James Cridland: 0:00

It's Friday, the 13th of October 2023.

Announcement: 0:04

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

Sam Sethi: 0:13

I'm James Cridland, the editor of Pod News, and I'm Sam Suthey, the CEO of Podfans.

James Cridland: 0:18

In the chapters. Today, podcasts are launching on YouTube Music in the UK and in other places. Production companies have stopped producing new content for the BBC. What's going on there, then, and also Hi.

Todd Cochrane: 0:29

This is Todd Cochran, CEO and co-founder of Blueberry, and I will be on later to talk about my 19 years of active podcasting.

James Cridland: 0:38

He will. This podcast is sponsored by Buzzsprout. Last week, 3,100 people started a podcast with Buzzsprout. Podcast hosting made easy with powerful tools, free learning materials and remarkable customer support From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly Review.

Sam Sethi: 0:56

Right, James, let's kick this show off. Youtube has launched in the UK and Australia. Very nice of them to come into our backyards. What have they launched? Because I keep hearing launched, but I'm not really sure what launch means.

James Cridland: 1:08

Yes, well, as the helicopter goes overhead for the fourth or fifth time today, who knows what's going on there. Yes, they're rolling out podcasts globally. If you remember, they added podcasts to the YouTube Music app here in Australia a couple of weeks ago. They've now added the podcast homepage, youtubecom slash podcasts, which looks much the same as it does in the US, to be fair. But they've also launched on the app on YouTube Music in the UK this week as well, which I noted is the second largest podcast market in the world. And YouTube Music is actually a really interesting app because it is normally pre-installed on all modern Android phones, so worthwhile, just bearing in mind that this is the app which everybody will have. So this is the equivalent of Apple podcasts and Google podcasts. We never got such a thing. That's a plane going overhead. Now that's nice, isn't it? So Google podcast was never actually pre-installed. So the fact that the YouTube Music app is pre-installed, because it is a standard installation on all new Android phones, is a pretty big deal, I think.

Sam Sethi: 2:22

Yeah, I mean, is this really Google, saying we've got to put everything in one box to compete with Amazon and Spotify and Apple? Or is it going to be another Google graveyard where they just try it, fail and then just go? Oh well, we'll go back to what we do normally then.

James Cridland: 2:38

Well, I think YouTube by itself isn't in any risk of being a Google graveyard product. Youtube is massive, you know. As we know, second largest search engine in the world, only after Google itself. So I think YouTube is going to be pretty safe. I think YouTube Music is going to be pretty safe as well. They've very successfully pulled that away from the Google Play brand and moved it into the YouTube brand to make it work a little bit better and clearer. So I think all of that is a very good move. So I don't think that there's going to be any significant concern here, apart from anything else.

James Cridland: 3:17

You know, the way that you earn money out of YouTube is a pretty standard way, and that will work, whether or not you're a podcast or whether or not you're producing full motion video as well. You know, if you have enough users, then you get to share some of the money. So I think that actually, you know, it's arguable that they're actually even launching a product here. It's just another category in the YouTube app and in the YouTube Music app, and I think it's probably a good thing. So, yeah, now what is it good news for the podcast industry? Well, that's a very different conversation entirely, I think.

Sam Sethi: 3:53

Now YouTube also launched primetime channels in the UK on Paramount Plus. I mean, am I supposed to now go to Paramount Pay for YouTube Music and watch it there?

James Cridland: 4:03

No, it's the other way around. So you go to YouTube and you have access, if you want to pay for them, to a bunch of additional services, like Paramount Plus, like DAZN or DAZN, is it DAISN? However you, you, you are, you are pronounced it. So, basically, instead of having 400 different streaming apps with lots and lots of different companies, you can have just the one. So you know, it's essentially it's YouTube trying to be your cable TV company. They're doing that quite well in the US with a different model YouTube TV, which is being able to watch a ton of live and on demand channels there. They're doing things slightly differently with primetime channels, which I believe is now in Germany, spain, I think, and also now the UK, and you know, basically pulling everything together. So if you like TV, you'll get all of the TV on your YouTube app. I think that's probably a sensible plan as well. So you know, pulling all of the video content and audio content into one big ecosystem is probably not a bad plan.

Sam Sethi: 5:15

I've got that similar strategy with five TV here in the UK, so I go through Amazon and I can license Paramount. I guess they're all doing the same thing.

James Cridland: 5:24

Yeah, I'm sure that they're all doing much the same sort of thing. They're also adding. Of course, if you're with some podcast hosts, then they are already automatically uploading shows for you to YouTube. Rsscom is one of those who I'm an advisor for. Buzzsprout. I don't think offers that quite yet, but you can use Headliner, as we're using for this particular show, but later on this year YouTube are planning support for creators to directly submit their RSS feeds to YouTube, so that will enable you to gain access to that sort of thing as well, which is probably a good thing. Not quite sure when they're going to launch that, but I do know that there are quite a few people now using that as a test and giving YouTube feedback.

James Cridland: 6:14

So, yeah, there's some interesting stuff going in there. I think one of the very interesting things particularly is that you're not allowed adverts on the YouTube version of your podcast. So sponsors this show is fine because we've got sponsors, but you're not allowed to all of a sudden stop and have a 30 second ad like the ACAST model. That is strictly forbidden with YouTube. So that's going to be interesting to see how podcasters cope with that as a rule, because at some point YouTube will be turning around and actually ensuring that that is being strictly policed. So who knows what's going to happen there. But then you have that same issue with Apple subscriptions.

Sam Sethi: 6:56

You have to produce a different version to get your podcast listed in Apple subscriptions.

James Cridland: 7:03

Yeah, you can produce a different version but that version could be ad-free, but it doesn't have to be. That version could be a longer version with a couple of extra stories. That version could be a whole new additional show. The pod news extra show that we produce could be just an Apple subscriptions exclusive. So I think it's a little bit different. What Apple certainly isn't doing is they're not turning around and saying you can't have ads in your shows if you upload them to Apple, whereas YouTube is most definitely saying that. So I think that's going to be interesting once people wake up to this and go well, hang on a minute, I'm earning money on my podcast with these programmatic ads and you're telling me I'm not even allowed them on YouTube, and I think that's going to be quite a wake-up call. Well, we'll watch this space. Now moving on.

Sam Sethi: 7:57

Twitter, which is this week in tech, owned by Leo Laporte, has said that they've been blocked from certain advertising lists. James, tell me more.

James Cridland: 8:07

Yeah, so these are advertising block lists which are used by Apple subscriptions Block lists, which are used by products like Eero, which is a Wi-Fi system where you can basically turn on an advertising block list on there. You can also use Piehole. If you've got an old Raspberry Pi knocking around in your house, then you can use that to block all of the ads on every single device that you own in the house. Or there's products like Next DNS or Control-D. I use Control-D, it's rather good.

James Cridland: 8:36

Anyway, all of these things have advertising block lists in them and that basically says that any connection to, for example, google's double click just simply doesn't work, and so you don't get connected to that and then you don't get any ads.

James Cridland: 8:55

And that's fine if you're looking at websites.

James Cridland: 8:57

Not so fine if you're trying to download a podcast, because the way that a podcast works, of course, is it's one piece of audio and it just happens to have some ads in it, and so when people add podcasts hosting companies to an advertising block list as somebody added a tweet to, but also there have been others Megaphone has been added occasionally, and a million ads and various others Then that basically means that you can't download your podcast at all.

James Cridland: 9:26

And the reason why this was spotted it wasn't spotted by this week in tech. It was spotted by Mark Arment from Overcast Because he was getting a ton of emails saying your app is rubbish, marko. It doesn't allow us to listen to my favorite podcast, twitter, and Marko was there going. Well, actually, it's because of this, and so one of the things that Marko was going to be doing in the next version of Overcast is to make those error messages much clearer, so that he has actually already done the tech. He's told me to basically flag and say you're running an ad blocking system and you need to turn the ad blocking system off if you need to listen to this particular show, and we can't control that. So I feel quite sorry for Marko having to deal with an awful lot of angry emails, because that can't be easy, because it's got nothing to do with him at the end of the day.

Sam Sethi: 10:21

Yeah, and I'm sure that the Twitter network was not very happy to be added to a block list either.

James Cridland: 10:27

No, well indeed, and you know. But these block lists are normally run by a couple of well-meaning amateurs who are sitting and not necessarily understanding what happens if you add a podcast hosting company to a block list. So yeah, that's clearly going to be an issue too.

Sam Sethi: 10:45

Lisa LaPorte tweeted out this week can I say tweet, I'm still saying tweet that they have reduced their advertising to one ad per show. Now she framed it within the way that it was from. The advertisers wanted it that way, but I suspect that there's a lack of infantry coming through, because I've been talking about that quite a bit over the last six months.

James Cridland: 11:08

Yeah, there have been. I you know. I wonder what is going on there, I wonder what the deal is. I mean, clearly, you know, we are still seeing economic uncertainties. I believe the phrase it doesn't help when another war starts in some countries. So I think that that is clearly going to cause some issues. But I think that they're actually right in cutting down the amount of ads in shows. Anyway, there have been some very dumb calls from my point of view from radio, people saying you know, we've got away with 12, 13 minutes of ads an hour. Why aren't you guys in podcasting doing that? Well, the reason why we're not doing that in podcasting is because it sounds rubbish, you know, and that's absolutely not the right thing. So, yeah, I think that that would be that, that that would be certainly a mistake there. So, cutting down the amount of ads, probably a good thing.

Sam Sethi: 12:05

What I find really weird.

Sam Sethi: 12:06

I've been a fan of Leo's show for many years and listened for you know, when they were at the twit previous studio and he's always said that his one goal was to get fans to pay him directly and to be able to survive without advertising. And when we interviewed him those months ago and I said to him well, have you had a look at the podcast namespace and have you looked at what Satoshi's are and the ability to get paid directly? And he just totally dismissed it and I was like, ok, I'm not even going to try. But I thought weird, because that would be the perfect model. He's got an audience. He's great at selling reads on his show for advertising. He'd be great at selling the please come and give us money type story Based on the micro payment, because he's already doing that. Saying to people become members of the discord. So again, you know it would be a great way for him to do it, but he just doesn't want to get involved at all.

James Cridland: 13:05

No, and I think that there are two reasons firstly, because you know and we've talked many times about how there are lots of people out there that don't like cryptocurrency and they see this as being buying into cryptocurrency. And you know, and as I've said time and time again, it really isn't. It's just a fairground token. You know, you're not buying into a whole new system of money when you go to the fairground and you buy your fairground tokens to go in, and, similarly, you're not buying into a whole new system of money if you just want to say thank you to a podcaster who you're listening to using using a sat. But I think that there are a lot of people who see Bitcoin and go oh my God, no scam, run, run, run away.

James Cridland: 13:47

And Leo is clearly one of those people, and I think that that's a shame, that he doesn't necessarily understand it, and there's some personal stuff between him and Adam Curry as well which I don't fully understand. But very clearly you know there's an issue there too. So I think you know from those two sides, I can understand why he hasn't jumped in, but I think it is a bit of a shame, but he's not, he's not alone. There are lots of very large podcasters who I think could be doing some very good things with the whole value for value model, including streaming, sat and other things. If only they understood it and they talked about it a little bit more. Yeah.

Sam Sethi: 14:27

Well, we'll see what happens. It was quite interesting. You'll hear in the interview later me and Todd talk about it as well and it's a case of will Leo retire before, before Twitter retires? We'll see.

James Cridland: 14:41

Well, you know, I mean I think Leo is. You know, he's been doing it for a long, long time and doing the same sort of thing on radio for a long, long time as well. So I mean, I think if anybody has earned the right to have a nice, quiet, relaxed retirement, it would be Leo. So, yeah, you know, I mean that was one of the first shows that I ever listened to. I listened to this week in tech, along with CNET's Buzz Out Loud, which was a fantastic show which I used to listen to religiously. And, yeah, and the fact that you know, cnet's Buzz Out Loud has long gone, but the fact that Leo is still going with most of the original guests that he had 20 years ago probably says quite a lot. Yeah Well, wishing well.

Sam Sethi: 15:28

Now moving on. Bloomberg has added bonus content for subscribers on Apple Podcasts, but at the same time, we hear AppStories, a podcast about Apple Apps, has discontinued its Apple Podcast paid subscription. So we were talking about it a few minutes ago, james. Apple subscriptions Good news, bad news.

James Cridland: 15:49

Well, this is what AppStories said about why they discontinued them. We decided to pull the plug on that.

Federico Viticci: 15:57

The better option is to go with an AppStories plus subscription directly from us. It just costs less, you get more with it. We just decided we didn't need the distraction of having that extra layer of subscription. That might confuse some people and not that many people were taking advantage of it through the Apple Podcasts app in any event.

James Cridland: 16:15

And I think that is the you know. The last thing that he said that Not that many people were taking advantage of it through the Apple Podcasts app in any event is the crux of the matter here. My suspicion is that the reason why they've discontinued their Apple Podcasts paid subscription now is that for the first time, they've actually had some numbers from Apple Podcasts that they can read, instead of having this complicated download a tab separated file and rename it in order to actually try and understand how many subscribers you have. You know, that was the big issue with Apple Podcasts paid subscriptions, and I think, now that all of a sudden, apple Podcasts have rolled out some really good analytics, appstories have gone. What the bloody hell are we doing? Wasting our time uploading special audio just for this particular thing when hardly anybody's using it? So, yeah, I can kind of understand what they're talking about there, to be fair, and I think it does point to one major thing here AppStories is a podcast about Apple Apps.

James Cridland: 17:30

If any podcast is going to succeed in terms of getting people to spend money through an Apple Podcasts app remember, it's not available on Android, it's only available on iPhone then it would be a podcast about Apple Apps and the fact that they've pulled away is, I think, interesting.

James Cridland: 17:49

Bloomberg on the other side that's not using Apple Podcasts paid subscription, that is using Bloomberg's existing subscriber service and that bonus content for subscribers on Apple Podcasts is now available automatically. If you've already paid for Bloomberg, you have the Bloomberg app on your phone, then Apple Podcasts realizes that and adds a bit more content for you there. So I wonder whether we're seeing a bit of a move away from specific paid subscriptions with Apple Podcasts and whether we're actually seeing some of the bigger companies going no, we're already charging these people anyway directly. So if they are a direct consumer of our stuff on our own app, then we will add Apple Podcasts stuff in there as well. And I guess with all of this it probably only works with the Apple App System. I'm guessing that if you subscribe directly, then of course the Apple App System isn't going to know that you're a subscriber, will they?

Sam Sethi: 18:58

I'm going to say something slightly odd. I think Apple's to blame for the podcast industry having a free model. Now, let me bear that in mind. One of the things I still find weird is that we all now happily pay for music, films and books. It's just what we do, but there's still a perception in the market that podcasts are free, and I guess it comes from the radio type of model where you don't pay for radio directly or you don't perceive that you're paying for any radio, even if you have to get a license.

Sam Sethi: 19:32

Apple, basically, is the only place where you could get any podcast and just go there and listen for free, and now they're trying to get people to move across to a paid model, while they're offering a free service. At least with Spotify, it is either listen for free but get ads or pay for a subscription, or then many of the other podcast apps are now trying to move to a model as pay as you go, but it's the Apple model of yeah well, you know, everything's still free, really. Now, if Apple said everything's going behind a subscription, just like a Spotify, or it's a per podcast subscription, then the industry would say well, actually podcasts are a payable item, just as music is, and therefore, yes, now I need to decide whether I want to pay the you know what I call the Chinese buffet model. You know we Spotify pay once, eat all you like, or the pay as you go models that you know, podcasting 2.0 we're trying to put forward.

James Cridland: 20:29

Yeah, I mean, you know, maybe I wonder whether or not, from a point of view of you know, I mean, podcasting was always there to be free and open and I think as soon as you start putting paid for stuff where you can only listen if you pay different value for value, of course then you end up essentially not being able to do that in an open way. You have to pay for audible, you have to pay for.

Sam Sethi: 20:53

Spotify. You just don't pay for Apple, and that is what's causing the industry to have this perception that podcasts are free because I don't pay when I go to Apple, so why should I pay anywhere else?

James Cridland: 21:07

Yeah, well, you know, yes. And and of course, spotify just adding audiobooks into Spotify. That hasn't necessarily gone down particularly well either, because the Society of Authors deeply concerned last week, they said, in a press statement to learn that all major book publishers have agreed new limited streaming deals with Spotify. As far as we're aware, no authors or agents have been approached for permission for such licenses. Authors have not been consulted on license or payment terms, and publishing contracts differ. But in our view, most licenses given to publishers for licensing of audio do not include streaming, and they're not. They're not hiding away from the fact that they think that what Spotify is doing in terms of audiobooks is completely wrong. So there's a thing too. So you know we're. They're talking about people getting paid, and the Society of Authors, which is the UK trade union for writers, is deeply uncomfortable with what Spotify is doing?

Sam Sethi: 22:14

Is that just because they're not getting a big enough share of the pie, or is that they just don't want their books delivered in that mechanism?

James Cridland: 22:22

They're basically saying we need publishers themselves to contact authors and agents immediately to inform them of the details of the proposed deal and basically, we need to understand what Spotify is actually doing. And you know there's a there's a ton of, there's a ton of stuff you know all about. You know all about this in in a article that they have made. So, yeah, I mean, again, they're not messing around. It's quite serious from their point of view that they're saying, well, nobody signed any, any license whatsoever. Now, of course, they may have signed licenses with that company that Spotify bought a couple of years ago for the audiobooks and maybe it's hidden away in there somehow. But yeah, who knows quite how that bit works. But yeah, a lot of this is wanting to be paid for the, for the product that you do, or at least reserving the, reserving the rights to be paid. You don't necessarily have to be paid, but reserving the right to be paid, you know, is a good plan.

James Cridland: 23:35

I mean, only yesterday in the pod news newsletter we covered a sleep podcast out which is called rest and that is charging $44.99 a year to listen to podcasts which help you go to sleep and quite a lot of those podcasts. The podcast that they've just got the open RSS feed for and, and they've and they've ended up taking those podcasts in. They've changed some of the names of the episodes, they've changed or removed some of the descriptions and they're basically selling access to free, free content. You know that's. That's a scam in any book, isn't it? I mean, you know and you know, I mean it's a real concern, because the app developer, who is called Evolve Global, also make a very big podcast app, which is called podcast app.

James Cridland: 24:28

They didn't respond to a request for comment, but you kind of you're kind of looking at that and going there are lots of people here who are trying to get money from the stuff that podcasters are giving away free, and on the other side, there's lots of podcasters who are basically saying we're finding it very difficult to earn money in terms of a subscription service, in terms of in terms of other things. So, yeah, I think it's. I think it's really interesting times for creators that, frankly, just want to get paid for stuff, and I suppose that's one of the interesting things around. You know music and what Adam Curry and Dave Jones is doing with, with music and streaming, where there is an, where there is an awful lot of respect there for the, the creator and making sure that the creator is able to get paid from people that can afford to pay them, and I think that's a really admirable thing. But running away with somebody else's content and then charging $45 annual subscription to listen to it, it's just cheeky by a beware.

Sam Sethi: 25:37

That's what I'd say Now. The other thing that I forgot to say when I saw the story from Spotify was the 15 hours of free usage of books before there was a chargeable model. It made me realize this was actually Spotify changing its economic model and maybe testing that in books, because they don't charge on a per time listened basis for anything else. They only charge on a free eat all you like, but pay your subscription in advance model. So suddenly this is the first model I've seen from Spotify that says yep, we're charging you per the time you listen and beyond the 15 hours we'll start charging you for further time, which is a different economic model, which again, is what we're trying to do in the podcast to the O space. Time listened is the value metric we use.

James Cridland: 26:29

Yes, yes, whereas you know, I'm on the other side in terms of time spent listened and I'm there producing a four minute podcast every day, and I'm kind of thinking.

James Cridland: 26:40

I'm kind of thinking, you know, does that? Does that reward content owners for not respecting the time that the audience is giving them? And so I'm kind of, I'm kind of you know, a little bit, a little bit on the on the fence here, but yeah, I mean, I think that there's certainly lots of different ways of the creators can get paid, and I think quite a lot of this is respecting what the creator wants and making sure that the infrastructure is in place to respect whatever the creator wants. If the creator wants to give stuff away for free, great. If the creator wants to charge for it, great. If the creator wants to do various other things with it, then that's absolutely fine as well. But you know, everything that I've I've been, you know, trying to do over the last three, four, five years has been respect whatever the creator wants, because that's the most important thing.

Sam Sethi: 27:36

Now fully agree. Let's move on, though. Bbc is squeezing its budgets. That sounds painful in any shape or form, but it's reported that they're only offering £800 for a two hour music show and people are saying that is not viable. There's no profit in that. Yeah, what's going on?

James Cridland: 27:56

So I mean this has been a problem from the BBC. They haven't necessarily pulled the prices down, it's just that the cost of living has gone up. And so the big broadcaster something else which you might know as Sony Music Entertainment's podcast division. They also make a ton of radio shows and they've basically said no, we're not going to do. We're not going to do these radio shows that we make for the BBC anymore 18 of them, according to the media podcast. They're not going to make any of them anymore because it just doesn't make sense to make them. So here is Chloe Straw from Audio UK. It's not even about making profit.

Federico Viticci: 28:40

Those budgets are not big enough for Indies to even go for them.

James Cridland: 28:44

I mean, you know, in terms of money, not an awful lot of money. Faraz Osman, who works for a company called Gold Waller. He looked into making shows for the BBC and again realized that, yeah, it's just simply not capable to earn money out of it 800 quid for like a two hour show. You're making virtually no margins on that. So at the end of the day yes, something else pulling out of making 18 different radio shows, it makes the BBC. They're running around trying to find other people to make these shows for them.

James Cridland: 29:22

I again, I think that this is an issue with IP more than more than anything else. If you're just producing a music show on the BBC, you're doing it in their studios. You know it's their talent. You don't have access to the, to the talent. You don't even have a say as to who that talent is, but you're producing the production team to go in there and and help that particular show go on the air. So it's not something that you can earn any money out of. It's not something you can turn into a podcast later. You know any of that.

James Cridland: 29:54

And so essentially it doesn't necessarily cover the costs of the salaries of these people to end up doing. I mean, 800 pounds for a two hour show sounds big, but if you remember that you've probably got two days worth of work for that, then that's 400 pounds a day. That's not an awful lot of money in terms of wages to give to give somebody. So, yeah, fascinating to see something else basically turning around and walking away. I should point out that they have also been making people redundant and cutting their their team as well. So perhaps it's not quite as cut and dry as all of this, but you can certainly see that it's going to be some interesting times for the BBC, particularly since they have to spend money with independent production companies. So they're kind of a little bit stuck here. They have to spend that money with independent production companies, but on the other side, independent production companies are increasingly turned around to turning around and saying that we're not that interested in giving them you know, taking this work because it doesn't pay enough.

Sam Sethi: 31:01

Hmm, well, yeah, what's going on with the BBC? It's all going on.

James Cridland: 31:09

It's all going on. I mean, you know, I mean even when you look at stats. It's all going on, isn't?

Sam Sethi: 31:14

it Podcasting up or down. James, when you look at listen notes, it appears as a significant drop in new podcast launches this year. Should we be worried?

James Cridland: 31:24

Well, yes, should we be worried? So a couple of people have been writing doom and gloom articles saying, you know, it's the least amount of new podcast launches ever and we're all going to hell in a handcart and all of that, and I have resisted in doing that. But I saw yet another person writing, you know, oh, a significant drop in listen notes, as if this was a big story. And so, from my point of view, I look at those numbers and I look at the numbers that listen notes also publish about the number of new episodes, which for 2023, is going to be higher than 2022. So the number of podcast episodes being created isn't in decline.

James Cridland: 32:03

I've also spotted a large number of new shows being launched in existing podcast feeds, so it's a new podcast taking the place of a dead one Now that you can't programmatically work out. Is that a new podcast? Because it looks like it's an existing one. It's just changed its name. So, from that point of view, I think there are lots of new podcasts happening, but they're probably happening in existing feeds, so there's probably nothing to worry about there. The podcast index is saying that there's more active podcasts now than there was in August and that seems to be bouncing back, which is nicely, and of course podcast consumption is going up as well. So are we all doomed? Is there a significant drop in podcast launches? I'm not so sure that A there is and B that it matters anyway.

Sam Sethi: 32:53

Oh well, that sorted that out then. Now there's a new podcast company on the block, james, who are they, yes, they're called Caleroga Shark Media.

James Cridland: 33:02

They even sent over a pronunciation guide Caleroga in case we need that, we need it, yeah, because frankly, I'm a big fan, particularly since there is a street in Adelaide called Caleroga Street, which is spelled the same way but pronounced slightly differently, and I was told in no uncertain terms it is not that it's Caleroga, but anyway, yes, they're making short form podcasts. They are already making things like Taylor Swift. Today they're making a show which is all about the Royal Family, which comes out every day. They're all about 15 minutes long and they're starting with 16 different shows. Some of those are brand new and some of those have been going for some time. It's collaboration between the Shark Deck and Caleroga Media and I think it's quite a good idea, frankly, to have a very focused podcast company focused on very short podcasts. Those are things that you can earn significant amount of money from in terms of advertising if you want to, and, yeah, I think that's quite a neat plan.

Sam Sethi: 34:09

Well, we might have this see you on in a couple of weeks time. Now let's have a look around the world, james. What's going on in the world that we know what?

James Cridland: 34:18

is going on in the world. Well, the Latino Podcast Listener Report 2023 published by Edison Research. They had some good numbers coming out of that. Latinos are getting into podcasting much faster than the general population four times faster since 2020 than the general population, which is good. It's a good piece of research which you'll find. Edison Research is spanking brand new website, which is very nice EdisonResearchcom.

James Cridland: 34:47

In Africa, the podcast sessions magazine, which is beautiful, glossy, glossy magazine. The October edition of that was released. You can download it as a PDF. It's a super good magazine. It features some cover stars, lydia KM and Marugi Muni, who are hosts of a podcast called TMI, the Messy in Between, and that's a podcast about life as it is, and super great photography. Such a good looking magazine. And, frankly, why there isn't a magazine of that quality in the US, in the UK, in Australia, I don't know, but well worth a peek at. The podcast sessionscom is, I think, where to get ahold of that.

James Cridland: 35:33

And in Canada, the CRTC, which is the media regulator, is doing its very level best to regulate podcasts and various other things. If you are a podcast online streaming provider which the CRTC tells me is somebody like Apple or Spotify then you will have to register with them by the end of November. If you don't, there will be penalties. Not quite sure what the penalties are, though, and basically the CRTC is wanting more visibility for Canadian and indigenous content, which, on the size of it, sounds quite good, but the CRTC is not the least heavy handed media regulator in the world, so it's going to be interesting seeing quite what the CRTC are actually doing.

James Cridland: 36:28

A lot of people are saying that it's the thin end of the wedge in terms of content regulation into podcasts, which the CRTC is legally required to do, so I think it's most certainly watched this space. Dave Jones said something which I thought was rather lovely on podcastindexsocial Once you've built a large red button, it's very difficult not to press that large red button, so once you've built all of that regulation, it's very difficult not to actually use it. What's going on in Canada?

Sam Sethi: 37:06

Mr Putin, don't press that button Do not press that button. Well, yes, indeed Right, james. Let's move on Job news who's coming and who's going.

James Cridland: 37:16

Well, yes, people news, because obviously we'll talk people for things other than just jobs in just a second. But Jen Oldishaw has been hired as lead of ABC Listen, which is the ABC Radio podcast and audiobook app here in Australia. She was once a radio presenter for Triple J, the youth station. She's been doing lots of very exciting things, so she's a proper radio person. It's always nice to see proper radio people being in charge of radio apps, so congratulations to Jen.

James Cridland: 37:50

Craig Strachan, friend of the show, has been promoted to global head of podcast industry at Amazon Music. I love head of podcast industry. I think that's a fantastic thing. The head of the podcast what's the phrase that Adam and Dave use? The industrial complex? Yes, exactly, the podcast industrial complex. So, yes, so Craig Strachan, global head of the podcast industrial complex at Amazon Music. He's been with Amazon since 2016 and he was head of podcasts for Europe, australia and New Zealand, rather bizarrely. So many congratulations to Craig. And Chris Long has been hired as chief revenue officer at Gemini 13. He was regional vice president of sales at SXM Media. But not just that. We're seeing a bunch of anniversaries coming up. Evo Terror is celebrating 19 years in podcasting, along with someone else who you spoke to, sam.

Sam Sethi: 38:49

Yeah, well you've reported that friend of the show, todd Cochran, has been podcasting, or at least Geeknew Central is 19 years. I'm sure he's been going a little bit longer than that even but I thought we'd reach out to Todd and find out what his journey has been like for those 19 years. What's changed, what stayed the same. But he wasn't really interested in the past, which I loved. He was more interested in the future, talking about his new service, podcast mirror, and what's happening with podcasting to dodo.

Todd Cochrane: 39:18

It's been a fun ride. October 9, 2004. I pulled up a chair to a little desk in a hotel room in Wakewood, texas, and, with a 1495 microphone from Walmart across the street, I recorded the first episode and I introduced it with ACDC back in black. You can't do that. So episode one and two actually went beyond the another somewhere because I took them down. I was afraid I was going to get hit with a copyright violation later on. But yeah, that was, that was. That was the thing you know. It was Well caught.

Sam Sethi: 39:53

The fever early on. What a great track. To start with, those about the podcast, we salute you. That's right, Same right. So yeah, looking back over the 19 years, I mean I know you said it's a 1499 mic and it's a. You know it's a laptop and the internet, but fundamentally, has anything really changed or is it just the same?

Todd Cochrane: 40:53

Ah, yeah, fundamentally it's changed a lot, you know, because you really had to be a geek in those early days and I was running on a content management system called movable type at the time I remember it well, Didn't switch to yeah, didn't switch to WordPress until later, but we really were trying to figure it all out. The biggest challenge really in those early days was hosting, because we all had to do our own thing and by the time or before the first hosting platform came on the market, which was Libsyn or the first one, I was shuffling between like nine or 10 shared hosting accounts. I would move the show like every three days because I'd run out of 500 gigs of bandwidth run out of 500 gigs of bandwidth, run out. But what, you don't need to think about it, those file sizes at the time were small because we were only encoding maybe 32K at the tops in those early days. But you know, things changed pretty rapidly.

Todd Cochrane: 41:49

2005, Apple introduced podcast, iTunes and then we're off to the races really. So from that perspective, no, things haven't changed that much. But you know, definitely being early was a. It helped, you know, from a sense. But also I did a tech show as my Genesis show and still do. There was a lot of tech shows so it wasn't like you know there was. The genre shows was narrow tech comedy and a few others, but so there was a plethora of tech shows that, in those early start days, Give everyone who doesn't know what are the shows that you do so I do Geek News Central.

Todd Cochrane: 42:29

It's a tech show Twice a week week Monday and Thursday. I record that. In the evening On Wednesdays I do the new media show, new Media Showcom, with Rob Gifford. Him and I have been doing that more than 10 years in itself, and then I there's three of us that round Robin on the podcast Insider at Blueberry. So usually we're on a couple episodes a month of the company podcast. But all told I think I told it up here recently it was more than 2,300 episodes and plus 2,000, plus interviews, some that I have received and some that I have given. You know so because, well, the majority of those interviews were done at, like the Consumer Electronic Show, CES show, part of adding content to the, to the tech stack for the, for the Geek show.

Sam Sethi: 43:14

Now you've got Blueberry and you've got multiple products. You know, got WordPress products. You've got other products we're going to talk about shortly. Is the podcast a loss leader to making people aware of Blueberry or is it fundamentally its own separate entity? Where does the podcast sit within the business?

Todd Cochrane: 43:36

Yeah, the two shows that I do for Eat New Central and the New Media Show are not, you know, really designed to drive. It's not a funnel for Rob Boyce or Blueberry, or Blueberry specifically. But why I do a podcast and I was talking in our Facebook group about it yesterday was if there's very few podcast hosting owners, founders, team members that actually do podcasts. So on my team I have a lot of team members that do podcasts. Barry, my CFO and legal officer, you know, he does a travel show. One of the guys that's on our board of directors does a indie music show, and so it's. It's really my philosophy was and has been, if I'm going to talk about monetization, if I'm going to talk about growing a show, if I'm going to talk about consistency, if I'm going to talk about all these things are important podcasting, you better be doing it. Yeah, eat your own dog food, as I say, that's right. You better be doing it. And if and if you're not and you're talking hypothetically be quiet, you don't know what you're talking about, I agree.

Sam Sethi: 44:49

Now, one of the things that you have with both Geeknew Central and the new media show is you've now started to adopt some of these new podcast two to O features, and one of those is lit the live item tag. Yeah, I mean, found it. I mean, has it been challenging, has it been? Oh, okay, now we've just got through a few of the you know glitches. It's pretty smooth. Where are you with it now?

Todd Cochrane: 45:15

You know, you know, having done live literally for more than 10 years for both Geeknew Central and the new media show, and you know, for us it was just an extra step to click a button and say, hey, we're live. And then notify the podcast 2.0 apps at podcastappscom that are capable of showing live audio or video and we're both both up live on audio, we're both up on live and video and those apps. And for me it's been, it's exciting because, you know, I've always been an individual that said I want to control my own destiny, I want to build my own brand, I want to build my owncom, I want I don't want to rely on YouTube or Facebook live or any of these other places to build an audience and to keep the audience, you know, basically engaged. I'm never going to get deplatformed, but at the same time, I would much rather have the audience, if they decide they want to consume live, consume it in an app where they're having conversations same place they're having conversations in, or podcast or you know, regular consumption of podcasts. So I'd rather have them have it there than have it on YouTube or have it on Facebook.

Todd Cochrane: 46:33

Now, granted, the audience is definitely split on where they largely watch? Now, they watch those three places. They watch on YouTube live, they watch on Facebook live and they watch within the podcast apps and, you know, pushing folks to those other apps over time. It's just, you know, it's just an education thing. So I think it's fantastic and really it does give an a person the ability to not be reliant on a logarithm, and that's what you are. When you're chasing YouTube numbers or you're chasing Facebook, it's the logo that you're battling against. Why do that? Why just continue to build your brand on yourcom and use these features to build a native audience. It's all about education on the content creator standpoint too. So if you've started one place and you try to shift people together, it's going to take some work, but I think the live in lit is fantastic and, again, there's some uptake and you know we're working to make it easier for podcasters in all regards.

Sam Sethi: 47:40

I mean it is. We are in the super, super early days of all of this technology. You know, as Adam and Dave like to call it, running with scissors. I mean, I think we know we are literally sticky tape and plaster in some cases trying to do this. But what? What is interesting is you, as a blueberry, as a company, have embraced all of this technology. I saw a stat about the number of sats that have been paid out to your creators. Now, can you remind me what that was and what are you seeing in terms of, you know, from the support calls and sort of feedback generally on how this is being adopted?

Todd Cochrane: 48:24

Well, it's to me, has blown away because we do a 3% fee. So I basically went in and looked at our, our Satoshi account and I was like Whoa, I looked at the number. That's kind of surprise. So I just did a quick math thing, right, I just, you know, I did the inverse and said how you know what are the other 97% per? You know how much did that other 97% amount to? Actually 100%, because it's the fees on top, and just a little over 10 grand and real dollars.

Todd Cochrane: 48:56

Well, you know, I guess I have to go back and look at when we enabled value for value for five months maybe, so not a huge amount, but I was actually actually kind of surprised. And so I mean, you know, something new I'm doing now is like, okay, you know where are those sats going. You know, going back and through and looking at stuff that are coming from and a lot of it's streaming sats, people that are streaming, you know 100 sats a minute or 1000 sats a minute, or they're doing boost and you know 100,000 Satoshi boost and it's. It was. It's interesting to see that now again, it was just again over a number of months, and so I was really pretty surprised and I hadn't been in there and looked for for two, because the first time I looked I said something like I think the first time I looked at it was like maybe they were like $800 or something like that, or 900 or something. And then you know, months later I go back in and I'm like wow what is the support?

Todd Cochrane: 50:00

like so oh, the support is yeah. I mean, are people coming?

Sam Sethi: 50:03

to you going. I don't understand what you're talking about, todd, or is it like oh, this is really cool, I get it. It's pretty quick and you know some of the questions are getting on our more advanced questions. I don't know where is the feedback.

Todd Cochrane: 50:15

Well, so far we did a, we did YouTube shorts not shorts, but you as short of YouTube videos as we could on explaining every single feature. And this is the thing we've had to really do is educate the podcaster that this is a feature. We get all the geek tech. We don't want to get their eyes glazed over and try to break this down at the most simple level and said, listen, all I got to do is go in here, you enable this, you set up, you either use your fountain account, your get out your albie, your get albie account, or you can use your own node If you're so geeky inclined we don't recommend that and we'll automatically link it up, fill the boxes. You set up the splits and the support on it has been virtually nil.

Todd Cochrane: 51:05

Wow, okay, now I reason. I reason. The reason I think it is at this point is we've we've got a lot of businesses come in from other companies that have, so it's a lot of people that want to be involved. They've done a little bit of self, you know self study, they know what the features are and they've come in and adopted. I think there's huge opportunity here, with these new features, to really do cool things with the odd. I think you were the first one who called them features.

Sam Sethi: 51:35

If I remember rightly, you know everyone had been calling them tags or names. Tags or namespace extensions. I think it was you and one of your shows that said, well, let's just call them feature. And I thought good on you, todd, that just makes it really customer friendly. Now, with your adoption of all of these new features, do you think you've created a competitive advantage? Do you see other people leaving other hosts? I mean, I don't know if your data tells you that, but do you see that?

Todd Cochrane: 52:05

Well, you know, let's be honest, we're not the only ones that have done some significant adoption.

Todd Cochrane: 52:11

Rsscom, buzzsprout, rss Blue and a few others have done significant adoption of podcasting 2.0 tags. So I'm not getting customers from there, they're not moving from there, but they are moving from other hosts that have been slow on the uptake and slow on the adoption and people that are impatient and have been asking. Those are types of folks and I'm sure those other companies are gaining customers too, and I know specifically ones usually that are coming because they tell me they're coming and you know we've got some of their wait for us to do some additional stuff before they move. So I think that now the majority of the gain in business has been really from hosts that haven't adopted and we've talked to those hosts and said, hey, how come you're not playing here. But I guess at this point it's their loss in our game. It's not hundreds, you know, but if I can move, you know 20, 25 a month off another service. You know those are great adopts because people don't move when they get out of hosting service. They rarely move. The percentages are very, very good.

Sam Sethi: 53:19

Now a feature or a function of Blueberry was a new thing you launched called Podcast Mirror. Tell me more about Podcast Mirror.

Todd Cochrane: 53:28

Yeah, podcast Mirror has actually been a service we've had. For who? Maybe? 2016, 17. We launched Podcast Mirror and really what Podcast Mirror was was number one. It was a feed burner replacement. This feed burner wasn't staying current. So what we do is the podcast mirrors does exactly as it says. It mirrors the feed that you create on whatever service, whether it be a competitor, whether it be on your own website, whether it be or in SoundCloud, wherever it may be. It copies that mirror and makes an exact mirror of it and then basically that becomes the point that Apple Podcasts and Spotify and everyone else they pull from that URL and it basically designed that service to be a rocket ship and did basically really like load quickly.

Todd Cochrane: 54:20

There's a lot of high volume podcasts that are using Podcast Mirror for years and we made it available for free. Well, if like anything else, we started looking at the cost of what this was costing us every month and it's free for our. Well, it's been again a free for everyone. But we made a change just a couple of weeks ago, put a $60 a year annual fee on it and then we added a number of podcasting 2.0 features. So what's kind of cool about this is you may not want to move to Blueberry, you may want to stay at that non-participating Podcast 2.0 host, but guess what? We made it now so that you can do live, you can do value for value, you can set the medium tag to the type of content it is.

Todd Cochrane: 55:12

So if someone's on SoundCloud and has a music show and they want to participate in this new thing that's going on with music, they can do that, or they can set the medium to podcasts. There's the funding tag, credits. We even support OP3. And it's all channel level features, top level features, because I really to implement something at an episode level would require a monumental amount of work.

Todd Cochrane: 55:35

Because, again, all we're doing is we're taking the feed that was originally created, we're making a copy of it, hosting it on Podcasts Mirror with an address at Podcasts Mirror that loads lightning fast, takes the load off your web server. If you're, again you're on $1.99 or maybe you're over it some place that charges you for too much traffic, which happens a lot as well. Now that we can, now we just inject at the channel level those Podcasting 2.0 features and what it really does is it makes a show immediately able to participate in this new medium, again with a limited number of features live, value for value, medium funding credits and OP3. And, of course, guid. If they don't have a good, we'll put a GUID in there. It does pod ping, it does all those things that you would expect from a host that was engaging and operating. So we started to see some trickle from some people we weren't suspecting that would come over and use it, so it's kind of fun to see that.

Sam Sethi: 56:39

So looking further down the field. I mean that you and I both very heavily involved in in talking about some of the new features. We weren't going to any of those particularly, but one of the things that as a host I've always wanted, and somebody who does a lot of live and a lot of video would blueberry provide a client and service where I could come to blueberry and create a live server and HLS server and pay you extra money on top of my blueberry account? Is that any in the planning around that maybe?

Todd Cochrane: 57:16

It's on my list but I don't have it in the stack yet. If someone wants to do audio streaming, I've got a couple of audio streamers set up with time slots available. If they come over and they're a blueberry host, they say, hey, I need an audio stream from Thursday night from, or Thursday morning from 9 to 11. And if I have this slot, I'll give them the slot. They can use the stream server for audio right now, but I'm just giving slots on something that we pay for. That's not something we built, it's just a service.

Sam Sethi: 57:45

It's a good testing ground for you to see what the usage might be, or anything else. Now you do video, you do a lot of video, but, as blueberry, would you ever provide the alternate enclosure ability for me, as a client of blueberry, to host video? I've spoken to a few other hosts and that seems to be like oh my God, that's nuts. No, no, no Well we've hosted video from day one.

Todd Cochrane: 58:13

Yeah, here's what we've learned is here's what I've learned. 70% of my audience on my tech show listen, 30% watch On RobinEye's new media show. It's like an 80-20 split 80% listen, 20% watch. I think most listeners. I want to have them, the cleanest solution possible. I want them to say I love this audio show. Click, follow or subscribe. Bam, that's what I get and there's no monkey around. I know what I'm going to have, so I try to and I look at this try to play devil's advocate. At the same time. I understand where you want one listing that clicks between audio and video, but maybe streaming stats, if I have any difference right.

Todd Cochrane: 58:58

Same value, right, but again I have two fees with value for value set up in both, so it doesn't matter which one you hit.

Sam Sethi: 59:06

Okay, put your hat on Todd and tell me what's five years from now. What's 19 years from now?

Todd Cochrane: 59:15

I'll give you a 12. Okay, I'll take that, because the AI will be part of every podcast hosting platforms offering. Everyone's going to have something. If they don't, they're not going to be in business three years from now. I think that I'm not talking about an AI voice creating content that, no. But here's what will happen as all this proliferation of AI content, written videos, all this stuff people are not going to know who to trust or what to trust. So people, they're doing original content. I'll include YouTubers as well. People are doing original content audio podcasts, video podcasts, youtube channels where there is a voice that you can trust. They are going to flock to those voices and personalities because you're not gonna know what you're reading, if it's true or not, if it's biased through you, if it's how it's been written.

Todd Cochrane: 1:00:21

Where AI is gonna help podcasters is folks that are a hit, a writer's block, or maybe they're having a hard time coming with questions for a host, or maybe they're been horrible at writing summaries of their episodes. That's thunking work and I stole that word from Google, by the way. That thunking work is what AI is gonna do. It's gonna help, it's gonna assist, won't be the authority. Here's what's gonna end up happening. We're very creative. We're all creators. I consider myself praying, but I can't draw. If I asked to draw something, I draw strict things. So I'm a journey. I'm in that a lot of time, okay, but I can visualize what I want right, and I know the kind of things I wanna bring out in my shows. So, being a creator, you're not gonna give anything up, but the assistance is gonna come with that. Thunking is show notes, maybe questions, creative ideas. That's thunking work. It's gonna be helped by AI. And then the you still have to be the subject matter expert of everything because you're gonna do your content. You're gonna be the SME, the subject matter expert of your content, and then you're gonna have to make sure that you're the subject matter expert of whatever that AI puts out. So this was the summary.

Todd Cochrane: 1:01:44

You know Todd talked about this, this and this and this. He said oh no, I didn't talk about that, it made it up. Let me delete that from the draft and correct that you do the QA on the output and when you hit publish, it's still your product because you've had to edit this, because these AIs are, you know, they're the dumbest they'll ever be. Right now, yeah, exactly, but I think it's good, I think it's gonna help the creative types in some of this stuff, but in the playing field it's gonna be equal, because everyone's gonna be doing the same thing. Everyone's gonna have comprehensive notes. But what does that do then? This is why it's gonna change the podcasting space a lot. You don't write for your audience, you write for Google, and now you're gonna be writing for language models. So the more in-depth your show notes are when a language model comes by and indexes your page.

Todd Cochrane: 1:02:40

So Todd talked about podcasting 2.0. Sam talked about podcasting 2.0, or whatever it may be. Then, as these things evolve, then as search changes, tell me about podcasting 2.0. And there's like, well, here's Sam and Todd talking about this, here's Adam, here's Dave, here's the authorities. And this is not gonna happen right now because it's pretty dumb right now. It's built on data that doesn't shift very much in between models, but over time it will. So in one to three years, the world is gonna change completely for knowledge workers, and I think that podcast hosts are better be you know, I'm probably. If they're not aware of it, then sorry, you know. So I think that's what's gonna happen Now. What's gonna happen for listeners? Well, we just want listeners to engage. We want listeners to be. You know, that's what is the thing that most podcasters care about the most besides growth.

Todd Cochrane: 1:03:44

Someone saying I love your show yeah, interactivity. Someone saying I hate you. Someone saying that sucked or that was great. Or you know, my biggest fan that I had years ago was a hater because he co-co-lust my audience. I would read every one of his hateful comments he sent to the show and the audience would rally around me and they build a stronger user base just because of one, sal. Where have you come back to the show, brother? You know. So, sal, from Brooklyn.

Sam Sethi: 1:04:13

Put him on the space.

Todd Cochrane: 1:04:17

Exactly, you know. So I think that you know we want this listener engagement. What does listener engagement do that keeps us motivated to create content? Because being a content creator, being a podcaster, can be lonely.

Sam Sethi: 1:04:31

Yeah, I remember when doing radio shows it was also very lonely until he got someone calling in. Oh, someone is listening. That's right.

Sam Sethi: 1:04:39

Switching slightly. We both know this person, leo Laporte. He's got a podcast network. He is not very clearly not adopting any of the podcasting 2.0 namespace stuff, which is the weirdest thing in the world, because if anyone's ever listened to Leo, from the beginning he's always talked about wanting to have fans pay him directly. And I'm going it's available. Now, leo, it's available, but he blinkers it. But he's talking about advertising now you know, diminishing quite rapidly. They've gone down to one advert per show now, do you? The question really then is you know I'm looking at the sort of slow demise of a very good network that's been going for 10 plus years and you've been going for 20 years nearly. Do you think advertising within podcasting is going to evolve and grow or diminish? Because nobody wants advertising in their podcast, they just want money. So if we can replace money with micro payments, that direct from fans, is advertising just the sort of hanging around like a bad smell and then we just will see in five years gone.

Todd Cochrane: 1:05:46

First of all, I love Leo, love Lisa, love the team over there at Twitter, but Leo's thinking about retiring, is. You know Leo's close to pulling the plug and Leo is the lynchpin to Twitter and you know I've seen Leo get rid of some people in the past. I thought there was the legacy to continue on your network but Leo made his own business decisions. So Leo for many, many years didn't call podcast a podcast either and called it a netcast. So Leo's been a little slow adopting on some things, but still very successful in his own right. But he came from television, he had the pre-built audience, he had a syndicated radio show. So Leo's operating at a level that 99% of podcasters don't. So if you build a big audience and I'm a big audience, I'm going to say, is above 10,000 listeners, 10,000 players at download you can do very well in monetizing your podcasts through some great host spread advertising and as the bigger you get, you can gain those advertisers on your own or through a partner. Where the problem is, in my opinion, is the partners have now started to employ a whole bunch of tech that is not beneficial to the content creator, where in this world of everyone has to be, can't have their feelings hurt and advertisers are a risk adverse to someone saying that something they shouldn't. I think you can do well. If you have an advertiser relationship that is built upon trust and providing value and you love the product, you can endorse that and do very, very well. The problem I run into now with advertising is I listen to some shows and there's an ad break every seven minutes there's three, to add. Someone droning on about something they really don't believe in. It's absolute crap. So get on my soapbox a little bit. Media buyers are lazy. They are lazy. They have ignored 90% of podcasters don't want no advertising to begin with. So let's just throw that out. Let's say 10% and that's being generous or being monetized. Today that leaves you 40% of podcasts that want advertising. That inventory is empty. It's setting to be filled because media buyers have been lazy and not bought down into it Some of the most engaging and beautiful audiences that are out there. So I think advertising can work. But you are now living in a world where you say one word and, boom, you're off the platform. You've had your ads pulled. So I think there's a way forward.

Todd Cochrane: 1:08:33

I think the way things are going now, where automation the automation is what they're trying to do is trying to build volume and then in case and at this point the automation is hurting content creators. So where value for value comes in, it's hard for a content creator to say, hey, can you provide time, talent or treasure? I think the talent is easy Asking someone to support the show, maybe be a moderator, maybe help with social talent being, maybe submitting album art or whatever it may be Some sort of maybe ideas for the show episode. The treasure piece is the hard part and you have to ask and I don't want to buy me a coffee that doesn't work, that doesn't keep the insurance and the lights on in this place. So until people start learning to support, if you provide value and you get monetarily value back, whether it be in dollars or in Satoshi's, I think Satoshi's at this point are largely a feedback mechanism.

Todd Cochrane: 1:09:47

I've collected a lot of Satoshi's. I can't complain. I've done well personally, probably $600 or $700 in donations on Satoshi's so far, but at the same time, my Vyap funds that come in via PayPal donation probably equal just about that much in the same amount of period too. So again, it's a mixed piece. I think they can coincide with one another, but a lot of these automated systems that 90% of podcasters will never have to deal with are hurting that 10%. But maybe those podcasters need to stand up and say stop.

Sam Sethi: 1:10:22

Yeah, I guess my question to you is trying to fast forward. What is the crossover timeframe in your mind between people who are reliant on advertising as their monetization, which we know is just a bad way of doing it because there is no micropayment, so monetization through advertising was the option, but nobody wants a DII ad injected into the middle of their conversation. Nobody does right.

Todd Cochrane: 1:10:50

Well, it's as planned and prepared.

Sam Sethi: 1:10:53

Yeah, but even then you're only doing it because you want money. I mean, how many squares based ads do we want? And you know my bad, that's true. So I guess if you knew, going back to you know, if you looked at the amount, oh, if I could go all the way back.

Sam Sethi: 1:11:10

Well, no, if you could go all the way forward, actually more to the point, oh forward. So if you could say, right today I'm not saying you, but on average I make so much per episode through advertising, at what point do you think your cross or the industry will cross over where micropayments is actually the bigger revenue value generator than advertising, at which point the content creator can go. You know what Screw ads. I'm now making more than enough money through this model. Are we talking five years or hopefully not 19 years?

Todd Cochrane: 1:11:44

Oh it's, that's a loaded question. Because if you only have 1,000 listeners today, 1,000 engaged listeners, and you run one ad spot on a traditional CPM, you make a whopping $25. Yeah, but what if those what it so for smaller shows and value for value? What if 1,000, let's say 10% of those 1,000 send you a dollar a month in sats Yep Equivalent value, then you've already replaced your ad. If you're 10,000 and you cross that over, OK, 10,000 downloads an episode, you could potentially make $250 an episode. You do four episodes a month. That's $1,000. You have to use this analogy to go and say where does it cross? You've got to kind of do a little bit of simple math. And again, it's about getting the audience, training the audience and providing value and getting that and I hate to say train. That's probably something that's cringing out there to make them understand hey, you want to support this show. I don't have an advertiser, please, time, talent or treasure, and it can work. It can.

Todd Cochrane: 1:12:58

I think that I would consider my audience, the size of the audience I have. If just 10% donated every month, it wouldn't have to be a lot. I've always said $1 to $2. And if, actually if 100% of my audience gave a dollar a month, I could hire four people. There could be some significant changes. So let's say 10% or 5%, because that's all you're really ever going to get. Maybe 5%, 6%, 7%, maybe the audience will donate. So if you figure 7% of your existing, let's say you have 1,000, that means 70 people. If they give you $1 to a month or more, it's a minimum and again, it doesn't have to be $1. It could be $100. They got that enough value out of it, or $1,000. I've heard some contributors to Adam and no Agenda Wow, woo, a couple of thousand bucks. I'm like holy cow.

Sam Sethi: 1:13:58

Yeah, exactly, talk about value it wasn't me, it wasn't you, it wasn't me.

Todd Cochrane: 1:14:02

It wasn't me. So those are fans that you love, those types of fans, and I think there is a path forward. It just takes a mindset change. And here's the thing Big shows are going to continue to monetize. The 10% that are monetizing are going to monetize. Let's take the 40% that can't get an advertiser if they wanted one, unless they just want to run programmatic and I'm talking about when they want one. I mean one that would pay a host. Read it sure can get $25 or more CPM when programmatic is anywhere between 7 and 15?. I think you have the option, you have the ability there. If you go Valley for Valley from, you know it's starting early and even adopted now. I mean been podcasting for 19 years. I think over time you can build that, build that revenue. But you got again. You got to. You got to do good, you got to put out great content.

Sam Sethi: 1:14:59

Todd, thank you so much. Thank you on behalf of the industry for the last 19 years of what you've done. Hopefully we are here for another 19 years, maybe, maybe you will. Maybe wait not in terms of you might be doing a, you know, a Leela Portland and leaving on a steam ship somewhere, but hopefully not and speak to you.

James Cridland: 1:15:19

Thank you, todd Cochran, the very excellent Todd Cochran, and many congratulations. 19 years and Podcast mirrors. Answer. Super interesting a tweet from Daniel J Lewis which will go into pod news on Monday. He says, in case you're wondering, you can successfully proxy a podcast feed with podcasting 2.0 features Using feed burner, even if you're using the live item tag. It goes through feed burner absolutely fine, different to the podcast mirror, which allows you to add Additional features. But if you just want to proxy an RSS feed yourself, then, yeah, feed burner will Automatically just pass through all of the tags that it doesn't. It doesn't understand, and all of that works quite nicely. It doesn't support pod ping, though, so just bear that in mind, but yes, there's a thing. So, yeah, feed burner also something that you might want to have a look at if you don't need to add some of the tags for the podcast index. The tech stuff text on the pod news weekly review.

James Cridland: 1:16:25

If that sounded a bit like tech stuff, and this is even more tech stuff. It's the stuff you'll find every Monday in the pod news newsletter. Here's where we do all of the tech talk. Sam, are you going to say AI to me?

Sam Sethi: 1:16:36

I am so drink everybody, drink, drink, drink. No, look, last week we talked about Spotify's AI and how Diary of a CEO, as an example, was dubbing Steven's voice, but it sounded like Steven in Spanish and he was very pleased because his girlfriend's clearly Spanish and his Future in laws could listen to him. But I was saying what was the tech behind that? And it seemed to imply it was open AI.

Sam Sethi: 1:17:02

Well, this week, 11 labs which is another very clever voice AI platform has unveiled new AI dubbing features where your voice Translation tool can convert spoken content to another language in minutes while preserving this is the critical part the voice of the original speakers. So if you don't want to use the clever way that Spotify has done it with open AI, you could just go to 11 labs who are offering a service to do this. I haven't tested it, but I think it will be really interesting to see whether your voice, james, actually sounded like your voice in Spanish or another language. They do Hindi as well, james, so we could have you doing Hindi in another language. That'll be a fascinating.

James Cridland: 1:17:45

Well, I think you and Hindi would be good too. Yes, I think it would definitely be worthwhile giving that a go. I'm presuming, as you are, as you know everybody, I'm presuming, that you know the CEO of 11 labs. To you, no, not this time.

Sam Sethi: 1:18:01

No I. Know enough people who do so. I could probably get to them.

James Cridland: 1:18:07

Well, we'll see if we can get hold of them, because that would be, because that would be interesting to give it a go. There's tons of these AI dubbing features going on and and I would think that it's really interesting to give them a go, see what they sound like. Particularly, I would be interested as I think I said last week, I'd be interested in hearing non-English Content being translated into English and we have this sort of view, don't we that?

James Cridland: 1:18:35

well, it's, it's our English content that the foreigners want to listen to, and I, I actually think that it's rather the reverse. I'd love to listen to some, you know, japanese podcasts. That would be amazing. So, yes, it'd be Interesting to hear those. Hear those two. I would have thought leave it with me.

Sam Sethi: 1:18:53

I'll see if I can find someone. Now Amazon has launched a self-service podcast advertising tool in the UK. What's that, james?

James Cridland: 1:19:00

Yes, they have. So if you want to, you can use this particular Advertising tool to basically by advertising both on Amazon music shows you know so, shows available on the Amazon music app but also on Wundery as well. But it'll also, by the looks of it, also work With third-party publishers, apps and sites via something called Amazon publisher direct. Not quite sure what that is, but nevertheless it's interesting seeing Amazon jumping into podcast advertising, which is nice. Pod chaser announcing something quite similar. They've announced a thing called air checks, and air checks is a tool that allows you to Listen to a podcast ad on a podcast, so if you have bought a podcast ad, it will automatically sit there, listen to it and work out whether or not the, the people, did a very good job or not of doing your live read or whatever it might have been. So Some quite neat stuff there from a casts pod chaser, which is good, and you know even more of this stuff.

James Cridland: 1:20:07

Sonnet and podder announcing a partnership Combining sonnets content analysis with podder's demographic data all to do with targeting and making sure the advertising works really well. Now there have been a few new exciting things happening this week Spotify for podcasters beginning to roll out a set of features which they first announced a podcast movement. One of those is best place to start, which is, you know, featured episode. But the other thing is recommendations and being able to recommend individual shows on your Spotify podcast page that you want to recommend. You know I listen to these shows and I think that you might like these particular shows. That is a thing which, in terms of open podcasting, is called the pod roll and was an idea of Kevin Finn From Buzzsprout and Sam. You're supporting pod roll now in pod fans.

Sam Sethi: 1:21:08

Yeah, we have been for a while because you kindly Self-rolled a pod roll. You added three shows which we do a new podcast trailers, pod news extra and Upon use daily or weekly depending on which one you were looking at and but that was you doing it yourself and buzzcast did that as well. But there wasn't a way for everybody else, who wasn't technical enough to do that in a just standard UI. So last night we rolled out pod rolls as part of our creators admin dashboard, so now you can just go into your creators dashboard, click on the tab that says pod rolls, do a search for any podcast you want and simply click add to pod roll and it appears in a tab on your podcast page and that's it.

James Cridland: 1:21:57

Yeah, that's very nice. And so you've added a few. You've added one for Adam Curry so you can actually see all of the shows that he might want to promote from no agenda, and I think you've also Added one for Ainsley Costello as well. So, yeah, which I think is a very, is a very cool thing. So, yeah, that looks, that looks a smart, a smart plan.

Sam Sethi: 1:22:21

It's just a very simple way For the you know it creates just to do it without having to get their sleeves rolled up and work out how to do it in native RSS. We've also added and that'll be going out on Friday, which is today, a podcast pinning. So you described, I think you said, spotify.

James Cridland: 1:22:43

Yes, that's right place to start, best place to start, which is what Spotify calls it.

Sam Sethi: 1:22:47

Yep, well, we've done something very similar. So at the top of your feed will be your trailer. When someone listened to your trailer, that will fade and then you as a creator, again in your admin dashboard, can go in and just simply pick whichever episode you might like to feature at the top of your feed as your starting point for your feed. So, yeah, it's called podcast pinning in the open index, in the podcast index namespace. Yeah, and we've implemented podcast pinning as well this week.

James Cridland: 1:23:18

Well, that's a very cool thing, so worthwhile taking a peek pod. Fansfm Is where to go for that. I'm sure we'd look at some events and awards coming up indeed. Yes, well, the signal awards have just happened, actually. Well, the winning, the winning Ceremony, is going to happen in a couple of weeks time, but they've announced the winners already, which is a bit weird. Audible won the signal company of the year. There were 130,000 votes in the public voting stage of the signal awards as well. So what I ended up doing is I ended up putting together a list of the winners that they have sent, that they have sent me, which turns out isn't all of the winners, which is, which is nice of them, but anyway, a list of the winners which they sent me. But using the the pod news podcast directory, we've been able to link to all of the platforms that those shows are on. We've been able to show all of the hosting companies as well, and a little button that you're seeing more and more in the pod news newsletter, which is a button where you can play the trailer, which is probably a good thing. So, yeah, so there's a bunch of that Going on in there, if you wanted to take a peek and many congratulations to she's a ten times five who won the award for best conversation starter. They are hosted by Buzzsprout, so congratulations to them, and a bunch of other shows in there as well. Worth a peek in the pod news newsletter.

James Cridland: 1:24:58

Also coming up the aphros and audio podcast festival, which is in a couple of weeks time in Baltimore in Maryland in the US. The 28th annual webby awards are now open. There's a early entry deadline, which is Friday, october the 27th. The way that these normally work is that they continue Having deadlines until the end of the year, but it's cheaper if you enter now. And the independent podcast awards 2023 are happening in London on October the 30th. And finally, on the move, I will be in Munich in Germany in a couple of weeks time. What else is going on? Pod con mx, which is happening in Mexico City in early November. That will happen in Mexico, presented by rsscom, and I'm speaking there as well, so looking forward to that. More events, both paid for and free, at pod news as virtual events or events in a place with people, and if you're organizing something, tell the world about it's free to be listed.

Announcement: 1:25:58

Pod news, net slash events Boostergram corner corner corner on the pod news weekly review.

James Cridland: 1:26:06

Oh, it's our favorite time of the week, sam, it's Boostergram corner. Have we had any? We?

Sam Sethi: 1:26:10

have. Thank you for people sending those in Gene bean. I'd love it if more podcasts registered with op3 to promote others to also do so via peer pressure. Normalizing open statistics would do a lot to help the industry, in my opinion as a bystander with a small show. And thanks for the row of ducks to to tune.

James Cridland: 1:26:30

Thanks, gene bean. Yes, and I completely agree with that. I think that op3 is a super exciting thing. So I did some work this week on the pod news website where if you go to the To the podcast page for a show which is being measured by op3, it goes off and it collects the data For that particular podcast so you can see instantly in that page how well that podcast is is doing.

James Cridland: 1:26:56

And I think certainly if you are asking for people's money, you should be open and transparent. Being open and transparent is always a good thing about what they're actually Paying for and how many people that podcast is actually reaching, and so sticking that on on op3 is a good thing. Quite apart from anything else it allows. It allows us to be open and transparent about everything that's going on in the podcast industry as well. So it's definitely a good thing. It's completely free op3 dot dev and you can go in and and and do that. And I noticed that Gene bean was listening at on the 8th of October At about 9 o'clock at night, because I can see all of his lovely streaming sats. I was getting 20 sats a minute From Gene bean. So thank you for listening on cast-o-matic as well, I appreciate that very good.

Sam Sethi: 1:27:54

Me amortals are firing down. Friend of the show. Keep me informed as well. Sam, would love to meet in person if you come to when Briss Vegas.

James Cridland: 1:28:03

Briss Vegas. Yes, that's what some people call it. I don't call it Briss Vegas. I think it's a dreadful name. But, yes, brisbane land is another one. Run, run away, run away. So, yes, of course, karen lives here as well, in in me and gin, and, yes, he would be. We should, we should have a podcasting, podcasting get together. But it would basically be him. Indeed, it would be Satan's lawyer, as Adam Curry calls him. Jeva Bell, who's a lovely man, and it would be, and it would be me and that one. That would basically Basically be it, I think, but nevertheless, and John Chichi as well, if we can, if we can. I've never met John. It would be lovely to get him out as well. So, yes, that would be a good thing to now.

Sam Sethi: 1:28:49

Karen did, I have to say, a really good podcast this week on Valley for Valley. He reviewed all of the new podcasting 2.0 apps and did a fantastic job. So well done. Thanks, karen, for doing that.

James Cridland: 1:29:01

Yeah, no, indeed, indeed, that's always a good, always a good plan, and thank you to Dave Jones who sent us 10,000 sat Spotify. He says not supporting the transcript tag is just a complete head shaker, complete nonsense. Yes, I would agree with that. I discovered only yesterday that that pod bean supports the podcast transcript tag. It's not listed anywhere as supporting it, but it does and it's got all. It's got everything in place. It's it does all of the SRT files and everything else. It's a very good thing. So really surprising that Spotify don't support that. Really surprising, frankly, that other podcast apps don't support that, particularly including Apple as well. Such a head shaker when there are so many people who are doing that. So, yeah, I would completely agree with with with Dave, you know on that.

Sam Sethi: 1:29:54

Yeah, no, I think what we have now is a namespace wall. Really. We have Apple's namespace, we have Spotify's namespace and we have the open namespace from podcast index and you know, pick your, pick, your namespace.

James Cridland: 1:30:08

Yes, except, of course. Except, of course, apple and Spotify. The new things that they are doing in their Systems aren't open, so they're not using RSS. They're using whatever it is that they want to end up using, which. I Understand why they're doing that, but that's not a very helpful thing. Apple only this week, for example, carried something about kids podcasts and was basically saying Please make sure that you are saying somewhere in the description of your show what age range you're aimed at and you're there going. Have you not considered that that might be a really good tag, just to add. So it's, yeah, it's a little bit frustrating.

James Cridland: 1:30:50

I do want to say thank you to the many people who listen to us while streaming Streaming sats, because we don't always mention them and it's a useful thing. Gene bean Sending in 20 sats to listen. Mere mortals Sending in now, this is what I'm getting in my in my albie, so it may well be more. Probably gene bean is sending 50 or something, but I'm seeing mere mortals. So that's Kyren Sending a good, a good nine sats a minute, which is nice. Dave Jackson sending in 24 sats a minute. Thank you, dave, much appreciated. The late bloomer actor also listening as well, as what's he giving four sats, so I'm getting that. That's 10 sats a minute.

James Cridland: 1:31:33

Potentially Kevin Finn From Buzzsprout. Hooray, our sponsors. Kevin sending us 27 or sending me 27 sats a minute. Name and shame them. Oscar Mary 47 sats a minute, I'm getting from that. And Adam Curry Sending us 95 sats a minute, or rather sending me 95 sats a minute.

James Cridland: 1:31:56

As I say, all of these Probably after the split, because I don't fully understand what I'm looking at in terms of, in terms of Albie, but that's, but that's a super kind thing. And Dave, dave Jones, of course, also sending us stuff in there too. So everybody that is streaming. Thank you so much for that. Streaming sats is a good thing If you do get value from what we do. The pod news weekly review is separate From pod news salmon. I share everything from it. We really appreciate your support so we can continue making the show and continue affording a nice beer together once in a while. You can become a power supporter, a weekly dot pod news net, or you can support us with sats by hitting that boost button in your podcast app. Is there? Is there a birthday happening in your, in your household, soon? Oh, yes.

Sam Sethi: 1:32:45

Yes, well, look, that's my wife's birthday. It was yesterday, but we're having a surprise birthday tomorrow. She doesn't know, she never listened to this podcast, she'll never hear about it. So we're fine, we can talk about it. We had a lovely night at the pig hotel, if anyone knows what the pig hotel is in. Yeah, so we were doing some wine tasting there and we're off to Barolo in Italy next week, so I won't be here. James, I'll be sipping a red right beanor, as you call it, but a lovely bottle of Barolo or 10.

James Cridland: 1:33:15

Yes, well, I'll need to find somebody. I'll need to find somebody else to do this show. Would anybody like to do this show with me next week? Email Editor. A pod news? No, that would be a fine thing. So, yes, well, I hope you enjoy that and hope that she enjoys her surprise Thing and that she's not sitting there by the side of the door having a listen to this.

Sam Sethi: 1:33:41

Yeah, exactly, she did pop in 30 seconds ago, but she's gone now. She's gone for a spa day with one of her best friends. So, no, she's very nice. Yes, now James, what's been happening for you?

James Cridland: 1:33:51

I have been mostly doing tedious little bits of coding which I needed to do in order to Fix things. I've managed to do a very good thing, which is very tedious and dull, but my database kept on filling up and I was. I didn't understand why I had so many database connections and I thought it was my crappy code. Anyway, it turns out to be the way that I configured a different box on my system and I fixed that now and and everything is working as it should have been doing three years ago. So, yes, so thankfully, all of that is now has now gone away and I needn't worry too much about all of that. But, yes, so accepting that everything is good, and, yeah, I might. My week has basically been Trying to stop the pool from turning green.

James Cridland: 1:34:45

It's a hard life in Australia. I'll tell you and, yeah, and I think I've, I think I've understood a little bit more. I tell you what you know. If you're technical as I think I am right, trying to understand how a pool pump works and trying to understand how this really deeply complicated pool pump Timer thing works, I I thought that I understood it all and it turns out that I really didn't understand half of what it, what it is that I should have understood. Okay, yeah, it's super complicated, but anyway, it's never a good color, james.

Sam Sethi: 1:35:21

No.

James Cridland: 1:35:23

Indeed, indeed, it's not not always good, but still no. Apart from that, everything's all, everything's all good. So that's so, that's lovely, and I think that's it for this week.

Sam Sethi: 1:35:34

Indeed, you can give feedback to James, not by sending us a booster gram. If your podcast app doesn't support boost, what is he doing? Get a new one from pod news dot net. Slash new podcast apps.

James Cridland: 1:35:45

Yes, our music is from studio dragonfly, our voice service, sheila D. We use clean feed for our main audio and we're hosted and sponsored by Buzz Brout. Podcast hosting made easy get updated every day. Subscribe to our newsletter at pot news net.

Todd Cochrane: 1:36:02

Tell your friends and grow the show and support us the pod news weekly review will return next week. Keep listening.