James Cridland: 0:00

It's Friday, the 4th of August 2023.

Speaker 2: 0:04

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

James Cridland: 0:13

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

Sam Sethi: 0:15

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

James Cridland: 0:18

In the chapters. Today, adam Curry makes podcasting history again. The British podcast awards are slammed for their ticket pricing. Podcasts are coming to TikTok, amazon and their weird demand of 30% ad revenue share, and also Hi there.

Jake Warren: 0:34

I'm Jake Warren. I'm the CEO and founder of Message Heard and I'll be on to talk about the interesting developments of the British podcast awards.

Adam Curry: 0:42

Now, madam Curry, I will be on later to talk about boosts, the grand ball as we move into an exciting new phase of podcasting music podcast and what is it? I'll tell you later.

James Cridland: 0:53

They will. This podcast is sponsored and hosted by Buzzsprout. Last week, 3,091 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: 1:21

Okay, james, let's crack on with the show. Look, last Friday Adam Curry launched his new podcast called Boost the Grand Ball. It's the first time that money from listeners has shared directly with the music artists, so it was using value for value in a live show. We think we used to call those radio shows, didn't we James? But anyway, if you have a compatible podcast player like Podverse Fountain or Podfans, you can listen to those shows and in real time, while the show was playing, you could also be paying those artists. Did you ever listen to the show, james?

James Cridland: 1:57

Yeah, I had listened to the show. It was a very Adam Curry show. Lots of compression in there, lots of exciting music and all of that kind of stuff and really interesting and really exciting how this is the first time really that artists are going to get properly paid for the songs that they have on these particular shows.

Sam Sethi: 2:18

So really cool, I thought Well it would be rude of us not to then reach out to Adam himself, the Podfather, and ask him a little bit about what was Booster Groundball and why it took him 20 years to create this podcast.

Adam Curry: 2:32

Coming from a radio background, I understand, and have always understood the issues with playing music in a radio program, in a pirate radio. So I've actually been arrested for doing that and have gotten in trouble for playing music without paying the proper licenses, because there is a system set up worldwide. Music is very complicated. The music industry has, of course, where there's a lot of money, there's a lot of people trying to take pieces of it and there's a lot of ownership, a lot of ownership issues, and whenever music is used, the people who created that music or who own that not necessarily the same people want to have a piece of it. So for podcasting man, there's a whole bunch of stuff that comes into play. There's the performing rights, because it's kind of like a radio show. There's the mechanical rights, because you're actually putting it onto an MP3 that's being duplicated, replicated. There's a publishing right. I mean it's all this stuff. So if you really made a podcast and you played music that was licensed through any of these performing rights organizations and, of course, has big publishers, you're pretty certain you're going to get sued or you'll have to take it down. It just won't work.

Adam Curry: 3:51

Probably, if you go back and listen to the early days of Daily Source Code. You'll hear me talking about this and the whole. This is really why the entire medium went more towards soliloquies, monologues, dialogues, interviews, et cetera, and has really been about voices and not about music. We needed a mechanism to get the artist paid, the music owners whoever produced the song owns it, whoever else played on it, whatever that distribution has to be. We needed to have a simple way to do that, basically to create the modern version. We had the modern version of the studio for recording. We had the modern version of radio, which is podcasting. Now we needed the modern version of distributing payments and rights, very much like ASCAP, bmi, and those pieces came together in the past week or two.

Sam Sethi: 4:47

Is it the past week or two when I listened to you and Dave? I obviously followed you for the last couple of years and it feels like there's been blocks building. Now you may have had the view of where this was going, but not all of us did so. For example, when did you first go? I know the monetization mechanism it's Tosh's, it's micropayments. I know you've had value for value for a long time from no agenda, but when did you and Dave suddenly go? Yep, it's this Toshie.

Adam Curry: 5:17

Well, when I called Dave and said and we've been friends for 12, 10, 12 years and we'd tried lots of cool little projects that went nowhere, we still are five people who use our software. And I said, dude, here's what we got to do. We've got to protect podcasting, we're going to have to set up our own index so that no one could deplatform it, and we need an API for podcast developers to use this. And we have to make it free. And the idea from the get go was free means value for value, so they can use it. You know, you use the API and yet you support the project. If no one supports the project monetarily, by supporting us with finances as well, it'll die. So you know, but I've done no agenda long enough to know that you can build a community around this. Simultaneously, I was learning about the Lightning Network and this wonderful piece of it which is key send, which means you don't need permission to send somebody money. And I said you know, and we need to put this as the payment system. We saw that you could split this up and we immediately went, Dave, and I went ah, now we can finally put the application developer in the value flow. This was the big idea, because you know people who were building apps. You know they have to beg for $2.99 a month or a $99 purchase or it's very demoralizing not demoralizing per se, but you're not. You know, if you see someone got a big ad deal and you're the app guy and people are using your software and you're working hard and of course you only hear from your users when something breaks and then you suck and this is no good and what do I expect with it? But you're never in the value flow. So now it's like, oh man, we could have not just the app developers but also podcast index, can you know can also receive a little piece of this. So here's a true value for value system where the minute someone presses play at their own discretion, so whatever they feel it's worth, they are sending value to the podcaster, to the app they're using, to, you know, to the index. That is actually part of the app developers value flow and the podcaster on their end can split this up transparently. So you can have, per host, you know, 40% for the for each co-host and you know, 5% for someone who's doing chapters and 5% who's doing something for you know, some promotion for the show 10% to your mom because you borrowed the money from her to buy the equipment. So it's like, wow, this is perfect.

Adam Curry: 7:49

Now, once we had that working and in play, my head was already gone. I knew from that moment I knew this is the way for music. It's been. You know, hundreds of people over time have worked together on this and I think that Dave and I sometimes just act as co-conductors of an orchestra and this orchestra there's a hundred people show up and there's a guy with a banjo and someone with spoons and a washboard and electric guitar a Spanish guitar and we have to kind of make it all work together.

Adam Curry: 8:27

And this, to me, I got to go a little spiritual. To me it's God's work. What's happened here? There's been something that's gone beyond just a couple of guys and some people. This was meant to be and the way this was all flowing together.

Adam Curry: 8:41

And for me all I had to do was just add my piece was once we kind of had it, you know, and of course I've been motivating like, hey, you know what if we do this part and what if we, when I play the song, we can switch the wallet, so that then goes to the artist. You know that, translated to something called remote item. And this is now you're in doing namespace and spec stuff. Adam doesn't do that. That's Dave and Alex Gates and Steven B and all these different people who jump in. And I think the true reason is that from the get-go, everybody is getting a piece of that value flow. It's not about how much it's that. The minute it works, everybody sees it. Everybody sees a couple of sats drip into their wallet, you know, and that is such an exciting, exhilarating, rewarding feeling. That is what has made this work and gotten us to this point.

Sam Sethi: 9:36

Yeah, no, I mean, I remember the first time I got my head around how to make a wallet work and sent my first sats or received my first sats. It was magic. And I think you know I just did this with Rob Greenley just the other day. I just set up a wallet for him, dumped in a thousand sats, in real time as we were talking. He was like, oh my God, I get it right. And so it is that magic moment.

Sam Sethi: 9:57

And I think when I look at the namespace, you know everything that's been built. So it starts off with chapters and the value block, then splits and the live item tag and then this new one which has come out recently, which, again, maybe you can explain a little bit more about the value time split. Now this is the one that really took a lot of people me maybe longer than others to get my head around, because I was like, ok, well, we've got value blocks and we've got splits, adam, why do we need something else? And when I looked at what it is and how it works, it's the way that in your show you can divert any payments for a period of time to an artist and explain a little bit more. What was the, I suppose, the idea behind coming up with another way of splitting payments.

Adam Curry: 10:50

OK, so within the, an RSS feed for a podcast, we can, and that was actually the first we had. The namespace was created for the value block, so that came first, the whole reason for the namespace, which we're delighted by what came into the namespace, because, holy crap, now we have 25, 26 different features, but it started with in order to have the value block, which means, ok, here's an RSS feed. Now there's something additional and we define it in this namespace, which is just a pointer to our documentation, and that was the value block, meaning any payments that you want to send to this podcast are done through this mechanism and you could technically put anything in there you want, but we chose for lightning and anyone can add something if they want. No one's really done it successfully yet and the payment addresses are to these different wallets and here is the distribution, so the percentages, as we were moving ahead.

Adam Curry: 11:48

Something that came up that was developed amongst this large group was the remote item, and it was initially, I think, set up for playlists, so you could point to a different podcast or a clip from a podcast and it would, instead of you inserting something from someone else's feed, creating a duplicate recording, you could just say, hey, this particular moment I want to insert this particular item from a whole different podcast feed. That of course, brought the idea that, oh, wait a minute, what if that item was a song? But instead of inserting that song, what if we just make a pointer in time and say, at 10 seconds into the beginning of my show, I'm starting a song? So at that moment I want every podcast app that understands value for value to switch the wallet to that song's information. And here's where it gets cool, because the song which is put up by an artist is just like a podcast, only it's three, four minutes and it has a RSS feed. It has a value block. That song can have a value block that is distributed in a very traditional manner.

Adam Curry: 13:15

Writer-composer, which may be 40% each, because that is a traditional split. Writer-composer the two people of the song, but maybe you put in every band member, every person who played on the song. Give them a couple of points. Now we've just circumvented all of ASCAD, bmi, the whole publishing business. They've been antiquated overnight, because not only is the payment direct, you don't have to wait 48 months, it's direct from the person who's enjoying the music at that moment to the artist who and the people who created the song. It's also completely transparent because you can look at the value block and say, oh, this is what everyone's getting. There's no hanky-panky, you don't have to sue the label, you don't have to sue ASCAD BMI. It's exactly all the things that artists and musicians and people who make and publish music have complained about for 50 years has been circumvented right in one go.

Adam Curry: 14:08

And for me, the frustrated radio DJ, I can now play whatever I want, as long as it's within this realm of music. Whenever I play a song and you're listening to it at that moment, the wallet in your app switches to whoever is the owner of that piece of content, of that music. So now, if you're streaming sats in real time maybe 100 sats a minute or 200 sats a minute it's going to go to the owner of that piece of music and their distribution. When you hit your boost button or a boostogram, that will also go. So now you can also send a note to the person who made that song and let them know how much you enjoy it. I mean, we're just scratching the surface now of what can be done with this.

Sam Sethi: 14:53

Yeah, the nearest. I got to it so I could get my head around. It was like a hyperlink URL. So you're on a web page and there's a link on a page. You click on the link and it goes somewhere else. So you're in the same way for that moment in the audio, just for that second or time that you've set aside, it goes off. Looks at someone else's value block, looks at something else, everything transfer there and then when that's finished, it comes back to you. I just thought it was genius. So how do people get involved in this? So here you are doing a live show, you're playing music, you're mixing it all in, but in the split value time split you've got specific timestamps. Are you doing that post the time? How's it working, adam? How does it work? Do you do it beforehand or do you do it through some voodoo magic? What do you do?

Adam Curry: 15:41

As a DJ anyone who's an old school DJ you know that we are basically octopus, we have eight hands and we could do a whole bunch of things at once. But let's keep it simple and let's say I'm not doing a live show, I'm just recording a podcast and this podcast will include music. So we actually have been testing this concept out for several weeks on the podcast in 2.0 boardroom, as we call it, the podcast in 2.0 podcast. We'll play a song and we'll switch the wallet at that moment. So, like everything with it's new with podcasting, to create the podcast, your podcast host will have to add some additional capabilities.

Adam Curry: 16:22

There's a lot of moving parts in this case. That is typical with everything RSS. You could literally do all this in Notepad if you know what you're doing, and you don't even have to. If you can read English and you have an understanding of what you're doing, you could do this this way. But that's not what most people, if any people, are actually going to do. In order to add these wallet switches in, you need to be able to get the information from the music that you're about to play. I'm just going to keep it in music to keep it simple, the way the spec is built, we actually use the GUID, that's the unique identifier of that particular piece. So you need to be able to retrieve that information. That's not something that is just simple to do.

Adam Curry: 17:10

There's some work that some look up, that needs to be done and again, the beautiful Steven B created a system where you literally you type in the name of the artist, the song, the title, and it pops up and you just select it and it builds all that into this one particular block of the RSS feed.

Adam Curry: 17:31

That's something that I'm not sure how quickly hosting companies will get on board with that to do this type of work. It may be something that could be an external tool. I think that's probably more likely. But the way I do it currently is I've recorded the show, I get ready to publish the feed and just like I'd say, okay, here's the chapters, here's where the transcript file is, here's who the host is for the person tag, all these things you put into a little interface. Now I look up the songs that I played and I say, okay, play this at this minute, at this minute, at this minute for the next one, and that all gets put into the split. So that's how you would do it. One feed, as far as I know, is the only tool that does this front to back, and then all I have to do is publish and it works.

Sam Sethi: 18:22

When, where, next? Where are you going to take this next? What's in your head?

Adam Curry: 18:26

There's a lot of sawdust. Apparently there's a lot of stuff in there.

Sam Sethi: 18:30

In my head is right now.

Adam Curry: 18:33

I'm very excited because what I hope would happen is happening. Most are starving for discovery to be discovered, to be known, to be distributed for people to talk about them. If I wanted to start a music show without value for value, I could have done that at any point and people would have been happy to give me their songs and I could play it. But now what we've seen, particularly with Wave Lake, w-a-v-l-a-k-ecom, is they are, they have a little top 40 there. Now it's not all the songs that are value for value, but you know they're right now.

Adam Curry: 19:09

It's a place where someone can easily go and set it up. They're not. They're lacking a lot of features like full split capability etc. But you can. You can go there quickly and set something up and see that when someone plays your song you can see sats coming in. This is a very exciting moment for artists because even on the tests we did in the past two or three months with podcasting 2.0, the podcast we'd get emails from people saying, like Joe Martin, like I got in one day more actual value from one play of podcasting 2.0 than three years of Spotify. So I want a hundred thousand music podcasts and I think this comes at a good time, sam, because and I even mentioned this on the first Boost to Grand Ball, you had the producer on from who did, who worked for Archwell and set up Pivot and yeah, Rebecca, yeah.

Adam Curry: 20:05

Rebecca. Yeah, rebecca, exactly. She was saying podcasting is, you know, in this lull right now, which is, you know, as we've identified, is because a lot of the money has dried up to fund new projects. There's a softness, as some would call it, in the advertising market. Oh boy, what are we going to do? Is podcasting over? It's not cool anymore. All of a sudden, here's a whole new category of podcasting, which is it's. We're bringing in a whole field of content.

Adam Curry: 20:35

This is not just people who can talk. This is people who are interested in music. You don't have to be a DJ, don't have to be Adam Curry to do this. You can just be a dude who sits around or do debt, saying, hey, here's some cool tracks that I found I want to share with you. Let me play this. And yeah, I got the guy or gal on. Let me interview him. We've created, then, really we, all of us, everyone who's been working in this community for three years, and it's hosting companies, it's, I mean, everyone's in on it. We have created this new category and it's just sprouted and here we go. You know, hold on to your pants.

Sam Sethi: 21:08

Yeah, I mean some of the places. If you want to play in this game, you know, go to fountain, podverse, pod fans, kuro, cast a pod friend, podcast guru, podcast addict, and there's probably several of them missed out, but you know they're all joining in now and again. I think you know a lot of this is going to evolve very quickly into what I would say more people are aware of it than they are today.

Adam Curry: 21:32

And I'd like to toot your horn for a moment, sam what you've done with pod fans. I think this is going to be right up your alley. I mean the things that can be done now with music in addition to what you've already done with podcasting, and it's almost like a gift. Pod fans you know you have a very agile. I think you support as just like Kuro cast, or probably support every single tag, every single feature of podcasting 2.0. I mean you can even have the music lookup built right into pod fans so people can look up the music there. I mean the stuff that you will be able to do. I'm very excited to see what will come out of that. I mean, your problem is how much time at the date do you have?

Sam Sethi: 22:14

Oh, I have all the time. We are looking very closely at it right now. We have all the mechanisms working. So the good lookup for a pod role we have that. The ability to support the value time splurge we have that. I've got a call, hopefully with Stephen B, to understand how we do it in the live show because, again, that's still something I haven't got my head around. But all of this is very cool.

Sam Sethi: 22:38

And look all the value for value block we already know. We've got boost to ground ball already in our system and we can already see how the splits are working, the fees are working and everything else is working and the payments have. We've already got in the chapters all of the cover art for each of the title artists and links out. So all of that is already there. There's a few enhancements we would like to make, but it all works and that was without us having to change anything. We just ingested your RSS straight into our system and it all just worked and that was a lovely, beautiful thing about it. So, yeah, very well done.

Adam Curry: 23:11

That's actually one of the beautiful things that I learned early on from Dave Weiner, who, of course, really did all the technology of podcasting 1.0, which we concepted and invented together is this concept of interoperability. In the early days of podcasting, I was just looking at software developers and how they would speak and how they would function and there was always this do we have interop? Do we have interop? And I never really understood how important it was, and of course, that's what RSS was by definition is a protocol or format really that allows everyone to interoperate with each other, and we've really only just added one more thing to that, and that is the Lightning Network. And so there was never. We didn't have to go out and build Wave Lake, we didn't have to convince anybody to do all this, we didn't have to build GetAlbycom, we didn't have to talk to anyone at Breeze or anywhere else.

Adam Curry: 24:17

Here's how it works is everyone understands it, and so that's what I think is so exciting is we don't even know what the next thing will be, that someone comes along and just plugs into this, because it's all open, it's all known how it works and everybody can play along, as long as you adhere to these basic protocols and formats which are published and well distributed and no one owns. And having the value flow I can't say it enough that's the magic. Most open source projects like podcasting 2.0, podcast index they blow up within a certain amount of time because there's anger and disagreement and then they fizzle and then someone forks it and goes off and does their own thing. I've seen it so many times and because the value flow is a part of this, no one ever strays too far from that because, hey, if I plug this thing in, it's gonna I'm gonna go to piece of the value flow.

James Cridland: 25:14

The Pondfather himself, adam Curry, and a full version of that interview is available in the pod news extra feed. I notice that you managed to get your voice in quite a lot there, sam.

Sam Sethi: 25:28

Yeah, the three, three sentences added to it immensely. He talks for a living. You know he doesn't. I didn't notice that. No, no, he's very good. I mean, look, it was a bit like the action man that I used to have when I was a kid, you know, you pulled a string at the back of the head and then they just talk. It's easy as an interviewer to just simply ask Adam, tell me about this, and then sit back. I went and made a cup of coffee. I came back he was still going. It was great.

James Cridland: 25:52

Yeah, glass of wine, had a full three course meal. No, really cool, really cool and great to hear Adam and you know you got the feeling listening to that show. You got the feeling that he was just super proud of everything. There's so much technology, there's so much running with scissors that's made all of this work and it's a wonderful thing that it's that it's finally there. So I guess the question is whether or not the catalogue is wide enough yet to be able to produce a music show which will have a ton of different, of different artists in there. But right now, you know it's a great start.

Sam Sethi: 26:31

It is, and I think later on in the technical section you and I are going to talk about more of the technology that was made or used to make that show and also some of the feedback from the artists that are absolutely over the moon with what's happened. So again, stick with us. In the technical section We'll cover a little bit more about that.

James Cridland: 26:51

Yeah, and, as a reminder, we use chapters so you can skip right there if you want to, but don't do that. Listen to this instead. This is all about. Well, I spotted this about Amazon, who are doing something really interesting. So what they're basically doing is they have a fire TV, which is their TV platform, which is a fork of Android, and they sell these little sticks that go in the back of your TVs. And what they have turned around to the companies who are on that platform and that might be, you know, itv player, or it might be Hulu, or it might be all of these other platforms they basically turned around and said right, we want 30% of your ad revenue, or, if you like, you can use our own ad sales program instead.

James Cridland: 27:36

And I was looking at that and thinking well, that's really interesting. It's got nothing to do with podcasting, but that's really interesting. And then I thought, well, no wait, it might, because podcasts right now contain advertising. They're not required to share any ad revenue at this time, but presumably Amazon Music and Spotify and YouTube will all be watching this with interest and going. Well, if Amazon get away with this, then maybe we can ask our podcasters for 30% of their income as well. What do you think? Do you think I'm just crazy, or do you think there's something in that? I think they would be crazy if they did that.

Sam Sethi: 28:12

Oh, yeah, I mean, I think they've been watching Apple going oh, they've been getting away with that 30% for ages. We want a bit of that 30%, thank you very much. But no, there is a large fragmentation. There are a lot of providers. I think they're sitting there going yeah, we're providing the infrastructure, providing the network. We want some value. So I can see why they might. 30% feels a bit high, but that seems to be the market value set by Apple. And yeah, you're right, I mean Amazon and Spotify and YouTube Music might sit there and go. Yeah, with podcasts, maybe we could. I don't think they would, though I think everyone at Abandoned Ship fairly quickly on that one.

James Cridland: 28:53

No, I think there is something around why podcast platforms aren't saying we'll have a bit of that money too, and I guess if you have a look at value for value, that's kind of built in there. If you give this show a boost, then a percentage of that goes to the podcast index. If you give the pod news daily a boost, then a percentage of that goes to the people who are hosting that show, more of which later. So I think there's potentially something there but worthwhile keeping an eye on, I guess.

Sam Sethi: 29:27

Now, one thing you spotted very much this week TikTok are announcing that they might be going into podcasting and they're going to use RSS as well. James, tell me more.

James Cridland: 29:36

Yes, some podcasters if you're a special podcaster, then you might get an email from them with details of how to add podcast feeds to TikTok. I think it's done in rather a clever way. So, firstly, it uses your RSS feed, but secondly, they're not trying to do another podcast app. All they're trying to do is allow you to link from your video to a podcast episode so you can listen to that podcast episode in TikTok. So it basically encourages you, as a podcaster, to produce content on TikTok, which then links directly to the podcast episode, which is quite an interesting podcast. It's quite a smart idea. It plays on a player page within the app. It seems to work quite nicely. Tiktok have been doing this sort of thing, have been fiddling around in the podcast space for the last two years, so I understand. But yeah, the first set of podcasters are getting access to this. So another podcast platform, but not really a replacement for Spotify or for Google podcasts or YouTube music. It's really a very different way of doing things.

Sam Sethi: 30:48

I think YouTube should look at this very cleverly. One of the things I think that podcasters could do and should do maybe is create clips from their audio or from a video if they want to record it, Instead of putting it through the main YouTube platform. I think they'd get better engagement if they went like TikTok five-minute short clips, or maybe they did Reels or they did Instagrams and again that whole short, quick, sort of like a here's a little snippet of my podcast Now you might want to come and listen to the full one over here. I think you should use those platforms for what they're good for and I don't know. Well, I'm excited. I want to see when this comes out, because I want to play with it, and I think TikTok's engagement for me right now is going through the roof. I think it's brilliant.

James Cridland: 31:37

Yeah, no, I think it's a very clever way of integrating podcasts into that particular platform and I would share that. I think you know perhaps this is something that YouTube should have thought about and actually encourage people to produce the short form content that we know works on YouTube, rather than uploading the entire show. So it makes a bunch of sense, I think, worthwhile keeping an eye on, Right.

Sam Sethi: 32:03

Next story OK, brand unsuitability is the title. Nice, yeah, so these AI brand suitability platforms have basically used AI and said that they don't particularly understand certain black podcasters, and so they've labeled them as unsuitable. James, tell me more about this.

James Cridland: 32:25

Yeah, this was a astonishing story. Now it is put out by Sounder, which is an AI based tool, an AI based brand suitability tool which gets things right, so they say so. Just bear that in mind when you listen to what the story is. But if you look at standard keyword blocklists, which some people are using for brand suitability should I be advertising on this podcast or does it talk about naughty things?

James Cridland: 32:56

If you look at a standard keyword blocklist, 92 percent of the podcast content from Urban One, which is a black podcast network, was marked as potentially problematic and it couldn't be advertised on, even though actually the reality is probably about 10 percent was problematic, not 92 percent. So what was going on is that the tools didn't understand that in black culture, you know, the word bomb means cool. It's not talking about an explosive device. It didn't understand the accent and so therefore, instead of that, it thought that somebody had said the word dead and therefore thought, oh well, we're talking about death and we're talking about conflict and blah, blah, blah, and so it marked it as something that they couldn't advertise on. I mean really interesting stuff, and it does go to show that, yes, a brand suitability tool might work very well on polite content from you know, from middle-aged white people, but it doesn't necessarily understand different cultures, which I thought was a fascinating story.

Sam Sethi: 34:05

It's not the first time I did, if you recall, when Google's AI image detector couldn't tell the difference between a gorilla and a black person because of the way that the AI had been trained. We know that with LLMs large language models unless you have a cultural LLM, what it means in Japan and what it means in America, you know. Words and context are very different, so you're going to have to have cultural, localized LLMs in order to understand you know the differences, otherwise this problem will be common fare.

James Cridland: 34:39

Yeah, absolutely, I mean, you know some understanding of context, some understanding of you know, all of that sort of side is very important and you know I mean it's a very important thing. And you know I mean, who would have thought that brand suitability tools could be perhaps inadvertently, but could be being racist? But that's essentially what's going on here. So quite an astonishing story and you know it does make you wonder how many of those brand suitability tools are basically turning around and saying you know, no, this is an unsuitable podcast when it's absolutely suitable and there's nothing wrong with it whatsoever. The question that I have is whether or not the company that was setting up these standard keyword blocklists are now legally liable, because Urban One have lost an awful lot of money, you know, if systems were telling advertisers that, no, you can't advertise on this. So yeah, I just found that absolutely fascinating story.

Sam Sethi: 35:43

Oh well, we'll find out if anyone actually takes them to court. Oh now, edison Research has a number of reports out. They reveal that the kids like listening to podcasts. 29% of kids aged six to 12 in the USA listen to podcasts. I mean, my kids are much older, so I've missed the trend here. Is this true? I mean, are kids listening to podcasts, james?

James Cridland: 36:04

Well, I mean, this is data from Edison Research and so it's probably true. I think that they interviewed the parents, not the kids, but apparently 87% of kids have shared something that they learned from a podcast with others. Let's hope they weren't listening to Joe Rogan. The reports free to download from the Edison Research website. But there's clearly a lot of money in kids, because only yesterday we saw scripted podcast company Realm acquiring the kids production company Pinner and also acquiring other kids or rights to other kids shows like Rebel Girls and Go Kid Go. So there's obviously a ton of money in the kids podcast space. But that's not the only data that Edison Research has released this week, is it?

Sam Sethi: 36:52

No, it's the first time that they've produced a podcast metrics on a quarterly ranker. And, no surprise, joe Rogan is still number one, crime junkie at number two, the daily at number three. But a new entry. I feel like going like fluff freedmen. And a new entry with Bad Friends, a comedy podcast from Andrew Santino and Bobby Lee. He says, oh, bobby Lee, like a rubber ball comeback. No, that's not the same Bobby Lee, is it? No, that's a very old reference. There they interviewed 5,352 weekly podcast consumers aged 13 plus. So again, why have they come out with this? Is this something they're now doing? That's a new thing for them, because everyone else has got a ranker, or what is it?

James Cridland: 37:34

No, so this is a ranker. By the way, it was Bobby V, as you well know, rubber ball. So, yes, this is a ranker that they've been doing for some time, but this is the first time that they've actually had the data to be able to produce this just for a quarter. So, if you remember, a couple of years ago they were producing this, but it was a whole years worth of data that they had, and so it was very much focused on the podcast, which are always there, like Joe Rogan and the daily and crime junkie. Now they've managed to get that down to six months and this is the first time that they've produced just a quarters worth of data. They're interviewing five thousand three hundred people for that and, yeah, it's some great data.

James Cridland: 38:26

And this is very different to the other rankers that you see. The other rankers, you have to sign up to be part of them. You've probably got to pay to be in those rankers as well. You've got to put all kinds of code in there. So PodTrack is one of those rankers. Triton Digital is another one of those rankers, and those are fine, but they don't list everybody, whereas this lists absolutely everything. If you're a podcast, you'll be in it. So it's always interesting seeing the data that comes out of Edison podcast metrics Now let's take a zip around the world very quickly.

Sam Sethi: 39:00

In Denmark, danish podcast translation company Podster is to work with Finnish podcast producer Sonoma Media to produce Swedish language true crime shows and translate them into Finnish. Hmm, okay, there you go. The Scandies are working.

James Cridland: 39:18

Yeah, they're a fascinating company, podster, because what they're basically doing is they are taking different shows that have been successes in one part of the world and they are translating those and putting those into the right culture for other parts of the world. So they've also done a deal with a BBC show as well, making Killing Victoria into a number of different languages for new markets there as well. And they emailed me yesterday to talk about Il dossier del mistero, which is an Italian show which they're making a Spanish version of with a company called Editorial Planeta. So there's a whole set of stuff that Podster is doing in terms of taking great shows in one language and translating them into a bunch of other languages, which, if you remember, was kind of how Podimo first started on the scene. So a fascinating company to watch out for, I think, also going on around the world.

James Cridland: 40:19

In the UK, commercial TV broadcaster ITV has renewed a sales partnership with Global and DAX for the podcast that they produce everything from Love Island to ITV news podcasts and all that kind of thing and also in the UK, octave IP, which is a big collection of different companies, including Rupert Murdoch's News UK and Bauer Media. They have signed a deal to sell advertising for Sirius XM and Stitcher Media podcasts in that country. So things like Podsave the UK, for example, and others, which seems a rather sensible deal. And there's also a rather sensible production company here in Australia, pro podcast, which has just made its 300th podcast series, which is quite impressive.

Sam Sethi: 41:07

So, James Tummy, what's going on with the job world this week?

James Cridland: 41:10

Well, I'm glad you asked. We've got a massive jobs board as well. You know PodNewsnet slash jobs. It's the biggest in the podcast industry. All kinds of things going on there, including Wondery hiring for all kinds of people a senior producer for a weekly sports podcast. They're looking for a writer and producer and editor as well. There's also jobs going at Eddie Audio at audiochuckpodnewsnet. Slash jobs is where to go. Also, we hear about three layoffs in Marvel's podcast division earlier on in the year. Now, three layoffs doesn't sound very much until you realize that that was half of the entire podcast division at Marvel. So, gosh, a 50% shaving of that particular department is quite a large thing.

James Cridland: 41:59

And congratulations to Lena Topia. If you remember, we've been amazed at the amount of work that Blueberry has done fairly recently Sticking all kinds of new stuff into their dashboard and launching, you know, web apps for their stats package and lots of support for the podcasting 2.0 features and everything else. Lena Topia is the person who is responsible for that. She is CTO of Blueberry and she's been rewarded with a seat on the board of directors for the company. She's worked for the company since 2015. So many congratulations to her. Good job, darn, I think If you're looking for a job. Podnews has podcasting jobs across the industry and across the world. They're free to post. It just takes two minutes to add a new role. You don't need to be a supporter of PodNews, although we'd love you to do that too. Just pop along and do it for free at podnewsnet slash jobs. The tech stuff on the PodNews Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 42:58

Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday in the PodNews newsletter. Here's where we do all of the tech talk, and I have a feeling we're going to talk a little bit more about BoosterGram Ball, aren't we? Sam?

Sam Sethi: 43:09

We are indeed. I mean, look what Adam and Dave, I suppose, achieved with that show was the pinnacle, really. And, as we said earlier, history was made. The reason it was so special was because every building block required to get to that point had been made over the last couple of years. So let's unpack that a little bit. So, when you look at what Adam was doing, he was doing a live show. In order to do a live show, you needed the live item tag. But before you could have the live item tag, you needed podping. Before you could do that, you probably needed chapters, because you needed to put the music into a chronological order. And then, on the other end of that, you needed this new thing called the remote item tag. All of these building blocks are part of the podcast 2.0 namespace.

Sam Sethi: 43:59

And again, as I said to Adam in the interview, did you have this vision from day one? And he said, yes, I had it from 20 years back, but it's taken me this long to get to this point. And again, I think, when you and I looked at some of this stuff and I'll be honest and say I didn't have this as an end vision Each building block to me was just a way of making podcasting better for me. And I looked at podping and it was like, oh, it's really difficult. Then I looked at remote item. Do you remember when we were doing pod roles, james? We were looking at all different ways and I couldn't get my head around. Why are you making this so difficult? Just list three podcasts and an OPML. That'll work, won't it? And all of this seems to have been well thought through. Again, it just ended up on Friday. Last week, we boosted the ground ball being a result of all of these building blocks. And again, what do you think of what Adam's done?

James Cridland: 44:55

Yeah, I thought it was really clever and I mean, there are so many spinning wheels in order to or spinning plates, I should say to make this thing work. It was quite fantastic. But yeah, I think it's a really interesting, interesting idea. It completely changes the way that you, as a music artist, get paid, and I think that's important to remember as well.

James Cridland: 45:21

I mean, if you're a music artist at the moment, you get paid on the radio in the United States. You get nothing, zero, nada. If you are a music artist and you get played in places like the UK, then you do get some money, but the money that you get is absolutely tiny. I mean, it's really really small. But with this, not only do listeners directly pay you, or they pay whoever you want to be paid because it's up to you as to who you put in the splits and all of that kind of stuff but also it means that if listeners really like what you're doing, they can pay you more, which is a really interesting, interesting idea. So I'm planning on doing I was once a radio DJ a long, long time ago I'm planning on doing one random music show and I have a feeling that that is what it might be called Literally, just so I can play around and understand the. It won't be live, but to understand the tools.

James Cridland: 46:25

I'm not going to do it live but to understand the tools that I need to actually get this up and running and give it a go. But it's such an exciting time, I think, of just seeing new interesting ideas going on in the podcast world.

Sam Sethi: 46:42

Yeah, I mean talking of the tools, I mean obviously you need to get a server that's going to allow you. You're not doing it live, so it doesn't matter. Actually, I was going to say you need a server to go live, but you don't need that. But Sovereign feeds from Steven Bell's probably the best place right now to go and start to do this so you can go in and you can use something called a split kit and you can use something called the value remote item to put the artists in and you can create all of that with time splits and everything else and the amount. And then you run that and it's quite amazing.

Sam Sethi: 47:16

We've ingested into pod fans that into the split of that show and it just works. We can't do it live but we do it in the post production when it's played and it just works and you just go. It's using this thing called a GUID. Again, if you want the technical way it's working. It's literally like I've likened it to like a hyperlink in a web page. So Adam talks it's live streaming to the show, he's earning sat and then suddenly he says now I'm going to play artist X and then suddenly it looks at the GUID of that artist, goes into their RSS, finds their value block, finds their wallet, looks at what Adam has said. Here's how much I want to donate from that, from the live stream. That's what goes to them during that live stream and then, since that's the tracks finished, it goes straight back to Adam and the stream continues paying Adam. I think that's pretty clever.

James Cridland: 48:10

Yeah, I think it's very, very smart. There's lots of clever stuff going on in there. Is it actually getting back to the artists? That's the question. Have you been looking and seeing whether any of the artists played have said how much they're earning out of it?

Sam Sethi: 48:28

Yeah, one of the artists, ainsley Costello. She tweeted I received 122,000 sat on Wave Lake this week. That's $36. It would take me a year to make $36 on any streaming platform aka Spotify. She did give us an update actually where she said here's the mind blowing update two songs two weeks on Wave Lake $357,000,. That's $104 compared to for her on 60 other streaming platforms, just $22. So I think she's a convert. I think she loves what's going on. So, yeah, I can see this. You know what it is it's waiting for the penny to drop. I think that the quote I love the best is the future is already here. It's just not very evenly distributed, which was William Gibson's famous quote, and I think that's true. I think we've seen an historic moment where people are just beginning to wake up. Hang on a minute. This stuff works. It's micro payments.

James Cridland: 49:31

Yeah, no, I think there's definitely something going on there and, yeah, I'm really looking forward to seeing how that all pans out. And of course, you need to have a supporting podcast app and of course, you actually need to be. You know, there's an awful lot of trust in this as well. You don't have to pay to listen, but if you do choose to pay, then you know that that money is actually going to the right people. So fascinating to keep an eye on it and fascinating to have a listen to the booster grand ball, which you should do in a service like Podfans or Fountain or any of those other services, just to make sure that all of the right people get paid, and at least that way you'll understand a little bit more about how the whole thing works. But really cool.

Sam Sethi: 50:23

Now talking about people earning sat. So we've talked about artists, we've talked about creators in themselves, we're using it, micro payments and value splits in another interesting way You're actually paying people in terms of leaving you feedback, aren't you?

James Cridland: 50:41

And bug spotting and all of that kind of stuff.

Sam Sethi: 50:44

Yeah, again, another way that people can get rewarded for their time and attention or for their value that they create. So in Podfans, we've just launched our feedback app and what we decided to do was to pay users micro payments if they put in a bug report or if they suggested a new feature, and if that's feature then gets added to our roadmap, we will pay you again. So we'll pay you a micro payment just for the original idea. Everyone who votes gets a little micro payment and then, if we think that's a great idea and we progress it into an actual feature of our platform, we will pay you a larger amount. So I think it's a way that we feel we should reward our users for their time, and we've also which Dave Jones was interested in we've created a blog platform that uses micro payments.

Sam Sethi: 51:39

So now on our blog, you I can write a post and you can zap. The post is a way of voting for it or you can write a boostergram and leave a comment. So again, we're using the podcasting 2.0 namespace tools, but we're now putting also back into a blog, which was the original RSS, and you now can then click on the RSS, export that RSS to any way you want with, which is a podcasting 2.0 namespace extension. So we sport the medium tag, which is we set to blog, we sport the person tag, the value, block boosts, etc. So, yeah, so micro formats or micro payments. I should say not micro formats or something else. Micro payments, yeah, are extending beyond just paying for a podcast.

James Cridland: 52:28

Now let's have a look at some events and awards, and let's start with an event which doesn't necessarily appear to have read the room particularly well. So we may have mentioned last week around the British podcast awards, which were super annoying Some podcasters because instead of charging 75 quid to attend the awards, they were wanting to charge 300 quid, which is quite an increase. Haymarket, who bought the awards last year, changed from what I'm going to call a tent in a field to a fancy central London venue. You were in the tent in a field and you thought it was rather splendid, I think, great for a wedding venue. I'd say yes, yes, exactly that you may remember from last week. Well, they have changed their mind and they've lowered ticket pricing for the awards ceremony in September. Pricing now starts at 150 quid, not 300 quid, which is fine, except, of course, tickets last year were 75 quid and really quite a lot of people are still a little bit upset about all of this.

James Cridland: 53:41

Michael Fenton Stevens is a great comic actor in the UK and has a number of great podcasts as well. Well, he is grumbling on Twitter we have to be nominated, which we have to pay for. There are so many categories, and then I'd be happy to pay to come to the ceremony if nominated, but not to pay to be considered. So he's talking about the amount of money that he had to pay to enter Barmy Dale Sitcom, who we've covered in pod news also saying that it's a farce, and all of this. Where do you stand on all of this, sam Well?

Sam Sethi: 54:14

again. I think that what we're seeing here is the corporatization of this event. Clearly, when I looked through the list of nominees and it's worth looking at that list and congratulate those that have been already nominated I did feel that it was very corporate. 70% of the entries were all BBC so I couldn't ingest those into an open RSS platform and I think other people are very angry. Neil Velio, who's one of the friends of the show, said Dear Haymarket, thanks for ruining the British Podcast Awards. Read the room. Your 99% of your colleagues won't be there. Seems like Haymarket's answer to defending these absurd pricing increases for tickets to the BPAs is to say yeah, but we're getting you drunk in Central London. Suggest you have a cheaper venue and charge more for drinks. I mean, I just think who is the event for? Is the event for podcasters or is the event for Haymarket? That's where I think it's going.

James Cridland: 55:17

Yes, well, you ended up speaking with somebody who's been nominated multiple times and is a previous British Podcast Awards winner. His message hurts Jake Warren.

Jake Warren: 55:30

The BPAs for me was one of my first entry points into this magnificent industry From 2018, I think it was. I've personally been a judge the last four or maybe five years and it was certainly one of those for me personally, an entry point into kind of really getting stuck into what has become such a growing industry the last few years. But it always had that slightly communitarian feel to it of this is a day of celebration, not just for yourself, but to celebrate the wins and successes of others and as an industry as a whole. I look at it and with the pricing there, which we've got enough corporate content awards, this doesn't need to be corporate content awards 100.0. The spirit of the British podcasting awards, I felt, was that it was a day out as an industry.

Jake Warren: 56:29

It's fantastic to see people like Idris Elba and other amazing celebrities for half a second on stage. Actually, I'd much rather talk to the freelancer that worked for us 12 months ago, 18 months ago, on a particular project and did an amazing job, and maybe he's also being honored on that stage. It feels to me slightly counter-intuitive as to what makes and did make. I hope it's not just did make, but is what makes this industry great because, yes, of course there's a degree of elbowing each other when you're competing for opportunities. But also, I think this is an industry which is naturally cooperative, naturally collaborative and where we can share in the success and rise of this industry as a whole, rather than it being everyone's my enemy and we're all out to get each other. I don't feel that. I think that, with the changing of this setting to a more formal, evening, corporatey kind of feel, it's not reflective of the industry. I don't feel.

Sam Sethi: 57:39

No, and I think there's also a dress code for the events. So, again, I think everyone's going to have to dress up a little bit if they want to come along to this thing, which again feels very different to the feel that I had from the last two British podcast awards.

Jake Warren: 57:56

Definitely. I mean last year. It was Boiling Hot and it was in Kennington Park and, to be honest, last year was one of the highs for me personally. In a thrust as a company, we won the best true crime award last year, which is one of the most coveted things, and it was Boiling Hot and I was wearing a terrible Hawaiian shirt and some awful shorts. I won because it was hot, the two because I didn't think we're going to win, so I don't think I'll be able to.

Jake Warren: 58:23

I think I'll be turned away the door if I turn up dressing like that, dressed like that this year.

Sam Sethi: 58:27

Even if you say I'm one of the judges, no, that won't help. Now, look, I went along to the ambies in Vegas last well, earlier this year and again that felt very corporatey. It was very odd. The whole event was like people had flown in just for the event, very dressed up and of course, lots of the companies were all Americans. And that's why I renamed the ambies the American podcast award, so nothing to do with the global awards, the World Series of Awards, whatever you want to call them. And again that felt very corporatey and very, you know, the big companies won, like Wondry, etc. And it felt like many of the independents weren't being considered.

Sam Sethi: 59:11

And I think, if I look at it again, I think the British podcast awards wants to mirror the ambies and go for the big Sony's and the big companies and the Amazons and say, look, hey, look, we're here for you, we're going to give you awards, give us sponsorship money for our future events or for this event, and I think is a quid pro quo. So they have, though, to be fair to them, come out with a statement of what they want to do, based on, I assume, not just you and I, but many other people giving them feedback. They've said small companies now will get a ticket price at £118 plus fat, medium companies £165 and large companies £255. Which ones do you buy for?

Jake Warren: 59:55

Sadly it's the big company, so it's the, because the way in which they've sort of stratified it there's not, it's quite. They're not big bands, should we say. And I was looking at it earlier and I was thinking, you know, we're a company of 25-ish people, sort of full time. If I wanted to pay for every single person in my company to have that day out in celebration together amongst ourselves, it's going to cost me over £7,500. And I think, to your point, there's a space for, you know, the big glitzy evening. I don't know what the right word to describe it is. I don't want to say corporate, because that's not what I mean, but you know, in terms of it being a little bit more classy, for one sort of better word, you know where you wear your glad rags and all these evening things. That's fine, there's a space for that. But I don't think it should be at the expense or the envelopment of what was effectively quite grass roots, quite communitarian, as I said, because what they've done is by buying the awards and then trying to pivot and turn it into something else. What's the space left for that, other than going to the pub or at ordering each other? You know, in that way, which is fine, and I think, look, I'm a company that's learning about this, right? You know we're a big company. I suppose in the UK podcasting industry, this is going to affect individuals and freelancers far more than it affects us. You know, if I'm complaining about it and I have the luxury of, you know, having what they class as a big company, imagine how that trickles down the ladder in terms of the people that are just freelancers.

Jake Warren: 1:01:38

You know, I noticed the really good point being made by Talia Augustidis, who is, you know, rightly nominated for the Rising Star Award because she is a superstar, which I'm sure she'll thank me for saying. That she said openly I can't afford to go to something which may well be one of the crowning, you know, accomplishments for my career so far, because the price is, you know it's astronomical. You know, I understand they may have a Bursary Award scheme now which I think you have to apply for. I don't know how to look into that in truth, but I think for me also if I think about it. You know we are nominated this year, so I don't want us to make it seem like it's just complete sale grapes that we didn't get any nominations.

Jake Warren: 1:02:25

So I'm having a moment Exactly, but we, you know I think it's six or seven including me we spent time to be judges this year, which there was a lot more of workload, just a small thing, like you know, not having a complimentary ticket. So you know, I'm not saying people should be paid for things like that, but recompensing that you spend some time and invest in effort, time to think about your peers and who should win, and then to get no sort of recognition to that, I think, is a shame.

Sam Sethi: 1:02:56

Yeah, I mean, look, they're offering writing not star nominees and all of the small companies that have been shortlisted, one free ticket.

Sam Sethi: 1:03:04

Say again, you know, if you're, if you're wanting to bring a partner along or you want to bring several of your people from your small company, you're into, you know, still a sizable amount of money. Look, it will either be one of those events where they live and learn and you know, they get the big companies coming along, but it's not supported by the majority of the industry. All people will, you know, bite the bullet and say, okay, well, I just want to be there, I'm going to pay the 255 pounds, or 118 pounds depending on the size of your company, and, you know, next year it will be a glowing success. But it will be interesting to see. I know Matt Deegan and Matt his partner, who put on the original Rich podcast awards, are still involved. It'll be interesting to see, once they're out of their golden handcuffs, having sold the podcast awards over to, you know, to Pod Pod, whether they will then run a original BPA award again. Rename it, restart it, re, make it independent. Who knows, that might be the way it goes.

Jake Warren: 1:04:13

Yeah, it's. Look, I don't want to be sound too much like Sal Grape, so I'm only mentioning that you know it's a vast expense because you know the awards themselves Rich podcast awards, I feel, have always been the crowning awards that we have. This is an issue particularly in this country. It's always the one that I felt was to be sort of coveted beyond all the other ones in truth. But I think at some point, like we were talking about, you know, price does has to become a factor, because you know we were lucky enough to win a corporate content award the other week on behalf of one of our clients, v-malfolio, and you know that's a fantastic achievement and there's a place for that. But when the corporate content awards cost more, cost less to go to than the British podcast awards, I think something has gone badly wrong.

Sam Sethi: 1:05:03

Well, I feel, as I said earlier, pod Pod may be looking at. Let's have a big glitzy location, DJ, drinks and everything else. I'm wondering who they're trying to make look good. Is it they're trying to make the podcasters look good or themselves? Yeah, that's just an opinion.

Jake Warren: 1:05:19

I would rather stand in a park with the rest of the industry than stand in black tie with no one.

Sam Sethi: 1:05:26

Well, I'll stand with you, Jake, don't you worry, I'll stand with you. Jake Warren, md, and CEO of that message. Thanks so much, mate. Speak to you soon. No, I speak to you soon.

James Cridland: 1:05:35

Jake Warren. Not a happy man, gosh. I mean, the list of nominees is worth taking a look at, so congratulations to them and the eventual winners as well. The British podcast awards has been very much part of the industry for a number of years now, so he's hoping that Haymarket look after it. But yeah, I always find it strange when you get original audio like the BBC or like Audible, which are only available on their own platforms. To me that's not really what a podcast is. But I suppose they've paid the entrance fee, so who knows?

Sam Sethi: 1:06:15

Yeah, Now, moving on the ambies, talking about awards, the American podcast awards, as I like to call them, are now open for entry. It'll be good to see if anyone from outside of the USA actually gets nominated or gets an award. But yes, they are the ambies.

James Cridland: 1:06:35

Yes, and why not? I was at the awards last year, which was nice, I should point out. I didn't pay $300 to get in, or indeed quid. So there we are. What else has gone on? There's the audio production awards, there's the People's Choice podcast awards, which you can go and vote for now, online podcast awardscom and the Black Podcast Awards has announced Erica Cobb as its inaugural lead judge. She is a TV star on something called Daily Blast Live, which is the only live TV show on both coasts in the US, apparently. Anyway, applications close on August 7. So you've got a little bit more time, and if you want a discount code to save you $10 on your entry and the entries are already quite cheap then you can use Cobbler. I'm not quite sure why they've chosen Cobbler, but anyway you can use that and give that $10 to us in terms of a boost as well. So that would be good.

James Cridland: 1:07:34

In terms of events, podcast movement in Denver is happening. I will be out, looking forward to being there August 21 to the 24th. In Colorado, the Mile High City, I'm told it's called. Mile High to me means something completely different. So there we are, probably move on from that. And Podcast Day Asia is happening in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia on September 6. It's part of a big Radio Days Asia event which is going on there. The number one podcast from Malaysia will be there as well as me I am not that and Kim Treasure from Audacia and many more people as well. So you can find out more information at podcastdayasiacom. And, of course, pod News Live is happening 27th of September. Pod Newsnet slash live is where to grab tickets for that. Very much looking forward to that, sam. That should be a good day.

Sam Sethi: 1:08:34

Yeah, I'm looking forward to it too. I mean, as we say, we've got keynote speakers from A-Cast, from Podimo, from Folder Media, so Matt Deegan is going to be there, naomi Meller from the International Podcast Awards, jake, who you just heard from from Message Heard. We've got Sean Glenn from Novell, kirsty Hunter, Jake Davenport from Gold Hanger Podcasts, who do the rest is Politics and History Podcasts, persefonica, dino Sofa. So from the news agent, we've got the guys from City University there, lowest Street Media, harry Morton, and then we've got a few apps, so Oscar is going to be there with Fountain. So, look, it's going to be a brilliant business to business day.

Sam Sethi: 1:09:17

This is a business forum where we're going to be talking about what's going on in the industry live, hearing from real experts who are doing it day to day. Come along, ask them questions, listen. The one we did in Manchester had great feedback. I suspect this will be equally good. So, yeah, just go along to podnewsnet forward slash live. Grab a ticket. They aren't £300, they're not even £50, james, they're just £30. So sorry, I sound like a barrow boy there for a second, but yes, it's the day before the British Podcast Awards. So if you are coming into London then you can use your time effectively. Come and see us stick around for the evening, have a drink with all of us and then pop over to the BPAs if you want.

James Cridland: 1:10:01

James. Yeah, no, I think it's a fantastic thing, so very much looking forward to that. There are more events, both paid for and free, at Podnews virtual events or events in a place with people. If you're organising something, you can tell the world about it. It's free to be listed. You don't have to be a supporter or anything. So go to podnewsnet slash events Boostagram.

Adam Curry: 1:10:21

Corner. Corner Corner On the Podnews Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 1:10:25

Oh, it's time for our favourite time of the week. It's Boostagram Corner and a bunch of boosts. Let's read the one from now. Brian, how do I pronounce your surname? Entsminger? Entsminger, no.

Jake Warren: 1:10:40

I'd go with the first one, I'd go.

James Cridland: 1:10:42

OK, let's go with the first one. Entsminger, you're sure that's been of a binger.

Sam Sethi: 1:10:48

Oh, I have no idea. I'm sure Brian will tell us.

James Cridland: 1:10:50

Anyway, yes, I'm sure he will in terms of a boost. He's given us a 1701 Satz, which is presumably something American, and he said regarding on what to call podcasting at the risk of being the old guy with the tinfoil hat on, this is why the blurring of lines between the distribution method and the content and format of the show actually matters and why what YouTube is trying to do to the word podcast is making it even more difficult. He says I don't think we need a new word for podcast and if you remember, rebecca Sananez was kind of jokingly saying that we should do. Brian says I think we should start saying I make a show about cheese. It's available as a podcast on all of the popular podcast apps or on YouTube, if you prefer the video version. It's a language shift which is slight, but Brian says I think it's important, that's interesting. So you basically say it's available on on your podcast apps or it's also available on YouTube, exactly.

Sam Sethi: 1:11:51

I think that's quite a nice way of doing it. I think you'll be the same when we say and it's available on Twitter or X and available on TikTok, but it isn't a podcast particularly. Yeah, I like that.

James Cridland: 1:12:02

Yeah, no, indeed, Dave Jones sent us a massive, great big boost 21,112 sats. Great interview with Rebecca Sam. I would agree. I found that really, really interesting. I went through that entire, that entire interview and it was a fascinating thing. And Gene Bean as well. Double, two, double, two sats, a row of ducks Another great show. He says I particularly enjoyed the interview this week. Again, that's another one, another one on you. So, yeah, all good stuff. Thank you very much.

James Cridland: 1:12:33

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. We really appreciate your support so we can continue making this show. You can become a power supporter if you want, with your Mastercard or your Visa card, your Fiat currency that old fashioned thing at weeklypodnewsnet, weeklypodnewsnet. Or you can support us with sats by hitting the boost button in your podcast app and if you don't have one, podnewsnet slash new podcast apps will help you find a new app. So you're still here, sam.

Sam Sethi: 1:13:04

I'm still here this week this hasn't crashed, so what's happened for you this week? Well, generally working on pod fans, but I had a little bit of a distasteful moment on LinkedIn. Again, I use LinkedIn, I'm looking for stories. I saw this guy from the brutal truth podcast. He put out a post that said I'm going to say these isn't a symbol of success if you have to drive it to a job you hate. And I thought, fair enough. And I thought I've got a nice car that I drive to a job I love, and that was it. And he started to put a racist comment to that and I basically didn't take well to that. So, yeah, whoever you are who runs the brutal truth, you're blocked on pod fans. You will not be allowed on there and I suggest that until I get an apology for your racist comment, you will stay that way as well.

Sam Sethi: 1:13:54

That's LinkedIn for you yes cesspit of cesspit of hate and bile Normally. Yes, no, it's not this, just one person. It was just. It was. It was just weird. I mean, he claims to have 744,000 followers and you think you know somebody fundamentally. I listened to half an episode of his podcast and if you're stupid and gullible to buy his snake oil sales techniques, then good luck to you.

James Cridland: 1:14:21

Well, yes, there's a thing, yes, it's. I spend very little time on LinkedIn, it's. It's normally full of. It's normally full of, yes, people bragging about their horrible businesses. So now, James, so what?

Sam Sethi: 1:14:38

happened for you. Let's move on. What happened for you?

James Cridland: 1:14:42

I have been. I have been rather boringly doing lots of technical, you know, fixing lots of technical debt. So there's bits on the pod news website that have never worked particularly well, so I've been fixing a lot of that, changing a lot of the of the back end stuff Very, very dull, but still it's kind of stuff that needs to be done, I guess, and doing. One thing that I ended up doing was doing a little automated script that goes and checks whether some of the old stories that I linked to are still there and if they're not, then it will automatically go and find those stories from the web archive instead, which has been a really interesting learning experience. So perhaps more on that in a personal blog post at some point, but that's it for this week.

Sam Sethi: 1:15:35

Thank you to our guests Adam and Jake. You can give us feedback by using email to weekly at podnewsnet or send us a boostergram. If your podcast app doesn't support Boost, then grab a new one at podnewsnet. Forward slash a new podcast apps.

James Cridland: 1:15:51

Our music is from Studio Dragonfly, our voiceover is Sheila Dee and we're hosted and sponsored by Pod News Live and Buzz Proud. Podcast hosting made easy. Get updated every day. Subscribe to our newsletter at podnewsnet.

Adam Curry: 1:16:07

Tell your friends and grow the show and support us and support us.

Speaker 2: 1:16:11

The Pod News Weekly Review will return next week. Keep listening.