James Cridland: 0:00

It's Friday, 1 September 2023.

Speaker 2: 0:04

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

James Cridland: 0:13

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

Sam Sethi: 0:15

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

James Cridland: 0:18

In the chapters today. Youtube to support RSS. Finally, but not fully, spotify adds more proprietary new features for podcasters, apple launches enhanced analytics for paid subscriptions and the World Series of Important Americans in podcasting is announced. I like what you've done there, sam Plus hi.

Nathan Gathright: 0:38

I'm Nathan Gathright from transcribefm and I'll be on later to talk about transcripts and lightning payment APIs.

James Cridland: 0:43

He will. This podcast is sponsored and hosted by Buzzsprout. Last week, 3,201 people started a podcast with Buzzsprout. Podcast hosting made easy with powerful tools and remarkable customer support. And now AI to help you publish your show and buy Pod News Live in London this September. Tickets are at podnewsnet slash live. From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly Review.

Sam Sethi: 1:08

Well, welcome back, James, first of all.

James Cridland: 1:10

That's what I should say oh, it's a great pleasure to be back. Let me tell you.

Sam Sethi: 1:14

Yeah, the globetrotter himself. Now look, while you're away. We'll find out what happened over in Colorado later on in this show, but one of the stories that broke obviously you were there when it broke. Youtube says it will support RSS. Finally, but let's be honest, it's not fully supporting RSS, is it?

James Cridland: 1:33

Well, there's two things that they're doing with RSS. One of the things that they're doing is RSS ingestion, so that means that they will look at your RSS feed. When you publish a new episode, it will automatically upload it to the YouTube system. So, no DAI, no dynamic audio insertion, like you can do with Buzzsprout, none of that stuff. But it will at least support RSS as a method of getting into YouTube, which will be a good thing. Perhaps that was something that we reported on in May, but it's the first time that actually YouTube has said that they're actually doing that, which is a thing. So that's one side of the RSS that they're using. The other side, which is slightly more interesting, is actually something that they didn't mention on the day, but they mentioned to me when I was having a chat with them, and that's that the YouTube Music app will support RSS natively. So proper, you know, pass through RSS. So the YouTube Music app is actually going to be a podcast app, rather bizarrely. So there's a thing.

Sam Sethi: 2:44

Well, that's interesting, but my question is what version of RSS will they support? I bet it won't be the podcast namespace.

James Cridland: 2:53

I bet it probably won't. My suspicion is I mean, they don't necessarily need it, I don't suppose. But you know, I don't know It'll be. It'll be interesting to see quite what they are supporting in terms of the RSS ingest.

Sam Sethi: 3:09

I was listening to Rob Greenley last night talking about what, why there's this debate about YouTube. And you know, is it not a proper podcast if it doesn't have RSS? Well, ok, so you're saying YouTube will have RSS, but my point is it's only the bare minimum RSS that they want to import, which means things like you know, the comments that you have in YouTube won't be standard comments, the chapter won't be, and so it fundamentally is another one of the what I would call proprietary platforms. Spotify did this. They supported you, they supported RSS for a while, ingested what they wanted, and then, when they've got what they want, they turn off the pipe and then it's back to the old ways and more proprietary technology, and I suspect and I hope I be proved wrong, but I suspect YouTube will do exactly the same thing.

James Cridland: 4:00

Yeah, maybe. I mean, you know, what we can see is a few ingestions of RSS that they're currently running. Cnn One Thing is one of those, and that looks like a relatively standard YouTube hosted video with a static graphic on it, and it doesn't appear to have any episode art, but then CNN One Thing doesn't have any episode art anyway, and nor does it appear to have any support for chapters, but then CNN One Thing doesn't have any support for chapters anyway. So we're a little bit sort of in the dark as to which bits that it actually supports. But you know, I guess we'll begin to learn a little bit more about that when they get a little bit closer towards launching this thing.

Sam Sethi: 4:48

My worry is that and this is one of the things that I'd love to get more support for I think people talk about RSS in the generic Right and we don't talk about specific versions of RSS anymore, and this worries me because for the standard person in the street who goes, oh, it's a podcast, it's YouTube, it's the same thing, and even more so now. Oh, yes, and it does RSS, but it doesn't do full RSS. And that's where I think and I know you talked about the podcast standards project on the show with Todd and Rob, and again, it's something that I think needs to happen but there needs to be versioning for the namespace as well. Which version of RSS I mean? I talk about RSS 2.06, right, it's the phase six version of RSS. We've got to find a way to delimit between what the open standards groups do People like Found in Podverse or the hosts and what Spotify, apple and Google in this case. Youtube are doing.

Sam Sethi: 5:54

Because otherwise we're talking RSS is not the same. We're not talking apples and oranges, right, when we talk about RSS. And I go back to my days in Netscape and when we were battling with Microsoft. It was we supported this version of HTML 3.1, 3.2, and they support 2.x and that gave the user some form of understanding that there was a difference. They didn't need to know the technical difference between the features in HTML, but they did need to know that there was a number difference. I think we're failing when we don't start to put a number difference into what the namespace is doing, and that's one of my big bug ways really.

James Cridland: 6:38

Yeah, I think the difficulty with that is that not every single podcast hosting company, not every single podcast app, supports every single feature in the new podcast namespace, and I think that that's going to be a particular issue. There are some ideas in the new podcast namespace which were probably mistakes and we probably shouldn't have actually done them. There are some that simply nobody supports. You know the fast follow idea, all of that kind of stuff. So I think it's a little bit harder saying, you know, we support RSS namespace phase six and everything in it, because it's going to be very unlikely, apart from PodFans, that everybody supports every single tag, I suppose.

James Cridland: 7:24

But yes, I would certainly agree that it would be. It would certainly make sense if you had a bit more of an understanding of which bits were supported by who. You know that was part of the whole RSS thing was part of the announcement. The other part of the announcement was that podcasts are on track to complete a global rollout by the end of the year. I was tipped the wink that Australia may be next in terms of in terms of support.

James Cridland: 7:54

So that's nice, they're favouring you, James.

Sam Sethi: 7:57

That's all it is.

James Cridland: 7:58

Yeah, that may be it A podcast section on the website and, of course, support in the YouTube Music app. The country is also planning additional analytics for podcasts they didn't say quite what and also improved discovery. And the one thing that Steve McLendon did say is, if your podcast is on YouTube, make sure that you have checked the little box that says that this is a podcast, because you'll actually get into more places as a result if you do that. So that's a useful hint and tip. And already companies are integrating with YouTube's analytics. So Triton Digital, for example, is doing a very interesting thing, where they are actually going to be using YouTube analytics as part of Triton podcast metrics. So your views on YouTube will count for Triton podcast metrics, which is an interesting departure for that particular company. And I'll be talking to Stephanie Donovan from YouTube in the podcast business journal in a couple of weeks as well, so hopefully find out a little bit more about that too.

Sam Sethi: 9:04

Let's move on, james, to some other news. Apple have launched enhanced analytics for paid subscriptions. I'm going to go and make a cup of tea while you tell me what Apple's done, because I'm not that interested.

James Cridland: 9:15

Well, all that I'll tell you is that they've actually launched what they should have launched a year ago. Apple's paid subscriptions was all very well, but actually the only way to find out whether or not you had actually sold any of these things was to download a spreadsheet literally a spreadsheet. In fact, it wasn't even a spreadsheet, it was atxt file, which you then had to rename to TSV in order for you to actually view it in a spreadsheet. So, yes, they now have all of the pretty analytics that you would expect them to have launched a year ago, when they launched paid subscriptions. So they've done that. They've also announced more delegated delivery partners, which will allow you to upload premium content directly to Apple podcasts. Podbean is the first of those to go live, and there'll be a few more of those. So there you go.

Sam Sethi: 10:04

Okay, some more interesting stuff. Then Apple has integrated with a company called Linkfire, a new podcast linking service. Tell me more, James.

James Cridland: 10:13

Well. So Linkfire is one of the many different Magic Link podcasting services out there which allow you to share your podcast and all of the places where it is with just one page. So a bit weird that Apple have partnered up with this company. I don't quite understand why, and certainly I asked them what happens if you visit one of these pages with an Android phone. Will Apple podcasts still be at the top? And the bloke said yes. So that seems a little bit pointless, unless, of course, that means that the Apple podcasts Android app is on its way.

James Cridland: 10:49

The interesting thing, though, is that if you use Linkfire, you get access to Apple podcasts analytics within your linkfire dashboard, so it's the first time that Apple podcasts analytics have been available on a third party service. I did ask Apple does this mean that Apple podcasts analytics now has an open API? And I got a rather sort of embarrassed shuffle of an answer. So I don't know why Linkfire have been chosen as a special company for this. I don't know what they had to do in order to actually get access to Apple podcasts analytics, nor do I understand quite why Apple has promoted them so heavily. It all seems a little bit confusing from my point of view. But if Apple wants to do deals with random companies, then that's up to Apple, I guess.

Sam Sethi: 11:46

Did anyone say acquisition in the pipeline? Oh sorry, did they say that publicly? Yes, I suspect it will be.

James Cridland: 11:54

Well, yes, perhaps, and perhaps that's one of the reasons why the company's getting very excited. I mean, I have to say, one of the things that is interesting is that, of course, this Linkfire page will also link to your podcast on Spotify and on YouTube perhaps, and even perhaps on podfans, because you can write in any old link if you want to. So that's, I think, interesting, but I don't fully understand, as I say, quite why Apple have jumped into bed with this company. They don't seem to be doing anything particularly interesting, although they are doing the same sort of job for music. So if you want to link to a song that you really like, you can use Linkfire for that, and that will then allow you to play that song in Apple Music or in YouTube Music or in Spotify or various other places. So perhaps that was the reason why they were chosen. I don't know.

Sam Sethi: 12:50

Friend of the show, dan Meisner from Bumper, told you a few things about this, what he thought about it, what was his view.

James Cridland: 12:56

Yeah, I mean he says that it's exciting in terms of at least we'll get beyond downloads and we'll actually understand verified consumption and true audience growth, which is what Apple Podcasts Analytics does. Certainly, I'm seeing a big, big difference between what Apple Podcasts Analytics is telling you and what Apple Podcasts is actually downloading, and if you were to compare the Apple Podcasts dashboard with your own podcast host, I suspect that you would find wildly different numbers, and I'm actually quite interested to see whether or not there is a piece of work that I can do to try and persuade people to punch in those individual numbers so that we can actually compare like for like there and see quite how many downloads are being made by Apple Podcasts that aren't getting played. But perhaps that's a different story later in the year.

Sam Sethi: 13:53

Didn't we have that as a bug? No, sorry, a feature earlier in the year. Well, yeah, that is a bug last year.

James Cridland: 13:59

Yes, and we decided that around 31% of downloads on Apple Podcasts are simply not actually played, although Apple are very upset at me for saying that. So there you go.

Sam Sethi: 14:13

Well, I'm with Dan Meisner A focus on listen time, percent completed and value paid would be much better metrics than downloads. But anyway, we will leave Apple to do what they do. James, I don't know if you saw this while you're out at podcast movement, but the Hollywood reporter has announced the 40 most powerful people in podcasting, or as I call it, the World Series of 40 Important Americans in podcasting. Because, guess what? There were no people outside the United States on their top 40.

James Cridland: 14:42

They did not know. There was very few people outside of North America in that list and actually I Heart's very own podcast news daily, or whatever it's called. Apparently it's a daily newsletter for podcasting. They also released their most powerful people in podcasting list and I went through that this afternoon and I was counting all of the people that weren't based in North America and that was a big fat zero as well. So it's good to know that both of these American organizations don't believe that there's anything going on in podcasting in the rest of the world. So a little bit sad really, but still, that's the myopic Americans, I guess, or certainly the myopic journalists there.

Sam Sethi: 15:32

Yeah, I mean I wrote a LinkedIn post and got some great feedback. I mean I said, look, how about you Like Davenport dinner, so forth more than Strungoon Alberta Bertelli. I mean I then said, look, if you, if you just want to stick to Americans, how about Adam Curry, dave Chur? I mean the list was awful. It was just sort of the the, the people we happen to want to talk to who might be advertising in our publication. That's who we're gonna list in this and that's such an old trick from publications in the day. I remember you know you would get these lists and it would be what? Why are they getting an award or why are they on that? Oh yeah, it took advertising out.

James Cridland: 16:12

I remember, right, okay, great yeah well, the I, I mean the I heart list was even was even funnier because it had, you know, many big executives from I heart media weirdly in that list and they also had some of the talent that has signed up to I heart. And you know, it was what I thought about the the I heart, the I heart. One which I thought was quite funny is that they have made that alphabetical because for the first couple of years of them publishing that they made it. You know, this is the most powerful person and the most powerful person was always connell burn from I heart media. It was always him because of course, you know what was an I heart publication going to make sure the boss is on there, yeah exactly, by the way, a company that actually hides the fact that it's owned by I heart.

James Cridland: 17:08

So yeah, I think it's all. It's all a little bit lazy and you know, bless them, but there is more to podcasting than just the usa hey look, maybe, james, you and I should do a list and see what we've come up with.

Sam Sethi: 17:21

I don't know. Let's see, yeah, yeah, let's no, no, oh, go on it'll be fun to just see who we cross off the list. That'll be even funnier, yeah that would be funny.

James Cridland: 17:35

So yes, one of the most powerful people in podcasting last year was don ostrov, no longer, but also working with her spotifies director of podcast product, ostin lomon, I think, is how you pronounce his name. Anyway, he was also a podcast movement announcing a number of enhancements and features for spotify as well yeah they.

Sam Sethi: 18:00

They talked about show page customization, creator controls for podcast previews and a rollout of automated ads. So I had a look at it. I think you know after you you published it on pod news daily and I looked at it and I went, okay, that's fine, that's that's updating their ad stuff, that's that okay. And then I looked at the show page customization and fundamentally it's just more proprietary mechanisms. So they've they've done the pod role. Okay, they've come up with a pod role in their own special way and that's one of the core features on show page customization. I sort of rolled my eyes go why? Why are you doing this?

James Cridland: 18:42

I think I've worked out what spotify's plan is. These days, they are going to support the bare minimum in terms of rss, both in and out. So, if you host with spotify, they'll support the bare minimum. Um, if you um uh are an rss podcast elsewhere, then, uh, they will support the bare minimum and that is it. And what their plan is is to then add a load of additional spotify only features so that they can basically have their cake and eat it. They can make their shows available everywhere, um, but if you want the uh video version, for example, of those shows, the only place that you will see it is it is on spotify.

James Cridland: 19:25

Um, and you know and there are plenty of other examples of that, I think so I think that's basically what I've worked out there that the plan is that, um, you know the bare minimum in terms of rss, and then all of these additional features will be a proprietary thing just for spotify, which, to be fair, is is also the game that apple podcasts has been playing recently as well, um, so you know, interesting to see them launching a bunch of um of additional things, um, especially automated ads, to more countries, because I think that they, um are feeling the heat from youtube, which, of course, is available in every single country on earth, in terms of payout, um but um, you know, I think that that's where they're, where their heads are out there how did those uh proprietary spotify polls go?

Sam Sethi: 20:16

anyone using them?

James Cridland: 20:18

I. I recently worked out that you can turn them off, so I turned them off. Um, uh, I mean, I'm sure has anyone worked out how?

Sam Sethi: 20:25

to turn them on even using.

James Cridland: 20:26

Well, that's the funny thing, because they were turned on automatically um, which I always thought was quite was quite funny um that they basically, you know, uh, they, they turned on the whole thing completely automatically um and was asking what did? What did you think of this episode? Uh, you know, good, bad. So you know I don't know um, but you know I it's, it's um, probably a plan uh from from uh spotify and, let's face it, they need a plan um. There's been a bunch of uh of research which has shown how many people are using spotify um since uh 2017 um in terms of um, in terms of audience share, and not very many people are actually using spotify in terms of um ad supported um. Uh that that figure hasn't really increased um over the last five or six years, so perhaps spotify does need to end up doing something there yeah, I mean they've.

Sam Sethi: 21:26

They've seen a growth in, uh, active users, monthly active users, which is good. I mean their subscribers, paid subscribers. So you know, well done spotify there. But, as you said, the the non paying spotify users who would use the platform is flatlined totally. So, um, I wonder what the joe rogan effect was. Do you think their bet was that people would come across and pay, or people come across and just use? Which was it?

James Cridland: 21:56

well, I don't know. I mean, if people are coming, if their bet was people will come across and then turn into paying customers, then perhaps that's been a good plan because, as you so rightly say, that has done uh very well. It's more than doubled uh in terms of audience, but there's really been no change in terms of um, of ad supported audience share at all. And again, I think it's different. It is um, it is, you know you're comparing monthly active users with time spent listening and in this particular case, time spent listening is not increasing in terms of ad supported audience at all. Um, and whenever you have a look at Spotify's time spent listening numbers, they don't do very well, you know um, so you know they don't do very well in terms of time spent listening to podcasts overall. So you know, perhaps there is something there to to have a look at in terms of the different numbers that we see coming out of the big green monster it's really actually when you say that.

Sam Sethi: 22:59

It's really weird, because I've had Spotify, like many people, for years now, and I pay this subscription, but I do that for the family in order to have music, but I and I have it in the car and everywhere else, but I never, ever, use Spotify as my podcast app and it, you know, it's not my default.

James Cridland: 23:17

I don't go to it and I just don't know why, even though I've got it on every device everywhere, yeah um, it just doesn't seem natural but I bet you'll, uh, have listened to at least one podcast in a month, even if it's just Spotify throwing one at you in the middle of a automated playlist, and so they will still count you as a monthly user in terms of um, in terms of using podcasts on the platform, and I think that's that's the thing. That's where the this um you know, this weird set of numbers appears from um is that it's um. It is just basically based on on the fact that if Spotify serves you one podcast in the month, then it can count you as a podcast user. Nice trick nice trick.

Sam Sethi: 24:00

If you can do it, okay, well, let's move on that. That part of let's give give it some due. That part was part of that report was from Edison Research, wasn't it there? There is Cheriveer. They've also said uh, james, that um friend of the show, gabrielle Soto, unveiled demographic breakdowns for podcast listeners. He said boomers are less familiar with podcasting and listen far less, but 91 percent have a smartphone. So there's an opportunity there. What was he talking about?

James Cridland: 24:32

yeah, there's a massive opportunity, both in boomers um, so old folk um, but in gen alpha as well, in the really young uh people as well. They're really young. They're younger than gen z um.

Sam Sethi: 24:46

Oh, we've got the full car number plate round. I know, exactly, exactly.

James Cridland: 24:50

It's all a little bit ridiculous, but yes, so there's um real opportunity with both boomers and gen alpha if we want to grow the amount of listeners to podcasts now. Um, I will now boringly say that I'm less interested in the number of listeners and more interested in time spent listening, and that's the thing that I am most excited by these days. Um, and really don't care too much about seeing that random 43 percent number increase. I would much rather focus on the amount of time we're spending. But, yeah, um, a great, um, a great piece from uh Gabrielle Soto at podcast movement and yeah, it's really good to end up seeing him.

James Cridland: 25:34

Um, and other folk at podcast movement were the good folk from evergreen podcasts, who appears to have acquired um a slate of music podcasts from sound talent media.

James Cridland: 25:47

I'm always interested when uh companies acquire a slate of music podcasts rather than acquiring the company. Um, which tends to me to point to the same thing that's going on with live one and cast media they've acquired certain assets of, but not acquiring the actual company itself. Even so, combined with the uh cyrus media stuff that they look for, evergreens music podcast is now 55 music podcasts and they're reaching half a million monthly listeners, which is a good thing. They are also, I understand, a investor into podcast radio, which announced that it was going to be available in a number of different us markets. Um, in the next couple of weeks, we don't know which us markets podcast radio is going to be available in, but it's going to be interesting seeing where they end up launching and whether or not podcasting works on the radio, because we don't really have a ton of good numbers in terms of that when I saw this story, first of all I thought, um, evergreen, uh, really good company.

Sam Sethi: 26:58

They sponsored my podcast festival many, many years ago and, and thank you for doing that, um, and it's good to see their supporting other companies. Um, I thought 55 music podcasts. I thought, jesus, after boosted grand ball, someone's gone mental and created 55 new shows. So I thought, wow, better go and check this out. And of course it's. It is 55 shows that talk about music rather than music shows, which I think is a slightly different, uh, angle. And, yes, but when I ingested those into pod fans, because I thought you know, this is great and um, I thought, wow, if these guys and I bet they haven't heard about your show, james and and adam show, but if they had, and they understand it these shows that talk about albums and talk about specific genres of music, um, wow, they can start to look at including real music within their shows, because it's only talking about the music rather than talking about the music and playing the music. And I thought, oh, here's an opportunity.

James Cridland: 28:02

Well, yes, maybe there is an opportunity there, although of course right now the songs that are available for you to play, like that, nobody's heard of. So you know, you kind of get, I guess, a little bit of that. But yeah, you know, there's certainly, there's certainly some, you know, opportunity, I think, you know, in the future. I mean, of course, we've all heard this song. You put the cereal song for the less you made, but I'll leave it out, your wrong. The cereal song. Yes, we've all heard that song because of course it's still number one, I would imagine, on the Wave Lake Top 40. Not for me, that song, I know, but I would imagine it's not going to be a whole lot of other songs like that. But who knows?

Sam Sethi: 28:49

Well, we'll find out, because she's on the show next week.

James Cridland: 28:51

Is she really there, you?

Sam Sethi: 28:53

go.

James Cridland: 28:54

Yes, that's a good booking, mr Sethi. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, many congratulations. I'm looking forward to that. Let's go around the world. Taipei the number of people listening to podcasts has reached half of radio's audience, which sounds good, except 17% of adults listen to the radio in the country, so half of radio's audience isn't actually as much as it could be. Guangjinyou, who I'm actually meeting next week, who is Pod News Asia correspondent he tells me that Taipei is very, very YouTube heavy, really really strongly YouTube heavy, and so that may be a thing to be said for that. Guangjinyou is celebrating a year existing in Finland. The premium podcast and audiobook subscription services so far enabled more than 30 podcasters to turn professional, which is a good thing.

Sam Sethi: 29:51

Now moving on Jobs. James, tell me more. Who's moving, who's grooving?

James Cridland: 29:56

Well, john W Gibbons I bumped into him at podcast movement last week. He has been appointed to the board of directors at Libsyn Now. He was made interim CEO only last month and chief product officer. You would assume that he would be put onto the board of directors at the same time, but no, so there we are Not quite sure why has he got enough hats?

Sam Sethi: 30:19

I know, I know. Spread the love, john. Spread the love. Give the jobs to a few other people.

James Cridland: 30:24

Exactly. One of the interesting things that he was saying is that he is seriously considering changing the name of the company to Liberated Syndication, because that's what Libsyn stands for and Liberated Syndication does what it says on the tin, it's open, it's, etc. Etc and everything else. I would imagine that that won't mean that the Libsyn brand changes, but I rather like the fact that they might make a little bit more of the Liberated Syndication name. Good to bump into him and good to bump into Chuck, who is their new CFO.

Sam Sethi: 30:58

I was going to say before, thankfully, hopefully John's not taking head of marketing, because I don't know that at all.

James Cridland: 31:05

Well, it was good to bump into those two. Chuck was a good person to meet, who's their new CFO, but has no background in the podcasting world, and so I think he was finding the whole podcast movement a little bit bewildering, but I'm sure that he enjoyed that. Good news for fans of great people Stacy Goers has been hired as Senior Manager of Products for Apple Podcasts. She used to work for ACAST, before that used to work for NPR. She started last week. She's moving to Cupertino in quarter four after she takes some time from eternity leave.

James Cridland: 31:40

So more good news for the Goers household and she is, I think, very good news for Apple. I understand it and I don't think Ben Cave will thank me for saying this, but as I understand it, the Senior Manager of Product for Apple Podcasts is the person with the power. Ben, from everything that I understand, has the power in terms of editorial but not the power in terms of technology, and the fact that Stacy has spent some time understanding the new podcast namespace understanding podcasting 2.0, is very good news for Apple. So it's a very good hiring, I think, for Stacy. Have we had her on the show, sam? I think we have, haven't we?

Sam Sethi: 32:27

No, no, I don't think we have. I'm going to reach out to her, but obviously she's on maternity leave. Well, obviously A she's on maternity leave and B.

James Cridland: 32:37

She now works at Apple Podcasts and therefore can't say a thing to anybody about it, the so-and-a-long grata, yes. But there we are. I did bump into some of my friends at Apple at Podcasts Movement, and they were very friendly and jolly, although they did not buy me a beer or bring me a new iPhone. So still, there you go.

Sam Sethi: 32:58

It's a bit like the BBC James. When you join Apple, you have to leave your opinion in a corner and never have one.

James Cridland: 33:03

Yes except I would imagine that Apple is at least slightly more competent. John Gibbs is a former Spotify data scientist and he has joined Veritonic as a strategic advisor, which is always interesting to end up seeing. And Dominic Milano. I used to work with Dominic many years ago at Triton Digital. He has since worked for Target Spot which has a fancy new name that I've completely forgotten, so I'm going to call them Target Spot and he has joined Katz Media Group, or rather rejoined Katz Media Group, as Senior Vice President, Sales Director and Programmatic Audio Lead. He's most definitely a giant in the audio ad tech world. So good to see him and he's got a giant business card.

Sam Sethi: 33:48

if he's got that title on as well, I know exactly SVP, SD and Programmatic Audio Lead.

James Cridland: 33:53

I'm not sure that you can have power, but if you're looking for a job, Pod News has podcasting jobs across the industry and across the world. It's podcasting's largest jobs board and they're free to post as well. It just takes two minutes.

Speaker 2: 34:05

Podnewsnet slash jobs the tech stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 34:13

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. And what tech stuff do you have for us today, Mr Sethi?

Sam Sethi: 34:23

Well, one of the new services that's launched is called Transcribefm. It's been launched by Nathan Gathright. It's launched as a lightning fast transcription service. I was really curious about this, so I spoke to Nathan. Now, look, before we do. What it is is. He allows you to go to the site a very simple UI, log in with your Albi wallet and then upload your audio and then boom, it'll give you a price for transcribing that audio. You pay it from your digital wallet using Satoshi's, and guess what? You then get your transcription back in JSON or SRT, txt, vtt. So, yeah, it's a really simple service. But one thing he's done, james, that's really, really cool. He's using this new protocol called L402. And what it does is it produces a BALT11 invoice. Technically, it's the first time that an API can be used as a service in this way and automated. And yeah, I thought, wow, that's pretty cool. And so we reached out to Nathan and said, look, tell me more. What is Transcribefm and why did you build it?

Nathan Gathright: 35:39

Transcribefm is a lightning fast transcription service for podcasters that lets users pay for transcription with their lightning wallet and developers can take advantage of our L402 API to offer transcription in their own apps.

Sam Sethi: 35:51

Ok, let's unpack all that. That's a lot to unpack. Step back a second. So the first thing is you've created a platform that allows podcasters to get a transcription, as you say, lightning fast, but it's a transcription. Are you using, like everyone else, open or whisper APIs, or are you doing something else?

Nathan Gathright: 36:11

Yeah, I'm doing something else. I was really inspired by Fountain's approach to transcription and I sort of wanted to offer that as a service within my own apps and for other people.

Sam Sethi: 36:21

Ok so that's great. You mentioned something called L402. What is L402?

Nathan Gathright: 36:27

Yeah, l402 is a standard for charging for services over the Lightning network. For developers like me, this eliminates many of the headaches with running a paid API. I don't have to convince users to sign up with a credit card, I don't have to worry about credit card processing fees. I don't have to manage recurring usage based billing so there's lots of advantages that really made this project viable.

Sam Sethi: 36:48

So the question is how much does it cost? How long is a piece of string? How long is the cost of the transcription? I mean, is it per minute? And that's the cost charging model. How does it work?

Nathan Gathright: 36:59

Yeah, so every time a user makes an API request, transcribe FM responds with a lightning invoice based on the duration of the audio. With a paid invoice they can repeat that same request and get their audio transcribed and download it in their preferred formats. So it costs. Whatever my own costs are with my transcription provider, convert it into SAT so that users can pay with Satoshi.

Sam Sethi: 37:21

Okay so can you, or does it allow for things like splits in there? Now, the reason I ask is because talked about third party developers using your API. So let's say there's an app that wants to use your API to offer their clients a transcription service, which is what you want to do. They click a button. It says oh, this is going to cost you 10,000 sat random number. What would you take from that? You take just the full 10,000, but if you're the app developer, you're sending a customer to transcribefm. So of course you know you want a little kick in there as well. You know it's all value for value. So in the workflow, is there a way of setting in splits?

Nathan Gathright: 38:07

Yeah, unfortunately this is all based on bolt 11 invoices. Okay, so with key send payments. So with key send payments we would be able to offer splits. But the L402 spec is all centered around bolt 11 invoices. So if a developer wants to add on a cut for themselves before paying transcribefm, they can present you know their own invoice to their users and maybe do a key send payment at that point. But then the L402 API needs to be fully paid to transcribefm.

Sam Sethi: 38:38

Okay, I can see a way of doing that. I guess the other way could be that you create an affiliate link fee. I mean, you know that 17 transcriptions have come from app X, so you could do it in real time or later.

Nathan Gathright: 38:51

Yeah, no, I think that's something definitely worth exploring, but it's early days yet.

Sam Sethi: 38:55

So you mentioned something called bolt 11. Tell me what's bolt 11.?

Nathan Gathright: 38:59

So yeah, bolt 11 is just the sort of standard lightning invoice that requires all the like. Required information really is an amount for the invoice and who the recipient is. So every time an API request is made, I generate a bolt 11 invoice without really having to know too much about who is requesting that transcript. So that can be another service. It can be a web. A web LN wallet can pay that invoice and once that invoice is paid, a code called a pre image is revealed and that is used to sort of provide proof of payment and actually get your transcript Right.

Sam Sethi: 39:35

And when they get the transcript, what formats do they get them back in?

Nathan Gathright: 39:38

Yeah, so I support all of the podcasting 2.0 formats, especially my favorite is Jason, because I really appreciate word by word fidelity. That really comes into play in Stenofm for the sort of like karaoke style highlighting you can see there. But we also provide it in SRT, vtt and TXT files.

Sam Sethi: 39:57

Okay, so Jason formats the one we use as well within pod fans and I think many have started using that. As you said, it's the karaoke style playback and, of course, as people are starting to add music lyrics as well as just standard, is there a way and this is just something thinking outside the box of having a automated repeat function? So the worst thing in the world would be this right, I go to new episode and then I have to go into my admin dashboard and click send me a new transcript every time. Right, because I might just forget. Is there a way that you can say soon as a new episode drops, send me an invoice. Invoice gets paid to send me a transcript, so you can automate it.

Nathan Gathright: 40:39

Yeah, that's definitely something I'm looking into. It would either require Transcribefm to monitor your RSS feed for new episodes or the host to integrate that functionality before publishing, so that they could just send that audio URL to Transcribefm, get the transcript and include it in the RSS feed before the episode gets published.

Sam Sethi: 40:59

You could do a pod ping notification even.

Nathan Gathright: 41:01

Yeah, I've been talking to at least one host about an integration, as well as Steven B integrating it with Sovereign Feeds.

Sam Sethi: 41:10

Yeah, I think the natural place that this should sit is with host. That's where I would see it. But you mentioned Fountain and Oscar and they've implemented a transcription capability into Fountain which is not host driven. This is a podcaster who's claimed their podcast in Fountain can now choose to get a transcription added to their episode, which is what you're talking about here as well.

Nathan Gathright: 41:36

Yeah, well, the great thing about Fountain is that also listeners can also request the transcript. It doesn't have to be a burden on the podcaster themselves. The listener can request the transcript and it would end up propagating to all listeners in the Fountain app. So I think that's a really great model. I'd love to see those transcripts make their way back to the host so that those transcripts would then be made available outside of Fountain, but we're going to need some new developments in the podcast namespace or some other sort of relationships with hosts before we see something like that.

Sam Sethi: 42:05

Yeah, because you'd have to update the RSS feed, wouldn't you? By directionally. That's the challenge. You'd have to export a updated RSS into a host to then ingest a new RSS before. It would then serve that transcript, or you just send them the transcript, I guess.

Nathan Gathright: 42:22

Yeah. So if we eventually get web hooks in RSS feeds, I'd love to see different third parties providing their transcripts back to the podcaster, sort of as a public service.

Sam Sethi: 42:31

One other way, just playing devil's advocate is we're waiting on something called podcast verify, which is a phase seven tag Because of the removal of email from RSS feeds by many hosts. It means that it makes it very difficult for podcast app providers to verify a claim to a podcast, because normally we'd email them go hey, is this your email verify? It's your email Bang, it's your podcast, right? It's the email in your RSS. But if there isn't one, you can't do it. It just you can.

Sam Sethi: 43:02

But most average users are not going to go and find the hidden feature in their host that re-enables it and wait for a popping, just not happening. So podcast verify, if it ever comes to light, is like an OAuth type verification. I click a button, it looks at a unique identity string that goes to the host where it's hosted, and then the user verifies and the claim is made. It could be in that same process, though, that you could. Once you know who the host is, if the transcription is made available, you could have the app just automatically send the transcription back to the host Once you know the verified host. That's the thing.

Nathan Gathright: 43:44

Yeah, knowing the host is maybe easy for a vast majority of shows, but for every self-hosted show out there there's a million edge cases to worry about, so there's not a one-size-fits-all approach, but I'm looking forward to seeing something like the events or webhook or whatever endpoint whatever endpoint it is that actually provides access for third parties to make API requests back to the host. I'm really looking forward to that, whether or not it is the user at the other end is the podcaster or not. I think podcast verify is great for when you are wanting to confirm ownership or take some action on behalf of the podcast. As the podcaster For transcripts, I really want to see that democratized further than just the podcaster, so that if listeners are willing to front the SATs or whatever the payment method is, that listeners can become a part of that, providing value back to the podcaster.

Sam Sethi: 44:35

Yeah, I mean I've just talked to Cameron about listeners are paying for hosting, in effect by paying as a split on the IPFS network, so it could be that listeners pay for it. I could see that I suspect it's going to be mainly podcasters to begin with, but then it could be down to your fans to do that, I guess.

Nathan Gathright: 44:56

Yeah, I think we've seen the past couple decades. We've heard accessibility advocates make the case for transcripts for podcasts and unfortunately it has not caught on en masse. So I'd love to be able to see people put their money where their mouth is about caring about transcripts and making them available to other people when it's even when the podcaster isn't fully convinced. Two more questions quickly.

Sam Sethi: 45:17

One is will you ever provide a service like Tech Clouds?

Nathan Gathright: 45:22

Tech Clouds. Yeah, I'm definitely looking into generative AI tech to add on top of the transcripts, like autochapters and things like that. It already does speaker diarization it can't identify who they are, so a user would need to go in and relabel their speakers because they're just flat files at the end of the day. But Tag Clouds, things like that keywords, chapters, highlights all of that stuff is really interesting and I'd love to see what is actually viable and customers are interested in.

Sam Sethi: 45:53

And then the last one is how easy is it for other API providers to implement L402? How hard was it for you to do?

Nathan Gathright: 46:02

Oh, it was rather easy once I wrapped my head around the process. Just the back and forth nature of making multiple API requests to fulfill one outcome Was a little bit to wrap my head around. That and the Macaroon system, but I did it as part of a hackathon. Albi encouraged me to submit transcribe FM to AI for all hackathon and so I implemented L402 as part of my proposal and it was a great sort of like week long project.

Sam Sethi: 46:30

Can't wait to try it. I have gone on to the site, I've connected my Albi account. I'm going to upload a couple of transcripts and see what comes back. So, hey, nathan, thank you for doing this. It's a really cool feature you've implemented. Thank you. So, nathan, where can people reminders? Where can people go to find out more about your service?

Nathan Gathright: 46:50

Yeah, you can visit the website transcribefm and give it a test run for yourself.

Sam Sethi: 46:57

And if they need to get a hold of you, where's the best place to find you these days?

Nathan Gathright: 47:01

Yeah, you can find me on mastodon. Just search hello at NathanGathardcom and I'll come up.

Sam Sethi: 47:08

Excellent, Nathan. Thank you so much.

Nathan Gathright: 47:10

Thank you.

James Cridland: 47:11

Nathan Gathright. He's a very clever man and also produces some very beautiful websites as well. What I love about transcribefm and Stenofm is one of his as well is that it looks properly good. He's clearly very good on the design and everything else. One day I might send him a quick email to see if he might give the pod news website a spruce of a new look of paint. That would be a good thing, perhaps.

Sam Sethi: 47:40

Indeed.

James Cridland: 47:42

Yes, Descripts bought Squadcast, of course, as you will have heard in this very podcast a couple of weeks ago, and Remote Recording Tool Riverside has enhanced its editor in its latest release. It's got all kinds of smart things in there text-based editing, intros and outros, all of that kind of stuff. So that's all fancy, do? We used to use Riverside for this very podcast. This week we're trying clean feed, partially because Adam Curry and Dave Jones particularly were saying that the audio quality of this show was not as it should be. No, so tell us what the audio quality of this show is this week. See if you can spot any difference whatsoever. That would be kind. You can send us a boost with that. And Descripts are forcing people onto the new version of Descripts, are they?

Sam Sethi: 48:36

Yes, coming October 1st, they will be moving all the projects that were on the classic, as they called it, over to the new Descript. You don't have to do anything, it will automatically move those classic projects for you and all your data will go along, including your files, comments and version history. So, yeah, goodbye to the classic, which I know many people still love and use, because the new version, sadly, is a little bit sort of minimalist, trying to find features. Where did that go? How did you get that to work? Still doesn't become that obvious to most people, certainly from people like me, matt Medeiros, I know. Speaking to him was like oh, don't like the new version, but it's goodbye, old version, you better get used to it.

James Cridland: 49:23

Yes, oh well, there you go. Yes, I haven't used Descript for a while and perhaps I should give it a go, or, who knows, perhaps I possibly shouldn't. Albee has launched a developer wallet, if you want to get down and dirty as Nathan did. They've also launched a PWA client, a fancy web thing that you can open on your phone and it looks and works just like an app, which is nice. And they're not the only people, are they Sam?

Sam Sethi: 49:50

No Oscar friend of the show from Fountain. They've launched a new PWA. I don't think they've officially launched it. It's a soft launch, a bit like the Albee one. But when you look around now in the industry, you've got Podverse, podfriend. They're also PWA's progressive web apps and I can say to you now Podfans will launch its PWA strangely before the 27th of September. James.

James Cridland: 50:19

Oh well, there's a thing the 27th of September is going to be an interesting time for launches, I think. I suspect that we will see at least one other launch on the 27th of September. Not going to tell you what it is, you'll just have to wait and find out. Oh good, yes, but that should be fun, I think. Go go.

James Cridland: 50:39

Also rolling out, podcastle has launched what it calls the first real-time collaborative podcasting platform. It isn't. You can now. I didn't think it was. Yeah, you can now work on the same project simultaneously, like you've been able to do in Descript and other tools. But Podcastle does look very cool and very smart and there's clearly some very clever techies working on there, which is nice. And two other things here Snips, which is a podcast app. They are adding AI episodes, summaries and transcripts, which is all very fancy. It's a paid-for thing. Snips Premium. And there's a thing called Revive, and Revive is quite clever. It calls itself a groundbreaking generative AI audio enhancement tool and basically you can record anywhere and it will make you sound as if you're in a proper studio. Let's have a quick listen to what it sounds like.

Nathan Gathright: 51:34

Imagine that every microphone from any device recorded in any environment instantly sounded like it was recorded and mixed by a professional sound engineer. That's pretty impressive, isn't it Impressive? Yeah.

James Cridland: 51:51

Imagine if something that you're recording all of a sudden sounds as if you're holding your nose, and that's a little bit funny, it sounds like, but it is very, very impressive. It sounds very similar to Adobe's enhancement services that we've actually used on this show before, so that's a smart thing.

Sam Sethi: 52:10

Now friend of the show. Rss Blue launched something quietly yesterday as well. They're calling all music podcasters an audio enthusiast. They're rolling out a special pricing for shorter episodes. I thought that was really interesting, that they're going to charge a little bit less if you upload songs, albums or bite-side pieces of content. So, yeah, one regular episode is equivalent to three short episodes. So again, I think it's interesting as we start to look beyond just audio podcasting, because obviously music podcasting is now becoming a thing. And, yeah, well done to the guys at RSS Blue yes, well done to them.

James Cridland: 52:50

I think that that's very smart.

Sam Sethi: 52:52

Just a couple of things then, james, just a couple of proposals that are going off, and I think just people should be flagged. Alec Gates has proposed a new radio medium in the podcast namespace. I think that's really interesting. It's the idea again of being able to set in the live item tag a continuous time rather than a start and an end time, and then in the medium tag itself you tag it radio, and I think this could be a really good way again as we start to look at more live and we start to look at more other formats not just podcasting for where RSS could be used.

Sam Sethi: 53:34

I think there was a quote from the interview we did a couple of weeks ago. He said one of the things that people have not got used to yet or not got into their heads is that RSS is now a live data transport layer and he's pushing very heavily on that aspect of RSS and I thought, wow, actually I hadn't thought about how much more we are pushing towards a live medium in the web and RSS is going to be the transport layer for doing that.

James Cridland: 54:04

Yeah, I think it's. You know, RSS could well be quite interesting in terms of radio stations, certainly, and it's something that I'll be talking about when I'm at Radio Days Asia next week. So, yes, it'll be interesting to see how that goes. Also interesting to see how some Crossout comments. Do you remember that when we were all getting very excited about Crossout comments and we're still waiting for them?

Sam Sethi: 54:29

Can I just say I never got excited about it, but that's fine.

James Cridland: 54:32

Well, there's another idea, Hooray, Although thankfully it doesn't mean any more work Lemmy, which is an alternative to Reddit that basically uses Activity Pub, and if it had something very tedious called a replies collection API, it would enable that to work very well with Crossout comments in the existing standard. So there is somebody who is taking a look at seeing whether or not they can get that API call into the Lemmy app, and in which case, then that would be a good thing for Crossout comments to podcasting. It would make an awful lot of sense. Thank you to John Spurlock for pushing that forward. I'm still a little bit dubious about Crossout comments, the way that it's been specified, because I think it's been specified for large shows really more than smaller ones.

Sam Sethi: 55:33

Yeah, james, you said. Pud News's RSS feed supports the social interact tag through the Activity Pub, but if you wanted your opinion, you'd like it enabled on the channel level, at the show level, as an option, rather than the individual episode. Can you explain what you mean?

James Cridland: 55:49

So I was basically thinking that if the majority of shows have fewer than 50 downloads which they do then actually it doesn't make much sense to splinter all of the comments that you get from your podcast into each individual episode. What many podcasters would probably want to do is to have one space for all of the comments about a particular podcast, until it reaches a certain size, of course, but all comments for a particular podcast on the show level rather than on each individual episode level, and I think that that would be rather more interesting to many podcasters who aren't the size of no agenda or podcasting 2.0 or any of those larger shows. I think that that would be rather more interesting. After all, nobody wants to go into a pub which is virtually empty. You always want to go into a pub which has some other nice, interesting people in there, and so that's what I'd like to see.

Sam Sethi: 56:58

But yeah, who knows? Well, actually, strangely, if you look at Fountain and at Podfans, we both Josca and I, have an activity tab that exists at the show level. There you go, and that activity shows not just only comments but also other activity if somebody followed you or if somebody shared your episode or whatever, and it's all at the show level. And I think there was a proposal for something called podcast events, which John Spurlock was interested in doing, and I think actually those event triggers could include comments as one of those event triggers, right, yeah Well, but also other things. So that may be the way forward as opposed to using the social interactive.

James Cridland: 57:50

Indeed, I mean, there are 400 million different alternative ways of doing comments, so it's delightful that we're now seeing another one. Oscar Mary has proposed using Nostra as a cross app commenting system. The idea is that, of course, we already know who you are from a person point of view, because we know that you're logged into a Bitcoin wallet, so therefore you can use Nostra with that, and the idea is that that then automatically works through Nostra and through relays and all of that kind of stuff. So you know, it's another London bus thing. We now have seven competing cross out commenting systems, and it'll be lovely if one of those gets implemented by more than one set of people, I guess.

Sam Sethi: 58:45

Well, I think. I mean I looked at that proposal from Oscar and I said, look, I'll put my hand up and I'll implement what we agree as a community upon and I think you know, olby for example, as allow you to have your end pub within the API. So we support the end pub, the public identity for your Nostra account. We don't have the private one, obviously so we can share via Gosh. I hate these things, but nipple 01 straight into Nostra already today as an example. But what? And of course you know Nostra is using sats. That's the reason why everyone's going down this road, because then you can link sats and boosts and everything else can be, you know, still in that payment system, as opposed to activity pub, which doesn't do any of that, which is why I think Nostra is looking that way. But again, one thing I'd say we don't. We already have this, James. We do boost a gram corner right, and we get comments from numerous apps into one place. We already have cross up comments.

James Cridland: 59:50

Yes, and, of course, we also have the benefit that those cross up comments come with come with money attached to them as well. Nearly said small amounts of money there. I held back. So yes, it's it. You know some of it is all a bit tedious, but still there we are. And and one final thing just to mention is that Stitcher God blessed its soul. It was turned off yesterday and no longer works as an app. If you're wondering which podcast app to choose next and you are using Stitcher as an app which is a very important thing to say then there is a long piece in pod news recommending individual apps for that. You will find not very many podcasting 2.0 apps because as a replacement to Stitcher they're probably not the right place yet, but I'm sure that I'm sure that they will be worthwhile taking a look at that.

James Cridland: 1:00:52

In any case, let's dive into some events and some awards. The big event that I'm getting ready for next week is podcast day Asia, which is part of Radio Days Asia in Kuala Lumpur, which should be good fun. And then, of course, pod news live in London on the 27th of September. Tickets are still available for that pod news dot net slash live. The early bird ticket price has gone, but that's okay, it's still very cheap. So pod news dot net slash live is where to go for that. And then, of course, the British podcast awards are the next day. And there are more events, both paid for and free, at pod news virtual events or events in a place with people, and if you're organizing something you can tell the world about it, it's free to be listed at pod news dot net slash events boost a gram corner corner on the pod news weekly review.

James Cridland: 1:01:47

Oh, it's our favorite time of the week, Sam. It's boost a gram corner. We've got a boost here from Dave Jones, who is talking about your tattoo 21,112 satts. What does he say?

Sam Sethi: 1:01:59

He hasn't paid enough to get the, the, the, the actual chapter art that shows the tattoo. Yet, yeah, more satts. Dave and I might do it, but no, I was joking that I had a pod news tattoo. I wouldn't put a tattoo on my body, that's me. But there you go.

James Cridland: 1:02:14

No, well, there you go. Moritz from Albee sent us a couple of different booths, one saying fascinating episode, thank you, and one saying taking the friction out of payments is one of the greatest achievements of pod fans. Oh look, you've got. You've got a fan there, yeah.

Sam Sethi: 1:02:31

Well, what could I say? Thank you, moritz, that's all I'll say.

James Cridland: 1:02:34

Very nice. And two things Talking about the podcast standards project. One from Nick, who I think is Nick Mauster. Double three, double three satts. Interesting discussion. First time I've heard the podcast standards project mentioned since it launched, and then Adam Curry, 10,000 sat. Thank you, Adam. Can we just admit that the podcast standards group has pod faded? Oh well, I bring news from podcast movement. There was a meeting of the podcast standards group, not that you would have known because they haven't told anybody about it, but nevertheless there was a meeting on.

Sam Sethi: 1:03:10

Sorry, did they tell the people before the meeting or did no one turn up?

James Cridland: 1:03:13

to the meeting. People did turn up and I think the issue that they have is they do want more podcast hosts involved, but I think the most important thing is they need podcast apps also involved as well. One of the ideas that I put forward to one of the members of the podcast standards project was that I think, frankly, they should release an app. You know they should get together They've got some big podcast hosting companies involved in that they should release a white labelled app which offers the bits of the new podcasting namespace that they want to support, you know, and see if they can release something which is which just begins to shake up the world of Apple podcasts, Spotify, pocket casts and all of that kind of stuff. If you remember, pocket casts was supposed to have joined, but they don't appear to have joined the podcast standards group yet, so not quite sure what's going on there. Has it podfaded? I'm not sure it's podfaded yet, but I think there's definitely still conversations going on there.

Sam Sethi: 1:04:21

How about changing the alternative views of that, James, which is don't create an app, create a fund and support the apps that are actually supporting the podcast standards?

James Cridland: 1:04:33

Is the man who's made an app.

Sam Sethi: 1:04:34

Yes, I would probably.

James Cridland: 1:04:38

I could certainly get. That too Probably makes sense If you do get value from what we do. The Pod News Weekly Review is separate from Pod News. Sam and I share everything from it, and we really appreciate your support so we can continue making this show. If you want to, you can become a power supporter at weeklypodnewsnet. There's a bunch of people who have done that and they're supporting us month in, month out, so they should probably get at least a little bit of a mention. Dan Lopez, dave Jones yes, that man again Matt Medeiros, marshall Brown, cameron Moll and Kevin Finn. Thank you all so much for your monthly support of us. That's really kind, and, of course, you can support us with Sats as well by hitting the boost button in your podcast app. So what's been happening for you this week, then, sam?

Sam Sethi: 1:05:35

Well, while you were gallivanting and drinking beer and hobnobbing with the rich and famous in Denver, I was down coding. Actually, we took two weeks to work.

James Cridland: 1:05:48

Were you coding or was it your?

Sam Sethi: 1:05:50

code. No, let's be honest, I was just pontificating with him as well. Yeah, let's be clear. One wasn't rolling any sleeves up and God, if I did code, it would never work. No, no, no, I don't know about that. No, what we did do, though, was we the Royal. We, we basically refactored all of our APIs while you were away to do a second tracking of Toshies. When you listen to a show and that was important, because the show that you did, the James Music show, what did you actually call it eventually?

James Cridland: 1:06:29

Oh, it was James's random music show thing. That thing yes.

Sam Sethi: 1:06:34

And Adam's show meant that the way that we were paying or tracking sats before was on a per minute basis. We couldn't then do the switch when you did it at one minute 21 seconds over to a new. So, yeah, so we refactored all of that. We've now put that live and I think, james, have you started to see any payments coming to your dashboard?

James Cridland: 1:06:57

Yes, I'm seeing a few payments coming in, as you can, as you can see, yes, so that's a good thing, so that kind of works.

Sam Sethi: 1:07:07

Yeah, that works and, as I said earlier, we are finishing off our PWA, so the mobile client for Pod Funds will be available before the 27th of September. Very nice, james. Now what happened? Come on, spill all the gossip, the stuff that you didn't write about what was going on in the secret corridors, apart from that, podcast standards meeting.

James Cridland: 1:07:28

Well, you know there's all kinds of things going on. I enjoyed podcast movement. I have to say the hotel was massive and that had great benefits in terms of it was a decent place to be. It was a decent choice food. The hotel didn't seem overwhelmed at all at the fact that there were 2,500 podcasters there, plus actually a number of other conferences going on at the same time too. So I was particularly impressed at the hotel. So that was a good thing. The fire alarm went off at four o'clock in the morning, but not in my wing, so I was delighted not in the superb wing that I was in, so that was good. So you slept through it all is what you say I did Well.

James Cridland: 1:08:18

In fact I didn't sleep through it because jet lag, but I was awake and blissfully unaware that there was an alarm going off. So that was a thing. But no, it's really good, as ever. There are things that I am following up that I've heard you know naughty things about from some companies and I'm trying to understand a little bit more about what those naughty things are. But obviously I can't really say an awful lot about that until I actually understand a little bit more about what the naughty things are. So it's always good for new conversations and things, and it was good to meet up with some of the folks from Captivate as well who were there and who I think, being of Scottish origin, were in the bar quite a lot, so it was good to have a chat with them.

Sam Sethi: 1:09:10

I just remember talking about multiple events at the same time. I remember going to one of my first ever CES events in Vegas and I thought, oh, I'm so excited. And then I just got lost in hall after hall. But what was the funniest thing ever was talking about putting multiple events together. I'm on the vernacular to the hall, and coming the other way were the porn stars from the AVN Awards that were going on at the same week and I thought how funny to get geeks and porn stars in the same area.

James Cridland: 1:09:41

Never knew that the two would go together. That pretty well always happens at CES. It's one of those things. Yeah, absolutely yes, bless it. Las Vegas. Can't wait to go back there, except I can. And that's it for this week.

Sam Sethi: 1:09:58

Yes, you can give feedback to James and I by using email to weekly at podnewsnet or send us a boost to Graham, which we love. If your podcast app doesn't support boosting, grab a new app from podnewsnet. Forward slash new podcast apps.

James Cridland: 1:10:12

Yes, our music is from Studio Dragonfly. Our voiceover is Sheila Dee. We use clean feed for our main audio. This weekend 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. Tell your friends and grow the show and support us, and support us. The Pod News Weekly. Review will return next week. Keep listening.