James Cridland: 0:00

It's Friday, the 21st of July 2023.

Jingle: 0:04

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

Sam Sethi: 0:13

I'm James Cridland the editor of Pod News, and I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO of PodFans.

James Cridland: 0:18

In the chapters. Today has YouTube music rolled out podcast. Internationally. Audio boom slumps to $10.6 million in loss, but the share price has risen. Norma Cartney has launched a new podcast, Plus.

Christiana Brenton: 0:32

Hi, I'm Christiana Brenton, co-founder of Telling Media.

Georgie Holt: 0:36

I'm Georgie Halt, the co-founder of Telling Media, and I'll be on the show talking about our new podcast, media Agency Telling, and all of the great work that we intend to do for direct-to-consumer brands and performance marketing in podcast.

Christiana Brenton: 0:50

And also some of the legacy buying behaviors that we seek to challenge to deliver optimal outcomes for our clients.

James Cridland: 0:57

They will. This podcast is sponsored and hosted by Buzzsprout. Last week, 2,951 people started a podcast with Buzzsprout. Podcast hosting made easy with powerful tools and remarkable customer support. And now AI to help you publish your show. And by Pod News Live In London this September. Tickets are available now at podnewsnet slash live. From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly Review.

Sam Sethi: 1:24

Okay, james, let's get the show on the road. Welcome back. Thanks, Rob, keeping my seat warm, but that's enough, I'm back. I had the dogging holiday. I'm over, I'm back on this track, excellent. So yes, there you go, and I'm delighted. Thank you very much. Now, did you or did you not see YouTube podcasts appear internationally? This is the question that I need to ask you, james. It seems to be rolling out in countries like Canada and Brazil, but then again it doesn't seem to be rolling out anywhere else. People are reporting it's sort of appearing in New Zealand, occasionally in UK. Is it like a? You know, one of those little things that pops its head up, appears briefly and then disappears. What's going on?

James Cridland: 2:06

Well, it's because YouTube haven't really been telling anybody what's going on. Nine to five, google claimed that YouTube music was rolling out international support because they noticed that a couple of users in Canada and in Brazil sought podcasts appearing in YouTube music. But I've finally managed to get a contact at Google. Even better, they're in this time zone, so that's an even nicer thing. Well, and they're responding as well. Who would have thought it? It only took three emails to Google. So a YouTube spokesperson told me that YouTube music has begun to roll out podcasts to Canada and Brazil, but nowhere else, and she said stay tuned for updates about when podcasts will launch in YouTube music for your region. I don't think YouTube have fully understood that. Pod News speaks to podcast creators and we don't actually care about our region. We care about knowing where podcasts are actually available. But they have certainly officially now launched in Canada and Brazil CBC podcasts launching a channel on YouTube as well, and they already have more than eight million subscribers on the platform. So that should hopefully be good news as well.

Sam Sethi: 3:20

Okay, Well, I look forward to you getting it. I'm not that bothered personally, but yeah, I look forward to your final review when you get it in your region. Exciting Look. As much as we might take the mic, they are certainly somewhere that people are going to be putting their content, and studies from Veritonic and others have suggested that it is a good thing to have your podcast on YouTube, because 65% of people who watch a podcast on YouTube are consuming it for the first time and 54% of listeners like to consume podcasts on YouTube because they enjoy seeing the host. So I was wondering, james, should we ever do this show live?

James Cridland: 4:00

on YouTube?

James Cridland: 4:01

Well, now, that's a different conversation, and the answer is probably not, because it's really early in the morning for you. It's the middle of the night for the US and, yes, I don't think it would make much sense doing that, but this show is on YouTube thanks to our friends at Headliner who do that for us, so therefore, people can consume us on YouTube. I mean, our numbers are tiny on YouTube, but they're again, they are there, and the point I think of the Veritonic details was that two thirds of people are finding podcasts for the first time on YouTube rather than finding them on a podcast app. So if we can get new listeners that way who then have a listen to us properly, then that's absolutely cool. So it was really nice to see that data coming out from Veritonic earlier on in the week, and there will be more data. A podcast movement 2023, amplify Media and Coleman Research are going to be releasing new data into podcasting on YouTube as well. So if you're going to Denver in Colorado in August, then we will all learn more about that too.

Sam Sethi: 5:13

Now moving on, james, Audio Boom. Now, a month ago, in June of 2016,. To be precise, you wrote about podcast ad monetization company Audio Boom issued a profit warning company expected of revenue and adjusted EBITDA and the current financial year to lower than previously anticipated. Shares fell 27% at that time. Fast forward to today and that slump is a 10.6 million loss, mainly put down to the departure of True Crime Podcast Morbid. And despite that swing, you never understand the markets. The shares soared on Wednesday. So, yes, so they made a massive loss, but it wasn't clearly as bad as people thought. So there you go, james.

James Cridland: 5:57

Yeah, and the decline? It's been reported that it's primarily due to American True Crime Show Morbid Not really, so they lost that show in May last year to Wondery. So, yes, of course they're getting less people buying advertising in the Morbid show because they don't have that anymore. But the main amount of loss that they actually made? So they made $629,000 profit last year. This year they made a loss of $10.6 million, but it turns out that $8.9 million of that is a contract that they rather stupidly signed back in quarter one of 22. The contract lasts until July 2025. It lost just almost $2 million just in the first half of this year. It's going to cost the company $8.9 million in total. It's a massive, massive amount that you could lose. I mean that must be.

James Cridland: 7:05

I'm fascinated to find out who that particular contract is with, because that looks as if that's $1 million per quarter until July 2025 that this company is going to end up paying. So I was trying to work out who it was. It could be Formula One. It could be no such thing as a fish. It could be somebody else. Don't know quite who it is.

James Cridland: 7:32

Can't quite get the press announcements of their partner contracts to line up with anybody really but yeah, that's an awful lot of money. Somebody is very, very rich from a rather foolish guarantee that Audio Boom apparently ended up making back in quarter one of 2022. But that's basically where most of Audio Boom's loss has gone, and so my suspicion is that the markets have looked at this and gone. Okay, well, we've understood why you're making a loss and we're cool with that, and we're also cool that you've actually poned up the $8.9 million now so that all of the upcoming quarters won't have that mad contract in them. So presumably that's why Audio Boom shares have apparently gone up nearly 10% or so. So, yeah, but it's a very strange old thing.

Sam Sethi: 8:35

Well, why don't we ask the ex-employee who signed that contract because clearly they are an ex-employee I mean, I can't imagine they're still there yes who they signed that for? But the one thing to bear in mind although the shares did rise by 8.7%, they are still down by 70% in the last 12 months. So it may be a little blip of a rise but overall it's not great news for Audio Boom at the moment.

James Cridland: 9:01

No, indeed, not great news for Audio Boom. Also, podimo released their financial report for 2022. You won't have seen this in the English language press because nobody's reported on it yet, apart from, of course, pod News. What we discovered is that the company's revenue has tripled, which is lovely. It's now $33 million in 2022. So the company's revenue might have tripled, but the company's losses also tripled. They made $49 million worth of loss last year, which is quite a thing. More than stronger friend of the show is quoted as saying via Google Translate when we enter a new market, we've got to have a minimum catalogue of content from day one, because you can't launch a subscription service with just one podcast, which seems fair enough, but crikey, yeah, that's a lot of money $49 million to lose in just one year. But Podimo, by all accounts, doing relatively well, and perhaps you need to spend in order to make money in that market.

Sam Sethi: 10:09

Yes, the prodigal son story. Now, moving on, the Hollywood writers are on strike, james. Now, often that isn't a thing that we should worry about, because it's about films. The actors Guild, the Sagaftra as it's called, has joined the strike. In fact, the Barbie, you know, I know that you're fully up on this but the Barbie premiere was this week in America and none of the main actors turned up for the premiere because they didn't want to cross the picket line. Now, that's all well and good, but I think what you were talking about this week in pod news was the fact that this would also affect podcasting in some way. How is that going to affect podcasters?

James Cridland: 10:53

Yeah, it does, because if you are so, firstly, the Union Sagaftra. It's not Saga. By the way, it's not Spinach, I know my curries, it's Sagaftra or Sagaftra, as I believe I've heard it pronounced.

Sam Sethi: 11:11

But anyway, that is a Union. That's a Darlings expression. Oh yeah, it's Sagaftra.

James Cridland: 11:16

Exactly. Well, it's not just actors, it's also journalists, it's some radio personalities are in this Union, some broadcasters, some voice actors as well, and so what this means is you cannot do, if you are a Sagaftra member, you cannot do any voice acting on a podcast. You can't even do any narration on a podcast. So if you are hiring Sagaftra members, stars, call them what you will then you've basically lost those for I don't know, potentially a couple of months, maybe even more than that. So who knows how long the strike is going to continue? And of course, you've got Hollywood writers as well. Now, the writers' strike hasn't necessarily affected podcasting that much. There's a very small amount of podcasts that have been affected, but that's basically it. But in terms of the actors' Union, I think that that's going to have an effect, rather more of an effect as we go on, because some of the big stars that people tune into podcasts for won't necessarily be able to do their job.

Sam Sethi: 12:31

Well, daniel Carissima, the podcast manager at Headspace on the back of that story, did ask is there a Union for podcast professionals or one in development? Is it even possible? He says he feels it's important right now and I'm not sure. But our unions aren't they, because Parkhurst has a Union and some of the other production companies have unions, don't they? James?

James Cridland: 12:57

Yeah, there are unions and they are affiliated with the writer's guild and various other people as well. So there are some unions. I have to say that podcasting, because it is a new industry, it doesn't necessarily have the same amount of unions that other organisations do. I mean, as I was looking around for the SAG-AFTRA announcement that they were going on strike, I discovered in their YouTube channel that they have a SAG-AFTRA podcast contract. So again, if you are a SAG-AFTRA member, you have to sign not just any old contract to work for a podcast company, but you have to sign one which is allowed under the SAG-AFTRA rules. So there are all kinds of things.

James Cridland: 13:48

Now, I have never been a union member. Tried to be a union member once and the union that I was trying to get into was just simply not interested in me and any of my staff joining, which I thought was relatively entertaining. So I have never been a union member. I am blissfully ignorant in terms of where we stand from a union point of view, but I guess you can kind of see this as being Luddites, people who are scared of AI and technology in the future. That is one way of thinking about it, but you can think of it in a very different way as well.

Sam Sethi: 14:32

Well, look they are worried about their jobs. I get that right, but we have seen this so many times and this is fear mongering at its best. I mean whopping back in the 90s when they automated the printing presses down in London. There were massive strikes and eventually, you know, it just went through. The London Underground is still driven by drivers, when we know the DLR, which is another part of the Underground, can be automated without drivers. It is just the union preventing that happening.

Sam Sethi: 15:02

I think if you say that AI is assisted intelligence, not artificial intelligence, then the writers could use the tools from AI to assist them in producing shows and creating content and monetising it faster. Now, would Pixar use it and shorten the amount of time that they have between producing, you know, cartoons that is not fair. But animated films? They should use it. But what you can imagine is someone is going. Oh no, it is going to take your job.

Sam Sethi: 15:34

Everything is going to go, you know, and like the Luddites who used to smash up the spinning gennies because they thought the cotton production was going to be replaced by machinery, the whole thing feels to me there is always two sides to account. There are those that are technology phobes and those who are technology embraces, and this feels to me very much like the technology phobes going oh it is the spooky AI, it is going to do everything. They are going to take your voice, they are going to take your image. They are going to do this. Well, the actors aren't worried, because the old actors are actually licensing their faces and their voices for perpetuity and getting royalties, and they are very happy. So I am not sure why this is becoming a big issue, but it is certainly a big issue.

James Cridland: 16:18

Yeah, you know and again, I don't know the full ins and outs about what either Sagaftra or the WAG, the Writers Guild of America, either the East or the West versions, are talking about here. The one thing I would say is that, you know, we talk about the Luddites who were told smashed up machines, who were threatening their jobs. Well, actually they were protesting not against the machines, they were protesting against the manufacturers who were using those machines in a bad way, that was fraudulent and deceitful to their customers. So actually it is very similar to what is going on right now, and I don't necessarily think that this is something which is against progress, against technology. I think it is something that is against employers who are using new technologies in a fraudulent and bad way, and perhaps that is part of all of this. But if you have, you, dear listener, have a more educated view on this very, very green when it comes to union and union law, then by all means get in touch and we would love to perhaps have you on a show in the future.

Sam Sethi: 17:40

Well, all I would say is they convicted all those Luddites and sent them down and under mate. So you'll probably find some of their cousins or people that you can go and find living around the corner from you to interview.

James Cridland: 17:52

They're all down here. I mean, I have to say I am slightly nervous about what this does to the entertainment industry. The entertainment industry is still recovering, frankly, from the coronavirus, still recovering from the pandemic, and so I'm slightly concerned about what this does to an industry which is not in the best of health. Particularly You've got that on one side and then you've got stupid governments on the other side who are passing all kinds of new and entertaining laws, aren't they?

Sam Sethi: 18:26

Yes, this is Bill C18. It's a Canadian government law that says that companies like Metta and Google have to pay newspapers for their links. This has been tried so many times. It's been tried in Germany, spain. I know you had it down in Australia for a while, and then they suddenly realise the unintended consequences of it all when traffic starts to stop, and in this case, the unintended consequence of it affects podcasting as well. James.

James Cridland: 18:55

Yeah, that's right. There are a number of podcasts who have basically found all of their links in Facebook turned off. So Facebook has already blocked anything to do with news in Canada. So that includes Facebook, obviously, but also Instagram and threads as well, we shouldn't forget. So the 905 podcast is one of those who is affected and you, basically you visit their page if you're in Canada and it says, hey, you can't have a look at this because the Canadian government won't let us.

James Cridland: 19:30

So that's a thing which is already hurting those particular companies and, from my point of view, we went through all of this in Australia last year and none of that made any sense in Australia. What we ended up doing is Google and Facebook paid a little bit of money to Rupert Murdoch, who, by the way, paid no Australian tax. So Google and Facebook paid them some more money, so that the Australian tax payer lost out even more. That was nice. They didn't pay anybody else, any other news organisations particularly any money. They've paid a few others, but not the likes of me.

James Cridland: 20:18

You have to be pretty large in order to get any money out of Google and out of Facebook as well. By the way, google actually pays tax here in Australia not much, but News Corp Rupert Murdoch hasn't paid a cent in tax in the last five years in this country. Google has released a statement saying that last year they linked more than 3.6 billion times to Canadian news organisations. That referral traffic is probably about 250 million Canadian dollars, and by essentially turning that off, the news companies are going to find it quite hard because they're going to lose all of that money, and I think Google have it absolutely right. So it's just another example of stupid governments trying to pass laws about things that they don't fully understand.

Sam Sethi: 21:19

In my view, well, often it's Murdoch putting lobbyists a bit of flee in the ear of politicians with a little bit of money, exactly. I mean, I've not come across and I've met many MPs in this country and when I looked at Facebook and Google sitting in front of the US Congress for their hearings, and again when I look at some of the conversations that I had across the European MEP unions because I tend to follow that stuff, I haven't heard very many, if any, smart people in there. They tend to come up through a different path with a non-technical. Then they get given different lobbyists pushing their own agenda, of course, and then eventually you end up in this situation where some lobbyists has finally got through to enough MPs in Canada to then put a bill forward that gets passed, because they've been told one half of the story and it feels really odd. I think they'll get the consequences of that 250 million Canadian dollars, as you said, and eventually this will get turned over or some amendment will be made.

James Cridland: 22:26

And you're absolutely right. This has happened in the past. It happened in Spain in the 2000 and what? 12 or 13, something like that the Spanish government passed a law saying that Google had to pay them. Google said no, I don't think we're going to do that. They closed Google news in the country and and, in fact, media outlets in Spain basically lobbied their government to say this isn't working for us. We need you to allow Google to link to our stuff.

James Cridland: 23:02

And so back in June of 2022, june last year guess what Google news is back. So I mean, you know it's been done, we know that it doesn't work, but I think it's. You know the Canadians bless them trying to. I think part of it is just Canadians don't like foreigners very much and particularly don't like Americans particularly much, and I think that the concern there is you know Google is an American company and so is Facebook, and so therefore, you know we don't like that very much, and I think you know Canada, for all of its overpoliteness, should probably just calm down a little bit about that sort of thing.

Sam Sethi: 23:46

Anyway, let's move on Now. This is a story that I thought was very odd. Amanda Montel of Sound Like a Cult has sued her co-host, Isamidina, for half a million dollars, alleging bad behavior. Now I'm very worried. James, you're not planning on suing me for anything.

James Cridland: 24:02

No, although I have to say I mean it must be quite. Although. No, don't start a sentence with although it must be quite a thing. Because, yeah, the podcast that they were working on, the podcast called Sounds Like a Cult have to be careful how you say that but the podcast that they were working on was signed up by the Exactly Right Podcast Network, lasted two weeks in the Exactly Right Podcast Network and then Exactly Right said actually we've changed our mind, we don't want it anymore, yikes. But yes, isabella Medina Mattei to give her her full name is being sued for half a million dollars by Amanda Montel. And, yes, all kinds of entertaining stuff going on there.

Sam Sethi: 24:55

How bad was she to get sued for half a million dollars? I mean, what did she do not turn up one day? I mean that's not worth the half a million dollars suing.

James Cridland: 25:02

Well, I mean, they agreed to part ways to dissolve their company. They're deadlocked on the terms to dissolve their company. According to the suit, Isabella Medina is, you know, entitled to 50% copyright on episodes in which she appeared, says Amanda Montel. But Amanda Montel actually came up with the idea of the podcast anyway, and yeah, and the legal document is full of, you know, naughty language and everything else. So apparently she effectively destroyed the Sounds Like a Cult podcast and caused a substantial loss of value to the company in its future income stream. Sounds. If two people have fallen out, rather a lot by the looks of things. Hmm.

Sam Sethi: 25:50

Certainly not sending Christmas cards. Now let's move on. Let's have a look in France. Acast has launched its self service ad platform. James, tell me more.

James Cridland: 26:01

Yes, they have rolled out their self service ad platform, which is available in English countries, to France. They also released a bunch of data about podcasts in France which they do every quarter, I think and this particular data looked at podcast durations. The average duration for a top podcast in France is about 41 minutes and hasn't really changed an awful lot. The data also says that Apple Podcast is the number one platform with 38.9% of all downloads there, and that drives the most amount of downloads per listener. Spotify again, and most certainly nowhere near any of that. So it's good to see data coming out of France. Data out of Australia as well, with Podpole 2023, a podcast production house called Deadset Studios who released those findings.

James Cridland: 26:58

We had an exclusive on those earlier on in the week. I think the exciting thing from that data is actually seeing what shows people want more of, and it's always nice to actually see some real, proper data that actually turns around and says actually you know, we would quite like some more shows about science in the environment, please, people are actually asking for that and so therefore, you can actually turn around and produce some more science and environmental type shows. So that was good to end up reading. You'll find that in the Pod News newsletter this week. Also research about podcasting in Taiwan and research about podcasting in Spain with Ivox, which came out yesterday. So a bunch of research which is coming out. It's really nice seeing all of this research from different companies, from different countries, and that, of course, is available if you go heading off to podnewsnet.

James Cridland: 28:06

Hey, now let's take a quick look at some jobs, although not that many jobs by the looks of things. Again, more details from Australia, from the IAB. Here they say that the number of job vacancies in digital advertising so not just podcasting has plunged, they say Now I was trying to work out quite what that actually means Vacancy rates have dropped from 11.8% to just 4.5% now, which I think means that there are now a third fewer, or two thirds fewer jobs in the industry, I think. But yes, that's not good. However, some jobs that do exist. Ryan Reddington has been promoted to GM of Amazon Music. The person who used to do that job, the excellently named Steve Boom, is now leading all of Amazon's entertainment stuff, and Ryan Reddington is the new boss of Amazon Music.

James Cridland: 29:05

Also in the UK, charles Ubach has been promoted to Managing Director of Global Player and Digital Content Director at Global. He is the man if you want your podcast on the global player. He's worked for the company for over 13 years. He's a good man. He still looks as if he's about 18. So clearly life is very good for him. But congratulations to him. And a couple of people have left ACAST, haven't they? Sam?

Sam Sethi: 29:33

Yeah, georgina Holton, cristiana Brenton have found a new media agency called Telling us, a podcast media agency. They're championing the power of performance marketing. The pair, as you said, had worked for ACAST in New York. I knew Georgina before, so I thought I'd reach out to them to find out a little more about what is telling and what they plan to do with this new media agency in the UK.

Georgie Holt: 29:59

We launched Telling officially on Tuesday and the intention behind the business is in its fundamental form.

Georgie Holt: 30:05

It's a podcast media agency and consultancy and Cristiana and I and my co-founder we've had over a decade of experiencing the global podcast industry combined and we launched Telling as the first podcast media agency founded in the UK and our experience spans the UK, australia and the US.

Georgie Holt: 30:27

And what Telling is here to do is to really connect advertisers to the power of podcast and the audiences who love them and we absolutely love podcasts and they have so much potential for advertisers and Telling is really here to help maximize that potential. And we want to have a very specific focus, because of our expertise and experience in the US, on championing the power of performance marketing in podcasts, because we don't think that's a story that has been shared enough with the UK and European markets and it kind of our intention to really establish and share our knowledge with the brands and the platforms and the podcasters to help really optimize those results that they all are seeking to achieve with the customers that they want to reach in the podcast that they listen to. And we are hoping to really drive a striving podcast and create an economy through our work. So we're just very excited to get going.

Sam Sethi: 31:34

Cool. Now Cristiana. Obviously you two met at Acastle. Obviously that's not obvious to anyone else, but from the people who know you, but you're also one of the top sales people there. You are Australian. You lived around the world globally. But let's take a step back. Georgie mentioned something called performance marketing. What the hell is performance marketing? It sounds like a lovely term, but can you unpack that into English?

Christiana Brenton: 31:56

Of course I'm glad you asked. Performance marketing is really just the body of advertisers that are looking to drive direct sales conversions from podcast advertising. So when we think about the world of advertising, the traditional holding code model, that's really focused on brand budgets and that's the big global advertisers that are looking for jobs to help build key brand affinity metrics, whereas performance marketing is really focused on bottom funnel and driving sales conversions or subscriptions, so really actually getting consumers either going to directly purchase the product or subscribe online, download an app, so to take a direct action. I always like to say you know, brand marketing wants to change our consumers feel about you, whereas performance marketing you're actually trying to motivate consumers to take a direct action and that's ultimately the world that will be trading in the telling media.

Sam Sethi: 32:51

So this is also called direct to consumer as well. Is that another term that can be used for this?

Christiana Brenton: 32:57

Well, direct to consumer is actually sort of a category of clients, but they can be direct to consumer brands and also just other brands that are seeking performance KPIs. So not necessarily, let's say, a direct sales conversion, but things like website visitation. There's also a lot of global brands that invest in performance marketing. It's just that predominantly direct to consumer brands in podcasting are the major praise in the performance space.

Sam Sethi: 33:23

Okay, Georgie, so you both went off to head up the ACOS Americas, right. Why did you suddenly find a difference between the UK and why is the UK so far behind in this? Why is America doing 2.x billion and the UK doing 20% of that or less? What's the difference?

Georgie Holt: 33:42

Yeah, that's an interesting question. I think it's how the markets were established in the UK compared to the US. The US was the first mover in really monetizing podcasts because the great shows of scale like Serial that we all know and love was one of the first podcasts to monetize. Through their partnership with MailChimp and I think just by coincidence, that client particularly was looking to drive conversions for their brand. They wanted people to start to use that service, to go on and subscribe to use that service and use that as a newsletter outreach tool. And I think from that point onwards I think everybody suddenly started to understand, in the US particularly, that this media channel was a performance marketing channel and you could get conversions for your clients, for your brand using podcasts to do that. And that really comes back to all of those things we know about a podcast and why audiences love them. That trusted relationship they have with their hosts, deep attention and time they spend with podcasts really can help push that audience, that listener, to go and take an action after hearing the hosts they love In the show they love talking about a product really in a compelling way, and I think the industry then built in the US from that point onwards that it was the director consumer brand. It was the performance marketing model that really scaled the podcast industry and the brilliant agencies in the US that are continuing to do that now to great success for some of the global brands that they represent.

Georgie Holt: 35:03

And I think the holding code, the media agency dollars, came much later and are still taking some time to build in the US, whereas in the UK, because the market established itself a little later on on, all of the marketplaces focused and spent their time on the media agencies and the holding codes.

Georgie Holt: 35:19

As Kristiana said, they were very focused towards those brand dollars, those upper funnel metrics of reach and awareness, and so the industry was kind of built through a kind of brand style campaign rather than a performance style campaign in the UK.

Georgie Holt: 35:35

There are clients in the UK right now we're doing really great work in the performance space, like Kuhl, for example, hellofresh, audible but a lot of those brands have taken their big learnings from the US market and are applying them to the UK. I think it's just a sense of a lot of these clients who are looking to reach consumers directly, to take an action to subscribe, haven't necessarily been told this great story about how podcasting can really optimize those lower funnel metrics and we really want to come back to Europe and talk about this, to continue to grow this amazing industry and fund creators through ad dollars and ensure that the advertisers are getting the results they want, which I think probably we'll get to talk about this more. In a time of economic uncertainty, return on ad spend is one of the most critical effectiveness metrics that an advertiser is looking at and that is that performance model that we'll be talking about. A lot is they want to know that the impact of their ad spend is being immediately shown in action a consumer is taking.

Sam Sethi: 36:35

Cristiana, is there enough inventory that? I mean, we've all heard the Casper mattress, we've all heard the Athletic Green, we've all heard the Squarespace. They seem to be on every podcast, which is great for those brands, but potentially most listeners tune out. So how do you grow the pool of advertisers into this market? Is it a learning curve still for them, or is it an opportunity curve? What is missing?

Christiana Brenton: 37:00

I think it's both a learning and opportunity curve. But, to answer your earlier question, is there enough inventory? The answer is absolutely yes and I'm really glad you asked, because when we were in the US, we actually discovered some new market insights with regards to buying behaviors. So, you know, we're really curious if the same logic applies here in the UK, which we'll be, you know, seeking to prove out in the next couple of months. But let me share some of the data we found In the US, 44% of all podcast advertising investment lands with the top 500 shows alone.

Christiana Brenton: 37:32

Now, that data point came from Magellan AI. However, we now know that those 500 shows only account for 12% of the monthly listen potential, and that was found by a pod shaser. So for the first time ever, we were able to get a directional view of the total podcast universe in the US. And we found that there are those 500 shows only accounted for 12% of the total listen potential of English speaking podcasts. So that means that advertisers were missing the opportunity to reach 88% of the addressable podcast audience in the US, and that's predominantly due to this legacy buying habit of you know show led planning and investing in the top shows alone. And what we found, of course, is when you centralize, you know, when you centralize 44% of a $2.3 billion industry in only 500 shows, there's pretty alarming media implications. So, for example, the first one, of course, is inflated CPMs due to concentrated demand in these top shows. During our time in the US, we found a lot of our competitors were charging between two and three X that of the market average for show sponsorship, and that was really interesting. Of course, with the other buy a product higher ad loads. So data from Magellan AI also showed us that, on average, shows in the top 500 podcasts had 30% higher ad load than shows in the top 500 to 3000, which, of course, leads to category clad R, less mental availability for the consumer recall.

Christiana Brenton: 39:03

So what's really interesting and what we're really trying to champion is more clients accessing. You know the vast potential of podcast impressions that are available. You know there's what? Over a billion active podcasts now in the market globally today. So is there enough inventory? Their short answer is yes. It's just that clients haven't been accessing it due to this legacy show lead planning bias, whereas we're really here to champion that the, you know, optimal blend of shows is, yes, partnering with some of those big, well-known giants but accessing more of the long tail. Because these environments have lower ad loads, they can offer much more efficient CPMs and that will only help drive performance outcomes for clients.

Christiana Brenton: 39:46

I'm sure you can relate in you know working the podcast industry.

Christiana Brenton: 39:48

There's just a bias, you know, to advertise in the show that maybe you consume or you've seen advertised in the ranks.

Christiana Brenton: 39:55

But what's really interesting about podcasting and why I'm personally so drawn to it is that you know a listen is a listen and the effect on that consumer. If I choose to listen to a podcast that nobody else in the world has ever heard of but I feel an intimate connection to the host, that impression served me is just as effective as an impression served in any of those you know bigger giant shows that are more well known. So this is really interesting, these sort of insights that we presented actually at the New York IB podcast at France, and that's the type of sort of, you know, strategic development that we really want to conduct across the UK and European market, because our assumption is that similar spending habits in terms of concentrated spend in the top shows alone and really, as Jordy said, we want to create a thriving and sustainable podcast industry. So it's going to be so important that budgets are more spread out across the long tail, not just for performance objectives, but for more creators getting you know, fairly renew rated for their craft.

Sam Sethi: 40:52

And so, yes, opportunity gap, learning gap, yeah, I mean when the long tail has always been the least served right, because CPM rates are all based on, you know, present and of course you know if you've only got a couple of hundred listeners that's not going to work for you right? So you always been underserved into that market space, which is why it's always been concentrated at the top end. And also laziness, as you said you know. Oh, I listen to X podcast.

Christiana Brenton: 41:15

I want to be my I do said that way, not me but I agree there's a, there's some, I like to call it the efficiency bias.

Sam Sethi: 41:22

Okay, that's nicer.

Christiana Brenton: 41:24

People plan a show because it's easy to book one show and deliver, let's say, a hundred thousand impressions and maybe happening with five shows. But in some of the tests you know, in some of the tests that we've conducted we actually find that the smaller shows can deliver even higher and engagement. So it's really important to get the blend.

Sam Sethi: 41:42

Yeah, if the audience that they've got, even those 10, are more valuable than a thousand who aren't fully engaged. So your former employees I can say that now it must be funny for you to say that, but your former employees A-Cast obviously came up with Converse Tracking and they came up with that whole keyword tracking through transcripts. So, again, that identifies in the long tail, many more of those podcasts that have a set audience. That might be you. The thing I would ask, though, then, given what you've said bringing that to the UK market what is your ideal client and what is your ideal brand over here, then? Who are you going to kick this off with?

Christiana Brenton: 42:21

Our ideal client is really in a US or UK based direct-to-consumer brand looking to scale their business within the UK and European market. So a great example would be Better Health Athletic Greens, wise. They're already, you know, very active in podcasting, certainly in the US, and they are starting to scale their budgets in the UK and we would love to help them on that journey. And then locally, other fast growing deep-seat brands like Akado, gymshark, flume, stitchfix, gusto. So they are the UK based deep-to-seat brands, some already activating in podcast, but we'd really love to share all of our learnings and expertise to help them scale their businesses.

Christiana Brenton: 43:01

What's so exciting about founding TALING is that we're ultimately in the business for growth. You know we, if our clients grow, we win. You know we're obsessed with growth, with TALING, for our clients, for creators, for the marketplaces, which is really nice to sort of have that 360 perspective because we've worked for and all had exposure to every stakeholder in the podcast universe. So I really feel that from bringing a real value to our clients, understanding the objectives of everyone in the ecosystem.

Sam Sethi: 43:29

Josie, not being a Debbie Downer, but occasionally read on the podcast. News about the advertising market and budgets are dropping and blah, blah blah. Oh, it's the end of podcasting if you listen to some magazines that don't know anything about anything. What did you two just decide to wake up one morning with your eureka moment? This is the perfect time to start a podcast media agency.

Georgie Holt: 43:54

Yeah, it's an interesting question and, trust me, in the US we experience that economic downturn. I think it's been a little harder and harsher over in the US ad markets in it than it's been in Europe and I think what we saw during that time is those performance, clients, budgets and spend still remained very robust. And any advertiser, any brand who, during the time of economic downturn, when consumers are spending less and budgets need to work even harder and they probably start to pull away from the brand metrics the upper funnel metrics of reaching awareness and getting you to feel something about the brand and getting you to do something about the brand and we want to make sure that the return on and spend in podcasting is absolutely the definitive. It's shown continuously that we're bringing new innovations and ideas to these advertisers to show them the potential of this medium. Obviously, we have the absolutely brilliant and hugely influential host read, which is one of the greatest forms of influencer marketing and is what truly drives those conversions for advertisers. But with the innovations that you mentioned, the acaster pursuing and a lot of the other marketplaces are exploring as well there's more potential in ads, too, that there's more attribution. There's more potential for measuring outcomes and delivering performance through the ads format as well.

Georgie Holt: 45:15

So we want to really make sure that we're talking about all of those opportunities with our clients at telling, because we want to ensure that they're maximizing the full potential of this incredible media channel, which, for us, really what it delivers above anything else is the attention of that audience, and we all know we're in this attention economy and when attention is scarce and consumer spend is scarce and ad budgets are scarce, advertisers want to go with customers' attention is and why they're going to get a really strong result for their marketing spend.

Georgie Holt: 45:44

And we absolutely believe that podcasting is the right place for that to happen. So, yes, a podcast media agency, yes, now. I don't think it's ever been more important than right now, to be honest, and Cristiana and I spend 24-7 together anyway in a working capacity, so we were constantly talking about podcast, its success. I'm deeply passionate about creators, about publishers, about brilliant journalism that we see happen every day in podcasts around the world, and I'm passionate about advertisers finding shows and funding the journalists and creators and in those shows so they can continue to create amazing content that listeners love. So, yes, right now, and yes, us, and we're really excited to get going Excellent.

Sam Sethi: 46:28

Now, look, you've said a couple of things. One is it's really interesting to hear people talk. You've talked about attention. You've talked about time listened. You've talked about engagement. You've talked about host read ads right, so they're great metrics. There's a wonderful agency called Bumper, out of the US I don't know if you know them Jonas Boost and Dan Meisner. Phew, I nearly forgot that, so that would have been bad, right. So, yes, edit 17,. Strangely, this will stay in anyway. So one for chaps. And they've been pushing the metrics of time listened, and they're a percent completed and valued earned, right, which is maybe a third metric that will take a while to come in. But isn't the dirty little secret of podcasting download as a metric? You know well how many downloads does that podcast get? Well, it gets 20,000, but nobody listened to add three, because we don't measure the length of time consumed. So is it time for the industry to change the way that they metric for advertising, from downloads to time listened and two percent completed?

Christiana Brenton: 47:36

I would actually flip that perspective on its head and obviously you know I've worked in sales side by the majority of my career. There's this sort of obsession with the stream versus the download. We're obsessed with the results. All of that becomes sort of secondary when there's been such incredible advancements in measurement now in terms of brand uplift and attribution by a pixel implementation. So you know, it's interesting that we're still sort of focused there when really we need to focus on the outcomes. If your podcast campaign has delivered website reputation, sales conversions and has hit your CPA goal, all of the download versus stringing sort of becomes a secondary.

Sam Sethi: 48:15

Hmm, it's a CPA level. I agree with you.

Christiana Brenton: 48:17

Yeah, you know, it's really and that's ultimately what we try and that didn't CPA goals and delivering CPA goals for our clients. So I think that was more important before measurement developed and that conversation around transparency of download versus the stream and that is really before the days of attribution through the partners. Like you know, art sites, websites which I know are just being rebranded, and hierarchies and there's a few others. So those innovations have sort of meant that conversation now isn't as important to us. Of course transparency is and of course they're going to be asking the right critical questions of all of our partners that we're, you know, obsessed with the outcome. And I will say also my time at ACAST, 70% of all podcasts were still streamed. It takes an increase in 5G connectivity, so it's a little bit of a general conception that the download piece is so important when most fast majority of consumers are streaming in live time and also we can quantify that the ad was heard because it was acted upon with attribution measurement.

Sam Sethi: 49:18

So yeah, I agree if that person engages. If they don't engage, the ad could still be heard. But anyway, yeah, we split hairs there. Look, ladies, well done, congratulations, very excited for you both. Georgie, tell us, where would somebody come and find you? I mean, how can they connect with you? How can they get engaged? What's the next step?

Georgie Holt: 49:39

Absolutely, thank you. You can find us both on LinkedIn. It's Georgie Holt and Kristiana Brenton, so if you message us on LinkedIn, we'll get back to you directly. We also have a website which is wwwtelling-mediacom, and you can also email us both, but the general email for our business is hello at telling-mediacom, so you can find us there.

James Cridland: 50:00

Georgie and Holt and Kristiana Brenton. If you'd like more Kristiana Brenton, you can go and have a look at the podcast business journal for an interview that we did with her a few months or so ago. If you're looking for a job, of course Pod News has podcasting jobs across the industry and across the world, and they're free to post as well. It just takes two minutes to add a new role.

Jingle: 50:24

Podnewsnet slash jobs the tech stuff, the tech stuff On the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 50:31

Oh, 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. I linked to a little bit of Buzzsprout's AI service at the end of last week, which automatically now creates tweets and writes a draft blog post for each new episode on the platform and in Pod News at the end of last week I also linked to basically everything that it had produced for this show, because we put this show through the Buzzsprout co-host AI service. They are, of course, a sponsor and they did a really, really good job. It's a very impressive service. So if you want to see what they did about last week's show unedited, then you can see that in the Pod News newsletter. I think it was last Friday and this week. Of course, all of the much of the information that you see again came from that particular AI thing. It looks pretty cool, doesn't it?

Sam Sethi: 51:29

Sam. No, it looks great and I think they should be applauded for what they've done. I think it's one of those where everyone was going oh you've got to include AI in podcasting. Oh, it's going to be rubbish, and they haven't. They've done a really good job. The transcripts work, the speaker labelling works, show notes and now this, which again Usha at the podcast movement we interviewed Maxime a few weeks ago was talking about how they're producing AI-generated tweets and blog posts. And, of course, they're probably working on a very similar thing to Buzzsprout now, where they'll produce show notes and chapters and transcripts. But anyway, I think Buzzsprout has done a great job here, so well done to the chaps.

James Cridland: 52:09

Yeah, no, I think that they do that very well. You were talking to me about the five P's.

Sam Sethi: 52:16

Well, it's just a shorthand for me, so it's in my little brain, I call it the five P's. No one else in the world does it. So you know, nicky, if you want it or just bin it as it most people will. But it's the preparation, presentation, production, promotion and profit. And so for me in my head I always think where are you in the cycle?

Sam Sethi: 52:35

And with Buzzsprout they are very clearly focused on the production, promotion and profit end of the five P's. So they produce transcripts, chapters, soundbites, dynamic ad insertions, subscriptions, magic mastering and statistics. So all of that post recording element is what Buzzsprout's focusing on and they're doing a very good job of that. Whether they move into the other areas in terms of, you know, do they go and buy something like I'm not saying they will, but you know like a Riverside and do that full production of the actual podcast, or will they do something to help podcasters prepare for shows? You know I look at Captivate, who do a good job. You know they have a booking system. So getting your guest booked, that's an interesting preparation part of the process in the five P's. Could Buzzsprout go and move along with that scale and do more for podcasters? So it's just in my head. Where do you companies fit in? Those five little blocks Tends to give me a sort of indicator of what area they're focused on.

James Cridland: 53:42

Indeed, and I thought that you were talking about the seven P's. You know what the seven P's are, of course, yes preparation, yes, yes, proper planning and preparation prevents piss.

James Cridland: 53:51

Poor performance Indeed, as apparently they say in the army. Yes, they do. Anyway, let's move on. If you're playing the AI drinking game, you've got another two shots. Here's your second one.

James Cridland: 54:05

Momento, which is an AI powered method of creating video shorts from your filmed podcast or other video content, has just announced a free plan. It automatically finds key highlights, funny moments and more that you can then shove up as a YouTube short or an Instagram, whatever an Instagram thing is, or, yeah, real, if you like or you know. However, you want to end up doing that onto Twitter, if anybody still uses that. So, yes, that's worthwhile.

James Cridland: 54:37

Taking a peek at TryMomentoai is where you go for that. The reason why it's called that is it's 10 clips or 10 moments. That's what it does. It shares moments from what you're doing. And another piece of AI Seeker and Oxford Road have launched what they call the first ever civility score for podcasts. So if a podcast is full of ad hominem attacks, then you might not want to advertise next to that, and so they basically talk about all of that kind of stuff and there's a civility score, and if that kind of floats you boat and makes you feel happy, then go for it. You're more than welcome to have a play Add hominem.

Sam Sethi: 55:20

What the hell is an add hominem?

James Cridland: 55:24

That is basically attacking the person, not the argument.

Sam Sethi: 55:28

There you go See people think you can't learn anything on this show.

James Cridland: 55:33

Yes, so you can say that Joe Biden has very stupid ideas about such and such, but you can't say that Joe Biden is stupid. That would be different.

Sam Sethi: 55:41

Won't be using that again in a sentence but, anyway, thank you very much for that. Now, amazon, they're bringing out AMP Live Radio to your phone, james, at the Android phone, so you'll be very happy. They launched it on iOS 16 months ago and reportedly fired half of its staff, so I'm not exactly thinking this is the best thing. I don't know what did they go. Oh, we've got a little bit of code left over. Let's chuck it on the Android. What happened?

James Cridland: 56:07

It does seem very strange why they would grow this thing, which I mean. I've not heard anybody talking about their AMP Live Radio app. By the way, it only works in the US, so it still wouldn't work here, but I've not heard anybody talking about this for some time, and they appear to have said that it's coming soon to Android. They sent me an email saying you signed up for details about our app on Android and it's coming soon. How exciting. Oh good, basically, but if you want to pretend to be a radio DJ, then go for it. Why not? Well, that's a good thing.

Sam Sethi: 56:49

Maybe you should ask Steve Boone. You know, clearly, it's his job now to push this out, steve Boone.

James Cridland: 56:54

Maybe it is Steve Boone's job. Other things going on. Blueberry has launched a mid-roll ad insertion tool, as I said in this podcast last week. Whatever Todd Cochran is feeding their dev team, I would like some of that because, blimey, they seem to release a new thing every single week. Don't eat me, todd Cochran. This is their thing for this week and seems to be doing very well. They've also moved out of their offices, so they are now a fully remote organization. They used to have some expensive offices in, I think, columbus, ohio, and they've moved out of those after five years, which seems like a very sensible plan, and more people are doing that, so you know. So there you go. I think they were selling off office furniture quite cheap, so buy your own desk. So that's right, todd. So, yeah, so that was good. And what else has been going on?

Sam Sethi: 57:52

Pod in box, yeah they've accepted type messages as well as voice messages so you can turn this feature on in your profile. So if you use Pod in box for your podcasting, you can now accept type messages. I suppose Feedback in both ways is useful. Either way works.

James Cridland: 58:10

Yeah, absolutely Good. Pods has also directly integrated listener support, which they are calling tipping, and they've integrated that from Captivate. I'm only saying this because every time I say anything about value for value, Adam Curry is just just jumps on me. He did another jumping on me in his podcast last week whittering on about the premium podcast industry show is still talking about value, for value being small amounts of money.

James Cridland: 58:53

It is for us, mate, but anyway. So Good Pods has integrated what they call tipping from Captivate. I don't understand why Good Pods isn't using any of the new podcast namespace for that, but that's a good thing. I'm sure. Pod fans we've heard of Pod fans. We mentioned this last week. So what's happening with Pod fans? Sam, you're the CEO. You should know. You're listed on the podcast index. You're listed on Pod News's new podcast apps page, which is lovely. You are the only podcast player that supports all of the new podcast namespace features, which is a good thing. So is that launch now or whereabouts? Is that?

Sam Sethi: 59:37

going. So just thank you very much. I mean, yes, we do support all the current features up to phase six, but we support two of the features in phase seven already. But that's here, not here or there. Now.

Sam Sethi: 59:49

I listened to you last week with Rob and you're right, we've got a number of people on our waitlist. We are opening it slowly. We did so this week. We've invited another 100 people onto the platform and we're just taking feedback. We are actually building a brand new feedback app this week and that will allow people to submit ideas. They will get paid in sats when they do submit ideas, so we're not going to nick your ideas for free. We will pay you. In fact, we'll pay you for bug reporting as well. So again, yeah, we are slowly opening it. I'm not rushing this out the front door. We worked really hard to get all those features completed and now that they are, we are now going back and refactoring some of the APIs, moving up to a bigger service. So we're ingesting larger amounts of the podcast index now and we are testing and, yeah, it's all good fun. It's just going along very nicely. Thank you.

James Cridland: 1:00:43

Yeah, so very cool and it's always fun to have a play around. I keep on sending you bugs, obviously, but you know that's always the way of these things.

Sam Sethi: 1:00:53

I thought that was a feature rather than a bug. I thought there was a feature request rather than a bug, James, but I'll take it either way.

James Cridland: 1:01:00

Once a product manager, always a product manager. Now let's take a look at some upcoming events and awards. Firstly, starting with some awards, you should go and vote for your favourite podcast in the People's Choice podcast awards. You'll find that podcast awardscom. It's the 18th annual podcast awards and it's honouring podcasters globally in 30 categories. Well worth taking a quick peek at that.

James Cridland: 1:01:32

There's the Audio Production Awards 2023, which have been announced by Audio UK. What they've done this year quite nicely is that they are giving you much more time to enter. Now. I think it's an additional four weeks for you to enter, and I think that that's recognising that actually entering an award can be quite a lot of hard work, and so I think that that's a good thing. Entries are open for the 2023 International Women's Podcast Awards. You've until mid-September to enter that, and we discovered that the podcast Hall of Fame, which came back a year and a half ago in Los Angeles, that will next be announced at PodFest in Orlando next year. So it used to be a podcast movement thing and it is now, by the looks of it, a PodFest thing, and it's going to be announced at that point.

Sam Sethi: 1:02:30

Anything to announce, James, you know anything you want to announce.

James Cridland: 1:02:33

I mean, I can tell you, the three people who are essentially in charge of it are Todd Cochran, rob Greenlee and Rob Walsh, and so, therefore, I think you can guess whether or not. I stand any chance of ever being in there, then no chance at all.

James Cridland: 1:02:52

No, exactly In terms of events, podcast movement in Denver, of course, is happening. You won't be there, but I will be and looking forward to that. There will be an episode of this very show, which is taking place in the exhibitors hall while everybody else is having beer. I fully intend to have some beer as well. We'll be recording on the mono wireless microphones and stuff like that, and we're doing that alongside the new media show in podcast movement in Denver. So looking forward to that and you'll hear the output of that in towards the end of August.

James Cridland: 1:03:31

Also going on, podcast day Asia, which is in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia on September the sixth. Lots of good speakers. I can also talk about Kelly Riordan, who is from Dead Set Studios, who released all of that data about Australian podcast listening earlier on this week. She will be a speaker as well, so looking forward to that too. And the London podcast festival is returning from September the seventh to the 17th, which is a festival. If you want to go and see your favorite British podcast getting recorded, then you can go along and do that. And finally, Pod News Live is, of course, happening on September the 27th. It's in London. Lots of fantastic speakers. Pod News dot net. Slash live is where to get your tickets and we'll be ramping up some of the PR about that in weeks to come.

Jingle: 1:04:24

Pod News Live, where the podcast industry connects. Get your tickets now at podnewsnet slash live, boostergram corner, corner, corner on the Pod News Weekly Review.

Sam Sethi: 1:04:41

Oh it's our favorite part of the show Indeed Now. Dave Jones sent us in 10,000 sacks. Thank you, dave. You still sound sick, james, I hope you've got well. Hope you're feeling better soon. Are you feeling better, james?

James Cridland: 1:04:54

Well, you know a bit better, sort of slowly getting rid of that cold. But it was only a cold, it wasn't anything more. I did check myself twice but yes, which is a good thing, courtney Kosak. Courtney Kosak has sent us a boostergram. How amazing is that? A boob boost. If you've been following Courtney on Twitter, you will understand why it's a boob boost, because she is also appearing in Playboy. So there's a thing.

Sam Sethi: 1:05:25

Yes, yes, absolutely, it's in the lawn. I'm clearly not following the right tweets.

James Cridland: 1:05:30

You're not following the right podcasters. I'll tell you that yes.

James Cridland: 1:05:34

Oh my lord, If you're a fan of Courtney Kosak for other reasons, then you. Yes, you should follow her on Twitter and find out how to get some of her exclusive content, shall we say. Anyway, she says I very much enjoyed celebrating 20 years of podcasting with James and Rob Greenlee. Rob's guest hosting put me to shame. Well, anyway, I've been meaning to send you the boob boost as a cheeky thank you for not only this wonderful show, but for turning me on to value for value. I'm loving it over on Fountain. Thanks a ton. There you go, adam Curry. You thought I'd done a really bad job of selling value for value to Courtney, but no, seemingly not.

Sam Sethi: 1:06:15

Have you sold Rob Greenlee to Playboy as well?

James Cridland: 1:06:19

Because that could be interesting. That's right, todd, yes, gosh, and Gene Bean has sent us the Roe of Ducks as well.

Sam Sethi: 1:06:27

Yeah, gene sent a Roe of Ducks saying you talked about needing better stats in podcasting. Couldn't apps utilizing the stuff John Spurlock proposed around podcast events help with this? Now, we had a long discussion a private discussion about this. I am a very big advocate of this new phase seven tag called podcast events, or maybe something else, maybe podcast activity. Oscar and I met many, many, many months ago and we talked about this, about being able to have what is called an old W3C standard, called the activity stream, which eventually morphed into activity pub, by the way, which is what mastered on users.

Sam Sethi: 1:07:11

But there is an underlying thread there. It's a technology similar to RSS in many ways, where you can actually, using metadata, structured data in this case, where you can set events or activity, as I like to call it. So when did someone join, when did someone follow someone, how long did they listen, what did they play, et cetera, et cetera. And, yes, you could roll that up into some sort of analytics app, maybe something that John Spurlock could do, similar to OP3. And, yes, you would get cross app events and you would have the ability, therefore, to make some creators understand what listeners are doing or across apps with their podcasts.

James Cridland: 1:07:57

If you get value from what we do. The Pod News Weekly review is separate from Pod News. Sam and I share everything from it and we really appreciate your support so we can. So, all right, your support, so we can continue making this show and do the other stuff like Pod News Live as well. You can become a power supporter at weeklypodnewsnet with your dollars or your pounds, or you can support us with sats by hitting the boost button in your podcast app. Podnewsnet slash new podcast apps will help you find a new app. Why not try PodFans or Fountain or any of the other ones? So what's happened for you this week, sam? Well, I'm back from a doggy holiday.

Sam Sethi: 1:08:39

I've renamed the wife the grand old Duchess of York because she marched me up and down a number of hills I don't know how many. She had a gull to, I think walk the whole of Cornwall it felt like. So yeah, we did 16 miles a day. God, the dog was knackered even, let alone me. But it was nice. It was wet, windy, but there was great food. So, yes and yes, thank you for noticing. You weren't supposed to the number of people on my wait list. Thanks for being eagle-eyed.

James Cridland: 1:09:08

Well, you know, it's my job to look at screenshots and go oh, that's an interesting hamper.

Sam Sethi: 1:09:14

Yes, yes, the other things that this week. More back to podcasting. I'm looking forward to Paul McCartney's new podcast called A Life in Lyrics that's coming out in September. Bushkin Industries and I Heart are producing that. So he's talking about the Beatles songs that he produced. I think he's done a lot of this before. I mean, I've heard a lot of him talk about where certain song lyrics came from, so I don't think it's gonna be that revealing. But you know, again, good to see Paul McCartney getting into podcasting.

James Cridland: 1:09:44

Yeah, no, indeed, and these are all conversations that happened with Paul Muldoon, who is a poet who wrote the book, all about his lyrics and stuff, and they're conversations that actually happened during the pandemic, and so basically they've gone. We can make this into a podcast, so it should be good. And, as I wrote in the pod news newsletter a couple of days ago, I'm in arm, hand in hand. We all stand together knowing at least one song that won't be making the highlights real.

Sam Sethi: 1:10:23

There was a new Banksy podcast coming out, james in from the BBC. It's just come out, actually now a couple of days ago. Think that might be interesting. And, of course, who robs a Banksy, if you're into Banksy.

James Cridland: 1:10:36

I very much enjoyed the new podcast from PJVote. You will remember him from Reply. All Basically, all of the goodness of that has come back to his new podcast which is called Search Engine, which you can find in your favorite search engine, and the first version, which I listened to last week while I was making a climbing frame in the garden, which was a thrill was talking about drinking airplane coffee and it was just a great, sublime 50-minute documentary all about that. It's well worth the peak. He's doing that with Audacy and a company called Jigsaw and worthwhile taking a listen to. So that's good. And also my amount of productivity is going to go down to almost zero because I bought a Playdate about two years or so ago.

James Cridland: 1:11:40

Playdate is a little brightly colored games machine from Panic Software and it's a thing of beauty. Not just is it a thing of beauty, but absolutely everything that I have done with this. It came about 10 o'clock this morning and I've been playing around with it and absolutely everything is all about user experience and it's just a beautiful, beautiful experience. I'll be blogging about it all kinds of time. As one example, right. So this little toy comes through the post and there was a postcard inside the box which said if it doesn't turn on, don't worry, you'll just need to press the reset button with a paperclip. It's a relatively simple, straightforward thing. Attached to that postcard was a paperclip. You see, ux, excellent UX, anyway. So I'm looking forward to blogging about that. If you're interested in that sort of thing, jamescridlandnet is where to go.

Sam Sethi: 1:12:47

I'm also trying to work out why Can I just ask before you move on to what else you did this week Playdate. I used to organize my children to go on Playdates. I have no idea what this thing you've got it does what?

James Cridland: 1:13:02

does it do? Playdate is the website which you can go and have a look. It's and I'm reading this it's a new tiny handheld game system with a bunch of brand new games, and it's made by the folks behind Panic Software, who make basically very tedious, dull software. But no, it's a beautiful, beautiful toy. Ok, so yes, and I bought it two years ago. It was a Kickstarter thing. I bought it two years ago. I've only now been, you know, sent it and it's super good, Super good. Ok Now.

Sam Sethi: 1:13:41

I know.

James Cridland: 1:13:41

Yes. So there we go. Now we know. And what else was I going to say? I was going to say something else of supreme unimportant. Well, haven't you been on TV?

Sam Sethi: 1:13:49

or something.

James Cridland: 1:13:50

I was on the radio twice this week talking about AM Radio. So that was a thrill, oh yes, and the other thing that I'm trying to do is I'm trying to understand why commercial radio in Australia has managed to break the radio in my car Genuinely they have. I can listen to anything from the ABC, from public radio. Can I listen to anything from commercial radio now? No, I can't, because it's been run by somebody that doesn't understand how to broadcast the AB. So that is a thrill. So I'm busy trying to get that fixed for me, but for the other culture of a million people that have the same car that I do. So that'll be interesting. I'll report back next week and that's it for this week.

Sam Sethi: 1:14:34

I think Thank you to our guests from Telling and if you want to give us feedback by using email to weekly at podnewsnet, you can do so, or you can send us a boost to Graham. If your podcast app doesn't support Boost, then grab a new app from podnewsnet forward slash new podcast apps.

James Cridland: 1:14:51

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Christiana Brenton: 1:15:08

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