James Cridland: 0:00

It's Friday, the 11th of August 2023.

Jingle: 0:04

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

James Cridland: 0:14

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

Kyrin Down: 0:16

Meangin and I'm current down host of the mere models and the value for value podcast, also in Brisbane Meangin.

James Cridland: 0:23

In the chapters today Good News, bad News. Financial Sound Good, but Consumption Doesn't. So the Russians are coming and advanced audience demographics for podcasts plus live ones. Rob Ellen on the future of Cast Media and more. We made it clear to them.

Rob Ellin: 0:40

You cannot move with a fistful of anger right. You have to move over where you truly, in partnership with us and all of us, want to grow and build together and do something great together.

James Cridland: 0:52

This podcast is sponsored and hosted by Buzzsprout. Last week, 3,077 people started a podcast with Buzzsprout. Podcast hosting made easy with powerful tools and remarkable customer support. Now AI to help you publish your show and my Pod News Live in London this September. Tickets are available right now at podnewsnet. Slash live. From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly Review. Yes, Sam Suthey is away this week on another holiday Another holiday. So we're joined by Kairyn Down this week. Thank you so much for joining us, Kairyn.

Kyrin Down: 1:27

Oh, my pleasure, James. Thank you for having me.

James Cridland: 1:29

Yeah, it's fantastic that you're here. We're both in Brisbane, meandjin, so we should probably start by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land where we both are today, the Turbill and Jaguar people. We will pay our respects to their elders past, present and emerging, and I think it's particularly right on a podcast to do that, given that they have a proud history of telling their stories by word of mouth, which is what a podcast is. I guess this kind of reminds me of Adam and Dave recording podcasting 2.0 when they were at podcast movement in Dallas last year and Dave was on floor 13 and Adam was on floor 26 or something. They didn't even bother to get together in the same room, and that's exactly what we're doing as well.

Kyrin Down: 2:10

Yeah, exactly, I mean we have tried it in live once before, but it was even a bit different because we were out in South Bank, so that one was with all the noise and sounds of Brisbane.

James Cridland: 2:20

Yeah, that's right. Yes, and that was on video too, which we're not on video. All I can see behind you is a very nice map of South America, which is very smart. So, Karin, for those of our listeners if there are any who don't know who you are, who are?

Kyrin Down: 2:37

you. Yeah, so I'm Karin. I suppose you would call me a podcaster nowadays, because that's what I spend most of my time doing. The actual inspiration for wanting to start one was when I was traveling and I would chat with my friend Juan all the time via Skype, and it was just one of those times where it's like, ah, we should have recorded that. So when I came back, I started to get into it and yeah, yeah, once I started one, I guess it's. I think it's a thing. If you really start getting into it, you want to start creating more and more, as we'll find out at the end of the episode, with you as well. So, yeah, I just kept going, and I think I actually met you not long into my journey when you were doing a presentation in the ABC building about podcasting.

Kyrin Down: 3:21

So that was how we got connected initially.

James Cridland: 3:23

Yes, that was a long while ago. So you make the Mia Miltles podcast and a bunch of other ones as well. You had Mia as a guest on Mia Miltles and then you had Adam Curry as a guest and Sam Sethi as a guest, and you probably do your research as well. I seem to remember you're one of the only people I've been on a podcast on where, crikey, you have read virtually everything that I've ever written, I think.

Kyrin Down: 3:49

That is definitely not true. But I try and get to the main bits and pieces. And, yeah, I like to, I suppose, try and ask some questions which maybe haven't been asked before. And you'd particularly notice this with Adam Curry, for example. I mean, everyone wants to ask him about MTV and I think when I had him on I didn't even ask him about that. So, yeah, it's definitely. I feel it's like a sign of a good show and also of respect, or at least that's the way that I like to do it.

James Cridland: 4:16

Yeah, and that is definitely a good thing. So the Mia Miltles podcast you also do a number of others, don't you?

Kyrin Down: 4:22

Yeah. So there's the Mia Miltles book reviews pretty self-explanatory, that's just books that I'm reading and I talk about. And the value for value podcast is, I suppose, the other one that I'm really working on, which is, yeah, investigating the philosophy of it, how people are using it in their podcasts and even expanding that out into books perhaps, and even to music, as we've seen recently. And I had another one which was book reviews in Spanish, and I stopped doing that because it was really hard. But you speak Spanish perfectly. Not perfectly, I'm pretty good at it, but it's certainly not fluent. Fluent is a whole another level.

James Cridland: 5:02

Well, let's get going for this week then. What's making news?

Kyrin Down: 5:05

Yeah, so there's lots of good financial results over the past few weeks, james, but also lots of numbers showing that podcasting is shrinking. What is?

James Cridland: 5:13

up with that? What is up with that? Well, firstly, lots of really good financial results iHeartMedia releasing theirs podcast revenue up 25% quarter on quarter, 12.9% year on year. Also, acast announcing its quarter to 23 financial results. They show net sales growing by 22%, north American sales up by 31%, which is nice, to an unfathomably large amount of Swedish crowns 110.7 million of them, which is very exciting. That's 84.5 million US dollars. And Odyssey as well, releasing their quarter to 23 financial results.

James Cridland: 5:51

They were a little bit more quiet. They didn't even bother to do an earnings call, but they did say that revenue per thousand downloads grew by 38%. But that's about as much of the podcast numbers as we got. So numbers in terms of revenue going up, but numbers in terms of consumption, well, maybe going down. Podcast track says that the average US monthly audience was down 3% year on year. Listen notes saying that the number of new podcasts launched last month was well a third fewer than a year ago, and podcast index also saying that the number of active podcasts has been decreasing since April. Karin, do you think there's anything to worry about here? Do you think there are fewer podcasters, fewer listeners?

Kyrin Down: 6:38

You know, I was actually wondering if there's been a really good snapshot of what happened during the COVID period, because now that it's all over, you can kind of sweep away the dust and see what really happened. So, you know, going from March 2020 to, say, march 2022 or 2023, I would be really interested to know what actually happened then, because I think there's some counterintuitive things. I would have thought, oh, if people aren't working as much, they would actually be listening to more podcasts. But it was actually the opposite, because they weren't traveling that they weren't, as far as I'm aware. So I would have thought and I saw this there was a lot of podcasts popping up like Quaranty or Tea Time or Quarantine. You know, there was so many of those popping up which I'm guessing that they are gone. Now that people have that time back, that they are actually perhaps working a bit more than they were during the COVID period.

James Cridland: 7:33

So I mean some people say that obviously the pandemic is still with us which kind of is but some other people are saying that the pandemic ended to all intents and purposes more than a year or so ago, so we probably shouldn't be seeing tremendous effects on the numbers. But I mean from my point of view. I'm not sure I see fewer podcasters and less consumption going on, but clearly some of this data seems to show that.

Kyrin Down: 8:02

Yeah, I think the problem with this it's always just hard to tell, right, it's so difficult to know you can't just look at another show and see their numbers, so you can't even feel it in the shows that you normally listen to and see, oh yeah, their stats are going down or not. So yeah, it's kind of like the black box of podcasting which is always you never really know what's going on.

James Cridland: 8:26

No, no, you never do. I guess you know OP3 changes a little bit of that, where at least some of the data is open. You can find a ton of those shows on the podcast business journal, podcastbusinessjournalcom slash data and I kind of wish that. If you are publicly funded, maybe you get your money through Patreon, maybe you get your money through taxes like the ABC or the BBC does, then maybe part of the stipulation of that is that you must publish your figures. That would be a rather nice thing. Not quite sure how they would go with that, but anyway. So maybe that's a plan. But yeah, I would say it's very difficult to see some of those numbers apart from the PodTrack data. Perhaps that might be a conversation with Mark when I'm over at podcast movement, with the folks at PodTrack, to actually see whether or not there's something we can have a look at in terms of how podcasting was changed during the pandemic. Yeah, that would be interesting. Yeah, I'd definitely love to see that. You've given me more work to do there. Thanks for that, apologies.

Kyrin Down: 9:38

What else is going on? Yes, I'm moving on. Two shows were removed from Apple Podcasts after Russian authorities requested their removal. James, are we all going to be banned from Russia?

James Cridland: 9:50

Well, PodNews is already not available in Russia.

Kyrin Down: 9:55

Yeah, what's the deal with that? How come that is?

James Cridland: 9:58

well, because, if you remember, all the way back in February 2020, when Russia illegally invaded the Ukraine, one of the things that the American government was quite keen on is that everybody stopped doing business in Russia, and so PodNews is an American company, and so, therefore, I thought, right, well, I better follow whatever the Americans are telling me to do.

James Cridland: 10:24

But actually it was rather helpful, because quite a lot of the hacking attempts on the servers come from Russia and from Belarus, who are the two countries I've turned off, so they can actually see nothing of it, which is interesting.

James Cridland: 10:42

But, you know and Apple also did quite a lot of things where they have pulled back in terms of Russia I don't think you can buy their hardware there, or they've certainly closed all of their stores and all of that kind of thing, but clearly, apple Podcasts is still working because they had a complaint from the Russian government basically saying no, you need to pull these two shows down, or at least those two shows down. What happened, which was published by Medusa and another one which is called Chill, which was removed as well from Holod media, and they both were removed apparently because they were saying naughty things about the Russian army, and they are both officially banned media organizations there and in fact it turns out, kairin, that Apple was actually fined in the Russian courts for not deleting content with what they called incorrect information about the conflicts in Ukraine. They were actually fined. Have you any idea how much they were fined by the dastardly Russians, given that Apple is one of the richest companies in the world?

Kyrin Down: 11:54

Oh well, with that information and that layup, I got to feel that it's probably a slap on the wrist of I don't know $5,000 or something Exactly $4,000.

James Cridland: 12:05

Exactly right, so that's not even a slap on the wrist.

Kyrin Down: 12:08

That's a like a finger snap, it's a pinch.

James Cridland: 12:12

Yes, well, I was told once when the no smoking laws came in in the UK which must have been what 15 years ago now every single shop had to put at the time had to put a big sticker, ugly sticker, on the door saying no smoking. That was part of the law, that you had to put this ugly sticker on the door and you will find I think you will find something like 600 pounds if you did not have that sticker on the door and Apple said no, that sticker is too ugly and we're not going to put it on the door and we'll just pay that 600 pounds a day, or whatever it was, as a tax, just to bless them. So, yeah, it's really interesting. I'm wondering, of course, what that means in terms of the podcast index. I'm guessing that the podcast index wasn't asked by the Russian government to take those down, but there's clearly, you know, conversations going on there.

James Cridland: 13:12

I'm also curious. I know that Apple has a separate podcast directory that it feeds people in China because of the Chinese government has a very similar rule and I'm wondering whether or not Apple can actually feed different shows to different places. I don't know if you've ever thought about that. I had a look into that.

Kyrin Down: 13:35

No, I haven't. I didn't even know that about the Chinese one. Is that one that you can see? So is that publicly available so you can find out what shows aren't being highlighted?

James Cridland: 13:46

Yeah, I think my understanding with the Chinese one is that it's allow listed. So basically it's a list of shows which are made available on the Apple podcasts directory but basically not very many other people get on, so it's a very small one. You know is my understanding. But yeah, you know who knows. But you can kind of. You know, I know that the details that you get from the Spotify API are that you can turn on and off individual countries and I'm wondering whether or not that's something which is available to normal. You know, I was going to say to mere mortals, to normal people, to work out whether or not they can actually say actually no, I don't want this particular show available in this particular country. But, yeah, fascinating, you know, censorship staff, I guess.

Kyrin Down: 14:39

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I always think that there's the actual ability to access it. There's a tier of people like yourself who are programming savvy and can actually do it, and then people like myself who, yeah, maybe they could, but it's just not going to happen. Well, maybe, maybe. Who knows, who knows? So let's continue on. Live one is continuing to move over shows from cast media. There was a story in pod news last week talking about cast media. What's that, james?

James Cridland: 15:07

Yeah, there was. So I caught up with Rob Ellen from Live One a few days ago, before their financial results were announced on Thursday, and I asked him how the deal was going, and I learned a little of the backstory of what's going on.

Rob Ellin: 15:20

This is a big opportunity for video and the acquisition of assets from cast cast and a lot more video than us has really expanded our video dramatically. We just announced more news, which is an amazing show, like an SNL type show I love right and so much fun and so much action and the video side of it is really exploding.

James Cridland: 15:40

How is that? Acquisition of certain assets of cast media? How's that going, rob?

Rob Ellin: 15:46

Well, this was this is very tricky. You know, when we bought podcast one, it was in distressed asset. Luckily they had normal high-levels, so they had unlimited money. He could bail them out each time. But this is such an early stage for this industry and Colin's a wonderful guy, he's super talented. But he got himself caught in a rough situation where the banks pulled out, venture capital pulled out, investors pulled out and there was no money left for these small companies. And unless you sold and you sold the Spotify or Apple, which all those companies they bought were losing their share to today you're watching, whether it's Odyssey or it's iHeart there's a lot of there's a lot of pain going on and if you have debt you're in pain, but if you can't get money you're in a lot of pain. So we stepped in and we said, hey, just got to put together one of the greatest line in podcast Just think about it Theo Braun and Rob Dile and Brendan and Whitney, and it's just a massive lineup and you got to give them a lot of credit. But you also got to help them. We couldn't just step in and help them and bail them out of the problem. We had to slowly try to fix as much as we could, and so we've done, is we've almost stepped in as, like the dip financing Whoever wants to come and be a real partner and change the economics. Where those energies have gone down and the 80, 20 deals are over for life, they never happen again. They got to be fair deals that both partners can make money, and we've done terrific so far.

Rob Ellin: 17:08

We've been out a couple of including more news, millions of dollars in moving over. We said it could be as high as 10 million. I would say we'll be halfway there shortly and there's no reason we can't get all the way there. And we've spoken to every podcaster. We've offered them really fair deals. We've offered an equity in our IPO to help them. They got to decide for themselves whether or not they want to go to another platform. No other platform is going to pay them for the past. They're only going to work with them in the future. And my guys, as you know, our guys Kit, eli and Sue are the best in the business. They run this like money ball. It has to be a win for everybody and so we're going to continue to do that.

Rob Ellin: 17:45

I really hope more podcasts has come over. I really hope, even if they just come over for the distribution platform. Right, they could get paid. Now, why are you trying to figure out where you're going? Move over, we'll run it for you, we'll help you.

Rob Ellin: 17:58

If you get to know us well and you get to see what we do, nobody's going to live with us. You're not going to see a small company that is more entwined and entrenched with their creators. We're a white glove, hands-on partnership, 360 play for the creators and we're going to keep holding their hands and we're going to keep growing with them. That's why almost no one ever leaves Right, and you know we've gone through tough times of podcast one, you know, before we acquired it, obviously, covid lasted long than we thought.

Rob Ellin: 18:25

We've even raised the dime for it. Right, we raised a small amount of money last year, you know, pre-ipo, just to continue to do this and I think you're going to see more and more of it. You'll see announcements any minute now that we'll showcase our retail at moving over and then out moving over. You know we made it clear to them you cannot move with a fistful of anger. Right, you have to move over where you truly, in partnership with us and all of us, want to grow and build together and do something great together, and if we do something great together, we make history together. You're going to make your money back in, sean.

James Cridland: 18:58

Rob and then from Live One, speaking to me a couple of days ago. I think what's clear there is he really believes that he's buying some of the shows but he's not buying cast media as a company and to me it sounds as if cast media is probably a little bit over. There's loads of allegations out there about Colin Thompson. From you know some people I don't know enough about those. I mean, clearly there's an awful lot of excited language being used, but there's a more complete interview with Rob in the podcast business journal today. You can get that in your inbox or see it on the web at podcastbusinessjournalcom. Do you think, kari not necessarily talking about cast media in Live One, but do you think we will see, as Rob was talking about there more consolidation in podcasting? You know, as we go forward?

Kyrin Down: 19:48

Yeah, it's hard to know. I guess when you're doing it as an independent like myself, it just feels natural, it's kind of part of your lifestyle it is. I've got my studio room set up and I've just come in and do my things as I go and there's no ever real thought been in my mind about, you know, joining a podcast network or doing that sort of thing. But then I hear stuff from the other side when I do meet some people who work in media and it is very much in their minds about, you know, having a quick exit or doing something like that. Where it is there, there is a real directing, driving purpose for what they're doing and they are trying to make a, I guess what you would call like a finding. It's really based on financial decisions rather than perhaps the love of it. So yeah, it's very much I'm in my own world, so it is hard to tell what other people are doing outside of it. What about you, james? What do you think?

James Cridland: 20:47

Yeah, I mean, I would certainly think, as you know, as we're seeing the there are quite a few deals which have dried up in terms of making easy money very, very fast with podcasting, and that's as you say. I think that's probably a good thing. You know, people who are in it just to make the money make a very different product than people who are in it because you know they want to make a good show, they want to change the world, they want to, you know, educate people. You know all of those things. So I think that it's probably not necessarily a bad thing. But you can certainly understand that some of the journalists talking about you know the end of the podcasting market because actually, you know, podcasting is certainly changing away from the fast bucks, I suppose.

Kyrin Down: 21:35

Yeah, the only other thought would be if so many people are being driven towards video, as it kind of seems to be, once again, that doesn't. If you go on YouTube, it's not a podcast, but if there's a lot more people doing that, you know video is so intensive. You mentioned it at the start of the show that we did that and I'm very much moving away from that myself because it is exhausting. To be honest, it is a lot, lot more work. So when there's more work, there's more people. When there's more people, more financial decisions need to be made. So I could definitely see if there's more video podcasts, podcasts in quotations there, I could definitely see that becoming a more consolidated thing, because that's where you just need to start having more people working on a product, on a podcast once again, to make that actually financially viable.

James Cridland: 22:30

Yeah, I mean, you know just the amount of work involved in video. Whenever I've looked into it I've thought, wow, there's just like so much hard work. It always reminds me of, you know, getting to the end of a TV show and you see the credits go and you go. How many people worked on this seemingly simple looking show in comparison to a podcast or a comparison to a radio show. So I always find it absolutely fascinating. Yeah, yeah, it's a really, really interesting one. Yeah, I'm trying to avoid doing as much with video as I possibly can. I've got two people wanting to talk to me about TikTok what pod news could do on TikTok podcast movement, and I'm very, you know, I'm very open to the conversation. I'm kind of there. Are you on TikTok, kari? You're a young person.

Kyrin Down: 23:20

You'll be on. Yeah, yeah, I have it, but it's not a thing that I use per se. I've always been a kind of non-entity on social media, from 2013, 2014 through 2019. I had none unless you consider WhatsApp a social media not really, so it was more for messaging, and almost all the ones I have now are under the mere mortals brand, so I don't personally enjoy doing it myself. So I have it, but, yeah, I don't use it as the typical person would. Yeah, yeah no, indeed.

James Cridland: 23:59

Well, it's always interesting to see what happens there. One more story, and this is about podcasters getting paid for the stuff that they do. But the Spotify redux I suppose.

Kyrin Down: 24:13

Yeah, so Spotify has announced an integration between Patreon and Spotify, allowing all creators to offer Patreon-only content to Spotify listeners. That is news to me, and I'm really interested to see how that'll go.

James Cridland: 24:27

Yeah, it's really interesting. So, basically, you will be able to connect your Spotify and Patreon accounts. You being both a creator but also a listener, that means that you can access if you're a listener, you can access Patreon exclusive podcasts right where you're already listening to your favourite audio content. What In Apple podcasts? That's according to Spotify. So, yeah, they've been doing this for some time, with sporting cast and supercast. Obviously, patreon is a very large thing. Many people use it, and so this, theoretically, should allow anyone to produce exclusive content and to stick it straight into Spotify. The interesting side note of this is that, of course, because Apple podcasts also deals with these private RSS feeds, then Patreon works on Apple podcasts as well. You don't get the fancy user experience, but you still get all of that as well. So I find that really interesting and that's kind of a different clearly a different model to value for value. What are your thoughts in terms of how it compares?

Kyrin Down: 25:40

Yeah, I think so. I actually used Patreon not too long ago to support someone who I wanted to, and I found the whole experience just jarring the platform that they used. They had video on there, they were using a Vimeo hook-in or something like that. So the whole experience of it was it felt like I was paying for a downgraded experience, which is not a good business model, because I just couldn't justify it. As much as I love this creator, I just couldn't stay on there, and that's when I would go and look at something like value for value and I go.

Kyrin Down: 26:17

I can do all of the same things that I want to listen to their content, access it if it's on YouTube and I really like the comment section there listen to it there, but then just have the ability to readily and easily contribute back to them. So I guess you could say you would be able to do that. But the Patreon is kind of a paywall, so to get their stuff I had to go into Patreon. So, yeah, I think probably from Patreon's point of view, it's definitely a good deal because you can have people coming in accessing Patreon stuff, but it is through a mechanism they used to like Spotify.

James Cridland: 26:57

Yeah, and, of course, patreon. You end up paying for it as a Patreon, with your credit card and everything else, so you don't necessarily have to learn anything new, although there was a story last week that Patreon has changed the company that it uses to build the credit card. So instead of building the credit cards out of California, it's now building the credit cards out of Dublin in Ireland, which, of course, is foreign land to many Americans, and so therefore, their credit card companies have blocked those payments. So quite a few people have seen in this month they've seen a much lower amount of supporters because all of a sudden they've seen a bunch of bounced users, which is a little bit of a concern. I don't know whether you've seen any of that. I have to say I haven't, but I don't know whether that's been an issue on your side.

Kyrin Down: 27:51

No, not personally. It is funny, though, hearing things like that, and on the podcast index Mastodon, there was a, I suppose, like a little investigation by John Spurlock into some of the numbers coming out from Fountain using OP3. And he was noticing a lot were coming from Nepal, of all places, and a lot of them were actually tuning into my show, which was really funny because it's like well, are there Sherpas on Mount Everest? Are they the ones tuning into mere mortals? And they look like legit downloads. Maybe they were being done through a VPN, and this is one of those cases where you go. If someone from Nepal wanted to support the mere mortals, I mean I don't know if they're going to be able to do it through Patreon or Buy Me a Coffee or any of the, I suppose, standard, even PayPal, I'm not sure they'd be able to do it from there. And then this is why, being able to do it within the podcasting app using just a money which anyone can kind of get, this being Bitcoin, that does make a whole lot of sense.

James Cridland: 28:59

Yeah, it's going to be interesting to watch, I think, and interesting to see how all of that works, but certainly Spotify moving very much into offering the same sorts of things as Apple podcasts has in terms of paid subscriptions, although I'm not quite sure what money Spotify gets out of this, if anything. If I was to make something with Patreon, does Spotify get a cut of that? I'm not very sure, so it's probably worthwhile to dig into the release to find out more information about that. But if there are people and there may be some people who are still a little bit vague about the whole notion of value for value, you have a whole podcast all about that, don't you?

Kyrin Down: 29:49

Yeah, yeah, it's definitely one of the things that inspired me to change how I was doing podcasting. Funnily enough, you were the introduction to it for me, james, because I was watching. I can't remember this was during COVID times and you were presenting somewhere on an online conference, so nothing, good person again. And right at the end you talked about this Bitcoin thing and Adam Curry and value for value. And I came away thinking like, okay, so is value for value mean Adam Curry is going to give me Bitcoin? And I mean, funnily enough he has. He has boosted in the show.

Rob Ellin: 30:27

So the wrong prediction came true.

Kyrin Down: 30:30

But yeah, it was essentially just the idea of exceedingly simple. I provide value up front and then I just ask that you return it, and it can be in many different forms. And that idea is just really stuck with me since then for its simplicity and then also getting into the nuances of it, which is what I do on that show. To explain okay, if you are using something like Patreon with the paywall, you know you're blocking your content from a lot of people who would access it. And then it's the question is okay, well, are you? Are you doing it for the money or are you doing it so that people can listen in, so that you have something to say and share? So, yeah, it is really, really fun and yeah, I've been enjoying doing that show.

James Cridland: 31:19

So one more, one more story, and then we'll go around the world and we'll do some jobs and stuff. And you were talking about a lot of listeners to one of your shows in Nepal, but there's one company which is going a little bit further than that.

Kyrin Down: 31:35

Yeah, so cohost has announced advanced audience demographics, a tool to offer data on audience, age, gender, household income, interest and hobbies, family members and social media consumption and habits. And maybe they'll even brush your teeth for you.

James Cridland: 31:50

So it's a worrying thing. What do you think when you see stories like this, where they will work out exactly whether you're a boy or a girl and whether you, like, you know going on boats and you know, and you use tiktok and not X. You know what you know? You cool with this or are you running a?

Kyrin Down: 32:12

mile I'm. So I'm one of the ones who privacy is never really been my thing as a real, real concern in the large scale of things, yes, but for myself personally I don't really care. I remember reading a book once about how these, this family, was using something like target or walmart and they had magazine pamphlets being delivered to their house and just based on the purchasing decisions of the youngest daughter, who was, I'm gonna guess, like sixteen, seventeen, something like that, they were starting to receive all of these baby pamphlets, really targeting, and the mom and dad didn't even know and it was just based on the decisions Of what the daughter was doing and she didn't even really know. So that's one of those ones where you go like whoa, okay, if walmart knows I'm pregnant before I'm, before I even know, that's, that's a bit concerning. So yeah, that kind of stuff feels, feels gross, feels gross, it feels a bit wrong. What's on the just personal side, for myself, I've never been overly, overly concerned about.

James Cridland: 33:24

for you, james I've got my wall worth everyday rewards card, which is? Which is a supermarket here in australia, not a company that sells you. Pick and mix that somebody else's push their fingers through which, of course, is what it was in the uk and records final records. Use a cell, final records. Yes, so you know. So I'm.

James Cridland: 33:45

I'm very cool with companies going going through all of my data in that regard slightly less cool in terms of in terms of online, has to be said. But yeah, no, I think there's, you know, going in eyes wide open. I think the way that this cohost thing works is that it uses this bunch of data brokers out there who spot what you're doing at the end of your ip address and understand what's going on in your household. So they're looking at my ip address here and they can spot that there's somebody here you know searching for. You know searching for dresses and searching for women's shoes, and they can probably put two and two together to work out that might be my wife and you know, etc. Etc. So I think that that's how it works. But, yeah, I'm always kind of their thinking how reliable is that really going to be?

Kyrin Down: 34:36

which of course is the other. Yeah, yeah, I'm. A good illustration of this is have you heard of world coin, james? Have I heard of world coin?

Kyrin Down: 34:44

yeah, so world coin is a cryptocurrency token thing that's being as recently released and basically what you do is there's a big orb and you go up and you scan your iris into it and it'll give you Twenty five dollars worth of this world coin thing.

Kyrin Down: 35:01

What is the equivalent of that if you converted it? And this is meant to be done in a way so that we could have a global money, that's. You know, there's no bots, there's no Bad stuff gonna happen from that, and it was actually helped, co-founded by the guy who made open a is a sam ultimate, so he's kind of created the problem and then is trying to fix it himself. And the hilarious thing is that it's just not working, that there's people who are getting their family and friends to come scan their eyes, but then they will take the money for it or, like you know, percentage of it, and even the the world coin people. I believe they said they would sell that biometric data on to governments or they would give it to governments, but maybe they would sell it on as well. It's just like, yeah, if you, if you're going and willingly giving your your data up, it's and like something is, I guess, personal and private, as your, as your iris, which is pretty big security concerns for yeah exactly, exactly.

James Cridland: 36:05

It reminds me of a great podcast is also book as well, and I've just finished reading the book the missing crypto queen. She's made by the bbc and looks into one coin, which is, I mean, they're still selling one even now. They're still selling one coin, even though it's clearly, you know, so much of a scam it's. It's unbelievable and it's well worth a read or a listen, depending on how you go and the podcast itself is fantastic and is well worth it. So, yeah, there's a, there's a thing. Yeah, definitely there's a thing. Let's go around the world. In the UK, new radio audience figures which showed a growth in radio listening. Are you a radio listener at all current?

Kyrin Down: 36:49

no, I can't stand ads, so, hi, I listen to podcasts in my car.

James Cridland: 36:53

Well, there you go. There is. There is such thing called the ABC. You know it's a very good. I think the interesting thing about the UK numbers were that one percent more people listening to radio now them were a year ago. There's probably one percent more people in the UK, to be fair, but they're listening. 1.8 percent longer. Speech stations, though, we're down. So all of the talk stations, whether it's the bbc, whether it's the commercial stations, all of those were down. And I'm wondering whether or not some people have been talking about news avoidance and people just find the news too depressing to listen to. I think another reason might be the launch of lots of high quality podcast and they're doing exactly the same as you're doing and having listened to those in the car rather than the depressing news and stuff like that, so maybe that's the thing yeah, yeah, could, could definitely be that maybe, maybe podcasting has killed the radio star.

James Cridland: 37:53

Yeah, I can't believe I've just said that. Anyway, let's take a quick look at some jobs. There's a job for a producer at podmasters in London as a freelance audio documentary producer to se are in Sydney, yora in Australia, and if you're looking for a job, you can find more of those. I'm not sure. Podcasting jobs across the industry and across the world on podcasting's largest jobs board, their free to post as well. It just takes two minutes to add a new role. Pod news dot net. Slash jobs is where to go. The text stuff. Text on the pod news weekly review.

James Cridland: 38:30

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, of course. Adam curry publishing a new episode of booster grand ball this week, and the one of the music artists that he played in fact played Her twice this week ainsley castello. She has said that she has received more than a hundred and four dollars in two weeks from the plays on booster grand ball and others like it, which compares to April, where she earned from sixty different platforms. She had twenty two dollars, so so there's definitely something. There's definitely something here. You've presumably listened to both, because I think you were, you were, you were very excited by them.

Kyrin Down: 39:16

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I am. I've been very excited for this for a while. I remember when one of the first people to put music in a in a podcast like this or at least it related to podcasting to Pernod was a band called able in the wolf and they had a whole podcast about their process of creating it, of making the chapter art and images, of Getting the music together, and yeah, it was really cool and I followed that pretty religiously when that was coming out a year and a half ago or something like that. So, yeah, definitely interested that number itself. I'm pretty sure she crossed over one million sat, which is that would be even closer to like two hundred three hundred dollars. So it's yeah, that actually had a pretty big impact on her and I believe you did a show as well, james, and I actually listened into that one.

James Cridland: 40:08

I did. Yes, I did a very I did a short show. Call james is random music show thing which you'll find if you are using a podcast index compatible player. You won't find it on apple or on spotify, fairly obvious reasons. Yeah, that was. I tell you what making it? Because I was.

James Cridland: 40:28

I was just keen to understand how the whole thing worked and there's nothing better to understand, as a writer about this stuff, nothing better to understand how it works than actually just doing it for yourself. So learn to know for a lot, I tell you what incredibly complicated right now because there are no tools that there's split kit and the sovereign feeds, both of which are in Impenetrable for me. I'm sure that you know adam, who's been using them for the last four years or five years or so, is completely comfortable with it, but blimey, super complicated. I wasn't doing it live, which would be even more difficult, but yeah, there was a thing so it was back to my days of being a radio DJ, of using a calculator to work out timings so that the rss feed works. But yeah, that was. That was really interesting. Any any interest in doing that on your value for value show.

Kyrin Down: 41:25

I will actually do that next week, but I will not do that. And exclusive time splits I will not do the value time splits. I will make it easier and I'll just put the artist as a percentage of the actual episode. And yeah, I, yeah, there's a like you saying there's. There's so much cool stuff coming out, but for the average Joe like myself who doesn't know how to code, who looks at a command line and is horrified and scared it's, it is a lot to take in. So it's really awesome that people like you and Adam are kind of trailblazing and experimenting with these things. And I will just say, you know, for those problems that you are having, at least you have the background and radio so you can do all of the smooth intros and outtrows and it was very, very professional.

Kyrin Down: 42:20

I was, I was highly impressed, why Thank you very much.

James Cridland: 42:24

I'm available for hire. Yeah, it was good fun to do, but I think the other thing that of course is the issue is that there's very little music out there that's actually available in this format. You know that you're allowed to play and I think one of the reasons why my thing was only 21 minutes long, one of the reasons what was, you know, the point wasn't to do a full music show, the point was to understand how the whole thing works. But the other thing was that actually the amount of music out there is so low that I feel for Adam having to do an hour long show every week with the very small amount of tracks which are available out there. So hopefully more musicians will get involved in this and more people will be uploading their stuff.

James Cridland: 43:16

I did also find a bunch of cover of cover tracks, cover songs on on Wavelake, which I'm not putting that in a podcast because at least I know that if it's a Beatles cover song, then I'm not. I'm not allowed that you know, because the publishers will still want some money because you know Lenin and McCartney composed that particular song. So I'm kind of there going. You know, I recognize the Beatles track, but the may may well also be other tracks that are on there that are cover versions of other songs that I'm not aware of, and yeah, that's a little bit worrying as well. So a whole world of trouble if we're not careful.

Kyrin Down: 44:03

I think that's going to be the thorny type of Napster shenanigans, where the record companies they've they've shown that they're not. They're not too happy about people accessing music in different ways. A question for you, though, is when you were on the radio, when you are looking for for new music, how would that work as a radio station? How would you access a new song to play?

James Cridland: 44:27

Well, I mean on the, on the, on the radio, typically, you would be given those songs, you'd be sent those songs. I mean I'm old enough that they would be. I'd be sent those songs with CDs, not with vinyl I'm not quite that old, but yeah. So they would send, send those songs in and then you know, you would listen to them and and you'd work out which were worthwhile playing. But of course, the music licensing was that basically anything that we wanted to play? We could, because we had the blanket agreements, whereas podcasting very, very different. So you know, only having the agreements to play songs which have a value, block realistically and only, and so therefore only being able to choose from the, you know, the Wave Lake catalogue or the Wave Lake catalogue plus a few others, is, yeah, it's a bit, it's a bit, it's a bit harder on that front, I guess.

Kyrin Down: 45:24

Yeah, well, let's just see what happens in a, in a year's time, and maybe there'll be other various entities like Wave Lake popping up, because you only need a, probably a couple of musicians like Ainsley spreading the word of how much you can, even just the financial aspect of you know, you put it in one place and you earn five times, 10 times what you do from putting it in 60 places. There's a, there's a whole lot of incentive.

James Cridland: 45:52

It also helps if you record a decent song as well, which is, yes, worth while bearing in mind. And the other thing that I heard Dave Jones talking about this week on the podcasting 2.0 podcast, which is taking a couple of weeks off, while Adam Jets around Europe is talking about anonymous reporting of player stats so that you can get better podcast searches. So you can basically go OK. We know that these are popular shows in terms of consumption, so therefore those should go at the top of the list, which I thought was interesting, and I wondered whether Dave had considered pod roles. I don't know whether you've ever used the pod role in terms of helping people understand other shows that they might enjoy.

Kyrin Down: 46:43

Yeah, I have played around with it. Once again, this was absolute hand holding on my part by the good folks at Buzzsprout, because that's where I host two of my shows. So I just asked them you know, could you put in these three goards and do it? So I believe that was the old method, not the newer method. So that does work, and if you go to pod fans and type in mere models, you can see my pod role there. So I have done that. But yeah, that sounds very similar to, I guess, the Google PageRank algorithm or things like that right, where it's the amount of linkages to a particular page. Yeah, something similar for podcasts. Is that what you were thinking?

James Cridland: 47:29

Yeah, I mean. I mean certainly if, if a show is getting recommended by lots of other shows, you would kind of assume that that would be a good signal, you know, I guess, to actually show that. But you know. So the pod role, I think, is a really interesting plan. You have three on your pod role at the moment, which of course, you can see on the pod news website as well. You've got mere models, book reviews, you've got value for value, I think, and you've got the podcasting 2.0 show. Yeah, show, not, not, not, not this show I do notice.

Kyrin Down: 48:05

No, I might have to change that Buzzsprout expect an email.

James Cridland: 48:11

But there we are, and of course, buzzsprout is our sponsor of this very show and we thank them for that. Let's take a look at some upcoming events and awards. New plan we're going to talk about one upcoming event other than our own and the one upcoming event I'm talking about its podcast movement, which looks if it's going to be a busy one. The host hotel has sold out astonishingly, and the organizers have secured discounts at nearby hotels, though I think nearby is a is a comparative thing, it's. The hotel is in the middle of nowhere, although it's sort of relatively close to the airport. But yeah, nearby will be will be a small car away, I would have thought, but where's this being held at.

James Cridland: 48:55

So this is being held in Denver, in Colorado. It's being held at the Gaylord Resort, which, as a Brit, I find hilarious for reasons that I'm not going to go into, but yeah, so you know, it's a big hotel as well, really big hotel. So the fact that the hotel has sold out is, you know, is pretty impressive. So yeah, so, looking forward to that, I've just opened my calendar for people to be able to book half hours with me during the event, and already regretting it. So so that should be the rule is be at the bar or not. Well, you know, that's what I plan on. What you know, I do have a rule, that it's it's only off the record if there's some alcohol in my hand.

Rob Ellin: 49:40

So you know which I?

James Cridland: 49:43

think is a good plan, but anyway, that should be fun. And, of course, pod news live in London happening on September 27. Pod news dotnet slash live is where to get tickets are still some available. That's very cheap to get to and so I would hardly recommend that. You'll find it in. You'll find it in white city in London, so where the television center used to be and in fact, where this morning still comes from. I think it's in London. So there's a thing. So if you haven't bought your tickets yet, do get them before they sell out, because they really will sell out.

James Cridland: 50:17

Pod news dotnet slash live is where to go. Somebody was asking me what the nearest airport was and what the conference hotel is going to be, and my reply was that the best airport is Heathrow, because it's just the best airport and in terms of in terms of a hotel anywhere, because it's really easy to get to. So yeah, but that should be really good. And then the British podcast awards on September 28 as well. There are more events, both paid for and free of pod news virtual events or events in a place with people, and it's free to be listed as well. Pod news dotnet slash events is where to go Boostergram corner corner corner on the pod news weekly review.

James Cridland: 51:01

Yes, it's our favorite time of the week and quite possibly your favorite time as well, karen. It's boost a gram corner, of course, and a bunch of boosts both for the pod news weekly review but also for pod news extra, which last week had a full version of the interview with Adam Curry through a very scratchy stream yard connection that Sam insisted on using. That Sam will not be using again, but thank you for listening to that. So we've got a ton of boosts from both of those, haven't we? What were some of the boosts that we got in, kari?

Kyrin Down: 51:42

Yes, I'll read out these first ones here. So on the pod news extra, there was 100 sats from real coach Andy and he said good to hear you guys again.

Kyrin Down: 51:51

Thanks for the news, guys, and so that was with talking with Adam Curry on that episode. There I'll do another one. The 12345 from the tone wrecker and this was also in the pod news extra. He says excellent historical update with Adam's recap of the steps to reach this moment. Bravo. And yeah, I definitely think there is some really cool stuff going on which is why people are going into you. The pod news extra, which is a show which is you don't promote that often. It's always kind of in the background, hidden away.

James Cridland: 52:22

It's hidden away. It's where the stuff that doesn't fit goes. That's what that's for.

Kyrin Down: 52:28

I have that would be on your pod role, wouldn't it?

James Cridland: 52:30

Yeah, oh well, yeah, I mean I have a feeling it should be. It should be a little bit more full after podcast movement, because my plan is, at least on one of the days if, of course I've got enough time to go around the exhibition hall and talk to all of the exhibitors to find out what they're all doing there and what they're, you know, pushing on their stands and stuff, and make that into a podcast, which should be quite fun. So if I managed to do that, that might turn into an episode of this show. It might turn into a Pod News Extra episode, but however it works, worthwhile keeping your eye on that. We also got Boost 2100 Sats from this person. Oh, yes, it's Ainsley Costello, the Wave Lake number one, and she says thank you, sam Sethi, adam Curry and Wave Lake. Thank you, ainsley, for giving music a place to be valued for the indie artists, which is a wonderful thing, isn't it to actually get a boost from the music artist who you've just played?

Kyrin Down: 53:47

So there's a thing, yeah, yeah, from sats that were kind of recycled through, they're going back and around all over the place.

James Cridland: 53:57

There's an awful lot of recycled sats. And talking about an awful lot of sats, this is I even get to play this jingle yes, because this was a proper big ball of boost. One, two, three, four, five, six sats. Who's this?

Kyrin Down: 54:14

from Kyren, oh it's a handsome devil. Whoever we might not know who they are.

James Cridland: 54:21

It's from you. Yes, it really was from me. Thank you so much. What is it that you ended up saying here?

Kyrin Down: 54:26

Yeah, so I was saying so. This was for the Pod News Extra and I said boosting so people can see how revolutionary podcasting 2.0 and V4Me music actually is. What dragged me in from the get-go was the emphasis that everyone receives recognition for their contribution and can also benefit from the flow of money. Kudos to Adam and, as an aside, this is a personal one for you, James, and for Sam. Pod News is just an awesome, awesome show and I'm glad I connected with you that long, long time ago, found out about Pod News and, yeah, it's definitely a weekly listen for me At least this one is, so it's actually very cool to be on the show and kind of see how it's all done as well.

James Cridland: 55:11

And see all of the stuff behind the curtain. Well, thank you so much. It's a large amount of sats, so we will spend those in some way shape or form. Maybe we'll spend them as part of I'm trying to get Sam. Sam should come to Australia and he is talking about coming to Australia next year. Oh cool, so yeah.

Kyrin Down: 55:29

Almost certainly be at the time where I'm traveling. Oh, quite possibly, quite possibly.

James Cridland: 55:34

And probably I'll be. I'll be, you know, going and talking in other parts of the world as well. That would be amazing.

Kyrin Down: 55:39

It would be great fun.

James Cridland: 55:42

So, yes, but I definitely want him not to just go to Sydney and Melbourne, as everybody does, but to actually see a little bit more of that For sure. So that's a fine thing. You also sent another set of sats through for this show saying glad, it's not just me who thinks that the booster ground ball is something special. I just finished reading the long tail I did you, and this feels like one of those industry changing events. Double two, double two sats that say row of ducks. Is that a big row of ducks or a small row of ducks? I think that's a.

Kyrin Down: 56:12

It's just a row of ducks, isn't it? It's just a row of ducks, I guess, yeah.

James Cridland: 56:15

There's a. There's a jingle to go with that, but I can't be bothered. No.

Kyrin Down: 56:18

I don't know.

James Cridland: 56:20

So thank you so much for that and also thank you to Brian Entzminger. Apparently I got the name right first go. So he says you did great with the surname. The first attempt was right, so not minga. I did say minga and then Sam said no, no, no, it can't possibly be that. But again, I mean it goes back to Gaylord. So there we are. Anyway, he's given us 1,701 sats, which apparently is the Star Trek boost. What does that mean Currently?

Kyrin Down: 56:46

Star Trek boost. I have no, the enterprise something I don't know. I never watched Star Trek, so there's all sorts of numbers.

James Cridland: 56:54

Yeah, who knows? Who knows how all of that works. Anyway, 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 because it really helps us continue making this show. You can become a power supporter at weeklypodnewsnet and support us with your master card or your visa card or your American Express, or you can support us with sats by hitting the post button in your podcast app. If you don't have one, podnewsnet slash new podcast apps will help you find a new app. What new podcast app do you use, kieran? New one, I guess. Pod Fans is the obligatory one that we must say. If Sam wasn't listening to this show, what would you say?

Kyrin Down: 57:37

You know, I have tried actually using podcast guru recently I do like. The cool thing with all of the new apps is they all have something that they do really well, and so it takes a bit of experimentation to find and exactly so podcast attic, for example, and the functionalities in the back end of that. Or if you want to skip, if you want to have silence, if you want to have this put here and that put there, man, that thing is powerful and it's almost too much, it's you know.

James Cridland: 58:10

So yeah, podcast addict is, is, yeah, it's a real it's. I think powerful is absolutely the word. It's also, you know it's, it's. It has its own idea of style. Yes, yes Is the thing. But yes, I haven't played with podcast guru much recently. It does look like a very nice looking app with a bunch of really good features in there. What's the thing that stands out for you?

Kyrin Down: 58:42

I mean, for me it's almost the simplicity of it. If you went on to something like fountain, for example, I can see where you could get overwhelmed because there's so many tabs and if you click on another tab then another five tabs show up. So it's there's definitely for every person listener out there. There is what they really care about and and what they don't care about. And yeah, I definitely found podcast guru was one of those ones where it's it doesn't give you many options, which is it can be nice in some cases where you just go I just want to type this thing in and I just want to listen. I don't want to do anything else. So you know, with that being said, it does have the boost functionality in it so you can do that, but it's certainly not as maybe front and center as some of the other apps make that functionality.

James Cridland: 59:33

Yeah, indeed. Now this is the part of the show that we normally ask Sam what his week has been like. So what's happened for you this week? What's a typical week in, in, in, in Karin's life?

Kyrin Down: 59:46

Well, so I actually will, two hours after this has ended, be chatting with a Mikhail Christensen who is a hand balancing circus artist. So that's going to be really, really cool for me and I spend a lot of my week doing hand balancing stuff. So you know, preparation so cool. So yeah, there's. There's that aspect I've been experimenting with going live on quite a few of my shows so recently with the value for value one, and there's a whole lot of things to learn. You know, if you want to get the chat going, you need to learn that if you want to play jingles and stuff in that, you know you have to find other ways of connecting audio. So, and I'm also looking at doing a kind of self hosting shim type thing where I host, maybe, my shows on Buzzsprout and then be able to just play around with writing my own, adding some extra things into the RSS.

James Cridland: 1:00:47

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, kind of linking to that, yeah.

Kyrin Down: 1:00:50

So I might be doing that. We'll have to see, and I currently have 48 phone panels.

James Cridland: 1:00:57

Wow.

Kyrin Down: 1:00:58

Which need to go up on the wall, so I'll be spending some DIY time and sticking things all over the place.

James Cridland: 1:01:05

Yes, I have. This room is possibly the most echoey room ever and at some point I mean, what would make sense is just to put some rugs on the wall or something like that. But yeah, I'm not going to do that.

Kyrin Down: 1:01:21

Yeah, I've dilly dallyed for doing this for a while, but for whatever reason, I got them recently and was like, all right, I got to do it.

James Cridland: 1:01:30

No, that makes, that makes a bunch of sense.

Kyrin Down: 1:01:33

And so what happened for you this week, James?

James Cridland: 1:01:35

Well, I've got my haircut, so that was nice. So I was there getting my haircut in into one village and the lady who was cutting my hair said and I purposefully pretended that I didn't hear her she said so is it? Are you working today or are you retired? Oh no, yeah, I couldn't believe it. I mean, I know that you're cutting off my gray hair, lady, but you know. So, yes, I felt very old after that. So that was fun and I've spent much of the week rather weirdly battling my Amazon servers, it turns out.

James Cridland: 1:02:20

So I run a media directory and the media directory that I run has lots of logos for lots of the TV channels and also the radio channels and everything else. And it turns out that you know those dodgy illegal internet boxes that get you 4,000 channels from across the world. All of those, it turns out, were hard coded to pull all of the images because they were all the same size and the same, you know, and look quite decent, all of those logos from my server. Oh, wow, yeah. So I was there, you know, and I've just changed all of these, the security, and I've changed all of the addresses of the of the logos and everything else, with the result that there are all of these set top boxes out there that are all trying to connect to my server and all getting errors now. So hopefully they'll all go away and stop costing me money. Yeah, but yeah that's been, that's been entertaining, but anyway, that's been what I've been doing this week and that's it for this week.

Kyrin Down: 1:03:24

You can give feedback to Sam and James by using email to weekly at podnewsnet or send us a boost to Graham. If your podcast app doesn't support boost, then grab a new app from podnewsnet. Slash new podcast apps.

James Cridland: 1:03:37

Our music is from Studio Dragonfly. Our voiceover is Sheila Dee. We're hosted and sponsored by Pod News Live and Buzzsprout. Podcast hosting made easy. Thank you, Karen.

Kyrin Down: 1:03:48

My pleasure, james, and yeah, happy to do it anytime. Get updated every day. Subscribe to our newsletter at podnewsnet.

Rob Ellin: 1:03:56

Tell your friends and grow the show and support us, and support us, the Pod. News. Weekly Review will return next week. Keep listening.