James Cridland: 0:00

It's Friday, the 18th of August 2023.

: 0:04

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

James Cridland: 0:14

I'm James Cridland, the editor of Pod News, and I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO of PodFounds In the chapters. Today, glenn Beck censored by Apple, or was he Descript has purchased Squadcast. There's a new version of Descript 2, and Ainsley Costello earned 1 million sats on Wave Lake Also this is Jay LeBuff from Descript.

Jay Le Boeuf : 0:33

I'm going to be on later to talk about our acquisition of Squadcast a lot of new AI features and Descript on the web. Hi, I'm Rock and I'm Zach.

Zach Moreno: 0:41

And we're from Squadcast.

Rock Felder: 0:43

And now actually part of Descript and coming up on the show. We're going to talk all about the acquisition.

Alecks Gates: 0:47

Hi, I'm Alex Gates. I'll be on later to talk about all the different podcasts and two-point announcements I've worked on, Hi this is Cameron from IFUF's podcasting, and I will be on later to talk about hosting over.

James Cridland: 0:57

IPFS, they will. This podcast is sponsored and hosted by Buzzsprout. Last week, 3,056 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. They'll be a podcast movement and by 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.

Sam Sethi: 1:26

OK, James, let's crack on with the show. This week You've got a story here about Glenn Beck. His show's been censored by Apple. Tell me more.

James Cridland: 1:35

Yes. Well, according to Glenn Beck, that's the case. Anyway, he popped onto a social media post earlier on in the week this is me trying not to say Twitter, social media post. If ever you read that, then you'll know, because I'm not saying X and I'm not saying Twitter, because that would be wrong. So there we are.

James Cridland: 1:54

Anyway, he popped onto social media and he said that Apple Podcast has removed the Glenn Beck program. He says it's political censorship by Apple. Except it's not. We have learned at Pod News that the issue was actually just a trademark dispute from a third party and the Glenn Beck's organization was sent an email they hadn't replied, and Apple's emails, because I've got one of these emails from Apple from when I made a trademark dispute with somebody else, and the email is just basically say if you don't come back to us within five working days, then we'll take your show off. And that's exactly what happened, apparently. So there we are. So the tip for the top is, regardless of if you're Glenn Beck or if you're somebody else, make sure that the email you use in Apple Podcasts Connect is an email that you actually read and make sure that you reply to the email, otherwise you'll get taken off. So yeah, censorship no, not at all.

Sam Sethi: 2:52

So there you go, that's that story done, so the title of it is actually Glenn Beck's show removed for the lack of admin. That's it.

James Cridland: 3:00

Yes, well done Glenn. Yes, well done Glenn Beck. He looks very old doesn't he?

Sam Sethi: 3:07

A big week for a couple of companies. Descript has acquired Squadcast. I mean, that's a big thing in itself. The editing tool Descript purchased Squadcast earlier this week and we basically had a chance to talk to both parties Before we do. What I thought was really interesting about this announcement, james, is that Squadcast is going to be free for all Descript users.

James Cridland: 3:32

Yes, squadcast free for all Descript users, and on the other side, if you're a Squadcast customer, you get to use Descript too, to get its editing capabilities at no additional cost. So it's good news on both sides. It makes perfect sense. A decent editing tool buying a decent remote recording service. Squadcast, of course, were sponsors of this very show in the dim and distant past, and you ended up having a chat with them.

Sam Sethi: 3:59

I did indeed, so I asked the Zack and Rock what it liked to be working with.

Rock Felder: 4:03

Descript on them. So yeah, squadcast is now a part of Descript. You'll see when you log in to Squadcast it's going to say Squadcast by Descript and right now they're operating as two separate entities, if you will. They're one company but two separate products. But over time we'll be integrating it into the fold of Descript and it'll be one place where you can edit, record, publish, do all the things in one place, and it's going to really empower all creators of all kinds, but especially podcaster.

Sam Sethi: 4:32

Okay, zack. When did the knock on the door happen? You know?

Zach Moreno: 4:36

who picked up the phone to who.

Zach Moreno: 4:38

I think it's been a developing, deepening relationship over time.

Zach Moreno: 4:41

We've gotten to know the team at Descript for the last few years now, since the early days of Squadcast, and I think in that first conversation we had with Andrew, we kind of talked about something like this and that always struck me because we always had so much like vision and you know where we wanted to take Squadcast as its own thing that you know it's hard to kind of take something like that seriously when your company is like in beta and v1.

Zach Moreno: 5:10

It's like no, we're trying to get to, like, you know, v20. And it felt like there was a lot of potential to realize the on the Descript app and the Squadcast app and kind of product journeys to eventually yes, seven years later, we just, you know, kept the relationship going, continued to build out our API, descript's API, so that we can do cool things like the edit and Descript integration that we launched a little bit over a year ago now, made improvements there and got to know the teams as part of that journey and, yeah, things developed. So there wasn't really like this definitive moment and we've kind of discussed this on and off over time so I always felt you know Descript were close friends of ours and now we've kind of made that official is like how I would love to have been a fly in the wall when you two sat down over a beer went.

Sam Sethi: 5:59

you know what mate they want to buy us. What should we do? Our conversation would have been fun and you would have gone. Enough zeros on the end of the check. Yeah, there's enough, let's do it. Let's do it.

Rock Felder: 6:10

It would have been nice to have you there, not going to lie you know it's not all, it's not the most fun experience, but it's. It is an experience that we will never forget and I'm glad that I got to go through. It was that.

Zach Moreno: 6:20

Yeah, same here, and making sure we're looking out for the customer number one. You know, is this a win? Win Like I think it checks all those boxes. That's what I'm most proud of.

Sam Sethi: 6:28

I think it's a win. Win certainly because you are now free as part of Descript, as a service, so that's great. So for anyone who's a Descript customer gets the complete value of using squadcast and vice versa. I guess if you, if you're currently there Now I've gone through the upgrade I assume that's what you're calling it where I've connected both my accounts and for you know, transparency have been a long time user of Descript and a long time user of squadcast. So you know I was very happy and in fact, as you said earlier, zach, there was a basic integration previously and what I'm pleased to say is the integration now has gone deeper. I wouldn't say it's seamless yet, but it's gone much deeper.

Sam Sethi: 7:10

So I just did a recording with somebody else and since I finished, a little hover button appeared. I clicked on edit in Descript. It went straight over it. Transcribe Bang. It all works, so beautiful. And it went to the Descript web beta, not the app, but I had the choice actually, which was very nice of opening the app as well. So you've done a lot of work, even prior to the acquisition. This isn't something you did yesterday over you know, last night's, you know in your sleep, so you know again how long has this conversation been going on, how long has this work been going on?

Zach Moreno: 7:47

A few months. A single startup on its own is kind of a roller coaster time machine, but then you know two roller coaster time machines at once feels like a really strange time warp. So to me it feels like it's been a few months that we've been working this out like from a from like a legal perspective. You know a bunch of boring stuff behind the scenes but a lot of hard work by a lot of smart people to help get us here. And then of course, there's the product side right, the customer experience, and that's really where you know I'm super proud of both of our teams.

Zach Moreno: 8:20

Our team now having to correct myself, you know it's feels like squad cast has always been, you know, kind of lean and mean approach to how our team and company of structure.

Zach Moreno: 8:30

Now you know we've gained all these resources of like 120 other people who are super smart and work very hard to serve the creators who were also serving. So that has been really great to bring this to light and make our products really shine together, bring the value forward. Here there's the experience you just described, but also the that that edit and descript kind of moving your files from squad cast into Descript that you mentioned that also didn't use any of your transcription time, which is another value out here that we worked out with the, with the Descript product team, to make sure that you're not like paying for hours and two places. And you know there's a strong incentive to use squad cast for your remote recordings, where if you're bringing in recordings from zoom or elsewhere, those are going to use your transcription time. So if you're recording with squad cast, that's kind of an, I think, one of the biggest benefits here.

Sam Sethi: 9:21

Rock, looking at some of the financials. Obviously you're not going to tell me how much you were required for that's fine, I get that. But were you seed invested where you have you got other shareholders? I mean, how does that work?

Rock Felder: 9:34

Yeah, so we're a bootstrap company, so Zach and I and our founding team is what we like to call them that everybody that's that started this thing. It's become squad cast. We had the majority stake. We did have some other investors, some of our advisors and the accelerator rejoin tiny seed has had a few slices of the pie, but the majority was our team, and there's some tremendous benefits with that a lot of independence and decision making, which is what I personally love about being a founder.

Rock Felder: 10:00

I love having that pressure and having to solve those difficult problems and, you know, no hiding that's the other thing I like is you can't. There's no one to blame this on. It's on us, and I think that is a great forcing function to bring out the best in all of us, and so, yeah, it's nice, though, to have all these resources. It's like a new world. It's very cool where we felt confident that this was going to be an incredible partnership, marriage, whatever you want to call it, but operationally I wasn't sure how things were going to go, how we would all fit in. I mean, we're used to being this team of like 10 folks that know what everybody's doing and everybody can help out and contribute in some meaningful way, where now we're a little bit separated as far as the squad cast team goes, but the way that the sense of urgency and the passion and ambition that is that squad cast is at D script and that's been an incredible experience.

Sam Sethi: 10:50

Yeah, and look, I think, knowing both camps as I do, I think you're going to make a great fit together. I mean, jay's a great guy, kevin's great. I know a lot of the team over there, so I think it'll be a good fit. Now, on your roadmap, you've talked about things like supporting 4k and other things. I mean you can accelerate some of that roadmap. I guess now Is that something that's you know, front and center of your mind, now that the acquisitions happened? I know it's only yesterday, but now that it's happened can you get onto the fun stuff of the tech roadmap?

Zach Moreno: 11:21

Yeah, I love living in the future. So I think that there's a lot to look forward to and hard work to be done. But yeah, I think 4k will be a pretty fast follow. After yesterday's announcement, we've already done a bunch of the legwork to make that skate and for our customers who have 4k, and we've unofficially, if your camera is locked at 4k, like some of these devices are, they don't like gracefully degrade to 1087, 20. There's a little bit of an unofficial loophole in squadcast where we see those 4k recordings come through and we render them and upload them just fine. So this is something if you have a particular device, it'll, it'll, you can get 4k today actually and just kind of opening that up to everybody. So that's the big one that's next up on the squadcast side. But then there's, as you can imagine, the work to be done to put these two apps more together and that's really where it's nice to have kind of opened the opened up to the world about this, this partnership, collaboration, joining forces, because we're both big on our cultures, big on listening. So now we can talk to people like yourself and and our, our customers who are using both and say you know how do you want that to show up. We don't. If we tried to like guess at all that stuff, we'd probably get a lot of things wrong and it's not our process for how we make our products. So you know, we felt confident to do this kind of initial integration of like linking and syncing and making squadcast bundled as part of your descript subscription for probably cheaper. That is what we've done. We felt confident to kind of make happen without talking to people. But the rest of it, yeah, we want to be collaborative and conversational and we like to ship here. We like to move fast. So I'm really looking forward to.

Zach Moreno: 13:10

You mentioned descripts web beta. You know it doesn't have a recorder right now. I don't know if you know, if you click on record it takes you back to the desktop, so you can, of course, record in descript. It's just that the web is its own special environment and that's really what our team has a ton of background and experience of building not just, you know, single player recording but, like we're doing right now, multiplayer recording. So that's really where I think it's unclear exactly how these things will show up in the descript product.

Zach Moreno: 13:44

But I also think anybody who's used both products can really see how okay. Both apps are super collaborative. Both apps are focused on audio and video. Both apps are focused on very high quality, making it fun and fast, you know, having ultimately less work for the creators that we serve because, like like you know, sam, it's like it's a media startup to have a podcast and you're going to have like 10 jobs with probably just one person. So that is the reality for most creators that we serve and we're very mindful of that in both of our products and we don't want to add an 11th or 12th job. We want to take it down to, like you know, something more manageable one or two.

Sam Sethi: 14:21

Yeah, I mean one of James, and I have talked about this before and no one in the world, by the way, uses what I'm about to tell you because it's just in my head. Okay, so don't take this as a usable framework, but I call it the five P's. So pre production, production, post production, profit maximization and, you know, promotion, right. And I put everything into little buckets because, as you just said, zach, one man band producing your podcast. I have all five tasks to do, right? Not only do I have to book the guests, I have to then record the guests, then I have to edit the guests, then I have to promote the guests. I have to make some money from this, right? Otherwise we get pod fade, which is the six one, but we're not talking about that.

Sam Sethi: 15:01

So so when I see what you guys have done, you know, between squad cars and D script, I put you in the two P buckets. You know, now they've got production, they got post production, right. And I then look at the other three buckets and go, well, will you do things like integration? I know, zach, you're going to tell me that, not Zach Rock, you said it yesterday. So I'll let you tell me how you integrate with Zappia. But you know, booking in calendar would be one thing which pre production, which captivate, does. As an example, how do I do post promotion? You know AI, clearly D script users, ai. They've been sponsored by open AI or invested in heavily. You know Usher and the bus sprout do post production promotion. So you then suddenly get AI for things like putting out transcripts or tweets or whatever. Or is that? Are they X's? Now I don't know what we're supposed to call them.

Zach Moreno: 15:56

I don't know.

Sam Sethi: 15:57

Where do you, if anywhere, at the moment, do you see yourself extending along that horizontal line Rock?

Rock Felder: 16:06

I think promotion makes a lot of sense, like making it easy to take this content and easily distributed on social media platforms. I think there's some capabilities that D script already offers to help folks in that realm, but I do think making it much more streamlined and automated and integrated into one platform makes a ton of sense to me.

Sam Sethi: 16:28

And do you see? I mean you know I think we've spoken offline before together about how StreamYard's done some good things with you know screen labeling and live capabilities. Is that something that you know? You see yourselves now doing with squad cast?

Zach Moreno: 16:47

Yes, but in an unexpected. So I'll leave you with a cliffhanger on that. You know, anybody who's been following our work for a long time will know we are. We're about innovation and creating things, new things. So I mean, I'm not going to go and just like build another StreamYard. That would be a waste of my time, a waste of my customer's time, like you StreamYard, if that's what you're into. But you know, I think there's. We focus on what's different. You only get different by building something new.

Zach Moreno: 17:19

So, yeah, we think about that quite a lot and I think there is something that StreamYard has captured, but in their audience. But I think they're making a bunch of sacrifices in quality and experience to be able to provide that. We think we can do something a little more high quality and better experience. So, yeah, I think that's really interesting to think about. But at the same time, the flip side is we're very mindful to not like line, extend and create these, like you know, anchors models.

Zach Moreno: 17:48

Only going to work for anchor, I guess, is a way that I'll say it. We've seen some others in our category kind of follow that path and we'll see where it leads them. I think you should focus on solving the problem that you're really good at, not just like creating like a suite of things for the sake of creating a suite of things. That's certainly something where we have more resources and capabilities to be able to think about it From bigger picture. But one thing I'll say, one more thing I'll say, is that both Descript and Squadcast have always been focused on the actual creator experience before you hit publish, right, everything before you hit publish, I guess, is part of the creator experience, and then everything that your three other piece those are on like the consumption side, from the perspective of the creator. So, yeah, we like to focus upstream of the publish button and I think that's probably a good guidepost for us, like where we should focus.

Sam Sethi: 18:42

Now Rock. You mentioned yesterday that you've got new titles. What are your titles? Let's get those out of the way.

Rock Felder: 18:49

Yeah, so my title is financial operations manager, so I get to really specialize in areas that I'm extremely interested in and stuff that I got to work on at Squadcast, so it doesn't feel completely unfamiliar to me now at Descript. But working with the finance and sales teams, those are things that I look forward to specializing in and growing in and I think it will make me a better professional and founder. Like I said, I'll miss a lot of the things about being a founder, but there are some things like payroll and taxes and a bunch of other heavy topics that are extremely important.

Rock Felder: 19:23

Yeah, that too. Well, I don't know about that. We're still getting it, but less hats to wear, I will say and, zach, I'll let you say yours.

Zach Moreno: 19:32

Yeah, I'm the engineering manager on the recorder team here at Descript and that includes, yeah, like Squadcast, but also the surfaces in the Descript app. There's an existing team for us, so we're growing together as one team and that's been really great because there's a lot of knowledge here and a lot of ways that the recorder shows up in the Descript experience. That, frankly, like at Squadcast, we have never focused on what an individual recording experience should be like Just you recording by yourself. We have always been focused on solving the problem of multiple people, collaborative recording, and I think it's really interesting like the differences and similarities. It's non trivial. I think that there's like a lot of things that we bring to the table when it comes to like multiplayer recording. You know from all over the world and on the web. You know Descript's historically been a desktop app, so them moving up to the web as a first class experience I think is also a really important part of this story that we're excited to contribute more to.

Sam Sethi: 20:46

Yeah, I think. As I said earlier, I think it's going to be an acquisition of equals. I don't think it's a one size fits all Now. Last thing then really, where can guys go and girls go to find out more about what this acquisition means? Where's the info?

Rock Felder: 21:00

All of the socials at Descript or at Squadcast, fm, of course, both on pages, both apps. It should be hard to miss, I would say Now on that point very quickly.

Sam Sethi: 21:10

I mean it's already on the app. It says, you know, squad cost by Descript. I mean no offense, guys, but you know, will the squad cost brand survive or is it going to quietly wither on the vine? What's going to happen with it?

Zach Moreno: 21:25

It's a good question. Yeah, it'll fade. I think we'll have a. We'll have an informal, informal ceremony to put it to rest. But, yeah, I think that I think to them being two apps is just a side effect of them being two apps before and having, you know, multiple mountains of work to do to get them to be one app. But I'm also optimistic about how quickly we can show up and make that happen.

Zach Moreno: 21:51

So it's unclear exactly how long it'll take. It's going to be the case. Right now. The answer is for a long time probably. We then we expect, but there's also multiple paths we can take here. So I think choosing that path is still something that that we're doing and that's where listening to our customers as to which path you know they think would make the most sense here. And then, yeah, I love the squad cast brand name and you know logo iconography. Shout out to our OG designer, alec, for creating both generations of our branding, because we updated it at a point to to make refinements and the Alex saw both of those through to to success. So, yeah, I'll be sat as a designer to see the brand go to rest, but I'm thinking about getting it tattooed on me somewhere.

Sam Sethi: 22:39

Or you could rename the company. How about D cost? Go and have a chat with Adam. I'm sure he'll be happy to.

Cameron: 22:49

Yeah, I'll pick it.

Sam Sethi: 22:50

Thanks, guys, you take care. Speak to you soon.

James Cridland: 22:53

Zach and Rock at Squadcast. Many congratulations to them, because, of course, this ties in with a brand new version of Descript as well. Right, sam?

Sam Sethi: 23:02

It does, in fact. What's quite interesting is they must have been working on this for several months. I said they did because what you've got now is a new version of Squadcast that's got deeper integration to Descript and, of course, descript have launched their new version. They've also launched their web version, so no longer do you need to download an app to use it. And, of course, the nice thing about it is when I was interviewing Zach and Rock, I actually then finished the interview and clicked one button that's now new in Squadcast, called Edit to Descript, and it instantly put it straight into Descript, transcribed it and had the names of the people attached to it as well. It was very cool. Integration. That's the first part of the new version of Descript. They've added some new tools as well, james. What have they added?

James Cridland: 23:52

Yeah. So they've added a regeneration tool which, basically, if I say a word, but I managed to drop my pencil or something while I'm saying the words banana, then what you can basically do is you can get the Descript tool to rebuild me saying the word banana without the noise of the pencil dropping, which is very clever, so you can use those sorts of things to cover up for bad edits or glitches. There's a thing called Eye Contact, which edits video to keep your eyes on the camera if you're producing video as well, and Replace Selection lets you change a part of the audio or video you're working on without messing the timings up of everything else, and goodness, that's a useful tool. There's also a web interface as well, and you've not just caught up with Squadcast, but you've caught up with Descript as well.

Sam Sethi: 24:48

Yeah, the wonderful Jayla Berth, who's head of development, and I asked him about any acquisition, but also why and what's going on with Descript's new version.

Jay Le Boeuf : 24:58

We have acquired the number one battle tested remote recording solution, probably the best gift for podcasters we could possibly get.

Sam Sethi: 25:07

And we're using it right now. Now, I've been a long user of both Descript and of Squadcast, so I'm very pleased as a user to get any other role in my life. I literally went in and watched the whole of the video presentation and the Q&A went straight over to my Squadcast and Descript apps and instantly there was another level of integration. So congratulations on that. It's seamless. We'll talk about what the plans are coming forward, but let's take a step back. When did you sit down with the exec team and say you know what? We need to go and acquire a video recording company? When did that happen?

Jay Le Boeuf : 25:48

Well, something we've been talking about since as long as I've been there, which is a very beginning of 2020, we need a remote recording solution. We need to find a way for people to get their high quality recordings and bring them into Descript for the editing experience. And once the pandemic hit, once we got into 2020, everybody's on Zoom. All the time. People realized that the magic of just being able to hit record on Zoom. But therein came all the problems. We were getting from customers saying, hey, can you split out multiple video streams, because I only recorded the single one. Or hey, do you have anything that can make video quality better? Because it's glitchy or dropped out or it just it isn't making us look good. So from that moment on, we realized, you know, podcasters needed a better solution and, of course, podcasters had already found solutions.

Jay Le Boeuf : 26:34

Squadcast existed as a company before Descript and they had already done a lot of the hard work in solving the hard problems. If you think about remote recording, like what we're doing right now, this is like, in many ways you'd think who would want to get into this business Like because if it fails, it's catastrophic. If it fails, there's a lot of swearing, there's a lot of like contacting support. It's very urgent and the higher your production budget, the higher your VIP level on your guest, the higher the stakes. And whenever we started experimenting with this, squadcast was clearly the most reliable. We were on different Facebook groups and Discord. Everybody was talking about how reliable it was, how it corrected for audio drift that most other solutions don't correct, for how it does progressive upload, so you don't have to sit around and wait for 10 minutes at the end of the session for everything to come up. So, as a company, as a technology, it seemed rock solid. It seemed like a really good place to go.

Jay Le Boeuf : 27:29

Also, around 2020, I was really trying to learn who the key players were in the podcasting space and I met the founders, zach and Rock, at podcast movement evolutions and we started talking at conferences, doing Zoom calls. They're over in Oakland. I'm in San Francisco. We're just getting to know each other and that was another key part of this. Companies don't acquire companies, people at companies acquire people and technology at companies. So that relationship that our companies have had really since 2020 has been pretty strong.

Jay Le Boeuf : 28:01

Now, to directly answer your question, once a year since 2020, we really think about how are we going to address this and what are some different approaches we could try. Last summer Descript users will remember we had a big launch for edit in Descript, which was a new API that allowed people to take the content that they had in remote recording tools like Squadcast and Riverside and Restream and also podcasts they'd published in Captivate and with one click they can bring those directly into Descript. You can look back on that as you know what we thought that might be a good way to solve the problem at the time, and that was us like dipping our toes in and realizing that we actually need a more comprehensive solution. We thought we had taken the problem maybe halfway, but at the end of the day, we need to just provide these tools and make them totally integrated into the app to get the experience we want. So we really get to know them deeply, doing co-marketing and the technical integration last summer and that's at the stage for the acquisition this summer.

Sam Sethi: 29:01

I'll ask. I know the answer, but I'll ask how much was it?

Jay Le Boeuf : 29:06

We're not disclosing the terms, but all of the value from the deal is provided directly to Descript and Squadcast users. The most common question I've been answering and no one seems to believe me, sam is that if you're a Descript customer, it's free. You get remote recording now.

Sam Sethi: 29:20

I know that's amazing, it's really good. Again, just talk me through. You've acquired it. It has a value. You've taken it on board, did you not think? Because most companies would naturally think, oh, I know what we'll do, we'll create the pro version and that's what we're going to put the video into, but that's what naturally most people do. So again, talk me through the thinking in the company when you went nah, you know what, we're just going to include it.

Jay Le Boeuf : 29:44

I mean, there is a lot of thought involved and, hey, we're all trying to run company they're profitable here and we're also trying to run companies that solve real user pain points. So we get to the point where we identified remote recording is actually something that should be part of our stack of work, in the same way that we keep adding AI functionality. That's making the editing experience better and we're not going to charge more for that editing functionality. It's just part of the foundation level of how you get work done. So that remote recording, that collaboration you know, descript's always been a collaborative app where you and I can be in the app at the same time and we can edit, and now we can edit together on the web. So we should be able to, with one button, invite a guest, invite a collaborator to your session. They join your session.

Jay Le Boeuf : 30:35

Well, we've always had recording too. So you can take a few steps into where we're going with this, and there's a world where it just is such a natural part of our stack and right now, squadcast is a separate tool. We're keeping it as a separate tool and building this like rich integration layer. That's just phase one. Phase two is it's one Descript, it's built in. So, therefore, how could we charge for something that's going to be built in anyway?

Sam Sethi: 30:59

Okay, well, everyone else does. When they call it a feature, that's what they charge.

Jay Le Boeuf : 31:03

That's true.

Cameron: 31:04

That's true.

Sam Sethi: 31:04

Okay, so let's take a step forward. Now I talk about something called the five P's. Again, I hasten to add, no one else in the marketer Well, no one else in the world does, but I just. I'm simple. So I have pre-production, production, post-production, privatization and publicity rate, basically those five boxes where my head sits in the workflow of producing a podcast and what Descript was was always my post-production tool and Squadcast was my production tool itself. So where will you in the? Will you go horizontally with further integration? Now, will you do things like calendly integration so I can book a guest? Will you do I don't know snippets from using AI, you know, so that I can post stuff about, or or put video clips onto Tickton and X, as we have to now call it? I mean, what may be in the pipeline? Can you give us a little hint?

Jay Le Boeuf : 31:59

Yeah. So let's talk about a few things. First off, we do see ourselves as an all in one, very horizontal product. So we actually want to be able to have someone in Descript for as much of the process as possible. And with Squadcast we now add in the recording part which, as a single player, you could always record. Before, or there were ways to kind of coax other recordings in live into Descript, but now you natively record into Descript. Now the squadcast team actually has a suite of APIs that do allow for that Calendly integration. So there are APIs with Calendly, with Zapier, where you can automate getting guests into your squadcast a little sooner. So that's that's a pretty exciting part of it. That's something that I know Zach in particular is very proud of the work they've done there, and a lot of studios that we work with, like ESPN for example, will use that functionality as part of their whole like management process.

Jay Le Boeuf : 32:56

On the Descript side, content comes in. You do all your editing there. We have a suite of publishing integrations so you can publish natively to YouTube and with YouTube it will carry over the chapter markers that you've created in Descript. It'll bring over the transcript, it'll bring the SRT automatically, so you don't have to like download it and re upload it. So these are some of the things we have on the publishing integration side, the AI summarization pieces. One could imagine being backed by open AI, that we might have an interest in things like that. But those are announcements. Now you have to come on what we do and how we choose to.

Sam Sethi: 33:34

I'm not asking you to a pre-announce product that you can't do but we can talk about a new version of Descript. You've launched a new version with tools like regenerate eye contact, replace selection and also the new web interface. Is it out of beta? Is it now fully available or is it still in beta?

Jay Le Boeuf : 33:52

Yeah. So depending on what day of the week people listen to this, my answer will be more or less truthy. So Descript is out of the web, so let me explain what that means for people that are very confused. Descript historically has been a desktop app for Mac and Windows, and it always kind of worked in the web. It was like this fun party trick that you could pull it up on an iPad in Safari or something and see that your Descript project would open. You could see everything, but you couldn't make edits. The only thing you could really do with it is comment, and so what we did is we wanted to actually have a fully native version of Descripts that ran in any web browser. So now in any Chrome tab you can go to webdescriptcom. It'll show you the same view you have as your desktop app. In fact, it looks completely identical. It is fully identical.

Jay Le Boeuf : 34:49

There's a few features we're still trying to get working. So the recorder, for example, if you do use the video recorder or the audio recorder native to Descript, that won't work quite yet, but Squadcast kind of solves that problem and right now you can open any project you have, play it back, add new files, transcribe and do some editing there and where that's actually useful for customers is a lot of us are collaborating with people and they don't necessarily want to have to download but a new desktop app Also a lot of you listen to this might know Descript for the dialogue we have in the bottom right, which is a new update, is available. Well, on a desktop app, you have no choice. When we have new features, when we have bug fixes, when we have performance improvements, we have to do that, and so really every week, if not every few days, we're pushing out a new version of the app that has all the latest improvements.

Jay Le Boeuf : 35:38

On the web version, you don't have to worry about that anymore. It's just always there. So you know we're hoping, as everybody collaborates with more and more people on their workflows, the web version is going to solve most of your problems. For the highest performance users, you'll always want a desktop app, just like we are with our other productivity tools. Cool, so that's the Descript on the web.

Sam Sethi: 35:55

Cool. Now let's go through some of these functions. What is Regenerate?

Jay Le Boeuf : 35:59

Yeah, All right. So Regenerate is we think of it as our healing brush. For those that know Photoshop, it is basically your magical bandaid for an edit that doesn't sound good and just needs fixing. Or for a speaker who's kind of trailing off and you kind of need them to pick up the pace a little bit or fix what they said. Or the third instance of think of it when you want to like studio sound, an errant sound in the background. So if a dog starts barking while you are delivering your killer line, you need that dog bark removed. And so the way that we do it, it's all variations of using our overdub technology. So for that little snippet in time where either my voice trails off and I forgot what I was going to say, or there's just a really bad, unnatural sounding edit, we can actually regenerate that person's voice, saying that one or two words. So we're not saying entirely new sentences, entirely new paragraphs, just that one or two words to make the edit sound seamless.

Sam Sethi: 37:07

Cool. Now you talk about overdub and that was the one of the amazing first product features that I remember from Descript and it's got better over time. Where is it now? Because you know the first version was half an hour to train, then it's down to five minutes to train and I noticed I can train it while it's looking at my existing transcription. So, in terms of voice quality and in terms of accuracy, where do you believe you are now on the curve?

Jay Le Boeuf : 37:36

Yeah. So voice cloning and text to speech is one of the most rapidly evolving spaces in all of generative AI. The good side is that we started doing this before anybody else. We've been doing it five, six years. The Lyrebird team was the ones that actually pioneered this, going back to like 2017, 2018. So we continue to make a ton of improvements. I still feel like we are the best. I think it sounds the most natural. The amount of training material that you mentioned just is smaller and smaller. You don't have to read a script anymore. Anybody can train their own voice, and it's that type of technology which is making not only longer form audio text to speech just better, but makes things like regenerate even possible.

Sam Sethi: 38:21

No, and that's great, and I sometimes use it, as you say, for corrective nature. One of the other things obviously we talked about a little while back open AI investing into Descript, and one of the things you told me in that interview was that there will be a point at which open AI's whisper replaces Rev. When, or has that happened already?

Jay Le Boeuf : 38:42

It is actively in progress. So to support a lot of our users, whisper is behind the scenes for many First transcription users not all and so it's something that's currently rolling out, and our goal is to provide the highest quality transcription, and your typical user really doesn't care who their transcription provider is. They just want the best quality results. So we're in the process of rolling that out right now.

Sam Sethi: 39:07

Okay, cool. Now the other features that you are in the process of launching is one's called eye contact, which I saw Andrew Mason do a video of which is kind of spooky but kind of clever. And what eye contact is.

Jay Le Boeuf : 39:20

First of all, have you tried it?

Sam Sethi: 39:22

No, I haven't. No, I need to.

Jay Le Boeuf : 39:24

No, I need to try it's no, there are several things that I will never forget having seen for the first time, one of which was the first time I got a glimpse at GPT-4. We had access to it very early on and I asked it a question and I saw the result and my mind was blown Up. There in that top five list of things I will never kind of unsee is the first time I got a demo of the eye gaze correction, or eye contact. So even as we're doing this interview, I'm kind of torn between well, do I look at the camera or do I look at you, which is like about two inches off? But we're very perceptive on eye contact, and both for podcasters that might be doing an intro reading off of a script for a certain section, for a lot of our business users that are going to just be talking off a script most of the time. Even teleprompter work, reading off a teleprompter is a skill and you can still see somebody's eyes tracking back and forth. So with this eye contact correction, basically it looks at your eye and it I don't know how rotates it in its socket, so that way you are staring straight at the camera and when you blink, it blinks when you look too far off access. You know, when I look down to the ground, it's not trying to like artificially make my eyeball come out of my forehead, it's totally fine.

Jay Le Boeuf : 40:45

It is one of those things, that kind of like studio sound, where it just, in my opinion, just always makes your audio sound better, and it's a creative tool. You can choose to use it or you cannot. We are using iContact on increasingly more of our stuff. We see it as one of the most popular effects that people are now trying out, because there are times, especially during the intro segment, maybe Maybe don't keep it on for the full hour of your recording, but during the intro segment your viewers really need to see you during that time, during a social clip that you're going to post, turn it on. I would encourage everybody to experiment with it. That is still in beta. We're trying to make it even better, even faster, and we want to learn, so send me your feedback.

Sam Sethi: 41:27

You know what I'm doing straight off this, don't you?

Jay Le Boeuf : 41:30

You're going to record something, Read it. Open your favorite website and just read directly off of it and then see what happens.

Sam Sethi: 41:36

That's pretty much I needed this in 2019, when I was trying to read Cara Swishes bio and I'm like looking like this slightly off camera, yeah.

Alecks Gates: 41:43

Yeah.

Sam Sethi: 41:43

Trying to keep contact with it. So, yes, that would have been helpful. Now, other features that are in this new version. The last one is replace selection. What's that?

Jay Le Boeuf : 41:52

Replace selection. So you're recording off of a script and you rarely get the script down the first time. It usually starts with the written version. First of okay, let me type out what I'm going to say. We're seeing people increasingly use dScript for pre-production, for putting down. Here's what the script is that I want to say. Maybe they assign either their own overdub voice to it to kind of read it out. That's the workflow that Malcolm Gladwell's team uses for revisionist history, where they'll type out the scripts that Malcolm should say, assign it to Malcolm's overdub voice, and then what they would do is they get to the next phase, which is okay.

Jay Le Boeuf : 42:32

Now we need to actually re-record this thing.

Jay Le Boeuf : 42:36

Well, for people that are doing a lot of visuals so maybe the revisionist history team has an episode where they've already chopped it into scenes and they've already dropped in some b-roll, they've dropped in some audio clips you need a way to take the real audio, the real Malcolm recording on his high quality mic, and automatically align it to the script, either the text based script or even just like what you do is a scratch track.

Jay Le Boeuf : 43:03

So what replace script actually does is you can go in, you can record, it will automatically look at what you just said and stitch it in, line it up. It doesn't have to be word for word. You can have some extra filler words, you can have some improvs in there, and what it will do is take your new audio, replace your existing audio, but keep all of the visuals, keep all the audio that you spotted and just allow you to go in at the last minute and replace it with the highest quality audio possible. And it's like being able to, if you're a musician, go in and just kind of like, do that last solo at the end. You don't expect to do the solo at the end and then have to re-record the whole track with that, with a G-script. Now you can do that.

Sam Sethi: 43:47

Nice. There's a couple other things I've seen that you've added in because I'm on the beta. One is the fixing of the transcription, which is quite cool. Is there anything else that might be popping out before it goes live that I've forgotten?

Jay Le Boeuf : 44:00

The other thing that I would hope everybody has noticed as well and if you haven't noticed, that it's also a sign of success is just quality improvements. So we spent the first half of the year really focused on listening to our users and getting quality, so that way, there's really no difference. In fact, the version that we had launched on which we had code named Storyboard Storyboard is in use by like 98% of all users Descript Classic. It's being sunset very, very, very soon, and so everybody should be using the latest version of Descript, especially with Descript on the web. It's faster, much more performance, higher quality. That's the other thing that I think we'd want to cover is it's not just about adding all of these like newfangled AI features for your workflow. At the end of the day, we want people using Descript day in and day out, and with Squadcast, you now have yet another reason to make this a tool that's a daily, active tool for a lot of us that are content creators.

Sam Sethi: 44:59

Yeah, talking about a classic. When you do sunset it, I mean obviously everything's labeled classic or new version. Will your classic versions just be migrated over?

Jay Le Boeuf : 45:10

They'll be auto migrated over. So there's no proactive steps that someone needs to take to go back and find their classic versions. That magical date when it arrives very soon, you'll just see your project was auto converted to a new project. You'll open it up and it will just work identical as before.

Sam Sethi: 45:27

Brilliant Jay. Thank you so much. Congratulations on the Squadcast acquisition. Congratulations on the new releases. I look forward to talking to you very soon.

James Cridland: 45:36

Thanks for having me on Sam Jay LeBurf from Descript and Squadcast. I guess these days if you want to go and see the larger team then you'll find them a podcast movement, booth number 700, it says it's always very exciting when they say Booth number 700. I will tell you exactly where that is. That is opposite from the pod news stand. So if you find the pod news stand, then Descript is straight opposite. So I'll be waving to them all the way through the entire show, so that'll be fun.

Sam Sethi: 46:08

Cool Now. We talked a couple of weeks ago about Adam Curry's new Booster Grand Ball podcast and why it was quite unique in that it had actually used the ability to have live music and pay that musician in real time. Adam's been doing quite well. He put out a post, didn't he, james, about how much he's paid the artist so far.

James Cridland: 46:32

Yes, he did, and this was only after publishing the third edition of the Booster Grand Ball, so pretty early days. But he has already sent over $1,100 to music artists not him, of course, but the people listening to that particular show have already sent that amount of money. I worked it out that it's only had 6,400 downloads so far, which isn't a massive amount, but actually that makes the $1,100 even more impressive, because that works out to be an equivalent of $185 cost per thousand. Now, if you bear in mind that podcast advertising is rather a lot less than that, that's a particularly good number. Or indeed, if you look at it just per download, it's 18 cents per download, which is a tremendous thing too. So, yes, some really nice numbers coming out of that, and I think it does show that, while it's still very, very early days, there is definitely something in this, so very exciting.

Sam Sethi: 47:40

Yes, and also one of the artists there, ainsley Costello, has gone over the $1 million satsmark now on Wave Lake, which is again equally impressive.

James Cridland: 47:49

Yes, no, it's fantastic news and Ainsley Costello listening to this very show. How do I know this? Because you just wait until Boostergram Corner later on. But you have been talking about all of the technology that makes this stuff possible, haven't you?

Sam Sethi: 48:06

Yes, We've been sort of, over the course of pod news, been talking about things like pod ping, the medium tag, alternative enclosures, remote items and the value time split. These are some of the technology pieces in podcasting 2.0 that, when you put them all together, you end up with the Boostergram Ball or James' music show, which you did as well. So I mean you know how this all connects together and all the bits behind the scene that make it work. I mean, before we go into an interview, would you say it was easy, hard, I mean now that you've done it.

James Cridland: 48:44

I mean, I think that clearly there needs to be tools to make life much easier, and there are some tools available out there. I ended up doing what I normally do, which is copy somebody else's RSS feed and work out what was in there and fix it for myself. So you know. So it was certainly. It was certainly, you know, easy enough once you understood how the thing works. But yeah, it's, you know, very, very early days and, I think, very early days just in terms of support from individual players as well. I know that some players had problems and some players will continuing to have issues with some of this stuff, but you know, that's what this phase is for it's phase of bug fixing and it's a phase of making sure that everything works.

Sam Sethi: 49:35

So I thought I'd go and find out how this all really works. Though, James, there's a guy called Sir Alligate. He works alongside Adam and Dave. He's one of the people who doesn't really come to the fore and make a shout about what he does, but he's been heavily involved in making most of this technology, so I thought I'd go and find him and ask him about how this all works and where he sees it all going as well. A lot of the things that I get excited about in the new podcasting space. Again, these are things that you've been working on, so let's start off with a couple of things. Let's start off with podping. Explain what is podping first, before we go into why you produced it.

Alecks Gates: 50:16

Podping is a decentralized RSS feed update notification system, and that's really all there is to it, but what that allows us to do with it is basically stop polling and also enable live stream notifications.

Sam Sethi: 50:32

Yeah. So, fundamentally, before podping, people with an app like mine would sit there and poll or go to the host hey, any update, any update, any update. And then it would go no, no, no, no, no, no and eventually one time it would go yes, and then I'd pull the file. But the problem was it was processing and bandwidth and cost. So podping fixes that.

Alecks Gates: 50:53

Yeah, Knowing when the host has actually changed the feed. It is a remarkable change in architecture fundamentally across the entire ecosystem.

Sam Sethi: 51:02

Now is every host supporting this.

Alecks Gates: 51:05

I think most have gotten on board yes, most of them through podpingcloud, but there are a few that are also self-hosted.

Sam Sethi: 51:12

Okay, Now you said. Something else that I thought was really interesting was notifications. What do you mean by podping notifications?

Alecks Gates: 51:22

Podping notifications are essentially an indicator to end user applications that something that the user cares about knowing in real time is changing the feed. That's what enabled a lot of the live streams that we're doing today, but we can even do more within the future. Give me an example.

Alecks Gates: 51:42

Well, right now it's simple, things like if you need to update your value blocks in real time because you've made a mistake. There's a podcast app, tillis and update that as they need. But some of the future things we might be doing would be notifying that the podcast application needs to update the chapters.

Sam Sethi: 51:59

Okay. So that was a fundamental building block in terms of allowing apps to know when something had changed. And then Lit, the live item tag, was built on top of that. Tell me more about Lit.

Alecks Gates: 52:14

Well, live item tag. That was a collaboration between several of us who wanted to solve a problem and I mean that's not really that complicated. From the specification at the side of the house, that's basically just an item, an RSS item that tells the application that there's a live stream happening right now and it reuses all those elements. But, like a lot of the features that we have today, it's been hard for people to wrap their heads around. So it's been. That's been two years in the work actually.

Sam Sethi: 52:45

Yeah, one of the things I mean. Again, you know there's many apps that support live item tag fountain, podverse, cast of pod fans, pod friend. Many of the new podcasting 2.0 tag apps support it. The question I've got is why are so few hosts providing the interface for podcasters?

Alecks Gates: 53:07

I think the user interface and the hosting side isn't as simple as people want to think. It also requires extra infrastructure, which is additional cost, quite frankly. So some of the ones that are allowed to do it right now on the hosting side, like sovereign feeds, that requires you bring all your own pieces. So I've added it to something like peer tube, but that took quite a bit of work and it's still I mean, the only thing you have to bring there is your own podping key.

Sam Sethi: 53:33

So, as a host, I've often called it the technology escalator. Right, Hosting is now a commodity. It's basically everyone's got the similar price. You know, there's a free offer, there's a pro offer, there's an advanced offer, whatever. I would expect hosts to go oh okay, what's the next thing on the technology escalator I can offer as a value added service? And it just seems to me that offering a live item service, so a server that they could actually broadcast with, that could go into a configuration field just on their RSS feed, would seem a logical thing. Now, the amount of people who might take it up to begin with is going to be small, but again, you might just price it in the advanced section so that only those that are really interested are going to try it. Wouldn't that seem logical?

Alecks Gates: 54:23

Yeah, I think pricing is one of the biggest issues and we've heard from, I mean, one of the issues with a successful podcast is a lot of the hosting pricing models doesn't account for success, right? So I think some of the hosts should if they want to do live, they should consider pricing change. If you do value for value and get the podcast or add them to their split.

Sam Sethi: 54:43

Now you mentioned something called PeerTube. Let's take a step about what is PeerTube first.

Alecks Gates: 54:49

PeerTube is essentially a self-hostable YouTube alternative that is kind of in the Federation, along with Macedon, for example, so you can follow PeerTube from Macedon if you want. But it also allows users to help share bandwidth, which has traditionally been one of the big problems with video.

Sam Sethi: 55:07

Yeah, and so you can spin up your own instance. Is this the idea, then, that I could record a podcast, like we're doing now, and have the video element broadcast out, or is it purely for live broadcast? Is it pre-recorded or live, or both?

Alecks Gates: 55:25

It does both. I think it's been traditionally designed for pre-recorded up until now and as a PeerTube I think it's a 5.2. You'll actually get a podcast feed if you want to use with that. But live has been developing as Twitch has become more popular and they've had their own issues too.

Sam Sethi: 55:43

So can I pay for live and PeerTube with Satoshi's?

Alecks Gates: 55:50

Yeah, actually, if you install PeerTube and there's something called the lightning plugin, you can add as a host, you can add yourself as a, you can get a percentage split which helps pay for the server and service and everything. But you can also, as a podcast, or add your own value blocks in there too.

Sam Sethi: 56:08

Right, so let's step back a second then. So if I wanted to do a live broadcast, I can go in and I can configure probably manually today because most hosts don't support live. So manually in my RSS feed I can put a live item tag, I can configure the URL to point to a PeerTube instance and I can also put a value block inside of that would allow me to pay for that hosting bandwidth, correct.

Alecks Gates: 56:41

Yeah, if you want to do it with your own feed. Yes, so for audio, you have like the MP3 live stream in YouTube. It's just a different video URL.

Sam Sethi: 56:49

Now, one of the other tags that you helped bring to life was called the alternative enclosure tag. First of all, explain what it is, and then I'll ask you a follow-up question.

Alecks Gates: 57:00

Alternative enclosure developed as a way to re-host the same content in different codecs. Essentially, If you have an MP3, but you want to offer a smaller file size in Opus, for example, you could do that. Or if you want to support AC, you can also offer that, which I'm kind of amazed. Apple doesn't support that right now, and then it also allows you to. If you have like a torrent version or an IPFS version of an MP3, you can add that in the same way.

Sam Sethi: 57:31

Okay, could I have a situation where I have my audio as my main feed and the alternative enclosure is a PeerTube instance?

Alecks Gates: 57:41

Yeah, you can. I don't know if any apps that would support it, but it's definitely doable.

Sam Sethi: 57:46

The next part of what I wanted to talk about before we get onto what I really am excited about, which is remote item and value time splits. But at the moment, there seems to be a lack of end user tools or podcast creator tools to allow people to easily set up a live item tag, to easily set up the alternative enclosure or to easily do what we're going to come on to talk about. You know, the value time split. Is this just a time waiting between you and Dave and Adam coming up with all this technology and running with scissors and with steel as well and people like Oscar and Mitt and Mardov and others producing the tools that are end user friendly? Is that where we are now in that gap?

Alecks Gates: 58:34

Yeah, I think in a lot of the applications, like you mentioned, have already done a lot of this. I think a lot of it's on the hosting and software side and that's I mean we haven't had new features in so long. It's kind of understandable that some of the stuff is taking time to implement, but it's also so. It's almost a paradigm shift. We're not used to having real time things in RSS and I think people are still getting used to that.

Sam Sethi: 59:01

Okay Now with Adam and again he seems to you know we talked about it on pod news a few weeks back created a milestone in history with the booster grand ball podcast that he released, which was the first podcast to contain legal music played within it. But, more excitingly, it was not just legal music, but it was legal music that was actually having the listener pay the artist in real time. Now that's using something called the remote item tag and will come on to the value time split. But, stepping back, we use the remote item tag to create something called a pod role. Explain what a pod role is first and explain what the right item tag does, if you don't mind, please.

Alecks Gates: 59:46

This is one of the few things I actually had no involvement in, but, as I understand it, pod role is a link to other podcasts that the podcast recommends, and it uses that by looking to the feed good, and so the RSS feed itself. So if you reference a podcast, you don't have to file the new feed every time you want your recommending changes hosts.

Sam Sethi: 1:00:08

So this is something that is a unique identifier, isn't it for a podcast and for an episode as well?

Alecks Gates: 1:00:15

Yeah, so the podcast good tag, which I also helped to kind of make, and that basically the podcast good is once you have a good assignment to your podcast, you bring that with you wherever you go. So it's not guaranteed to be unique, but I mean nothing else. We've always kind of like worked together, as with hosts and apps, to make sure that we're all playing ball.

Sam Sethi: 1:00:37

Okay, and so, again, one of the things I'm quite frustrated with is the lack of support from hosts for something as simple as the pod role. I think that may change. Dave this week implemented a new GUID, resolver, and that's what I understand he's done, and he's come out with some endpoints for it, so it should allow hosts now to provide a simple UI for podcast creators to go oh right, I want to create a pod role here's, here's my three or four podcasts I want to link to, and they don't have to know the GUID. They could just look up the name of the podcast, like in a basic search, and then it would actually store it correctly within the RSS. That seems to be a simple way forward, doesn't it?

Alecks Gates: 1:01:22

Yes, I know I can understand your reluctance to not want to depend on the podcast index for a lot of the stuff. I'll be honest yet we have a long way to go to make sure GUID is more reliable for everyone, and relying on the podcast index to resolve it is definitely problematic. So we have some ideas to make that easier for everyone, and that might be to work with something like podping to make it a little more decentralized.

Sam Sethi: 1:01:45

Oh, okay, all right. Well, watch this space. Using that fundamental building block, the remote item, you came up with something new called the value time split. So let's go into what is the value time split?

Alecks Gates: 1:02:01

The value time split is essentially the combination of our mode. I, like we mentioned, and maybe a soundbite or a clip. It takes the remote reference concept and ties it together with the time concept and tells the application hey, at this time I want to reference this podcast and use their value blocks for this amount of Satoshi's.

Sam Sethi: 1:02:26

Okay, so again, adam used that capability within the BoosterGround Ball show and James did something very similar as well for a music show he created, and that's brilliant. I then realized sorry, before we move on, one other thing is you have splits in there as well, so for payments, don't you? So you can set the amount of streaming sats that are being diverted to the artist, correct?

Alecks Gates: 1:02:53

Yes, it's not 100% one way or the other, because obviously Adam still does a lot of work in producing his own podcast, so I think he sends 95% to the artist.

Sam Sethi: 1:03:05

Very generous man, very generous, okay. So I understand how that works. I mean, it takes a little bit of time for people to get their head round, but I can see where you've been building from, alex. You've taken popping live item tag, you've then taken remote item, alternative enclosure and now the value time split. So it's all fitted in and I guess, as I said, booster grand ball was the pinnacle of all of that being brought together.

Sam Sethi: 1:03:32

But the one other thing within that, then, is it dawned on me the other day that a soundbite which is a user podcast generated clip or a clip which is a user generated clip is actually the same thing as the way that we are treating music. So for a clip, it has a start time, it has a duration, and for a soundbite, exactly the same as start time and duration, and, in fact, chapters are just start times with a duration. So it dawned on me the other day that, actually, if I wanted to take a clip of, let's say, adam's show with Dave and I wanted to put that into pod news, I could actually use the remote item with a FIDID Google lookup and a duration and a split, and I can actually pay for the audio clip that I include within my own show. That would work.

Alecks Gates: 1:04:24

Yeah, and we have to be careful about just plugging in any feed we want.

Alecks Gates: 1:04:28

So this kind of I like to back up a bit and actually go in the medium, because medium is kind of what I helped helps an application and the host identify what an RSS feed is intended to be and not just a category, right? So that's how we're doing music today. That's what allows it. If you search the podcast and extra music, you get music feeds and that's what the medium is. We also have list mediums like playlists basically, and that allows us to do not only play with some music or place a podcast, but it allows you to basically, as an app or user, to host your own RSS feed and create clips of shows that you listen to, and they're not necessarily I mean, we're not saying these are on the same level as first party clips. So if a podcast or maybe wants to opt out of user-generated clips, we can go down that route, but it essentially makes it so you can have cross-app clips and fountain and podverse could generate this on behalf of the users.

Sam Sethi: 1:05:32

So one of the things I was thinking about is you could have an export standard and an import standard around that, which would be promote item, with a number of GUID and start time, duration, splits, et cetera. So you could actually create a file similar to what we had with OPML, but updated now to podcasting 2.0, which could be an export of a playlist that you could import to another app or export from another app.

Alecks Gates: 1:06:00

You wouldn't even need that. An application could start hosting RSS feeds for the users. The beautiful thing about that is they don't need to host the audio, they just need to host the playlist that references the other podcasts.

Sam Sethi: 1:06:11

Okay, I hadn't thought of it that way, nice. The last thing that I'm looking at well, two parts that I had a question, which I'm glad you were here to answer, is, first and foremost, is the Creative Commons license that we have as a field within podcasting 2.0. There is no license that I looked at that says the nearest is Creative Commons share, like 4.0, which is, yeah, you can share my content and remix it, but there isn't a license to share my content, remix it and pay me. Is there?

Alecks Gates: 1:06:49

Yeah, not that I'm aware of. That's kind of just been the default in podcasting is 2.0. I mean, there's a lot of murky area when you get a downloading stuff right, but that's kind of the whole point of value. Value is it pay what you want, not pay what I tell you to.

Sam Sethi: 1:07:05

Okay, and that may be the answer. Maybe set your podcasting license Creative Commons license to share a like and then just simply assume the person who's sharing your clip or taking a piece of your audio to share as a clip will remunerate you through V for V.

Alecks Gates: 1:07:25

Yeah, we still have some work to do, maybe even some new specifications to say, hey, if you make a clip of this, you could take 1%, or something like that. We're still talking about that now.

Sam Sethi: 1:07:36

That's not a standard. Okay, so that's a lot of stuff, alex, you've been working on. Is there stuff on the cutting room floor or stuff in the alpha that you aren't talking about? I mean, what's coming down the track?

Alecks Gates: 1:07:48

Yeah, I'm still one of the primary maintainers for the podcasting writer that we use, with a special Dave in the podcast index, and I'm always coming up with new ideas as needed there. So there's some possible additions that we might have there, and that's a fundamental thing, like whenever we want a new medium or something. If something that we don't know about came out, we would add support to podping first so people could use it, and I'm also thinking about ways to make podping notifications easier for standalone applications, for example, antenna pod and Android, maybe even some web applications that don't have servers. That's going to be a big deal for independent live streams that don't have applications that don't have infrastructure.

Sam Sethi: 1:08:35

I mean, one of the ones I thought about was radio as a medium with a continuous capability as the setting. So Adams talked about, I think, a radio station, holland, that wants to use the live item tank with the capability to have a schedule around shows, and I just thought, ah, set the medium to radio and then set the time to continuous. Therefore you don't have a start and end time.

Alecks Gates: 1:09:04

Yeah, that's one of the things. I think Adam would say that podcasting is radio. It's hard because the live item is designed for the content being played and not necessarily the stream, so we're getting some metadata issues there. My feeling is that if you want a 247 live stream, you could do that, but today I think we're at 100% retro, as an existing example, and that just updates the new live item every time. But we do have some issues with going from one live item to another, which I think we suddenly do address.

Sam Sethi: 1:09:42

OK, so last question, I guess, of all the tags that you've worked on, which was the one that you would want most hosts to adopt?

Alecks Gates: 1:09:51

next, I would say I mean, they all kind of fit together right. Medium is fundamental because if you're a band and you want to upload an album, that would allow, because right now a lot of artists are either trying to self-host or going to Wave like right, but medium is what allows you to have an album. So if you wanted to self-host an album and add value for value, that would be the easiest way to do it. It's actually not that big of a shift. But after that, I think value and value time split are probably the biggest ones.

Sam Sethi: 1:10:26

Again, I think I'll go back to what I said earlier. I think we are lacking tools for non-technical musicians, as an example, to create the feeds that we would need to ingest into apps. I guess they will come, but I can't quite work out who's going to produce them. Is it going to be a host? I can't see that right now. I don't think they're advanced enough yet. I mean, they're not adopting some of the earlier tags, so I can't see them adopting the value time split for a while, and apps generally aren't going to do that. So people like Steven B, who is producing standalone apps, maybe the only way forward.

Alecks Gates: 1:11:05

Yeah, stand-alone apps and maybe even some open source solutions. So, for example, I run PeerTube but there's an existing equivalent called Don't Laugh. It's called Funkoil. It allows you to host your own music and the Fediverse. And if we could add podcasts and two point out of that, that would be a great alternative that you can self-host or host your community.

Sam Sethi: 1:11:26

Well, all I can say is Alex Gates, thank you so much for all the hard work you do. You do hide your light under a bushel. You don't really step forward too much, but where can people find you if they do want to find you?

Alecks Gates: 1:11:39

I think the easiest way to be. I have a blog where I have links, so it would be writedigatesio. I'm also on the Fediverse, but it's a whole different domain and everything. So you can go to the podcast index at social and you'll be able to. If you ask me there you'll find me.

Sam Sethi: 1:11:54

Alex, thank you so much for everything you do. Thank you.

James Cridland: 1:11:57

Sir Alex Gates. Is he a real sir?

Sam Sethi: 1:11:59

No, I think it's the sir of podcasting 2.0. So, yes, I see, I don't get this, but it's an in-joke, so he wanted to be called it, but I left it in. So there you go.

James Cridland: 1:12:10

Absolutely. That's what respecting the curator does. So you've been sort of having a little look at this sort of thing, haven't you?

Sam Sethi: 1:12:20

Yeah, look, I want to understand it as well. In fact, sadly, I was playing with putting a show together yesterday, so you may find a sad 20-minute DJ show as well for me coming out soon. But Excellent, excellent, no wait till you hear it. Other than that, while I was away, I was thinking about how the remote item works and how value time switch works. Look, and it dawned on me, rightly or wrongly, that a clip is just a time with a duration, a chapter is a time with a duration. So if everything is a time and duration, you could actually put that within a remote item and create a value split.

Sam Sethi: 1:13:04

Now, if you could do that suddenly, if we you and I wanted to include a clip of Adam and Dave from a Friday night show at the moment we just take it, we just go, yay, we'll go over there, we'll grab the clip and we'll put it into our show and job done. But actually, a bit like the music, we could actually put that into a value time split. We could put a split and any streaming sats coming through now to this show would then divert over to that clip. So suddenly you've got this ability to take and remix audio, not just music, and actually then allow that clip that you've taken to get sats payments while you're actually playing your show. So no longer do you have to steal content, you can actually reward the content owner.

James Cridland: 1:13:53

So that's what I was thinking about. Yeah, no, and I think that that's really interesting. So at the moment, we're using, you know, fair use. You can grab little clips, and particularly fair use is particularly helpful when you are talking about news reporting, which this show is, but I couldn't steal an entire interview, because that really would be stealing. But if we were using the value, the remote value item, then we could certainly do that. So that's a really interesting, interesting thought. It's some some way into the future, though, isn't it?

Sam Sethi: 1:14:24

It is, and it goes back to what you said. There needs to be. Tools are made available. Now I have had a look at this and you know, obviously, stephen B. He's got split kit and he's got sovereign fees and that's probably the only tools around.

Sam Sethi: 1:14:41

I think it will be beholden on whether it's the host or the apps to produce better tools, and I suspect it's going to be a hybrid of those. In fact, it won't be a host, because when we look at some of the things that hosts are working on, I think you know RSScom has included an Albi wallet and split capabilities, but there are other hosts who haven't even started to include wallets yet. So, let alone now including remote items and value time splits and all this stuff. I can't see hosts doing this for a while. So it may be that, you know, fountain or myself or Mitch will produce a tool that allows us to enable podcasters to create content somehow. I don't know that it's never going to. I can't see hosts going down this road in the next six to 12 months. So if we're to make this move forward and tools are to be made available, then someone somewhere is going to have to do it, and I don't know if it's going to be the app providers as well.

James Cridland: 1:15:48

No, indeed. Now, Boosterground Ball is interesting for a number of different reasons. Firstly, it's interesting because of the value time split, so you can pay the artists that you're listening to but it's also interesting because it's using a thing called IPFS, isn't it?

Sam Sethi: 1:16:03

Yeah, now, I was really intrigued by IPFS a couple of years back and I thought, oh, here we go Back to the roots of the web. You know Skype, limewire, napster, this peer-to-peer distributed system and I thought, great. And then it just never seemed to go anywhere. And then, out of nowhere, it appeared, adam just announced that, yes, he's using this on the IPFS network and I was like, oh, that's amazing. And then you did a trial with Pod News Daily as well on there, and someone had managed to create a payment gateway using Sats for this IPFS net, which then meant you could put splits back into your value block and suddenly listeners were paying for your hosting. I think that's how it works, james.

James Cridland: 1:16:53

Yeah, it's a really interesting model where a podcast, instead of being hosted in one place, gets hosted in many different places and if you are hosting, then you get to share in some of the Sats that that particular podcast is paid, which is all very cool. So you spoke with a man called Cameron who lives in the woods somewhere and you asked about I tracked him down and you asked about IPFS and you asked about what it means for hosting in the future.

Cameron: 1:17:28

Interplanetary file system. It's a protocol for sharing files over the internet. Okay, concur it to BitTorrent, where you share chunks of files with other nodes.

Sam Sethi: 1:17:41

So I've always been a little bit confused. I'm going to ask an expert like you Is it segments of data on different nodes or is it a copy of the same file on different nodes?

Cameron: 1:17:53

Every node has a full copy, but it does break it up into segments and the chunks. I think 256K is the default. So when someone retrieves the file, you might only give it a chunk, Even though you have the whole thing. You might just give it a portion of the file and then everybody else sends a different portion. So that's why it speeds it up a lot faster when you're downloading from multiple nodes instead of trying to get the file from a single node.

Sam Sethi: 1:18:22

Now, one of the things that you've done very cleverly is you've added an ability for Satoshi Micro payments for people who are running a node to get paid. Is that correct?

Cameron: 1:18:35

Yeah, yeah, I did that. It's kind of tricky, but using the value for value system. You know, if someone, if a podcaster, provides a split for IPFS, I'll receive that, and then, since my system knows where the files are, I can send out pieces of that payment to all the nodes who are hosting the content. So basically, I divide up what I get and turn around and send it back to the nodes who have lightning.

Sam Sethi: 1:19:03

Okay, so let's take a step back. So you've created a mechanism that says you know podcasters value block. Give me a split. I think it's 5% of the moment. People are saying more though it could be. You know people can give you more.

Cameron: 1:19:19

Yeah, I'm curious what happens. We started with 5% but you know, if a podcaster wants to give more, they probably they might get more nodes supporting their show and if they give less, then people might. You know, it's a free market.

Sam Sethi: 1:19:32

Value for value. Give me a little bit more, I'll give you value. Give me a little bit less, I'll give you less value. No, the thing that's I think really exciting about this is Adam and James have put their podcast up, so they went to IPFS podcastingnet, which is your site. They registered their RSS with you and then that put that on to the nodes. Is that how it works?

Cameron: 1:19:55

Yeah, it's pretty much. When you submit your feed to IPFS podcastingnet, I'll start watching for new shows. So I'm listening to PodPain. You know the other another podcasting to go into the future. When a show comes out, it'll notify me and then I'll take that show and notify the nodes and say, hey, there's a new show out, so the nodes are going to download that show. And then they start sharing.

Sam Sethi: 1:20:23

And then? So the podcaster now has registered their feed on your IPFS net. They then put the split into their podcast value block and then when an app plays it, it looks to an IPFS address to pull the file from, as opposed to pulling the file previously from a host. Is that again correct? I'm just trying to get my head around this.

Cameron: 1:20:49

Yes, so the podcaster has their own host. But now we've got I've got an IPFS prefix, kind of like those tracking prefixes for podcasters, where they give you stats. Instead, the player will ask me you know, can I do you have the show in IPFS? And if I do, then I'll turn around and send them to the IPFS network, and if they don't, then it goes back to the regular host, the podcast host.

Sam Sethi: 1:21:16

Okay, so my question in there, cameron, was if the IPFS doesn't have the file, how does it go back to the host? Does it store the original host in the alternative enclosure, or how does it work?

Cameron: 1:21:31

Of the main enclosure you would put like a regular podcast. You just have your host and your file wherever that is and then in that same main enclosure if you use an IPFS podcast and you can put a prefix in front of your pure out. So if I don't have it, I'll send it back to wherever your original host is.

Sam Sethi: 1:21:53

Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. And now, on the flip side of this, if I wanted to participate as a node provided for storage in the IPFS network, how could I do that?

Cameron: 1:22:05

You can run a node. You go to the website. I've written apps for umbral nodes and the start nine labs as nodes. You can just download the app and run it and you're pretty much. You're already in for kind of anonymous hosting if you just do that far. But then you can create an account on the website if you want to specifically say I really like this podcast and I want to host all their shows or I want to host the shows from now into the future. So then you can kind of configure your node via the website on which shows or which podcast you want to host.

Sam Sethi: 1:22:43

Okay, so there's a capability to do that. Is there a capability to say, actually I want to be the default node that gets played first, or how does the system know which node to go to first?

Cameron: 1:22:57

That's all up to IPFS. That's the protocol. So all I can do, all I do is say it's out there. So I send the player to an IPFS gateway to get the file and then the gateway to set looks for nodes out there who have the file and it might find your node or someone else's node. You know you can't prioritize yourself over anybody else. Okay, so it's more cases, speed and yeah, if you have a better connection, you're more likely to post the file probably.

Sam Sethi: 1:23:31

Okay, so this is great. This is changing again. Adam, when he did booster ground ball, then he put it on IPFS net and then, you know, in one week or one weekend, we were seeing payments for artists through SAP payments and we're seeing hosting payments now through IPFS. Now I think this is such an exciting inflection point in where we are with podcasting too, but where do you see it going next?

Cameron: 1:23:59

That's a good question We've got to get. We're trying to figure out how to use the gateways better. Right now everything is going through the IPFS gateway, which is run by IPFS labs. So ideally we want to run our own gateways as a group. You know, like, if we can get Adam to run a gateway and you know Alberta at RSScom, you know these bigger pipes that can handle it then they can serve up the files to the players. But they can also get the files from these individual nodes that everybody's running, so they don't have to host the files, they just have to stream it from the nodes.

Sam Sethi: 1:24:42

Okay, so they're like a cloudflare CDN in effect.

Cameron: 1:24:46

Yes, yeah, pretty close.

Sam Sethi: 1:24:48

Okay, so one of the things that James pointed out to me I think it was in the terms and conditions was that it wasn't for commercial use yet. Is that simply a case of we don't want Joe Rogan on here, it will just kill the whole network, or is it a case of no? This is really not a commercial operation. This is just fun testing. Where are we between the Alpha Beta, early testing, and getting some sort of commercial, stable IPFS network that people can rely on?

Cameron: 1:25:20

Yeah, I understand that too. I see everyone using the gateways. It's hard to tell what's development and what isn't. People back up their websites on IPFS and they run through the gateways to browse that way, and the Brave browser has an option for IPFS, where they've run you through that same gateway. So I started using it. But yeah, technically, on their disclaimer they say, hey, this is for development use. We don't want to be hosting the entire internet through our bandwidth, so ideally, we would want to run our own gateways. The IPFS podcasting network could run gateways and send players to that instead of using the IPFS official gateway In Cloudflare. Cloudflare has a gateway. I think there's maybe 20 or 30 different gateways out there that people run, and a lot of them are open. A lot of them, though, it's for their customers only, so they don't allow you to use them. So I think that's the idea is that we have to run our own gateway as a group.

Sam Sethi: 1:26:25

Okay. One question I did ask of Alberto actually, was you have your own IPFS network, you have the largest node and it's based in Italy. Fundamentally, though, is this a threat to host because, as you said, you can go register your feed on IPFS podcastingnet and then it will serve it from the nodes as opposed to from the host Right. I guess eventually, if it worked and you were convinced that the nodes wouldn't go down and the whole network was stable, you would say oh well, why am I paying $12 a month to host with ex-host right? Right, I could just put it on there.

Cameron: 1:27:04

Right.

Sam Sethi: 1:27:05

So is it a threat to hosts?

Cameron: 1:27:07

Not technically. Your files still have to exist on the internet somewhere. Like IPFS podcasting, the nodes read the file from a host to get it onto the IPFS network. So if you don't have it anywhere, you got to start out somewhere. But they could put it on their own website or a Dropbox or something like that if they want to try to self-host and then from there, once it's on IPFS, the files will come up. Ipfs.

Sam Sethi: 1:27:37

So, cameron, if I've got my podcast already hosted with Buzzsprout, then what's the benefit of me hosting it as well on IPFSnet?

Cameron: 1:27:49

Yeah for the cloud distribution, for the crowd hosting concept of it, my original concept. When I created it, I was seeing a lot of people getting de-platformed and kicked off as platforms. So with this, your fans are hosting your content instead of a host that can shut you down which I'm not saying Buzzsprout or anybody would do that but it's more of a sovereign system where you're running, you're being hosted by your fans.

Sam Sethi: 1:28:21

So I'm still a little confused. So if the nodes have got a copy of my file, once they have a copy of that file, then the host isn't serving it. It's coming from the nodes. So is the issue that the original file has to be uploaded somewhere to begin with? Is that the problem?

Cameron: 1:28:40

Yes, before it gets on IPFS. As far as the IPFS podcasting system, it's got to be somewhere for the nodes to download it, so you've got to put it on your own host somewhere.

Sam Sethi: 1:28:53

Yeah, could you not build a upload capability directly? So I'm not trying to put the host out of business, that's not my job. But for example, when we use Buzzsprout, who are our sponsors and great people, we put it straight to Buzzsprout and then we manipulate it from there and then they send it out to the directories. Is a capability to just upload that same file directly to you on the IPFS network?

Cameron: 1:29:27

It could be, but you wouldn't be uploading it to me, you would be uploading it as a node. You'd have to run your own node to get it on the network. And then there's the issue with other nodes connecting to you to get that file. So if your node isn't very good or they'll have a problem downloading that file from you to get it going, the more nodes you have, the better the performance. So if you see shows on actually on IPFS, podcasts and net, you can look at episodes or shows. They might only have one or two nodes and they're really slow on the playback. They might not play at all because those nodes might have disappeared at the time for a moment or they might be real and bad ISP connection. So I don't know. That's the benefit of, I guess, having a host as your back, your backbone, your back end, to draw from Until you get enough nodes posting your content.

Sam Sethi: 1:30:25

I mean, it just sounds like we're in very, very early days, then, which is great. I mean, it's just a proof of concept, more than it is a rock solid. Here's where you can just rely on this. Going back to the commercial issue, it's not ready for Rogan, right? Right, it's an example. So, given that, what is the next evolution then? Is it just simply more nodes make the network better? Is it more features on the front end that you have to build? What's next?

Cameron: 1:30:55

Yeah, more nodes helps a lot. Like you said, we're still building and still in beta kind of. So there's a lot of work I have to do on the back end for the selection algorithm, because I'm keeping track of all the nodes, who has the file when a new show comes out, who should get it. So that is still being worked on. I'm constantly trying to hand fudge things to fix them, so I got to fix that code. Yeah, future stuff I think the big thing would be to get run IPFS podcasting gateways so you can get off of the official IPFS IOL gateway and share the bandwidth among the IPFS gateways. Right now we're sharing the storage among all the nodes and some of the bandwidth, but when the player plays a file, they're grabbing it from an HTTP gateway because players can't talk IPFS right now. An IPFS native player would be very helpful, but I don't know if I'm capable of putting out a player that can do IPFS. There's hope that the player people would work on that.

Sam Sethi: 1:32:01

Maybe they will, you never know. Look, cameron, thank you so much for this first step. I think it's exciting. I think I know James with the Pod News Daily is running it the moment. It looks like actually those podcasts that are self-hosted, like Adam and James, would get the benefit of the IPFS network for delivery and the bandwidth costs. I think if you're already hosted and you're not self-hosted, then I think right now it's an interesting thing to play with more than it is a I'll get rid of one cost for another. You're actually just supporting you more than you are actually trying to remove or eliminate the original hosting cost. But that's fine. I think people will understand that.

Cameron: 1:32:47

Right. I think if the hosting companies wanted to get into it, they could also reduce their hosting costs. They had help from fans and listeners and people running nodes. They wouldn't have to host so much.

Sam Sethi: 1:33:05

Yeah, that could be, and they could be the gateways as well, eventually, Right, they could share the load with the other hosts. That would be an interesting option, cameron, thank you so much. Look, we're holding this network together. I'm not going to risk it much further. Cameron, thanks so much. Where can remind people where they can go to find out more about how to get involved?

Cameron: 1:33:30

Pretty much ipfspodcastingnet. If you go right to that homepage, you can either submit your feed if you're a podcaster and want to test it out, or if you want to run a node. There's a link to run a node and they give you instructions how to set up a computer to do that.

James Cridland: 1:33:44

Cameron, a man in the woods somewhere talking about IPFS. Of course, adam Curry very keen about IPFS and you can learn more in the extended version of the interview that we had a couple of weeks ago with Adam. You'll find that in the Pod News Extra podcast available wherever you got this one.

Sam Sethi: 1:34:06

So, James, why don't we go around the world and have a look at what's happening?

James Cridland: 1:34:09

Yes, that's a good idea. So outside Amazon's offices in New York last week, the fiction podcasters, the WGA Audio Alliance, highlighted their efforts to unionise. Basically, they want Amazon to enter into negotiations with podcast writers. Some podcast companies, of course, have done this and some haven't yet, and so that's worthwhile keeping an eye on. In the UK, the Audio Production Awards has announced a Pay. What you Can scheme it's sponsored by Amazon Music and Wonder is kind of a little bit like Value for Value, isn't it? I suppose it is yes.

Sam Sethi: 1:34:46

They call it Pay what you Can. We call it Value for Value.

James Cridland: 1:34:49

And in Australia, podcasts spend up by 64% year on year. According to ARN's I Heart Radio Australia and Magellan AI, the top three advertisers were Health Insurance Company NIB, macas or McDonald's, as you probably know it, and Amazon Stuff going on around the world and it's always good to have a peak at other countries other than America, always helpful In terms of job news. There's a job going at Lemonada Media for Vice President of Sales and Partnerships. If you want to go and get that, podnewsnet slash jobs is where to find that.

James Cridland: 1:35:31

Acast has also announced a number of new appointments in the US. Lots of names and folk joining them, including Ricardo Netto from Spotify, greg Glenday, who's joining from Lightbox, and a very interesting one, steven Smick, who has joined ACAST's US Advisory Board. He had been at Veritone One since the acquisition of Performance Bridge where he was CEO. So there's some really big names that ACAST have made over there, and I think it's interesting that Greg Glenday is Chief Business Officer for ACAST globally and will be based in New York, so worthwhile keeping an eye on that. And ACAST, of course, making other announcements as well over the last 24 hours, including the one that it will no longer accept new campaigns that use Spotify's ad analytics. They basically turned around and said no, we're only going to work with people that share our view about an open and transparent environment, which I thought was an interesting move.

Sam Sethi: 1:36:40

Well, you'd be glad to know. We'll be talking to Glenday in a couple of weeks time.

James Cridland: 1:36:43

Well, that's an excellent thing If you're looking for a job. Podnews is podcasting jobs across the industry and across the world on podcasting's largest jobs board. They're free to post as well. Just takes two minutes. Podnewsnet slash jobs.

: 1:36:56

The tech stuff. Tech stuff On the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 1:37:01

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. What have you spotted over the last week or so, Sam?

Sam Sethi: 1:37:09

Well, there's a lot of me toos coming out. We've got a podstache. There's a new ARI website that lets you turn any link into a short podcast using chatGBT, and we've got podshorty. We'll turn any YouTube video into an AI summarized podcast. Joining many and many others doing very similar audio summaries using AI. Yes, there's a lot of them out there.

James Cridland: 1:37:34

Yes, there's a ton of that, some ad tech news out there as well Blueberry unveiling an update simplifying mid-roll ad insertion for podcasters, so you can stick an ad in the middle of your show in the right place and that'll work quite nicely. Red Circle as well, sharing their host red scripts management tool stuff which enables much easier purchases of host red scripts and stuff like that. But what they've also announced is that in the first half of the year its host red ad platform revenue more than doubled, which is really good news. But even better news, I suspect, for them is that quarter two was a profitable quarter for the company and they plan to invest further in their platform later on in the year. Red Circle will be hidden away at the podcast movement thing as well Booth 604, in case you want to go and see them not too far away from the pod news booth. So worthwhile taking a peek at them too. Podcast events on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 1:38:49

Yes, well, events. Obviously lots of excitement about podcast movement 2023. I may have an exclusive for you, sam, about something that's happening at podcast movement 2023.

Sam Sethi: 1:39:04

Oh, oh yes, do tell, or are you going to hold us in suspense for a few more minutes?

James Cridland: 1:39:10

No, I will tell you right now. So I mentioned a little bit earlier on that Pod News will have a stand there, stand 801, if you want to come and see us Opposite the Descript stand. Well, we're not quite opposite the Descript stand. We're opposite the Puppies. We're opposite Sam, the Pod News Puppies. I can exclusively reveal that Pod News is sponsoring the Puppies. They are puppies from a proper puppy rehabilitation place. It's all above board. It's all good news. But the Pod News Puppies will be there at podcast movements. So if you fancy some strokes and some tickling under the tummy and all of that, Leave.

Sam Sethi: 1:39:59

James alone. You're not allowed to stroke him. He doesn't like it.

James Cridland: 1:40:05

Do not stroke, james, and I believe that the puppies are there in the afternoons and you can come and see if I'm actually at the stand, which I may be or I may not be. I've still got to buy things like some Australian candy for the stand and various other things, and so that's going to be fun. Come and see the Pod News Tablecloth, because apparently we're getting a bespoke tablecloth. Who knew Other things going on at podcast movement, which I'm actually quite pleased about, even though it starts with bad news. Kai Chuck from YouTube is no longer answering questions at podcast movement, which he was down to do. I was quite excited by that. Sorry, can?

Sam Sethi: 1:40:52

I just point out, James, he's never answered any questions yet so far. So what's changed?

James Cridland: 1:40:57

Why start now? Actually, I'm delighted about that Because he was said to be a speaker and of course he didn't say an awful lot at podcast movement evolutions a couple of years ago. The good news is that his place is being taken by the product lead of podcasting at Google, steve MacLendon. Now Steve knows all about the YouTube stuff because he was involved in the launch of podcasts on YouTube, so he will easily answer all of those questions. But he was a former co-founder of 60DB, which was purchased by Google a long, long time ago, and he also looks after Google podcasts. So if there's the right person to get to talk from all of Google about what they're doing in the podcasting space, then Steve MacLendon is your man. So very much looking forward to that.

James Cridland: 1:41:49

Of course, he's been put on in one of the smaller rooms, aurora Sea, but Wednesday 2.30 in the afternoon If I can squeeze in there then I'm looking forward to ending up doing that. The session is sponsored by OSHA as well, so that should be good. You won't be at podcast movement, will you? Sam? You have a feeble excuse.

Sam Sethi: 1:42:11

Yeah, I have a feeble excuse. I've got a lunch date.

James Cridland: 1:42:15

That's it, is it?

Sam Sethi: 1:42:17

Okay, who is? I'm going for lunch with Tom and Jason over at the podcast show, so yeah, so I won't be in podcast movement, but yes.

Jay Le Boeuf : 1:42:28

Now.

Sam Sethi: 1:42:28

I genuinely got my dates wrong. We were in Greece last week. I thought we were going to be in Greece next week. So there you go and I didn't book anything. That's the real reason.

James Cridland: 1:42:38

Well, there you go. Other events going on the Afros and Audio Podcast Festival, which is October the 21st in Baltimore, and also online. And friend of the show, rebecca Sananez is hosting a month-long weekly online workshop and network to develop and grow your podcasting craft and career. You can go and register for that now. You'll find a link in the show notes, probably, if I remember to put it in, it starts September the 12th and if there's one person that knows her onions, it's Rebecca Sananez. Is that a phrase? It is now.

Sam Sethi: 1:43:16

I don't think so.

James Cridland: 1:43:17

Yeah, I think we'll find out. And Pod News Live, which is happening in London on the 27th of September. I've had a number of emails this week saying where is it and what is your recommended airport. That's always a good start, so my recommended airport for London is Heathrow, Although, frankly, you'll be coming into Heathrow unless you're a real cheapskate. So therefore it's a good thing. But where are we, Sam? Where is Pod News Live going to be? It's at your old Haunt James.

Sam Sethi: 1:43:50

It's at the old BBC Media Centre in White City. So it's at Soho House in White City, which is a lovely, lovely venue. I've done an event there before. So if you're really bored with everything we're saying, you can go around the corner to the Westgate. There's a big shopping centre there.

James Cridland: 1:44:06

Yes, westfield, yes, yes, because of course, as we all know, westfield is the best field. So, yes, so that'll be worthwhile doing. It's actually in the old television centre, which is where this morning comes from. So if you're really lucky, you'll catch a glimpse of Holly Willoughby, but you won't catch a glimpse of Phillips Gofield anymore.

Sam Sethi: 1:44:25

No.

James Cridland: 1:44:26

Oh dear. The day after, of course, september 28th, is the British podcast awards as well, which I'm looking forward to, and you know I've heard a bunch of cool people who are coming to Pod News Live, which is very exciting, so he'll be hidden away in the audience. Chris from Hindenburg said that he might be coming and he said you know, the flight that I will be catching leaves again at eight o'clock in the evening, unless you're going to a pub, in which case I'll stay the night and I've said we're going to a pub. I've got no idea where the pub is, but nevertheless we're going to the pub. So, yes, so that's what we're doing. It'll be good to to end up seeing him as well. And there are more events, both paid for and free, at Pod News, of course virtual events or events in a place with people. If you're organizing something, tell the world about it. It's free to be listed. Podnewsnet slash events. Boostergram, boostergram, corner, corner, corner On the Pod.

James Cridland: 1:45:27

News Weekly Review. Oh, it's our favorite time of the week, sam, and it's a Boostergram corner, and we've got the stars listening now, haven't we? We've got this person, but I'll tear yourself for the less you made, but I'll leave it out, your honor, it's tear your soul. Oh yes, it's Ainsley Costello with the Wave Lake Number One. Is she still Wave Lake Number One? I'm sure that she probably is.

Sam Sethi: 1:45:50

She is yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, she's storming it out there. I don't think we're going to shift her. Actually, personally now I think yeah, no. Actually I have to be honest and say the track's actually very good, irrelevant of what all the publicity she's had for free, and the track is really good as well. I've listened to a couple of her other tracks, so she's actually very good a singer.

James Cridland: 1:46:10

Yes, it's a bit of an earworm. It's going round and round and round in my head and I'm trying not to listen to it, and then, of course, I have to play another little clip of it. Hey, just to remind us about what it was. She sent in something to Kyren, my co-host last week, saying thank you, just thought I'd update Yoll. She's American Yoll. It's well over $400 now that she's earned. Thank you so much, she says, to everybody for supporting me. I've always been reluctant to put my stuff behind a paywall. I think my experience this week with Wave Lake and Adam Curry has proven why, or how, lightning changes the game for all creators. Thanks, kyren. So yeah, that was super good.

Sam Sethi: 1:46:49

Yeah, talking of Kyren, he asked me on James was such a blast. Look forward to Sam's return. You have great chemistry together. Yeah, we've only met twice, that's great. Twice, three times yeah, we are so close.

James Cridland: 1:47:07

Yeah, we've met three times. It'll be the fourth time in London, I think.

Sam Sethi: 1:47:11

So, yes, yes, yes, yes, he's tall, and the funny thing is, James is so much taller than you think. That's the thing. That was the thing. Conversely, James is probably going. He's so much shorter than I thought.

James Cridland: 1:47:25

Says little Sam. Neil McFaerd, long time listener. He says first time caller, actually he says over due for the beers in Vegas. Keep up the great work, guys. Yes, this was Neil from Podium, who became a pod news supporter this week, who was there at the beers in Vegas in the Brew Dog there, and he's given us a tremendous amount 150,000 sats. He earns one of these. Oh, yes, so, neil, thank you so much. I gather that Neil will be at podcast movement, so I will see him again and looking forward, obviously, to all three of us to be in the same room at some point.

Sam Sethi: 1:48:07

And also we had the real coach, andy. He said good to hear you guys again. Thanks for the news, guys, and he sent us 100 sats. Thank you so much.

James Cridland: 1:48:16

Yes, and he may be real coach Andy or real Coke handy, who knows? Ah, yes, but 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 with your actual money pounds, dollars, shillings, pence, weeklypodnewsnet or you can support us with sats by hitting the boost button in your podcast app. If you don't have one, podnewsnet slash new podcast apps will help you find a new app. Now, what's happened for you this week, sam?

Sam Sethi: 1:48:54

Well, after you reported on in Canada somebody getting a tattoo, I thought I should really show my support for this show. So I've gone and got a tattoo for Pod News while I was in Greece.

James Cridland: 1:49:05

Ha, ha, ha, ha ha.

Sam Sethi: 1:49:07

Oh, I hate to ask where it is no, no, it never to be revealed, does it actually?

James Cridland: 1:49:14

say pod, and then only later you can actually see the rest of the.

Sam Sethi: 1:49:22

All I'll say is the O's missing. That's all you need to know.

James Cridland: 1:49:26

Ha ha ha. That's even worse. That's even worse. You have this too.

Sam Sethi: 1:49:33

No, no, as I say to my children when you've got a Bentley, why would you stick a car sticker on it? There you go.

James Cridland: 1:49:40

Oh dear, what else has gone on for you then?

Sam Sethi: 1:49:42

Well, actually very, very kindly. I'm looking forward to this. I'm going for lunch with Jason and Tom from the podcast show the Big Event in London. It's more to do, actually, genuinely with feedback that we got when we were at the show from Ian Forrester saying he wanted a more technical thread going through the show, and Jason and Tom and I are going to be sitting down looking at that and seeing what we can put together for next year's show.

James Cridland: 1:50:07

Yeah, yeah. Well, I had a good catch up with Jason and Tom a couple of days ago, earlier on in the week, and it's really nice actually hearing from a company that is really keen to get feedback and to get information to learn how they can become better for next year. So that was super good, so very much enjoyed chatting with them. They didn't buy me lunch, though, I will point out, so Very hard over a Skype call or a video call Skype.

Sam Sethi: 1:50:42

Well, yes, indeed, I didn't even mention.

James Cridland: 1:50:44

Skype Skype grandad.

Sam Sethi: 1:50:46

Yes, I don't, yes, I know God, yeah, wow, where did that come from? And then the last thing was my daughter got her place at Bath University, so I'm very chuffed for that.

James Cridland: 1:50:59

Excellent, Excellent. Well, that's a lovely thing. It's a wonderful place. His bath, it seems a very nice place to be. What with your old Roman buildings and everything else, it seems a very nice place. So that's a good thing. James, come on. What's happened for you?

Sam Sethi: 1:51:14

while I was away.

James Cridland: 1:51:15

Well, this morning, this morning I was invited to an event all about AI and there's nothing that makes you feel more valued as a journalist than being deliberately lied to about the opening time so that you turn up after the speaker that didn't want a member of the press there. So you turn out halfway through and you go, oh shit, I'm late, why am I late? And then they say, oh, yes, yes, the bloke from Microsoft, he didn't want any press there and you know, in case, microsoft got negative press Microsoft. So so yeah. But the person who I did go to see from Adobe was really interesting, talking about generative AI, talking about how Adobe is using AI for video and for pictures and for all kinds of stuff some really amazing things that Adobe is doing in the picture world.

James Cridland: 1:52:12

I did ask when they're going to be making any announcements around podcasting and the answer is possibly around IBC, which is September, a big trade show in September in Amsterdam. I think it's September is when it normally is. So yeah, so that should be interesting to find out, although probably they'll be having a look at these scripts and going, oh wow, gosh, what are we going to do there? And the other thing I've been doing is packing, because, obviously, heading off to sunny Denver on Saturday, I'm doing the two hour flight from Brisbane to Sydney, then the 15 hour 45 minute flight to Dallas and then the two hour flight from Dallas to Denver. So imagine how fragrant I'm going to be when I get into Denver on Saturday evening, but still. But there we are. But Sunday I'm seeing a friend of mine who lives in Denver these days and I'm going to go shooting what's he giving you?

Sam Sethi: 1:53:15

A big SLR or you know a little nine millimetre browning. What's he giving you James?

James Cridland: 1:53:22

Well, we're going to a shooting range.

James Cridland: 1:53:25

And I think they look as if they look as if they're proper rifles. So, yes, so we don't. We don't want any of that, but that should be. That's the proper American thing, isn't it? Go to America and shoot a gun, yes, so that's what I'm going to be doing on Sunday and quite looking forward to to a little bit of that, but, yeah, very much looking forward to next week at podcast movement. I think it's going to be another one of those very long weeks, but I've got some good folk already booked into the diary who I'm seeing and talking to. So if you do see me around, you may or may not see me on the on the stand Quite a lot of the time. You'll just see a little notice on the stand because I won't be there, but it'll be good to end up seeing you and come and see the pod news puppies. That's all I can say. And remember, do not stroke James.

Sam Sethi: 1:54:18

Do not stroke James.

James Cridland: 1:54:20

Yes, yes, especially stroke, James Strokes on the tummy. I don't want any of that, although snacks snacks are absolutely fine. They can give me some snacks, those are absolutely fine. Next week, on this very show, it's going to be a little bit of a different sounding show because we will be coming from the exhibitor Hall, we will be this show and the new media show will be joining forces, as I believe the phrase that we have to say joining forces next week. So we'll come out slightly later next week from the, from the exhibitor hall. You'll be able to hear lots of people around us drinking beer and Todd and Rob and other guests and me. That's right, todd, we'll be talking using Nemono. You know those, those fearsomely expensive Nemono. You know the little cordless microphone, so we'll be using those. So if you don't understand a word of next week's show, that's why. But looking forward to that. And then a normal show the following week, including an interview with Nathan Gaithright from Transcribe FM, which I'm looking forward to hearing from him. And that's it for this week.

Sam Sethi: 1:55:39

You can give feedback to James Rye by using email to weekly at podnewsnet or send us a boostergram. Or, if your podcast doesn't support boosting, grab a new one from podnewsnet. Forward slash new podcast apps.

James Cridland: 1:55:53

And one of those, of course, is podfans, which you should be on podfansfm. Our music is from Studio Dragonfly, our voiceover is Sheila Dee, and we're hosted and sponsored by Pod News Live and Buzzsprout podcast hosting made easy Get updated every day. Subscribe to our newsletter at podnewsnet.

Jay Le Boeuf : 1:56:14

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