed it. Otherwise, of course, you'll find it just by doing a quick search on the podnews website podnewsnet. Slash search.

Sam Sethi: 1:07:12

Hang on, hang on a minute, hang on. Have I been superseded here now? Well, i mean, the AI has taken my editing job.

James Cridland: 1:07:19

We're using Buzzsprout for that this week, So who knows? I mean we can say that things are going to be in the show notes, but frankly, we don't know, do we Okay?

Sam Sethi: 1:07:30

I'm not sure how I feel anymore now. Right, moving on talking about smutty stuff In Canada, the number one French language podcast in Canada is Well, you won't mention it. Are we allowed to mention it here, or are we going to get banned here as well?

James Cridland: 1:07:47

Oh, i think we can mention it here. I didn't mention it in the newsletter because, you know, corporate email systems would go absolutely spare if I mentioned that the number one podcast in French-speaking Canada is called Oral Sex. Yes, oral Sex, ladies and gentlemen And I mean mostly ladies, oh, i don't know, mostly gentlemen. Anyway, it's the number one podcast in French Canada. It's the number one women's podcast in all of Canada, the number two podcast in all of Canada among 18 to 34 year olds, and etc. Etc. So it does really, really well. It seems to be sponsored by a sex shop, i think. So you know very, very French Canada If you've ever been to Montreal. That's all there is on the high street in Montreal. It's just sex shop, followed by an Apple store, followed by another sex shop. It's the bizarrest place. Yeah, it's very strange.

Sam Sethi: 1:08:49

A quick question Where are you going in on the 8th of June?

James Cridland: 1:08:53

I'm not just going to Montreal, i'm going to Toronto, which is a very different place. Oh, okay, very, very different place. Fine, fine Just checking, i just had the you're going to Canada moment.

James Cridland: 1:09:03

Yes, no, i'm going to Canada, but not to Montreal. But Montreal, yeah, fascinating place, is where Triton is based for quite a lot of people And, yes, they are very Yes, anyway. So the good folks at the podcast exchange, which is an ad tech company based in Canada, have written a long piece about oral sex, the number one podcast in French, canada. Ladies and gentlemen, there we go Now. This possibly means that we now need to mark this show as explicit, or I don't know. I don't know whether that?

Sam Sethi: 1:09:40

No, I don't Hey. hey, good news, James. It's not down to us anymore, It's down to the AI.

James Cridland: 1:09:45

Oh yeah, it's down to the AI Brilliant. Well, in that case, that's all okay. Other things going on around the world The podcast sessions magazine, which looks beautiful. It's had a redesign which looks even more beautiful. It's a Pan-African magazine. It's now available for download. There's the founder of the Young God podcast on the cover of that And, yeah, it's a super good thing. Thepodsessionscom is where to go and get your copy of podcast sessions magazine and it's free. People News on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 1:10:21

Now let's take a look at some job news. Not that much jobs news at the moment because not that much news, But Julie Shapiro has been hired as supporter and advisor to Canada Land, the Canadian podcast network. She'd been with Novel, with PRX and Radio Topio. She's a good egg. I met her in Sweden, I think. So good to see that she's doing a bit of work for them. And Isabelle Salazar has been hired as Podemos' new country manager for Spain. She joins from Google, but she's had enough of working for a gas company I do like that a gas company And she has replaced Juan Gallardo, who now becomes the company's global head of markets, which is all very exciting. If you're looking for a job, Pod News has podcasting jobs across the industry and across the world. The even better news is that that website now works again, after I made a breaking change that broke it. They're free to post. It'll just take two minutes to add a new role PodNewsnet slash jobs The tech stuff, the tech stuff On the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 1:11:33

Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday in the Pod News newsletter. Here's where we do all of the tech talk. Blueberry has done something quite cool. They've added badges for its podcast creators, which can be earned in a number of ways and quite smart, in fact. Blueberry has always done badges at conferences and things, so now they have virtual badges for you, too. Transistor has done something quite nice Dynamic Ad Campaign Scheduling, which is all very fancy, just in doing, as ever, a very good job of writing blog posts and recording videos and everything else for something which is a relatively minor upgrade but nevertheless seems to always get the news. So well done, justin for that.

Sam Sethi: 1:12:12

Now, content Studio Project Brazen has launched a podcast network and platform called Simply Brazen. What's this one, james?

James Cridland: 1:12:20

Yes, so this is interesting, project Brazen being a company that makes podcasts, but they will allow other shows on this platform. They're basically looking for other shows that are seeking an alternative distribution strategy that allows them to have a greater participation in the success of their work, just basically trying to get like-minded podcast producers together. I always think that that's a good plan, so worth a peek, and they've just announced a whole set of new shows coming out soon. Podcast events on the POD News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 1:12:58

Let's take a look at some events then, shall we? I am very much looking forward to speaking, although very much not looking forward to going to Radio Days North America in Toronto. Why would I say that? Because I'm flying with Air Canada, the airline for people who love the colour beige, but I will be sharing some and I've got absolutely no status on that airline. I, frankly, don't want to be flying with that airline, but I've got absolutely no status with them. The seat that I have been given for my 14-hour flight between here and Vancouver, you know it's an aisle seat and it's two rows away from the Lou and I'm not looking forward to that. Anyway, i'm going to be a bundle of joy, i tell you. So, yes, so anyway, looking forward to that. I'm doing a couple of speaking gigs there, so that should be good.

James Cridland: 1:14:03

Other things going on, of course podcast movement in Denver Towards the middle of August, august 21st to the 24th, in Denver, in Colorado. The venue is very easy to get to from the airport. I noticed when I was booking it only earlier on The British Podcast Awards coming at the end of September as well, and PodFest, which will be in early January, no late January 2024, in Orlando, in Florida, at the Wyndham Orlando Resort International Drive, whatever that is, but PodFest is always a great event and, who knows, i might, might make it to that one next year. And then, of course, there's Pod News Live, which is on June, the 13th. Yes, which yes. Give us an update on that then, sam.

Sam Sethi: 1:14:55

So, look, i caught up with loads of the speakers at the podcast show London last week, which was great to do. We are I've been speaking to the organisers up at the Lowry Theatre yesterday, so that was good. Thank you, tash. So all is going forward, going well. I'm sending out lots and lots of updates to the speakers today, but fundamentally, the format of the event is this We've got 14 amazing companies, so Captivate Voiceworks, we've got a whole bunch of others, There's Michael Carr coming out there, we've got the BBC R&D, so lots of the companies that are based around the Manchester BBC Hub. And the format, james, i think, that I've come up with is a show and tell.

Sam Sethi: 1:15:45

Mainly Now, if we look at why we did this event originally, it was we did a drinks last year not the drinks that we did this year where lots and lots of the companies came down. Then we're going oh, we've not really spoken to each other and we've had to come to London to meet each other. And it was a conversation with Mark from Captivate and Michael Carr, and we were just saying, well, why don't we bring Mountain to Mohamed, you know? and let's go up to Manchester and do something, which is what it started off with, And then it was like well, why didn't we say something when we're together rather than just have a drink?

Sam Sethi: 1:16:16

So that's how it evolved, and so the idea is that the companies will have 15 minutes to talk about what they're currently doing today to a really intelligent audience, and then you are all right, all both will do a Q&A with the said people. It may be a panel for a couple of the speakers, and then the audience has a chance to talk about it. We did want to give enough time as well for people to network, because you don't want to have just back to back to back to back talks. So, yeah, that is the event. You can get your tickets still at podnewsnet, forward slash live, and they are very reasonably priced. We've kept them low 30 pounds because we don't want we're not looking to make a profit out of this. We are literally trying to create an industry.

James Cridland: 1:17:01

We're not going to make a profit out of this.

Sam Sethi: 1:17:03

No, we're not going to make a profit out of this Technically, we're right, so but we are trying to see if we can support the industry, and this is the first one we're doing, and so please come and have a listen. Join us in Manchester on June the 13th to listen to a super smart group of people talking about what's going on in the podcast industry, and it's your chance to ask them any questions you like.

James Cridland: 1:17:27

Yeah, it's a day of sharing knowledge and networking in the business of podcasting massively looking forward to it. It should be a really good day. I booked my hotel in Salford only yesterday, so that's good news. So I know at least that I'll be where I'll be staying. So that's always a good plan, but definitely worthwhile finding out more information podnewsnet slash live, and we look forward to seeing you there Boostagram, corner, corner, corner on the pod news weekly review.

James Cridland: 1:18:03

Yes, it's our favorite time of the week, although not that many booster grams this week. Maybe this comes from doing a 45 minute or 40 minute show last week instead of two and a half hours. Maybe we get more boosts if we do two and a half hours, who knows? But thank you to Bumi, who sent 30,000 sats no message. Thank you to anonymous who sent 1000 sats as well. Gene Bean and Kyren also listened. I noticed from the stats that we have It's probably complicated by the fact that my umbral fell over last week. Not quite sure what's happened with it, but I have moved my umbral from the kitchen to the office rack, because of course I've got a rack in the office, because of course I do. So hopefully it'll work rather better in here. But if you have, yeah.

Sam Sethi: 1:19:00

James, that feels like you've put your umbral on the naughty step.

James Cridland: 1:19:03

Well, I kind of have You're out of the kitchen I kind of have, now I can actually see it.

James Cridland: 1:19:08

I've put it where I can see it or I can just check that it's actually working, the umbral. But anyway it's sitting there and working quite nicely If you get value from what we do. Give that umbral a bit of work to do because the Pod News Weekly Reviews separate from Pod News. Sam and I share everything from it. We really appreciate your support so we can continue making this show. You can become a power supporter at weeklypodnewsnet. You can subscribe in Apple Podcast at applecopodnews, or supporters with sats by hitting the boost button in your podcast app.

James Cridland: 1:19:41

I do wonder whether or not the fact that my umbral had fallen over last week. I wonder whether there are some apps out there that, because they couldn't send that payment to the value split that we have, i wonder whether it then didn't send anything at all. Perhaps that may be why we've not seen any boosts, or maybe it was just a really bad show last week, but I don't think it was. I think it was a really good one. So anyway, if you don't have an app that supports boosts, podnewsnet slash new podcast apps will help you find a new app. I would recommend Fountain, which has had a lick of paint and is faster and works much nicer. I'm an advisor. I'm not a paid advisor, by the way, adam Curry. I'm just an advisor, so fountainfm to go and get that Now. What's happening for you this week, sam?

Sam Sethi: 1:20:32

Well, it's official, I'm now a tech veteran. I don't know when I crossed the, I don't know where I crossed that chasm. Well done, But now I'm a veteran. Yes, that was my title At an event I did last week. I did a AI presentation at Soho House in White City, which will be the location of our podnews live London. So yes, I'm officially looking for white hairs now places I shouldn't.

James Cridland: 1:20:58

Yes, i was called a veteran radio futurologist at the NAB show, which, of course, i was delighted with. Not So, yes, veteran. That word should be banned unless you are a veteran. Yes, in which case that's acceptable.

Sam Sethi: 1:21:15

And I think I probably should go and learn French this week. Sorry if I sounded frustrated this week I'm not And I have recovered from the podcast show. Maybe I should learn French and listen to that number one Canadian podcast That might help me?

James Cridland: 1:21:29

Yes, maybe you should. Maybe it might teach you a thing or two.

Sam Sethi: 1:21:32

Now I'm also frustrated because of the gas companies, that is true, and because also RSS feeds. Now I hear this so often that they call the feed of truth right, and I have to tell you now, james, having dealt with thousands of RSS feeds in the last few months, they're a mess, absolute mess. Oh yes.

James Cridland: 1:21:56

Yes, there is a lot of crappy bad, i mean you know, wrong image sizes for a start.

James Cridland: 1:22:03

I mean, the podcasting 2.0 podcast didn't have a square image until a couple of weeks ago when I when I noticed and gave them a nicer image. But yeah, there are, and I think this is one of the things that isn't particularly well appreciated within podcasting is that actually, rss feeds are full of an awful lot of junk And a podcast hosting companies really do a particularly poor job checking whether the RSS feeds they might be. They might be technically acceptable, but they certainly don't have the right information in them quite a lot of the time. I mean, you only have to look at Joe Rogan's RSS feed, which is still there, which doesn't have a decent description field in there at all. It just says something like witterings from a guy and mind or something. Um, you know that there's just so much that if people were actually following the correct standards for rss, um, then podcasting would work so much better, um, so yeah, it's quite, it's quite a frustration, i think do you know if there's gonna be a podcast standards group that might help with this?

James Cridland: 1:23:19

Yeah, at some point, at some point there might be. I mean, there is a reason why i link on pod news podcast pages. There's a reason why i link to two different validators The live wire one, which john spurlock runs, and cast feed validator, which blueberry runs, and the reason why is that you would be surprised how broken some of these rss feeds are And and and also how fiddly you know quite a lot of things. I mean to come back to to apple. Apple require all kinds of things that they don't even put into their own documentation, so hugely frustrating. So, yes, i'm sure that you have had a particularly frustrating time with Pod fans working out exactly all of the all of the details and the information in there.

Sam Sethi: 1:24:08

Yeah, i did write a long email to adam and dave. I think you know our show notes go on for a long time. They got a longer version of that, just saying gosh, value blocks are just totally. We need some clarity. They are all over this place anyway. Yeah, crap in crap, out, there we go, james. Yes, what's been happening for?

James Cridland: 1:24:29

you garbage in, garbage out is. I believe the phrase isn't that's, that's the nicer version.

Sam Sethi: 1:24:34

We'll see what the a i says later.

James Cridland: 1:24:36

Yes, you, you were going to ask me what's happened for me this week. What you, i did, yes, what's happened for you, james? oh, i'm glad you asked. So, yes, i've, i've. Yes, i mean, apart from Try not fall asleep during the middle of the day, which has been a frankly, taken up quite a lot of my time this week.

James Cridland: 1:24:54

I also i also very much enjoyed speaking to a bunch full of people in new zealand this this morning, which was good. I've also Recorded a forthcoming edition of a podcast with alex sanfilippo and really enjoyed doing that this this morning to. You'll also find me on a podcast with Mark. Ask with mark. Ask with me mark. Ask with from captivate talking about youtube, which was good. A little bit frustrating in that i only got the information about YouTube's rss ingest after that particular recording, which is some quite a thing, but even so, mark and i managed to get an hour out of that talking about youtube and i should also tell you are you tube stats, because you did ask earlier How we were doing on youtube.

James Cridland: 1:25:46

So, pod news in total, if you include the pod news daily as well as this very show, over the last month we have had one thousand two hundred and thirty views on youtube So ready. That's not very much, but in terms of youtube's products directly, one thousand two hundred eighteen of those have been on youtube like the website and twelve have been on youtube music just twelve. This, of course, was the big launch that they neglected to tell the industry about at the end of last month, the big youtube music launch, twelve plays. So perhaps we shouldn't worry too much about youtube, because it looks as if google is messing this one up again. Interesting times as it always is. And that's it for this week.

Sam Sethi: 1:26:41

Yeah, thank you to our guests and if you want to ask us any questions or you want to give us any feedback, you can use our email weekly at pod news dot net Or send us a boost to grab, which we love for feedback if your podcast that doesn't support. Boost and grabbing you up from pod news dot net forward slash. New podcast apps.

James Cridland: 1:27:00

Yes, our music is from studio dragonfly. Our voice over is Sheila D. In case you're wondering if I sound a little bit different this week, it's because I'm using the senheiser profile USB microphone, just as a change, rather than my sure MV seven and why not? and we're hosted and sponsored by Buzzsprout podcast hosting made easy get updated every day. Subscribe to our newsletter at pod news dot net.

Alban Brooke: 1:27:29

Tell your friends and grow the show and support us and support us the podcast. Weekly review will return next week. Keep listening.