James Cridland: 0:00

It's Friday, the 20th of October 2023.

Announcement: 0:04

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

James Cridland: 0:13

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

Gene Liverman: 0:16

and I'm Gene Liverman in Dark Georgia.

James Cridland: 0:19

Yes, In the chapters. Today YouTube is moving on. The IAB released its podcast by a checklist. Apple Podcasts makes some changes and podcasters are the most trusted media personalities in the UK and also I'm Steve Goldstein from Appleify.

Jay Nachlis: 0:38

Media and I'm Jay Nackles from Coleman Insights, and later we'll be talking about the new rules of podcasting on YouTube.

James Cridland: 0:44

They will. This podcast is sponsored by Buzzsprout. Last week, 2,868 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 is truffle hunting in Italy and tasting Barolo. I've got no idea what Barolo is, so I'm joined by Gene. Who are you, gene?

Gene Liverman: 1:15

Where are you? I am in Georgia in the United States and I am an IT professional by day and a podcaster part-time and a general home automation enthusiast.

James Cridland: 1:28

Oh, home automation. Blimey, how long have you been in podcasting?

Gene Liverman: 1:33

I started podcasting by putting out one for my church, just putting out our church sermons as a podcast several years ago, and that got me kind of hooked on the idea. But it took a long time to find something to do as my own podcast.

James Cridland: 1:47

I've been doing my own now for just over a year, volunteer technologist at volunteertechnologistcom, and we would recognize you, not for your real name or where you are, because we've not heard your voice before, but we would recognize you. Why? Well?

Gene Liverman: 2:02

our boost into the show is Gene Bean on a regular basis, and I'm also pretty active in the podcast index. Master done, you are indeed yes you're all over that thing.

James Cridland: 2:12

So thank you so much for doing that. Home automation, eh yeah. What sort of systems are you using?

Gene Liverman: 2:20

I am a big fan of Home Assistant and I use a variety of different things, but it just all those routine and mundane things we have to do, like turning off every light when we leave and stuff like that. I like to not have to do that. I like to let something do it for me.

James Cridland: 2:37

Well, maybe we'll find out a little bit more about that later. Shall we look at the week's news.

Gene Liverman: 2:42

Sure, so YouTube is probably the big story this week. Youtube is now rolling out their RSS ingestion tools to podcasters, and they had a big chat with podcast hosting companies this week too. But advertising won't be allowed, is that right, james?

James Cridland: 2:55

Yeah, advertising won't be allowed, so it's kind of hidden away in the RSS best practices document, but if you have 30-second ads in your shows, then you won't be able to have those. So this show is okay because this show has sponsorship and it's host-read sponsorship and that's all good, but advertising won't be allowed at all, which is a thing. I mean. We got a boost, didn't we? From the Optimal Living Daily podcast and yeah, it looks as if they're a little bit surprised, doesn't it? In terms of what their boost says? Yeah, it absolutely does.

Gene Liverman: 3:32

It said yeah, I found where I can connect RSSV to YouTube Studio. Boo, Term of the service makes it sound like I can't because I run programmatic ads. Yes, you can't. Sounds like it'd be a real pain.

James Cridland: 3:44

Yeah, exactly, so when we record this, youtube haven't yet done their big talk to the podcast hosting companies. I know where it is, but it's at one o'clock in the afternoon, eastern time, and there's no chance of me being awake for that. So, yes, so I won't be doing that and anyway, I'm not invited. But yeah, it'd be interesting to be a fly on the wall in terms of that and to learn what some of the podcast hosting companies think of all of that. My understanding is that they'll be able to turn off podcast ads by IP address, which is what they'll probably end up having to do. There is a user agent as well that YouTube is using, but you probably don't want to use a user agent because that's an easy way to get every single podcast that you listen to ad free.

Gene Liverman: 4:34

Come on, maybe let them do that. That would work out really well for the rest of us.

James Cridland: 4:38

Yeah, exactly, so that would be fun. But yeah, we will see. What's your sort of thoughts on YouTube? Jumping into the podcasting world?

Gene Liverman: 4:49

I can see why they're doing it and I can see why a lot of people are really excited about it. One of my best friends actually said that he only gets podcasts and other things through YouTube because the video keeps him engaged, even if it's just the moving pictures. But I don't think it's good for podcasting as a whole. I think it's very much like what a lot of people have said, that it's bringing everybody to the end and then convince everybody that YouTube's the only place to do it and basically try and kill off everybody else. It doesn't seem like a good thing for podcasting in general to me.

James Cridland: 5:22

Yeah, I would probably agree with that, and I think you don't need a podcast hosting company really, if you're going to be just podcasting in YouTube. There's no opportunity for people to sell advertising, as we just heard, because they don't want the advertising.

Gene Liverman: 5:36

I mean, that's where Doodle makes all of their money.

James Cridland: 5:39

Yeah, exactly, and if you're lucky enough to be a big podcaster, then YouTube will share some of the money it's making from your content with you, which is very kind of them. So we will see quite how all of that works. But having said that, definitely from a consumer point of view, consumers are really interested in podcasting through YouTube. At Podcast Movement there was a great piece of research into YouTube for podcasting. It was from Amplify Media and Coleman Insights and it seems probably right now is a good time to learn more about what that research said. So I spoke with Steve Goldstein and Jay Nacklis and started by asking Steve what is a podcast?

Steve Goldstein: 6:21

Well, we seem to be moving into yet a new era in podcasting. New era is, I think, where every couple of years, now it feels like it's every couple of months, and so I think the question in front of us right now, with the ascension of YouTube, is a podcast just an RSS feed, or is it something different? Can it be video? The study that we just did demonstrates clearly regardless of whether you are a YouTube user or Spotify or Apple, wherever you get your podcasts, there is a clear sense that video can be a part of it.

James Cridland: 6:59

So you shared a study the new rules of podcasting on YouTube. It's obviously been a big week for YouTube this week with talking to podcast hosts, with emailing people saying you should be on YouTube with rolling out RSS ingestion as well. Jay, what did the study say and, first of all, how did you conduct it?

Jay Nachlis: 7:20

Well, we made sure that it was a really big, broad sample. So we talked to a thousand podcast consumers. They were as young as 15 and as old as 64 across the United States and when we were thinking about the methodology and how to design it, we really thought it was important that we didn't use the word listen. We've seen in a lot of research that that's a screener that's used. Do you listen to podcasts?

Jay Nachlis: 7:48

And if we're really trying to ask that question of how people define podcasts and how they're truly consuming podcasts and how they define it, then we thought that would be kind of disingenuous and could potentially bias the sample. So, although we recognize it's not the greatest word in the world, we use the word consume and consumption and so, particularly as we went through, particularly the first half of it, we use that and then listen and watch as we get a little bit later. So the study was kind of designed as a full funnel in the beginning, where the first half of it all 1000 podcast consumers got to answer the questions and then, as we got into the percentage of people that specifically use YouTube to consume their podcasts, then the second half of it focused on that.

James Cridland: 8:36

So, steve, what did the study say in terms of what a podcast is? Does everybody say it's an RSS feed, or does everybody talk about it being audio?

Steve Goldstein: 8:46

No, I think it's just Todd and Rob that talk about RSS feed being essential. No, the question was is podcast audio or video? And 75% said yes, it's audio or video, only 22% said audio only and only 3%, not surprisingly said video.

James Cridland: 9:10

Yeah, so there's quite a lot of people who are saying that podcasts can come with video now, and I'm presuming that that means that the research says that YouTube was a very preferred app for consuming podcasts. Is that what it ended up saying?

Jay Nachlis: 9:26

Yeah, it was the biggest. 60% of all those podcast consumers say that they consume podcasts on YouTube. Spotify was not too far behind right around 52, 53%, and then Apple was in a distant third. One thing that was interesting about when they talked about which platforms they're using to get their podcasts was that YouTube music showed up in the top 10. And we were pretty intentional in this study to make sure that we were specific, that YouTube and YouTube music were different apps. Obviously, that's not a perfect science. There will be some confusion, but YouTube music showed up in I think it was in ninth place already. Somewhere around 15% said that they were using it for podcasts, which, considering they really only got in the game a few months ago, we thought was an impressive first showing for them.

James Cridland: 10:20

Yeah, how did Google podcasts do? Just as a matter of interest, because normally what happens when they announce that they're going to close something is that everybody starts using it. They were number two.

Steve Goldstein: 10:31

Actually, in all seriousness, one of the big findings is that podcast consumption on an app is not binary 72% of consumers are using multiple apps for consumption. And if I could just throw some color on that, I'm teaching a course at NYU and 100% of the students are on an iPhone an Apple iPhone but they are using Spotify and they are using YouTube almost universally. At least the two apps are being used because they are customizing their consumption.

James Cridland: 11:13

That's interesting and you must have very rich students. Steve, Is there a difference between younger people and older people in terms of podcast consumption?

Jay Nachlis: 11:22

One thing that was kind of surprising to us in this study was this kind of demarcation line above and over the age of 25. If you were over 25, you were more likely to use YouTube for podcasts and if you were under the age of 25, Spotify was the line. I think a lot of people intuitively would have thought it'd be the other way around.

James Cridland: 11:41

Now Adam Bowie did some research last weekend. He suggested that only eight of the top 25 shows in the UK were on YouTube. Did you ask anything about whether people's favorite shows were on YouTube already?

Steve Goldstein: 11:54

Indeed, we did so. The study was divided into two sections. The first section, as Jay indicated, was a large overview of the market, and then we zeroed in on people who use YouTube. They indicate that YouTube is their favorite app for podcasts, and 24% so really a quarter said that they could not find their favorite podcast on YouTube. And, as I like to say, the lottery fits in here you can't win if you don't play, so why not put the podcast up on you?

James Cridland: 12:31

Yeah, I mean, obviously their favorite podcast is this podcast and we're on YouTube, so obviously that's kind of okay. So what should we be doing as podcasters then?

Jay Nachlis: 12:42

Well, I think it's different for every podcaster, right Like? One of the first things that I think Steve and I felt was very important to get across in this study was this isn't a prescription to say that every podcaster should be on YouTube the same way. Some podcasts, for example, are more conducive to using YouTube certain ways than others. Sometimes it makes sense, if you're doing a sports podcast, to have the two hosts talking. For a fictional storytelling podcast, that's going to be something completely different. Sometimes you're going to want to use animation, sometimes you're going to want to show the live hosts, and sometimes maybe you don't necessarily put your podcast on YouTube. But we do think, from a marketing perspective, that there's really no reason that a podcaster can't find a way to be on YouTube. One of the things that we thought was quite stunning was how big the recognition and usage of YouTube shorts was, particularly in the terms of how people are discovering new podcasts with that medium. So really, there's some application for YouTube for every podcaster.

James Cridland: 13:52

All right. So you're suggesting having a look at YouTube shorts, making sure that that is a thing that you're in, if that makes sense for your individual show. Is there anything in terms of the metadata, the information that we put on YouTubers, podcasters? Is that something that we should be focusing on?

Steve Goldstein: 14:12

So I think the algorithm for YouTube is bespoke. I mean, people who have been using the platform for years have some understanding of this, maybe better than most podcasters. But keywords and consistency and titles, categories and descriptions All of these things amount to how your podcast looks and performs, and there's a bias toward video and there's a bias toward channels, and so when you start thinking about YouTube and the game that they play, then you're focusing on the algorithm and warming up.

James Cridland: 14:53

The algorithm is really critical Because the algorithm, some people say, really favors video and favors people that don't skip away very, very quickly. I heard Boundary Scott talking about the idea that you should re-edit the podcast that you put on to YouTube to get rid of the intro music, to get rid of the preamble and go straight into the meat. Is that something I mean? Steve, you're an ex-radio programmer. Is that something that you would recommend?

Steve Goldstein: 15:23

Well, I think getting into content fast is becoming more important in podcasting in general, but I would tend to agree that YouTube is a different monster. People are making their decisions in three or five seconds and so, yeah, I'm now running across more podcasts that are doing the same thing in general, and I think that's applicable to YouTube absolutely.

James Cridland: 15:50

And Jay, what other data did you find out in this study? We've seen some of the top-line results. We saw some of them at podcast movement earlier on in the year but did Did you learn other things as well?

Jay Nachlis: 16:04

Yeah, I mean we learned a lot about the satisfaction levels of YouTube, which we thought honestly when we designed this study.

Jay Nachlis: 16:13

I think we had a fair amount of hypotheses about how consumers felt about YouTube, and we know that there are a lot of consumers that are on YouTube just because it's a beast.

Jay Nachlis: 16:25

Right, it's a mass platform and a lot of people are discovering podcasts and consuming podcasts because they're already there, which is an important note to take into account. But, above and beyond that, are they just using podcasts because they're there or are they using podcasts because they really like it? And that was one of the biggest findings we thought also from this study was that when we looked at we did what we call agree, disagree statements and how people feel about their experience on YouTube and how easy it is to find podcasts, how easy it is to navigate and so on and so forth, and our feeling was maybe this is where people say, yeah, I'm there because I use it already, but YouTube's really clunky. If there was a better experience I'd be more happy, but the consumer didn't. The industry may feel that way, but overall, the consumer really doesn't feel that way, and we actually did a face-off between YouTube and Spotify for those that use both for podcasts and YouTube and Apple. You know YouTube won by a landslide. It was quite remarkable.

James Cridland: 17:34

Interesting. I wonder why Is it comments? Is it just the UX? Did you get any sort of you know a call as to why that might be?

Jay Nachlis: 17:44

Yeah, we did have some one-on-one interviews and in that qualitative, some of those videos that definitely came up Engagement came up, comments came up. I think that's a super important factor that gives YouTube an advantage.

Steve Goldstein: 17:58

One of the things that surprised me when we did the face-off between YouTube and Apple and Spotify was the recommendation engine. 68% of the people who used YouTube and Apple podcasts said it makes better recommendations and 62% so essentially the same number on Spotify. That was a surprising find. The business has moved from a lot of different apps to consolidating into three apps. 73% in this study Use either YouTube, apple or Spotify.

James Cridland: 18:35

Interesting, interesting, and I guess you know some of that is down to YouTube already has a ton of information about me, about what I watch on that particular platform, and so I guess that it learns. You know it knows a little bit more about me, but yeah, so recommendations is always an interesting thing.

Jay Nachlis: 18:55

As they go to search for podcasts on YouTube. The number one way they do that is they type in the name of the podcast in the search box and the thing that we take from that is that when you are promoting your podcast on another platform and this goes to making sure that they're aware that you're on YouTube you know the blanket term everywhere you get your podcasts doesn't necessarily include YouTube. And if you're on YouTube, being intentional about that so that when people get to YouTube and it may not be as easy to get to a podcast page on YouTube as it is for other apps you know, knowing that they can search for your podcasts at YouTube because they know it's there, you know could provide a nice advantage.

Steve Goldstein: 19:42

James, I don't know how it is in Australia, but in the US it is a government mandate that you say wherever you get your podcasts.

James Cridland: 19:52

Yeah Well yes, and let's not ask what the Canadians are going to be planning. The work was sponsored by the Locked On Podcast Network. Where can people go to read a little bit more?

Jay Nachlis: 20:07

They can go to either of our websites ColemanInsightscom and AmplifyMediacom.

James Cridland: 20:13

Jay Steve, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it.

Jay Nachlis: 20:15

Thank you, james Closure.

James Cridland: 20:16

thank you, James, Steve Goldstein and Jay Nacklis with more information on YouTube. What's next?

Gene Liverman: 20:25

Jean. Well, it looks like the IAB released its podcasting buyer, seller checklist. That's a fun name to say yes, it was produced by the IAB and 20 members of a working group. What's this one about?

James Cridland: 20:38

Yeah, it's a really long. I think it's 23 pages long. If I've remembered correctly, I was talking about it on the Oxford Road podcast earlier on this week. It's a massive, great big checklist of everything you should know, according to the IAB, if you're buying advertising on podcasts. So it's got everything from you know. Does this podcast seller accept a vast tag and are they doing tracking and all this kind of stuff? And there's lots and lots and lots of tick boxes and stuff like that. I don't know, are you a big fan of advertising in podcasts, jean, or are you one of the many people that skips past them when you hear them?

Gene Liverman: 21:19

I think it kind of depends on the podcast and what I'm doing. Some of them I listen to, some of them I don't. Some of the shows I listen to it's the same advertiser sponsoring it for long periods of time, which is great. But I know what the ads want to be, so I don't really feel the need to listen to it a second time. But if I hear a new ad and one of the ones I listen to, I'll make a point to listen to it and I've got no problems with people advertising. I mean, it costs quite a bit of money to put out a podcast and to do it well and you've got to pay for it somehow. And value for value is still pretty new, so you're not going to fund most podcasts with it yet.

James Cridland: 21:52

Yeah, no, indeed, I mean, I think that there's definitely something in. I mean, I guess I worry slightly whether the IAB which, at the end of the day, doesn't care too much about podcasting, it does ad banners, it does all forms of other advertising online, and I do kind of worry whether the IAB is the right set of people for this, and whether or not there should be other people involved. You know, a podcast advertising bureau perhaps, rather than anything else. But, yeah, I think that that would probably be a wise plan, but it's an interesting look into the podcasting industrial complex. Anyway, if you do go and download it, of course you do have to register in order to download it, which is always one of those things, so you will doubtless hear from the IAB for many, many years to come. They've got to be able to advertise to you too. Yeah, well, yeah, exactly, exactly, that's exactly what the IAB needs to do. So, yes, apple Podcast has made a couple of changes, haven't they?

Gene Liverman: 22:53

They sure have. Apple Podcast made a few small changes about how automatic downloads worked in iOS 17. Do you think this is a big deal?

James Cridland: 23:01

Not, necessarily sure it is a big deal, so it's a very small change and I think it affects a very small amount of people. So if you got the Pod News Daily Podcast, for example, and then you didn't listen to it, then what Apple Podcast does is it pauses and it says OK, this person isn't listening to this podcast. I'm not going to fill their iPhone with countless shows that they're not listening to. I'm just going to pause and I'm going to wait for them to start listening again, and that's all fine. But the way that it used to work is, when you started listening again, it would go oh, he started listening to this podcast, let me download every single podcast that's in the feed, and so you know there are, you know, 150 shows in my feed, and so it would download 150, you know episodes, and that's probably not a good plan.

Gene Liverman: 23:52

Yeah, not good for the phone and not good for matching reality when it comes to the statistics side of things.

James Cridland: 23:58

Yeah, exactly Exactly Now. My suspicion is that it's hardly anybody that's actually doing this, but nevertheless, I spoke to Apple Podcasts about it and they tell me that they have people whose job is basically to sit there and go. How much battery life is this app using? How much storage is this app using? Can we optimize this in any way, shape or form?

James Cridland: 24:25

And they go around all of the different Apple apps, and the Apple Podcasts app was one of those that ended up being looked at and they went ah, there are some savings that we can make here in terms of storage. There are some savings that we can make here in terms of battery life, and that, I think, is a very good thing. So it was something that Apple did and something that Apple changed. I'm not sure it's going to make a massive amount of change. I know that Ross Adams from Acast has made a big deal about it. I'm not sure it's going to make a large amount of change, but, as you say, jean, what you will get out of it is you will get slightly more accurate download numbers, I suppose.

Gene Liverman: 25:04

And, as a consumer, you're going to get a little less stuff on your phone and a little tiny bit more battery life, and those are both good things.

James Cridland: 25:12

Yeah, those are a good plan. So I think that that's a wise move from Apple Podcasts point of view, and I guess what we don't want necessarily is we don't want individual podcast apps kind of spying on us and making lots of data calls back to people saying how many people have listened, and so actually, a download number is still a pretty good number. Apple Podcast is probably one of the big podcast apps that still has automated downloads. Big music has it, yes, but it's not necessarily going to be turned on, and similarly, spotify has it, but you've got to work really hard to end up turning it on. So it might make a difference, but I'm not sure how much of a difference, to be honest, is going to make.

Gene Liverman: 26:03

It'd be interesting to see if it shows up in any of the statistics over the next three to six months.

James Cridland: 26:08

Yeah, the statistics that come out from the different podcast hosts and that we hear about here on this show and elsewhere, yeah, no absolutely, and Buzzsprout publishes those, libsyn publishes those as well, and Transistor, for the first time, ended up sharing some of their data as well, which we'll get onto a little bit later. Now, you sent us a boost the other week, didn't you? I did.

Gene Liverman: 26:30

I said that it'd be awesome if more people registered with OP3 to promote others to do so, simply by peer pressure. So I think normalizing having open statistics about podcasts would be good for the industry as a whole. Or at least from somebody with a small show and who just listens to what's going on, it sure seems like it would be. Yeah.

James Cridland: 26:50

Well, and you sent us a boost with a row of ducks, so thank you for that. My pleasure, yeah, I mean, I think you know OP3, from my point of view, is super helpful, not just because, yes, it's got stats on there and they're pretty decent stats, but also because you can look into other people's stats, or indeed look into the stats as a whole, and there should be no reason why I can't pull out details about Apple podcasts versus Spotify versus YouTube from the OP3 stats. If I was just to sit down and do a little bit of coding, I suppose Not quite sure that I can be bothered yet, but anyway, but we will see. How do you suppose that we get more people using OP3 and putting their stats into the public domain, as you do when you're using this?

Gene Liverman: 27:42

I think at this stage it's going to have to be a bit of word of mouth and showing people by example that it's not going to crush your show or do something horrific with advertising or sponsorships, to let anybody who wants to see what you're doing see what you're doing. I think some people are just afraid of the what ifs, of how things are going to turn out, especially since we've heard so much about advertising going down or being harder for a lot of people to get. I think they're just afraid right now of what the impact could be to them.

James Cridland: 28:21

Yeah, I wonder how many people I mean frankly. I wonder how many people lie about their stats. I would imagine a fair few, and so therefore they don't necessarily want some of those stats to be there. I'm just curious. So on the podcast business journal, podcastbusinessjournalcom, there is actually a page which is full of shows that monitor their downloads through OP3. There's quite a lot of numbers in there as well, and I'm just curious. It's a good place to go just to see how you're doing in comparison to other people, which is always a fun thing to end up doing. There's an awful lot of religious shows in there. I don't see any. I don't actually see any sermons in there at all. I wonder why that might be.

Gene Liverman: 29:15

I'm guessing the word just hasn't gotten out. The first one might be showing up in there pretty soon, though, oh oh yes, is that one that you'll be, you'll be working on it will be yes, I'm actually relatively recently joined a new church and we're going to be doing the same thing I did at my last church we're going to be putting the sermons out as podcasts and I will definitely be hooking it in with OP3.

James Cridland: 29:40

Very cool, very cool. Have you considered our excellent sponsor Buzzsprout?

Gene Liverman: 29:46

They're very good, that's actually where my show is hosted and where my last church's show is hosted, and probably where this next one's going to be hosted. I am quite happy with them.

James Cridland: 29:56

Well, there you go. I hope they're listening to re-sign for next year.

Gene Liverman: 30:03

It's really interesting. I think there's one other thing that I think OP3 can help a lot with. I've heard quite a few podcasters in the tech area talk about how one problem they have is that so many of the advertisers want the tracking pixels and other things that they're just not comfortable with that much data being shared, and I wonder if we could start getting podcasters to pitch OP3 as an alternative to the tracking pixels, where the advertisers could see the data that OP3 provides, but seeing it in a way that doesn't have all the creepiness to it that a lot of podcasters just aren't comfortable with.

James Cridland: 30:40

Yeah, and I think OP3, particularly because it's open, because it's trustworthy, there's nobody trying to fake it and do things like that I mean it's a good backup for advertisers that, yes, I can have a look at my Libsyn stats Well, great. But also that advertiser could also go and have a look at the OP3 stats as well in there. Absolutely, and perhaps that would be a good plan. Op3.dev is where you go if you want to sign up for OP3. It's a good thing. I'm a supporter of OP3, a financial supporter, Moving forward to the logo being on there John Spurlock just saying so that would be a good thing for more people to end up signing up for and trust me, because I'm a podcaster.

Gene Liverman: 31:34

Speaking of which, that leads in nicely to the next story, because podcasters are the most trusted media personalities here in the US at least, according to a new study. The second most trusted are YouTubers, many of whom, of course, are also podcasters. Does this look about right to you, james?

James Cridland: 31:50

Does it, does it look about right to you? I mean, you presumably consume a fair amount of US mass media. I do, yeah. Do you have much trust for some of the TV stuff that you see, or some of the newspapers I have more trust than I think a decent amount of our population here does. So what sort of media do you consume them? I?

Gene Liverman: 32:14

watch national news. Watch and listen to national news, both from CNN and NPR. I catch the local news fairly often and read a good bit, but mostly from the traditional well-respected, well-regarded kind of peer-reviewed, trusted media sources and the things that have traditionally been trusted, which about half of the US population is not trusting so much right now.

James Cridland: 32:44

Yeah, and I think that's the interesting thing. Now, this study was paid for and published by ACAST and so all of a sudden, you go well, can I even trust this particular study, which I think is absolutely fair enough as well? Having said that, it's not just ACAST data, it's ACAST working with other people, working with a company called One Pulse which has done a bunch of research. Pretty small sample size there are only 451 people, and so you just sort of bear that in mind when you end up reading it. But I think, certainly, when people talk about podcasting, they're talking about intimacy, they're talking about how close the audience feels to the hosts, and I think that all of that is an important thing. So, yeah, and I think it's an interesting piece of data, just to be aware of, I guess.

Gene Liverman: 33:40

Yeah, it seems to mirror the, at least on the surface. It seems to mirror what I've heard from other places and I think even heard in some of the national news and the things that are not podcast related or YouTube related. But I think it's down to what you were saying about the kind of intimacy and the fact that people have to choose to seek it out and that it feels like a one-to-one conversation when you're listening to a podcast or watching a YouTube video, and I'm sure that has a lot to do with it.

James Cridland: 34:07

Yeah, yeah, and I'm sure it does. It's interesting data, so worth a peek. You'll find that in the Pod News newsletter. And one more story.

Gene Liverman: 34:17

Gene. There's a podcast discovery network called Pod Disco. They've launched and have just short episodes that are edits of shows like Crime Junkie, CBS News is 48 hours and Dateline NBC. The company tells Pod News that it hasn't asked creators for permission to do this with their shows. Why not?

James Cridland: 34:39

Well, why not? Indeed? I mean, firstly, they say that they haven't asked creators for permission. I mean, essentially, they're hacking down a 45-minute show to about 15 minutes. It's a very strange listen when you have listened to some of these shows. They've said that because they've said that they haven't asked for permission because they believe it can be beneficial for original creators as it can drive traffic to their content.

James Cridland: 35:06

I think the other reason why they haven't asked is that, weirdly, they don't need to, because American Copyright Law is such that you can produce an edited version of a piece of work and that is fine, which is where Blinkist and those services that turn a very long book into a 15-minute read. It's where those particular services can actually work. So I believe that those services have actually talked to the authors, but they don't necessarily need to because apparently it's fine under Copyright Law, which is a strange and wonderful thing. I wonder if anybody would make a 15-minute version of this particular show. Who knows, it'd be a scary, scary concept. But yes, pod Disco, it's an interesting idea. I'm not necessarily a massive fan of doing stuff without creators permission and all of that, but it would be always interesting to keep your eye on, I suppose.

Gene Liverman: 36:11

It is. It sounds a little bit like a podcast made up of the podcasting 2.0 clips. Is that kind of what they're doing with it?

James Cridland: 36:20

Yeah, I mean they could make it, I suppose, out of those individual clips. I mean, to be frank, it sounds as if it is. There aren't that many podcast apps out there which can just play a remote item, a little clip such as that. So I guess they're doing it to pull as many bits of content as they can together into one MP3. Maybe it will be slightly better if it was just a list of clips. Maybe that would be an interesting thing to have a play with. See if you could actually take I don't know the podcasting 2.0 show with Adam and Dave. Maybe see if you could produce a 15 minute version of that, but only using the remote items, so that all of your value splits would still work and everything else. That'd be an interesting, interesting thing to have a play with. Sounds like you might have a new project to try. Just what we don't want. Right, shall we move on?

Gene Liverman: 37:23

Yes, let's go right around the world, or maybe just Australia this week.

James Cridland: 37:28

Yes, just to Australia. Media Week has published the power list for 2023, which is the publication's top 100 list of media executives. Many congratulations. Grant Tothill at number 8080, works for SCAs listener, and Cori Layton at number 87, who works for I Heart Radio Australia or ARN. And there is some interesting things going on in the media landscape here in Australia because those two companies are talking about buying one another, or rather, arn media, who owns I Heart Radio, is talking about buying SCA, which is its big competitor. So I did a little piece of work on the Australian podcast ranker and basically, if you combine those two, that's 69% of all podcast downloads in the Australian podcast ranker, which would be quite a large company, wouldn't it? Yeah, no kidding, yeah, if that actually happens. I mean, you've got Clear Channel or I Heart in the US, which went around buying all kinds of individual companies, but this would be a massive company and, frankly, it would squeeze out almost the rest of the industry, it would seem.

James Cridland: 38:40

Yeah it seemed like it'd be very hard to compete with that.

James Cridland: 38:42

Yeah, yeah, and the weird, so the weird thing is the way that it's going to work, assuming that this actually happens, which is most certainly not a done deal yet, but assuming that it actually happens.

James Cridland: 38:55

They still need to keep the radio stations themselves separate, because Australian media law means that you can only own two radio stations in each market, which used to be the case in America a long, long time ago, but most certainly no longer so. So they're going to keep them as two separate companies competing with each other for regulatory reasons for the radio, but of course, they don't need to do any of that in terms of the podcasting, in terms of the app, and it'll be interesting to see whether I Heart radio wins out, whether listener wins out. Listener, of course, is SCA's technology, so if you're going to, you know, buy an app, then you've just bought all of the tech there, whereas I Heart is obviously just the I Heart code, which, which Australia is is using as well. So I find it all absolutely fascinating. So it'll be really interesting to see quite what happens there For sure.

Gene Liverman: 39:51

It's interesting how the the laws have not kept up in some areas, but old laws have just hung around, so you get this weird dichotomy here, yeah no, exactly, I think it was Ronald Reagan that made those changes.

James Cridland: 40:04

Maybe it was Ronald Reagan or maybe it was even Jimmy Carter as one of those two people a long, long, long, long, long time ago. Let's look at people. Eric John is leaving the IAB at the end of the month. He was part of the team responsible for the initial IAB podcasting measurement standards. He was always a very nice man when he spoke to me, so I wish him well, whatever he's leaving to do.

James Cridland: 40:28

Rjb has been named as Executive Director of Heritage Radio Network. Now RJ used to be, or indeed still is, the co-founder of Osiris Media, which is what they call themselves the largest independent podcast network focused on music. So good to see. Rj is being kept busy and John Cohen is celebrating 10 years in podcasting with a special feature from Indiana University. After working for companies like Podcast One and Wondery and Midroll, he's now a partnership executive at Spotify. It's worth a peek that particular article. But if you're looking for a job, pod News has podcasting jobs across the industry and across the world on podcasting's largest jobs board. They're free to post as well. It'll just take two minutes to add a new role at podnewsnet slash jobs. The tech stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 41:22

Oh 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. Jean, what have we got?

Gene Liverman: 41:31

first here, so looks like Transistor has reported the top podcast listening apps on the platform. Apple Podcast has fifty one point six percent of all downloads, spotify at twenty seven point seven percent and Google Podcast is at number three with two point one percent.

James Cridland: 41:47

Yes, just in time for them to turn them off. It's always interesting seeing these, these figures, and then comparing them with other platforms as well. So very close to Buzzsprouts details. Buzzsprout currently says Apple podcasts. Well, apple podcast is on forty four point four percent. It says here Spotify twenty eight point six percent and Google podcast at number three with three point five percent. So they're similar but not quite the same, which is interesting to end up seeing.

James Cridland: 42:22

I do wish that more podcast hosts would do this, would publish the kind of stats that you see from you know from from Transistor or from Lipsin, in there, the feed podcast, or even at buzzsproutcom. I noticed that Buzzsprout have just changed their URL. It's now buzzsproutcom slash stats, which makes much more sense than global underscore stats, and it does. Thank you for changing that, yes, global underscore. So always good to end up seeing that there's a new audio checking tool called Audio Audit, which is quite interesting. It's launched new features that checks your RSS feed automatically and basically looks and goes how loud is this show? What's the audio quality like? Is the lots of background noise, are there any gaps? And stuff like that.

James Cridland: 43:15

And I guess if you are looking after a bunch of different shows and perhaps you've got people underneath you who are editing some of those shows. It's quite a nice tool to end up using just to sort of check what it is that you're actually doing. Now I got an 80% score that I was able to move up to 90% because I added the ID3 tags. It apparently wanted ID3 tags a waste of time but nevertheless I've added that to this script that produces the Pond News Daily show, so that's all fine. How did you go, gene? Because you put one of your shows through there as well, didn't you?

Gene Liverman: 43:49

I did, I got a 73%, and everything they complained about is stuff that Buzzsprout does very intentionally.

James Cridland: 43:57

So I kind of questioned what they're doing and how they're auditing this.

James Cridland: 44:01

That's interesting, isn't it? Yeah, so bitrate. Bitrate, they said, was very low. Nice, 6k mono, it's absolutely fine. Yeah, number of channels Mono Audio files should be in stereo. No, that's all right too, that's fine. Yeah, mono Fine, absolutely fine. What was the problem with LUFS? Oh, they don't they. Yes, now you see, In terms of loudness, one of the things that I learned is, if you look at loudness for a mono file, well, a mono file is technically half as loud as a stereo file, isn't it? Because it's only coming through one ear. Oh, interesting. So what the data is here is it's basically gone. Well, it's much too quiet. Well, yeah, it is too quiet because it's a mono file and you have to calculate it in a different way.

Gene Liverman: 44:49

Yeah, if it's actually played back. Pretty much every pod, actually I think every podcast app I've ever tried plays mono podcast in both ears, so it's plenty loud, Exactly right.

James Cridland: 45:01

Exactly right. It's the weird way that FFMpeg measures LUFS levels, but still, I mean it's a useful tool for certain things. But yeah, like you, I looked at some of the data and I thought, really, there was one thing that it said you have to leave half a second of silence at the beginning of your show. And I was there thinking, well, really, why do I have to do that then? Nobody else has ever said that.

Gene Liverman: 45:32

That's the first time I've heard that one.

James Cridland: 45:33

Yeah, so I'm definitely not going to go into end up doing that. Headline has done something neat, haven't they? Yeah?

Gene Liverman: 45:40

they've got a text based editor, now called Headliners Eddie, and it now remembers the name of the speaker in the previous transcripts.

James Cridland: 45:49

And that is such a simple, simple tool. Every time I go into the Buzzsprout tool, when I upload this particular show, I have to tell it who I am and who Sam is, and it would only have to look back last week and go oh, that's the voice of James, that's the voice of Sam. Such a simple, straightforward thing. But it's one of those obvious things that you kind of go oh yeah, no, that kind of makes sense. So Eddie is worthwhile taking a peek at. Sam has also highlighted pics, which is an AI powered personal podcast recommendation engine which you can basically ask for shows that it thinks that you will enjoy. I asked it for shows about podcasting news and half of the podcast that I recommended don't actually exist, so I'm not entirely convinced about that, but anyway it's, you know it's worth a peek. And there's another one of these AI powers clip makers called Swell AI. They are allowing podcasters to find viral moments and make clips right from the transcripts. Have you ever used any of these AI powered tools?

Gene Liverman: 47:03

Well, I'm not trying to sound like an ad for Buzzsprout, but yes, I actually use their tool. That does exactly this. They generate a transcript for me and generate suggested social media post and do a lot of things, but they haven't started making clips yet. That would be a pretty cool new feature.

James Cridland: 47:19

There you go. Well, if they're listening, come on, kevin, get with the program. Then that's what? Then that's the thing. But yeah, no, the, the cohost tools that Buzzsprout have put together are really cool, so it's a smart thing, so it's well worth taking a peek at.

Gene Liverman: 47:38

They truly are a time saver.

James Cridland: 47:40

Yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely is, and there are some upcoming events coming up. The Philippines is to get its first ever podcast festival. It's called here For it H-E-A-R here for it. See what they did there. It's actually happening today, october the 20th, so I'm sure the good folk of the Philippines are enjoying that as we speak.

James Cridland: 48:03

If you would like to know how to win an award and you happen to be in London next Wednesday, then some of the winners of the British podcast awards are speaking at an event at City University of London which is worth going along to. It's a free event. It's worthwhile going. Who knows, there might even be coffee, tea and biscuits. So there's a thing If you want to win large awards, then get your entry into the 28th annual Webby Awards. They are now open. You can enter by the early entry deadline, which I just think means it's a bit cheaper. You've got until Friday week to do that, or this time next week. The independent podcast awards 2023 are on October the 30th in London in the UK.

James Cridland: 48:50

Finally, in Mexico there's a new event called PodCon MX. You can find out more details on their website. It's on November the 9th, presented by rsscom, who I'm an advisor for, and I am one of the speakers Very much looking forward to going to Mexico City. Have you ever been to Mexico, jim? I have not, but that sounds like it'd be a lot of fun to go to. And in fact, while we're on this, you're in Georgia. Have you ever been to the Coca-Cola Museum? I have.

Gene Liverman: 49:18

I've actually been there many times. It is fairly close to me and it is fascinating.

James Cridland: 49:23

Yeah, the weirdest thing is seeing there's a big theatre where you go in and you can watch Adverts for Coca-Cola.

Gene Liverman: 49:33

Yeah, that one's a little interesting, but there's enough in there to make it worth sitting through that short demonstration at the beginning. Yeah, yes.

James Cridland: 49:43

So that was a strange old thing. I went about 10 or so years ago. I did that. I did the CNN tour as well which I'm sure that you would have done as well where there was an awful lot of swearing by the gallery, which was quite funny. Something went to wrong and there was lots of F-bombs Very, very amusing. But anyway, yes, so it's a good place to go. I went to a radio conference in Georgia, trying to remember when, but it would have been about 2015 or 2016, maybe even earlier. No, it must have been earlier than that. Maybe 2014, 2013.

James Cridland: 50:21

Anyway, it's the first time I met Rob Greenley, so there's a thing Now that we've gone off on one 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, tell the world about it. It's free to be listed at podnewsnet slash events. Boostergram corner, corner, corner on the Pod News Weekly Review. Yes, it's our favorite time of the week Boostergram corner where we go through some of the boasts that we have had. What boasts have we had, gene?

Gene Liverman: 50:54

Well, the first one is from Dave Jones. For a short show like Pod News, daily listeners can just up their per minute sat. Total 200 sats per minute five times per week is 16,000 sats per month. That's $4.32 per month and that's in line with what you get from a $5 a month Patreon subscriber.

James Cridland: 51:15

He says yes, and I would exactly agree with that. A big rush boost from him. So, thank you, I would agree with that, if only people would, and I wonder whether or not people would necessarily go in and go. Oh well, this is a short podcast, so therefore I should up the amount of sats per minute. There is in the spec, isn't there? There is a suggested sats per minute level. I don't know, actually, whether any podcast apps support that.

Gene Liverman: 51:46

I've heard Sam talking about supporting that on his app.

James Cridland: 51:50

Well, he supports everything on his app.

Gene Liverman: 51:55

Were there recommending a value for each podcast and that sounds kind of like what you were talking about, but that's the only place I've seen that.

James Cridland: 52:03

So I wonder whether when you go and you use Fountain or something, it actually uses. The recommended thing that I should probably go and take a look. I'm an advisor to them too, so I should probably go and take a look and find out. Kairyn from the Mere Mortals podcast sent us a row of ducks double, two, double, two sats. I like the maths Todd was working out. He said I did a couple of case studies on my auto. This is Todd Cochran from last week. Of course, don't leave me, todd Cochran.

James Cridland: 52:31

I did a couple of case studies of my own shows on the value for value podcast and came away with two takeaways. Firstly, you'll need to optimize your show to make listener support stronger, which is a good point. He says, work on the ask, create a feedback loop and all of that. And secondly, he says that value for value works financially better for small shows, about the same for medium large. But for the super rare you might make more money, but then your show will suck anyway because you have ads in it. Oh, yes, I think he's talking about, yes, value for value versus advertising, which is what we were talking about last time, wasn't?

Gene Liverman: 53:08

he.

James Cridland: 53:08

Yeah, yeah, so yeah, no, kyren does a very good show. I'm sure that you've heard it, gene. I'm sure that you're a regular booster of the value for value show, which occasionally I get to hear going out live, which is always a thrill that sounds fun.

Gene Liverman: 53:26

I'm a little behind on it now, but it is a very good show and it's one that I'll actually listen to all the back episodes I've just had it caught back up.

James Cridland: 53:33

Yeah, yeah. So it's most definitely a good thing, and we've got one more boost, haven't we?

Gene Liverman: 53:39

We do. Some random person called Sam Sethi said this is a test, and he sent you a whopping 40 saps.

James Cridland: 53:46

Well, thanks, Sam. Thanks for the test. This is Sam on holiday, but clearly sending us tests.

James Cridland: 53:56

I think he's taken the wife for a romantic weekend or something in France or something like that. Where did he say that he was? Let me scoot all the way back up to where he put in his details Truffle hunting in Italy. Oh yes, that's right, he's in Italy. Anyway, thank you for the 40 sats, Sam. Very generous of you. We'll see you next week and if you get value from what we do. The Pod News Weekly Review is separate from Pod News. Sam and I share everything from it. We really appreciate your support so we can continue making this show. You can become a power supporter with your dollars or your great British pounds or your Indian rupees at weeklypodnewsnet, or you can support us with Sats by hitting the boost button in your podcast app. If you don't have one of those, please visit our podcast app. And, of course, there's always Pod fans or fountains. So what's a typical week in the week of you?

Gene Liverman: 54:58

Gene. For me it's doing remote IT work for a company that kind of makes TV work. We move television broadcasts from where they start to where the broadcasters need them for delivery. So that's kind of cool. I'm just starting there and it's a lot of fun. But beyond that it's doing things like I was talking about at the beginning playing with Home Assistant and finding out that maybe it's a good idea to pay attention to the low battery alerts that are in there. Got a rude awakening of that this week when my front door just beeped at me instead of unlocking.

James Cridland: 55:34

Oh, that's possibly not good.

Gene Liverman: 55:37

Yeah, fortunately, mine still has a key on it. I was, you know, trust but verify, so I didn't go truly keyless, but, needless to say, I changed the batteries and then proceeded to find out that it's actually pretty easy to have Home Assistant send you reminders for that kind of stuff. Oh really.

James Cridland: 55:53

Oh, there's, a. Thing. Yeah.

James Cridland: 55:55

There's a thing. Yes, I am mostly Google in this household, so not very much works on Home Assistant. The only thing that I've managed to get Google to do, which I'm quite pleased about, is when you ring the front door. I've got Google to automatically turn on the lights outside and there's a handy thing. Yeah, which is a handy thing. So there's some sort of rudimentary thing that Google Home has just done, which is some kind of scripting thing and it seems to. It seems to work from that point of view, but what it won't do is I can't get it to turn on the lights if it's spots a person. So if it's spots a person, then you can't do anything with that. It has to be somebody pressing a button, which seems a little bit ridiculous, because I quite like it to turn on the lights in the garage If there's somebody there. That would be a polite thing to do.

Gene Liverman: 56:48

I feel like if you get into Home Assistant just a hair or more, I bet you can make that one work. That's where I've heard people talking about that one.

James Cridland: 56:55

Yeah, and I'm sure you can. I don't know whether Google's Nest cameras will do any of that stuff, but I should dive into that a little bit more. Thankfully, you can run Home Assistant on an umbral, yes, so at some point I might spin that back up again. But yes, what else have you been doing? Anything else?

Gene Liverman: 57:17

Yeah, kind of only opposite end of the spectrum. I got a nice reminder about how energetic kids are. I went to a five year old's birthday party this past weekend and it never ceases to amaze me how much energy they have.

James Cridland: 57:31

Yes, yeah, absolutely yes yeah. Going to kids parties is just absolutely tiring out.

Gene Liverman: 57:44

It is.

James Cridland: 57:45

It's quite a thing. So, yes, yes, I feel exactly that I am normally. I normally love those kids parties where you can take your child to it. You can just throw the child at the person that's organizing the party and say I'll see you in two hours.

Gene Liverman: 58:01

It's always a good thing. This twist was almost that good. They had one of those inflatable bounce houses, and so the kids pretty well kept themselves entertained for most of the time, and then the adults got to just socialize. So it was almost what you're describing. Oh, yes, well, very nice. So what about you? What's?

James Cridland: 58:18

been going on for you this week. Yes, well, today, later today, I will be flying to Adelaide, which is in the south of Australia it's literally in south Australia and going to see some family there. It's only the second time that I will ever have been to Adelaide.

Gene Liverman: 58:35

Why is Adelaide a very important thing in terms of podcasting, jean I wish I knew the answer to this one, so how about you educate me?

James Cridland: 58:44

It's because the folks who built pocket casts are from Adelaide. Oh yes, not anymore, but that's where the original team was based, a company called Shifty Jelly, now, of course. Now, of course, it's run by the good folk at automatic also own WordPress, but, yes, so this will be the second ever time that I've been to Adelaide. It's one of those weird places in the world that has a time zone which is half an hour out of kilter with the rest of the of the world.

Gene Liverman: 59:17

So the top point is wonder if people do those just to be contrary.

James Cridland: 59:21

It's just like it's very, very strange. And, yeah, and they have daylight savings time and we don't. So it's just going into summer here, and so I think that means that they are now half an hour ahead of us. No, no, they're now half an hour behind us, but normally they're half an hour ahead of us. It's just the world's most complicated thing ever. So, yes, but I'm looking forward to going there and seeing, I'm driving to, driving down to a place called Victor Harbor, which is on the coast, and that's all that I know. It's about an hour and a half's drive away from from Adelaide. So, yeah, so that should be. That should be a little bit of a little bit of entertaining. And then next week there will still be a pod news weekly review, but I will be in Munich, in Germany, alongside Sam, who will be back, and, yes, so you can find out exactly how I'm doing. I thought when I would go to Munich in October, I thought that October Fest would be on. That would seem logical.

James Cridland: 1:00:35

Yeah, it would seem logical, it would would seem a sensible thing. Do you know when October Fest finished?

Gene Liverman: 1:00:41

I'm going to guess at the beginning of October, october, the third why would you do that?

James Cridland: 1:00:48

Why would you do that? Germany, what do?

Gene Liverman: 1:00:50

you actually do.

James Cridland: 1:00:51

Yes, exactly. So yeah, it's a weird and wonderful thing, but anyway, I'm very much looking forward to going there and going to Copenhagen next week to do a little bit of speaking, and then and then back again. The airline will, I'm sure, miss me, but still, but there we go. So, jean, if, if anybody wants to hear your show, what's your show called and where is it?

Gene Liverman: 1:01:16

My show is called Volunteer Technologist and you can find it at volunteer technologist dot com and in most podcast apps. And what is it about? It's a show that tries to take the stories of people who are technically inclined and volunteer those skills outside of their day jobs and kind of bring some of those stories out of the shadows there's so much that is done by volunteers and just trying to tell some of those stories.

James Cridland: 1:01:41

Very cool and presumably value for value and all of that Absolutely.

Gene Liverman: 1:01:46

Yes, all value for value enabled guests who come on who so desired. Yet a split of anything that's comes in. My last episode was with Mitch Downey, the creator of pod verse, and one of my favorite episodes I've done was with a gentleman who works in it for by day but does volunteer work with his fire department and did some work in their fire stations that quite literally helps them be more effective at saving people's lives and property. Wow, that's very cool.

James Cridland: 1:02:17

So volunteer technologist and you'll find it wherever you get your podcasts, even on YouTube.

Gene Liverman: 1:02:23

Not on YouTube and not on Spotify, but pretty much everywhere else Not on Spotify.

James Cridland: 1:02:28

Why is that then?

Gene Liverman: 1:02:29

Just not a big fan of Spotify. It's kind of like kind of the same reasons. It's not YouTube, they're. They just don't strike me as being all that great for the podcast industry and I just don't feel the need to support them.

James Cridland: 1:02:45

Yeah, no, no, indeed Well, yeah well. Volunteer technologist at volunteer technologistcom and that's it for this week.

Gene Liverman: 1:02:56

You can give feedback to James and Sam by sending them a booster gram If your podcast app doesn't support boosts and grab a new podcast app from podnewsnet. Slash new podcast apps.

James Cridland: 1:03:07

Music is from Studio Dragonfly. Our voiceover is Sheila D. We use clean feed for our main audio and we're hosted and sponsored by Buzzsprout podcast hosting made easy. Thank you, G. Thank you for having me. 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.