James Cridland: 0:00

It's Friday, the 23rd of February 2024.

Speaker 2: 0:04

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

James Cridland: 0:14

I'm James Cridland, the editor of Pod News here in Brisbane in Australia, and I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO of TrueFans.

Sam Sethi: 0:20

Hey, James, I'm also here in.

James Cridland: 0:21

Brisbane, Australia. Yes, we're in an actual podcast recording studio for the first time ever, which is a very strange thing, proper podcast recording studio. We're in a place called the Pod, which is a podcast studio at Edge Studios in West End in Brisbane. We've got Joe Rogan's microphones. This is a video capable room that make TV commercials and TV shows here All kinds of stuff. It's very smart in here, isn't it?

Sam Sethi: 0:47

It's very smart and the lovely ladies who've shown us around, I think what it is is. They're trying to market this as a studio that's available for producers and production podcasters here in Brisbane, aren't they?

James Cridland: 1:01

Yeah, I think they're doing that and very much you know I mean anything else you want them to do. My goodness, they've certainly got it. The amount of stuff in here is quite a thing and apparently they got caught in the floods in 2021. 2021, the floods were so, yes, so everything in here is brand new and it's very nice. Edge Studio Dot Productions is the website If you want to take a peek in the chapters today iOS 17 and Apple and return to profitability for podcasting.

Stew Redwine: 1:28

Plus. Hi, my name is Stu Redwine and a little bit later I'll be talking about podcast ads, radio ads and my new podcast ad, infant item, where we break down and discuss what makes audio ads work and what can make them work better.

Anthony Nwaneri: 1:44

Hello, my name is Anthony Winneri. I'm the host of a new show called why your Podcast Isn't Growing, and later on that's exactly what I'm going to be talking about. They will.

Sam Sethi: 1:53

This podcast is sponsored by Buzzsprout.

James Cridland: 1:55

Podcast hosting made easy with easy and powerful tools, free learning materials and remarkable customer support, and we're sponsored by a new show called why your Podcast Isn't Growing, a show made to help you get more listeners. They've just posted how to make your listeners not want to buy your stuff. You can find why your podcast isn't growing wherever. You got this podcast, and Anton is on later. From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly Review.

Sam Sethi: 2:22

OK, james, so let's kick this off. Did you miss me? Have you been away? Technically that doesn't work, because I'm actually with you, because you're actually away.

James Cridland: 2:32

Yes, it was entertaining doing the show just by myself last week. Not sure that Adam Curry liked it, which was the only feedback I got. I know we got some feedback from the guy.

Sam Sethi: 2:44

But yeah, so while I was away, anything big happened. You know, spotify has now adopted the podcasting 2.0 namespace. Not so far as I'm aware, I'm afraid Apple actually used the podcasting 2.0 namespace with anything other than a press release.

James Cridland: 3:02

Well, I mean Apple, have been doing that. But anyway, we'll get into that in just a second. But now I think you haven't missed an awful lot of exciting news in the world of podcasting.

Sam Sethi: 3:12

But who knows, we big story is that Meghan Markle's back as a podcaster? Yes, that's it.

James Cridland: 3:17

First on my list. Definitely a big story. Yes, I feel for the folks at Lemonada who all of a sudden are being called a tiny and irrelevant podcast company and you and you're there thinking, no, they're really good big podcast company, they understand what they're doing and all of that.

Sam Sethi: 3:34

So I'm they're thinking that's not really very fair, but anyway, didn't they win the award last year for the best podcast with Julia Louis Dreyfus?

James Cridland: 3:42

I think so. I mean, they've won plenty of awards. I think they've done a pretty good thing. So yeah, I just feel sorry for them, having the press, you know, just sort of trying to make Meghan Markle appear awful, which is all that's going to happen. So yeah, but I mean a great signing for Lemonada.

Sam Sethi: 4:02

Just in the sort of level of Katie Price for CragMetwork. Check in. Anyway, look moving on Story one. Yes, why, oh why, apple? So, james, you wrote a in depth story about what actually happened with iOS 17.

James Cridland: 4:20

Yes, because there's been quite a lot of talking about iOS 17, but actually not very much understanding of what's been going on there, really. And so, yeah, and so I wrote a long piece which you'll find on the pod news website, podnewsnet slash articles about the timeline, about what has actually happened. You might remember from last week that those small changes that Apple made in the middle of last year that they didn't really tell anybody about and they weren't going to tell anybody about, have cost a cast $7.2 million so far, and also you can see average weekly downloads for all of the big companies going down by well, nearly a third. So it's a big deal. So there's lots of detail on there, including, frankly, why Apple should have been telling people a little bit earlier, in my humble opinion. But weirdly, nobody else wants to say anything bad about Apple at all.

Sam Sethi: 5:17

I do in a minute.

James Cridland: 5:21

So that was one thing. Also, NPR's podcast strategy SVP Colin Campbell with two L's in both, Colin and in Campbell has been interviewed by current and he was saying and I thought this was a very interesting comment he was saying that NPR is a non-profit. Surely Apple should be taking less than 30% revenue from their podcasts for that, which I think made quite a lot of sense. So that was an interesting thing there.

Sam Sethi: 5:48

So let's get this clear the EU DMA comes out on March the 6th. Apple have been told that they have to open up the doors to the app store and the answer from Apple was yeah, we'll do that. We'll charge you 27%, not 30%. So you get a discount, but we still have to approve your app and you still have to get a developer license. So basically, nothing's changed, has it no?

James Cridland: 6:12

Malicious compliance is what people have been saying. Yeah, and you know so. Instead of paying 30% Apple tax, you'll be paying 27% Apple tax, but of course, you then have to pay 3% to your payment process anyway, so it comes out at exactly the same number. It's just Apple being Apple, and I think they're not just doing that, are they? They're actually cutting an alternative way to get past the Apple app store.

Sam Sethi: 6:41

Yeah, look, I'm an Apple fan, point. I won't deny it. I love Apple Pay. I think my back book and iPhone are great.

Sam Sethi: 6:48

I think some of the things they do are superb, but these little things they do just damage them and I think they should just stop it. It's petty and minor. So what they're going to do with iOS 17.4 when it comes out, is they're going to make it hard for app developers like myself, with true fans and others who've got a progressive web app which is web-based and not iOS store-based. They've just simply said they're going to stop offering that feature in Europe because it's too difficult with the DMA, the Digital Markets Act, in Europe. This sounds like the GDPR. It's just a good excuse, and I think this is Apple simply going two fingers up to the EU, going OK, you're going to make our lives difficult, we're going to make everyone else's lives difficult and there is no reason for them to do this. In fact, firefox and Google have got better support for PWAs than Safari, so actually, in theory, safari is the weakest browser on the iPhone.

James Cridland: 7:44

I don't know why they're doing this, james. Yeah, I mean they say it's just too complicated for them to allow PWAs using Firefox and using Chrome and everything else. They just say it's too complicated. And to be fair to them although I'm not quite sure why, but to be fair to them, apparently, if they were to turn around and say we'd like to work on that, but for the moment PWAs only work with Safari, then the EU would say, well, that's no good, and they would find Apple. So I can kind of see it from their point of view. But it's not great. It's in Europe only, which is odd. So I'll be fine here in Australia. The US will also be fine as well. I think Europe in this particular case, does it include the UK or not?

Sam Sethi: 8:36

Post Brexit. I have no idea what we are now yeah, exactly. We sort of fall into Europe when this stuff happens and we fall out of Europe when it's actually of any benefit. But I think at the end of the day, we will have to wait and see what, on March 6th, actually happens.

Sam Sethi: 8:52

I mean adding it to your home screen. I can't imagine they're going to disable adding an icon to your home screen. That would be crazy. The only thing I guess they will disable is push notifications In the script here. You'll see, james, if you can't beat them, you have to join them. Does that mean I have to get an iOS app? And then, of course, you know what Apple You're going to go. Oh, micropayments. We want 30% of that, please as well on top. So you're screwed if you do and you're screwed if you don't. And I think this is where Apple is a pure monopoly now and it really, really needs to be broken. I'm glad the EU is doing it. The DOJ is just a wet damp dog now.

Sam Sethi: 9:31

It's irrelevant, it's paid and whatever. So I don't know. We'll see. On March 6th, I guess in a couple of weeks time, james, I'll tell you whether we're broken or not.

James Cridland: 9:41

Yeah, no indeed, and I think it's one of those things where the EU comes up with ideas, which actually are pretty good ideas quite a lot of the time, except, of course. The problem is that they've been done by politicians, and politicians don't necessarily understand the right way of achieving this. Whenever I go into Europe and I try and use the internet, the amount of cookie banner things that I have to push my way through is ridiculous, and that's because of the GDPR and because whoever was putting the GDPR together didn't understand what to do with those, and I'm sure that this will be exactly the same way, Although they are thankfully responsible for the fact that my iPhone has a proper USB-C connector. So you know, not all bad Now moving on then.

Sam Sethi: 10:31

Magellan AI shared its rankings for top podcast advertisers in January. Mgm Resorts was the advertiser which has increased its spend the most, alongside MailChimp, the owner of Intuit and iXL Learning. What's your thoughts on this report, james?

James Cridland: 10:45

Yeah, it's a great report. It comes out every single month. It's always good just to be able to have a peek and see what is actually in there. The top three advertisers no idea who VGW is at number three. At number two, Amazon spending $6.7 million, and BetterHelp is still up there at $9 million. So they're doing some pretty big things there. But yeah, it's always interesting taking a peek at all of that information, and Magellan AI have been supporting the Pod News Daily newsletter all this month, and so it's always good to see their information all about advertising.

Sam Sethi: 11:25

So last week, James, we saw new data about podcast ads from Podscribe, and you had Emilio Kuma on talking about them.

James Cridland: 11:32

Yeah, we talked a lot about ad format. We didn't talk an awful lot about ad creatives. So Stu Redwine hosts a podcast called AdInfinitem which talks about podcast ads. He knows a thing or two about them because he's vice president of creative services at Oxford Road.

Stew Redwine: 11:51

Oxford Road is the leading privately owned audio agency here in the United States, where we work with companies like Shopify, oracle, indeed, masterclass, babble and Tommy John to achieve their goals in audio and beyond.

James Cridland: 12:07

So I was looking at you on LinkedIn once I got past the recipes, obviously and it says we just want the ads to work. What does that?

Stew Redwine: 12:16

mean what it means what it says. And the question is well, what does it mean for an ad to work? And that's like I was saying achieve our advertisers' goals. We come alongside them to test and then scale within audio. That's where we started in podcast, and they've got certain goals that they want to achieve, and a lot of times it's about getting clarity on exactly what that is. What's their entire comms strategy? How do we fit into that? How do we take the biggest picture possible? And the ads work when they achieve those goals, and those may be long-term goals, they may be short-term goals, but that's what we want. The thing that we do is help our advertisers bring their message, primarily in audio, to millions and millions of people every day, and however they're looking at that to measure did this work? Was this investment in advertising worth it? That's how we're going to measure ourselves. To go, did these ads?

James Cridland: 13:15

work. So it sounds as if one of the most important parts of writing podcast ads is actually getting a good, clear brief. What does your brief look like?

Stew Redwine: 13:25

It absolutely is. I think that that's critical for all of this business of advertising. What is advertising? That's a question that I like to bandy about and look at different sources, and Sir Martin Sorrell's answer to it is it's a solution. So, really, a brief, the best brief and our brief is to get back to what is the problem that we're trying to solve right, or the opportunity that we're trying to seize, and getting really clear about that, and I find that more succinct briefs are better.

Stew Redwine: 14:00

The podcast that I host, adinfinitem, that is focused on audio ads and critiquing audio ads and discussing them. The most recent guest is Mark Pollard, a strategist, an advertising strategist, and he talks about this a lot, this idea that you can have so much information and so much data and get a nine page brief. But it's sort of like so what If I were to boil a brief down? It's like how can I most succinctly answer what? What is the problem or the opportunity? So what? Why is that important? What do we know about our audience? What are the different market forces that are at work? What now? How then are we going to achieve that strategic?

James Cridland: 14:44

objective. So there's lots of data out there about podcast ads and their effectiveness and data about pre-rolls and post-rolls and all of that kind of stuff. I don't see that much data about the actual creative. How important is the creative in this whole process?

Stew Redwine: 15:01

It's massive. There's been several different studies just about the importance of creative overall and how much impact that has on an advertising campaign. I think it's cumulus that put out these different studies of like perception versus reality of what impact marketers think the creative has on an advertising campaign success and what impact it actually has. And I want to say the perception was much lower than the reality. Like I want to say it was 10 or 20%, something like that. And the reality that they discovered is the impact of the creative was number closer to like 47, 50%. So it has a massive impact. I think it's just intimidating for folks on how to even approach that question. How are we going to measure that? And then, particularly in podcast, you're relying so heavily on the hosts customizing and putting their own spin on it that you go. Are we looking at a case by case basis of how individual hosts delivered the creative or can we actually look at the copy points that we handed over to them? But in general, the impact of the creative on the campaign is massive.

James Cridland: 16:09

How I mean, does a good podcast ad need to be funny?

Stew Redwine: 16:14

I think that it definitely helps for podcast ads to be funny. I think what you get with humor, right, it's the same root word as humility, the same root word as humanity. I think, yeah, it breaks down the wall. Yeah, right, it makes a person feel it's, it's an element or a dimension of the pratfall effect, like this is a human and and humor then makes me feel something and then, once I'm emotionally invested, once the heart decides, the head will follow. I guess I would back up one level, like the takeaway from using humor to connect is really that you're connecting emotionally. So if we can connect emotionally, then we're able to get in the door and start also connecting to the rational mind as well.

James Cridland: 17:03

Is there a difference between an ad that you'd make for the radio and an ad that you'd make for podcasting? I mean, it's just audio right.

Stew Redwine: 17:12

Yes, it is just audio. They're both audio, but it's like man, you know, the big screen is a screen, the little screen is a screen. There's vertical, there's horizontal. I think it's really important on your what right and then so what? And then what? Now is, which type of audio are we doing here? Are we doing a smart speaker? Are we doing radio? Where we're going to be, this is a produce spot and we're going to be in breaks against a lot of other produce spots in podcasts. Are we going to be primarily doing host, read or, as I'm experiencing, I'm sure you are too the ad load is increasing, the number of breaks is increasing and more brand dollars are coming into podcasts, so you're hearing more spots that are like what's on the radio. I think it would be very easy to just port over what you're doing on the radio right over to podcasts, but it's a different animal and I think they to do it well, to do it the best, requires a different approach again, depending on how exactly is this audio going to be delivered to the listener.

James Cridland: 18:16

Yeah, I think it was Paul Rissmandell from Signal Hill Insights who was pointing out on a master don thread that radio ads one of their primary focuses is to get you to listen, because radio is typically on in the background, whereas for podcasts you're already listening. So actually that part of the ads job has already been done. What do you think?

Stew Redwine: 18:37

of that. I think it's fantastic. I remember when he pointed that out and I agree it's that like how lean in is this audio right? Am I on just a music station or am I on SiriusXM, where it's in the background and I need to cut through, or am I in something like Pivot? I like to listen to Pivot alongside with your show, of course, like almost every morning.

Stew Redwine: 19:02

Pivot I mean your show, basically every morning you're walking my dog with me and it's lean, it's very intentional, like I am stacking up what I listen to in the mornings intentionally, so I'm invested and I'm leaned in, and that's very similar to a lot of podcast listeners and so, like Paul was pointing out, I need to keep their attention.

Stew Redwine: 19:23

So if I'm using interruptive tactics, like I do in radio, to try to garner their attention, I might be working against myself. But I'd also like to say that some stuff does apply across both, like there was a recent study with Veratonic and Odyssey that found an improvement, double digit improvement in ad recall and improvement in purchase intent as well, when Sonic branding is used in radio and in podcast. So there's, so there are things that are similar. But to your point, it's like podcast is and has been so much more lean in, where radio perhaps is something that's more in the background, unless you're listening to talk radio specific host or your drive time people that you listen to in the morning, where I think the same kind of lean in stuff is at work. And how long should the perfect hand be? As long as it needs to be?

James Cridland: 20:14

I'm glad you answered the question with that. How long should a?

Stew Redwine: 20:16

person's legs be long enough to reach the ground. You know, I would say in podcast, and you know there was just a study I think it came out last week with PodScribe that found that longer ads work better. I think that's for a couple of different reasons. One, like we're talking about people are leaned in. There's some cognitive biases at work Human beings the longer they're exposed to any stimulus, what's amazing is not only do you get acclimated towards it right, so it's okay, because we're all we're surviving, right, our brains just trying to survive we also begin to favor the thing.

Stew Redwine: 20:52

So the longer a person can keep your attention and talk to you, instinctually down deep you are going to begin to develop affinity, and so that's at play with. There's also a narrative bias. Humans favor stories over disjointed facts or even just a list of items. You tend to get more storytelling and a longer ad because there's more opportunity for someone to weave a tail, and so those are longer than they work. But you know you've got to again. You got to go back to your what like.

Stew Redwine: 21:23

Who is this advertiser? How massive are they? How long have they been doing this? Do I perhaps need to, for instance, on serious XM? The right approach might be in certain cases, let's just try to pepper in a whole bunch of 15s and get a whole bunch of frequency, because we know that people are already very aware of this or unedited awareness is high and we just want to reinforce a particular message or particular call to action or something like that, or just increase their mental availability of our brand. You could accomplish that with shorter spots, but in the podcast platform, like I said, with that pod scribe study, it seems to hold out that, you know, the old advertising adage is the more you tell, the more you sell.

James Cridland: 22:08

Yeah, yeah, there's more reason to go and visit a website or do whatever it is that you want them to end up doing. You mentioned ad infinitum earlier, which is your podcast is back for a new season. What's that podcast all about?

Stew Redwine: 22:23

So ad infinitum is Oxford roads audio creative podcast, where we listen to and break down current top spenders in audio and on SiriusXM on radio, on podcast, and we have different advertising experts on with me where we'll drill into in the first season the nine key components of audiolytics, which is our methodology that we use to both audit and construct a persuasive message in audio.

Stew Redwine: 22:52

And then in season two we're going to be digging into different aspects of advertising. Like I said, the first episode of season two comes out this week and the guest is Mark Pollard, where we're talking about strategy and how does that apply. And then we've had on folks like Dallas Taylor, the host of 20,000 Hertz fantastic podcast about the world's most interesting sounds, richard Shotten, who's massive in the behavioral science space, author of the Choice Factory, and then like Amanda DeMarco from Veratonic, where we're able to talk about their platform and when we're analyzing the ads in that episode we're taking, you know, the scoring methodology we use audiolytics and stacking that up against Veratonic's testing platform and the methodology that they use so ad infinitum is wherever you get your podcasts.

James Cridland: 23:41

where can we learn more about you and your work?

Stew Redwine: 23:44

LinkedIn is the best place to go. Stew red wine, the one and only and last. Like you said, if you Google stew red wine, all you're going to get is recipes stew.

James Cridland: 23:53

it's been great to talk. I learned so much every time I talk to you. Thank you so much. You're very welcome, Thank you.

Sam Sethi: 24:00

James moving on then. Thank you, stew, for that. That was great. There's been a number of reports that you've put out on pod news daily. The first one is sports podcast company blue wire has concluded new funding, which is very good, but when I read into the detail of it, it's really more to do with getting the company back to profitability first, before they could get the new investment.

James Cridland: 24:25

Yes, it does look a bit like that, doesn't it? They cut its staff from, or it cut its staff from 30 to 18 in recent months. That's basically halving your staff. It's also no longer. If you went into the win in Las Vegas you would have seen a blue wire studio in there in one of those spaces. That I don't think is happening anymore because they've ended that partnership with win resorts, although win resorts still own some of the shares. But yeah, the company has been profitable since late last year and perhaps that's why they've got a bit more funding although we don't know how much from to cathlon capital.

Sam Sethi: 25:04

And veritone is also reducing its workforce by 14%. The company produces a number of services for podcast advertising. Again, I suspect this is on the road to profitability that will allow them to go and get more money or funding.

James Cridland: 25:18

Yeah, I don't know enough about veritone. It's a very large company, it does an awful lot of things, but it seemingly everything has the word AI in front of it which is always the way.

Sam Sethi: 25:29

Yes, vc bingo, as they call it Now, odyssey, which we've talked about a couple of times in the past. It went into bankruptcy chapter 11, it's now getting itself out of bankruptcy. I love how you can do that. It only happens in America, I think. So they reduced their debt from $1.9 billion to just 350 million. I don't know where the rest of that money went, but poor people who were owed that. But I guess this is again to get them back to some sort of profitability.

James Cridland: 25:59

I am fascinated by Odyssey because it seems to be exactly the same team in charge of Odyssey, david Field, and the rest of those folk who have not done a stellar business you know, not run a stellar business over the last couple of years, and so basically they've been let off all of this money, but it's still the same people who'll be running the same business in much the same sort of way. Yes, they're reorganizing, but it's mostly reorganizing in terms of giving their creditors shares, and that's about as far as it goes. So I am fascinated that enough people believe in the management of that company to keep that management intact. It seems to me very strange. So Odyssey clearly has a plan that I'm not privy to. But yeah, I mean, massive company owns lots of broadcast radio stations in the US, obviously owns Pineapple Street and a couple of other large podcast companies as well. But yeah, I don't really understand. As ever, I don't really understand the financial stuff there.

Sam Sethi: 27:12

Well, you probably find that they've got an arm of the business. That is a sinking cost that continuously has to be funded. But they just can't get out of that profitability element, so they've just jettisoned that out and then, when you look at the spreadsheet after that, everything looks a little bit rosier. And.

Sam Sethi: 27:31

I guess that's what they've had to present. If we get rid of this and put it into chapter 11, we can then see the profitable side of the business and give us another year or two years and we'll be back to a profit investment.

James Cridland: 27:42

Yes, I mean, they'll still have a debt of $350 million, but that's much, much lower than nearly two billion. So, yeah, so all fascinating seeing. But, yes, there's clear maneuverings going on in terms of that. But we are seeing a lot more companies making it into profitability Spotify, of course, saying that they're going to be profitable in their podcasting business very shortly, and, of course, acast also giving whatever that weird phrase was.

Sam Sethi: 28:14

EBITDA.

James Cridland: 28:15

Yes, adjusted positive, adjusted EBITDA or EBITDA as Ross pronounced it. I always thought it was EBITDA, but still. But there we are.

Sam Sethi: 28:26

So there we go Now all this month, James, we've been sponsored by a podcast called why your Podcast Isn't Growing. Who's behind it, James?

James Cridland: 28:36

Yeah, that's a good question. I thought I'd find out. I spoke with Anthony Waneri and I asked him what his podcast does.

Anthony Nwaneri: 28:42

Yeah, so this show was a recently launched show, around four months ago. You know, me and my business partner called Tygo Shea been in the space podcast in space for maybe nearly four years, something four years March 2024, which feels like a lifetime, but it's gone super fast. It's been quite nice. But he launched our books in terms of podcast marketing and podcasting me simple and that kind of set the foundation within the podcasting space. From there we kind of held podcasters grow their shows and market it and eventually decided to launch our own show. Right, the podcast coach and podcasters finally launched their show.

Anthony Nwaneri: 29:17

But really this show we want to make sure that wasn't just any other type of show about podcasting. We want us to make it fun engaging in a unique way. So what we do is every Monday we're getting basically bigger podcasts, getting 10,000 plus monthly downloads, some even 300,000 plus monthly downloads, some million plus monthly downloads to leave our listeners kind of a five to 10 minute bite size voice note sharing the pivotal growth of their show, their journey and really how they have you know how they've grown their audience really key moments within that. And then alternative Mondays to keep our audience engaged and keep things a little bit more fun. I really like to kind of have what we call a rose the show. That's the 18 plus version, the PG version is kind of a podcast live audit and that's what we just invite.

Anthony Nwaneri: 30:01

Listen on to the show and we've roast their show. We kind of give them direct feedback and honest feedback and providing, you know, hopefully some educational piece for our listeners, keep it entertaining, but also some personalized guidance to our listeners. So a bit of an engagement builder. And then every other Monday we kind of through the weekday Wednesday Fridays, me and my business partner Ty go show. We just go back and forth sharing up to date growth and monetization strategies that we can basically listeners can apply straight after each episode. And that's really it.

James Cridland: 30:30

So where have you, where have you both come from? What's, what's your history in this space?

Anthony Nwaneri: 30:35

Honestly, to be honest, we kind of stumbled into the space by a bit of luck but a bit of intuition, I guess.

Anthony Nwaneri: 30:42

So four years ago, me and my business partner, we're pretty kind of like the, the classic hustler kind of vibe, and college students like university students.

Anthony Nwaneri: 30:52

So we both went to Nozick University together, we grew up together and went to high school and went to university together and around this time, I think, when COVID happened, we both kind of wanted something more, our kind of desperation. We're kind of just looking honestly, to be to be honest with you, james, we were just looking for like our next hustle, and that's me being open and honest about that. We kind of looked at how can we make some, some money online and help provide value to people but also make an income, because we don't really want the traditional route of work. And we stumbled across something known as self publishing and this is a way to publish books through Amazon, self published and generate some income providing value to a particular niche. We decided podcasting because we saw that the trend was under up and there was ticking and more and more people were getting into podcasting, thought, you know what, why not provide some value within the space and that's how we kind of got our fin and door.

James Cridland: 31:40

Yeah, yeah, and you've been doing that ever since, and I was there going I wonder where the accent's from, and Nottingham is a place where I've been once, I'll tell you so, and I think it was closed. So so there we go. Are you still based there, or have you have you? Are you somewhere else?

Anthony Nwaneri: 32:02

Yeah, so my, I originally grew up here in a little small town called Kingsland. I'm in Norfolk, my business partner, we went to university there for three years. My business partner still lives there, so he's lived there for the last like six years now. But I actually moved back home. I'm a little small town called Kingsland, been living here for three years and I'm planning to go traveling for this year. So yes, I kind of lived in Nottingham for three years and then back in my hometown for three years.

James Cridland: 32:28

Very nice, very nice. It's very flat in Kingsland, I think, isn't it?

Anthony Nwaneri: 32:30

It is very, extremely flat in Kingsland. Honestly, if I, if you were just kind of born here, then realized outside world I'll probably be a flatterer for because it looks pretty flat here.

James Cridland: 32:41

So you've. You've obviously spoken to a bunch of different podcasters. One of the recent episodes that you've done is four lessons we've learned from podcasters. Getting 10,000 monthly downloads, which is a good amount of downloads. What are you seeing? Firstly, what mistakes are you seeing podcasters make?

Anthony Nwaneri: 33:02

That's a great question. I think the first mistake I see podcasts make is kind of getting comfortable. You know, when you're a podcast you're kind of stuck in a knots and bolts and you get on the content hamster wheel and we always ask our clients and just you know people who've had on the show, you know they have a pivotal moment. I realized what they're doing just isn't working, you know. So that's the kind of first thing, kind of almost like just doing the same things over and over again, expecting a different result, because they're being told most of the time, james, like hey, just work hard, be consistent, you shall grow. But met podcasters even work and hard and consistent for four or five years and I struggle to break past a couple hundred downloads per month or a few thousand a month, you know.

Anthony Nwaneri: 33:43

So for us it's really what we've found has been a trend with the podcast we've had on the show on Monday's episode is they all consistently say like hey, we experiment, we change things up in big ways. We didn't just stay comfortable with the same format, interviewing the same type of people. We experimented with solo, we experimented with narration, we experimented with longer form, shorter form, we experimented with a style, more entertaining, more value based, but they experimented to try to find out what works and what doesn't, rather than staying comfortable doing the same things that clearly isn't working, in hopes that just doing it long and hard and consistently will get them the results. So that's a huge lesson that I've learned, which is like experiment, and that's what we experiment with our format all the time, you know, to see what is going to stick on, what audience love.

James Cridland: 34:30

Well, we've been doing exactly the same format for the last two and a half years, so I would imagine that is possibly something that we could learn there as well. But no, that's really interesting. And what's the sort of, what's the sort of number one thing that you've seen which is successful?

Anthony Nwaneri: 34:46

I think the number one thing is going to be kind of that Honestly, james, when you asked me that question, I cringe so hard because I'm like, oh God, I'm going to say what everyone says. But I think it's just having been extremely clear on your positioning in the market and the podcast and space. Yeah.

Anthony Nwaneri: 35:01

I mean you mentioned James. Like you know, you've been doing the same thing over and over again for the last you know couple of years. But your position is so clear, right? Pod News Weekly Review. You know like it is just very clear. People know what they're getting. You go on after a specific type of audience. The thing that we see is people not being clear enough on the value proposition. They talk about business in general, but there's a billion I say billion, that's probably an exaggeration. You know there's tens of thousands of other shows in the same thing. So trying to find your own positioning, what makes your show different versus everyone else, is trying to do the exact same thing. Everything else becomes easier when it comes to marketing the show, retaining listeners, email marketing, getting sponsorship everything else falls in line. Landing clients when your positioning is clear, when the value proposition, the unique value proposition of your show, is clear and that's a difficult thing to find out, but again, it takes experimentation.

James Cridland: 35:58

Yeah, and experimentation is always. It's always that sort of that careful thing of experimenting, but not necessarily experimenting too fast, because consistency is also a thing, isn't it? Consistency is also something that actually you know, people come to expect a certain show from you, and so how do you change? Enough, but not too much.

Anthony Nwaneri: 36:22

James, that's a great question and I think for us it depends what stage you're at. I think let's say, for example, you've been podcasting for over a year now, or two years. You've been consistent, you've been working hard and things aren't necessarily gaining as much traction as you like your growth. Honestly, if your growth is plateaued, to me that's a sign that hey, look, let's that experiment or something a bit different, because people come, people go. What we've found is when you're at that stage where you've kind of plateaued, that's the point where you should be open to experimenting. If it's been six months of kind of really really slow and steady growth experiment, because you've got nothing to lose at that point you know things are getting a bit stale and unfortunately people's attention span, they're getting really small and people want some excitement. You know they want things to evolve because things are ever evolving. But when you do the same thing over and over again, you eventually kind of get bored of that and people do.

Anthony Nwaneri: 37:19

People say podcast, pod fade. I'll say listeners, pod fade, listeners. Stop listening to a show that doesn't evolve. There's an adapt, there's an improve, there's a change, right. So after kind of adapt with that. But what I will say is, let's say you are growing month after month. We had a client. He went from 400 downloads to around 23,000 monthly downloads and in 30,000 monthly downloads I think, like in 15 months, and then she started changing things up and experimenting way too much. You know, almost like sporadically, every couple of weeks you'll change things and in her numbers guess what? They start to kind of decline, you know, because she got to a point where things were working and she then kind of almost like one of the, change things up when she didn't need to. So that's what I would say, number one, if it's plateaued experiment. But if you're on the uptick and you're growing month after month, a month, don't change anything. It's working, please.

James Cridland: 38:10

Absolutely. Watching the trends is always important. The podcast is called why your Podcast Isn't Growing, which you can find on whatever streaming platform that you use. The website is getmorelistenerscom. There's acom that you must have been proud when you found that one. I was.

Anthony Nwaneri: 38:30

I was yeah that's fantastic.

James Cridland: 38:33

So, Anthony, thank you so much for your support this month and thank you for the podcast.

Anthony Nwaneri: 38:39

Thank you, James.

Sam Sethi: 38:41

Okay, james, just moving on a couple of quickies I wanted to look at. You covered a story which was myth Podcast thumbnails need to be 500 kilobytes or less. Fact the podcast artwork is really important. What are you talking?

James Cridland: 38:55

about there. It always used to be the case that Apple required your podcast thumbnails to be 500k or less. That is not the case anymore, and anybody that is saying that is old fashioned and should therefore have a big stamp that says I am old fashioned. I'm old fashioned. Yes, exactly so. Yeah, so that used to be the case, Isn't the case anymore? Isn't that interesting? No one knew and so just worthwhile getting it out there. But yes, I posted a bunch of tips on how to make decent podcast artwork from the pages of Pod News on the Pod News website.

Sam Sethi: 39:32

Now can I say can we please ignore everything James just said and keep it to 500 kilobytes?

James Cridland: 39:37

Oh yes, absolutely. I mean, you know, make sure that they're as small as possible. Pod News' thumbnail is, I think, 9k. Great, well done you.

Sam Sethi: 39:49

Everyone who's using Dali E finding compressing the engine straight after for their cover-up, because we're getting five or six meg or even larger files.

Sam Sethi: 39:58

And this is the one thing. As a podcast app, you know Truefans we struggle to get page loads, and so you've got cover-up, then you've got episode art and if those are all massively four or five meg and we have seen those all bigger then the page is just going to load really, really slowly. So we have to then in our own back-end server use compression capabilities. I certainly believe this should be the host who does this, and I've had conversations with Tom Rossi because, again, one of the things I think you've asked for is the removal of a tag called the images tag, because you don't think anyone uses it. Yes, tom wasn't even aware of it.

James Cridland: 40:36

Yes, exactly, and I know that nobody's using it and there's a better one, but let's not get into that.

James Cridland: 40:44

But yes, I mean, if you're a hosting company like Buzzsprout or others, you will want to save as much of your bandwidth as possible, and one of the best ways of saving as much of your bandwidth as possible is actually making sure that those images are as small as you possibly can.

James Cridland: 41:02

What PodNews does is we automatically recompress and resize the images, because I want to make sure that that is as small as possible, but that is one of the biggest issues on my little server that keeps on falling over is exactly that is, keeping those images as small as it possibly can and resizing all of those. That's computationally quite difficult and I really don't want to have to play around with you know doing things in a different way. So, yes, so what I'm not saying is make your podcast thumbnails as large as you can, and in fact, apple would actually say that they want to make sure that they're that your stuff loads as fast as possible, and if it takes too long to download that podcast thumbnail, then Apple will actually take you out of the podcast directory. So, yeah, so you know it is important and that's to do with server speed as well, but it is important just to make you know that, that you know important.

Sam Sethi: 42:06

Okay Now James, a couple of weeks ago you switched to the iPhone toy, as you called it.

James Cridland: 42:13

I don't think you call it, yeah, so I'm not allowed to call it iPhone toy anymore. He's been paid off.

Sam Sethi: 42:18

Now, how is your switch to the iPhone 15?

James Cridland: 42:22

Yes, I mean, I'm finding it. I'm finding it equally lovely and highly irritating in the same, in the same thing. Apple maps is rubbish, isn't it? Yes, wow.

Sam Sethi: 42:35

You can get lost on those.

James Cridland: 42:36

That's a properly rubbish app, at least, at least in this country it is. But yes, but I think one of the joys that I mean you just go, walk about and never come but I think one of the joys that I've had recently has been playing around with overcast and using overcast and that is a lovely, lovely podcast app.

Sam Sethi: 42:56

I'm going to read the tweet you put out. Actually, james, I'm afraid I'm totally sold on overcast. Being a new iPhone user, marco Arman has produced a playback engine of genius. I was like, okay, let me have a look at this. Let me have a look Because. And then Daniel J Lewis put but yeah, overcast works so wonderfully for me, but I want podcasting to features and I was nodding along with Daniel there. I want super chapters, cross-lap comments and live streaming. And then I thought about it. Marco Arman said he's never going to do any of this. A couple of weeks ago we castigated Libsyn, right? We said you're a big host. You don't support any of the podcasting to that features. What are you doing? And yeah, marco Arman, for the last three years, a swan along as the wonder boy with James Cridland saying he's a playback engine of genius and has 0.00 of any podcasting to that. Why is he getting a free ride?

James Cridland: 43:51

I think that's a very good point. I think it's a very good point, I mean, maybe because he's produced something which is good.

Sam Sethi: 43:57

Oh, I can do that. I can cut out 50 features don't have sat don't have chapters, don't have well, has he not got? No chapters, no sats, no live. I can keep reducing my album till it works. Just as well as that, If you want me to yeah. Why did he get a free ride? That's what I get.

James Cridland: 44:15

It is an interesting question and I think if you look at you know pocket casts seems to get a bit more criticism that it hasn't put any podcasting 2.0 features in there yet. Oh well, one yeah like Apple one yeah.

James Cridland: 44:30

Yeah, well, you know, and you can take a look at a number of others, I think. I think Overcast is one of those weird apps in that it has a very specific target audience. But, yeah, we should be pushing, we should be pushing Marco to actually do some of it and, frankly, not to talk podcasting 2.0 down, which he was also doing on a Leo Laporte show at the end of last year, you know. And so I wonder, I mean, it's lovely that he's giving $500 a month to the podcast index.

Sam Sethi: 45:08

And they never call him out either.

James Cridland: 45:10

Yeah, yeah, I think that's interesting, but I don't think he should get a free ride in terms of in terms of complete and utter interest in supporting any of these new features.

Sam Sethi: 45:23

Oh well, maybe, maybe you'll start to add some soon. But yes, I was. I was a bit peeved that he's getting this glowing reports. And then I'm thinking, yeah, but he's done nothing other than sorry, just a basic app. Right, moving on, there's my soapbox off around the world, james, here in Australia, I can say, here in Australia, now you can From down under the big to the big Apple by Poc, is that how you say it?

James Cridland: 45:51

Yeah, by Poc, which is like indigenous and people of color.

Sam Sethi: 45:55

Yes, I've never heard that before.

James Cridland: 45:58

Have you not? No, there you go.

Sam Sethi: 46:02

There you go, Things I've learned Right by Poc led women owned podcast agency. Say that quickly. The Piaz Projects has raised investment to launch into the US market. The company will open offices in New York later this month.

James Cridland: 46:15

Yes, I think very interested to find out what they're doing. The CEO of the company has pointed out that only 2% of venture capital goes to female founders and 1% less than 1% go to black founders, and so therefore she loves S&P ventures who have ponied up some of the money for them to open an office in New York. But yeah, I think that's an interesting thing. It would be interesting to find out a bit more from that. It would be good to get her on this show.

Sam Sethi: 46:54

There you go. Your wish is my command. As always, I have reached out to Michelle and she has positively said that she'd love to come on the show. So when I get back to the UK I will set a date and we'll get her back on the show.

James Cridland: 47:06

Excellent, well, that will be good. I tell you who else can I ask for a couple of other people. Sure, can we have the new CEO of Pushkin, because I'm quite interested in that.

Sam Sethi: 47:15

Greta Greta. Yes, we will have Greta Cohen on next week.

James Cridland: 47:19

Excellent. And how about Sony Music Entertainment? We've not really heard an awful lot from them recently?

Sam Sethi: 47:25

No, and strangely they're director of global marketing. Kieran Lanzini is going to come on as well. Yes, so we've got some really good guests coming up, James.

James Cridland: 47:34

That's really good. How about one more? How about Daniel Eck? Any chance of?

Sam Sethi: 47:39

I'll have a word with Dan.

James Cridland: 47:41

Yes.

Sam Sethi: 47:42

What Do you want, joe Rogan? Oh, during.

James Cridland: 47:45

Joe, yeah, just yeah. Why not, michelle? Let's go to France. The third edition of the podcast magazine has published. It's a beautiful thing. It's not just a magazine, it's a MOOC, it's a magazine book. Oh, 180 pages. And in it, this time around, if you speak French, is John Spurlock of OP3. Does he?

Sam Sethi: 48:09

speak French.

James Cridland: 48:09

He's being interviewed. Well, I tell you what. I'm also in there. I'm being interviewed and no, I speak Umpa, salomon Umpa and Greg Poy, who is a French pioneer of podcasting as well. If you want it, then firstly, obviously you need to speak French, but secondly, it's about $25 including postage.

Sam Sethi: 48:29

So it's a beautiful thing, so highly worthwhile Staying in France, a charity event called Podcasts on is planned for next month. What's this one all about?

James Cridland: 48:37

Yes, this is quite a nice idea. 300 podcasts took part last year, and you make a special version of your show that highlights a cause or charity, and in the last week of March you post it, which is a really clever idea. This year it has the support of Apple podcasts, amazon Music and Spotify Ocha, I know, have also been involved in it as well. There are 400 shows already registered for this year, so podcast on is a French only thing this year, but next year it'll also include English and other languages as well. I thought it was a really nice idea of podcasters working together, so that's a good thing.

Sam Sethi: 49:13

Now. You were in Mexico recently.

James Cridland: 49:16

Yes, if you look at Latin America by 2027, there will be more podcast listeners in that part of the world than anywhere else in the world. How?

Stew Redwine: 49:25

about.

James Cridland: 49:25

China, anyway, in the latest India.

Sam Sethi: 49:29

India Exactly, we can keep going. Name country.

James Cridland: 49:32

Exactly right In the latest of Pod News's global podcast market spotlights, we have the State of Podcasting in Latin America. It's from David R Gonzalez from Genuina Media and it's a fascinating read and I would recommend that.

Sam Sethi: 49:50

Zipping over to the Middle East. A-cast is to work with Next Broadcast Media to grow a podcast monetization. What are they doing?

James Cridland: 49:58

Yes, they are essentially much the same as they have done in some European countries. They're working with a local sales house to end up selling advertising in that part of the world, and Next Broadcast Media has a very large presence in the Middle East and North Africa, and so that is where they are going. And, interestingly, next Broadcast Media also working with Barometer on it's our favorite thing. It's a brand safety and suitability tool. This one is the first one in the Arabic language and it brings transparency and brand suitability to podcasting in the Middle East. So they say, but yeah, really interesting. I'm looking forward to having a proper chat with the folks at Next Broadcast Media relatively soon. I was in Riyadh last year, not last year, the year before and yes, so I should catch up with them a little bit more. Let's go over to the awards, and you were at the Independent Podcast Awards last time and they're coming back again this year, according to the organizers.

Sam Sethi: 51:00

Yep London October the 23rd. I will be there, I think.

James Cridland: 51:04

Indeed so, and maybe, who knows, maybe I will be there as well. There's something else.

Sam Sethi: 51:11

No, no, you don't get away with just doing that. That's that I know.

James Cridland: 51:14

I'm going to be there. Well, there's something else going on in October that we both know about, and if that goes ahead, then yes, then it would make sense for me to go in there. There you go. There's cryptic, isn't?

Anthony Nwaneri: 51:28

it.

James Cridland: 51:28

If you want to hear last year's winner, genevieve Hassan, then you can find that in this very podcast feed. If you go back, a number of other events going on PodFest Cairo, which is free Saturday, march the 2nd, so Saturday week, a number of speakers there, including the co-host of Radio Lab Latif. Nasa South by Southwest happening in a couple of weeks' time and there's some podcasting stuff going on there. And, of course, podcast movement Evolutions is coming up and very much looking forward to that. I will be talking about the PodNews report card. If you haven't filled that in yet, podnewsnet slash report card, please go and fill it in. I would very much appreciate it. We've had lots of people filling it in, but we could always do with some more, so that would be super excellent. And plenty of other things going on as well.

Sam Sethi: 52:19

And finally, new Zealand. The podcasting summit 2024 has been announced. It's on May the 11th in Auckland. The podcast show in London is the 22nd 23rd of May. We'll be doing a live version of this show as well as the one that we're doing in podcast movement in LA. And finally, james Radio Days, north America. Will you be there?

James Cridland: 52:39

for that one. Well, yes, it's got a podcast session on the Sunday. I believe it's very cheap to go If you want to go to that alone, but if you have a delegate pass, then you get to go in there as well. It's called the Podcast Power-Up Summit, and I read a press release about that, and so I contacted the person who is running it and I said do you know that I'm actually going to be out Radio Days North America and if you wanted a speaker for the Podcast Power-Up Summit then I'd be very happy to? And he said we've already got your name down, James. You're opening it. Yes, OK, All right then.

Sam Sethi: 53:13

Thanks for letting me know.

James Cridland: 53:15

Yeah, thanks, geoff. And there are more events, both paid for and free, at Pod News virtual events or events in a place with people. Podnewsnet slash events is where to go the tech stuff, tech stuff On the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 53:29

Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday in the Pod News newsletter. It is where we do the tech talk. And yes, apple Podcast is broken Again. It broke last week. It stopped checking for new episodes late Friday, which meant that latest episodes didn't show up in the app for users. Now I managed to break Pod News' RSS feed at the same time, so I managed to completely break everything there. Now that bit has fixed. I don't know how fair it is to be mentioning the transcripts on the developer beta, because it's a developer beta and human beings aren't seeing it, it's only nerds like you and me. Those transcripts stopped working last week at the same time and still aren't working, so there's no auto transcripts that have been generated, so far as I'm aware, over the last week or so. So, but I don't think it's particularly fair to point fingers and go come on, fix it because it is in developer beta.

Sam Sethi: 54:30

That's fine. That's fine. I'll let them off on that one, but I wanted to ask you have you seen any podcasting 2.0 transcripts in the world yet?

James Cridland: 54:41

And I have yes, so it will either automatically generate podcast transcripts from your audio or, if you want to, you can put the podcast transcript tag in there.

James Cridland: 54:55

You can learn more about that at podcasting2.org and find out a little bit more about that, and so you can feed it to your own transcript, which I have been doing. It's the only way to get, for example, transcripts with more than one voice name in there, because it recognizes the voices but it doesn't necessarily recognize the fact that it doesn't know who you are and who I am, and so that's the only way of actually doing that, and I have actually got my own transcripts to show up. So if you go and have a look at the pod news daily, then you can see that sometimes it says these transcripts are automatically generated and sometimes it says these transcripts are from the pod news daily. So that's working. So far I've not managed to get it to actually show individual speaker voice names, but again, it's in beta, so I'm absolutely cool with it until March the 6th, when assuming that that will be launch date, and then, if it's still not working, then obviously there's a conversation to be had.

Sam Sethi: 55:59

We'll have a conversation on March the 6th anyway.

James Cridland: 56:01

Yes, exactly, exactly. But yeah, so that should be fun. But I'm just checking whether or not the transcripts are back, and the quick answer is no, they are not. So yeah, so not quite sure what's going on there.

Sam Sethi: 56:16

Okay, one of the Phase 7 new tags that's being talked about is called the chat tag. What's that one, james?

James Cridland: 56:23

It is linking your podcast with real time chat like IRC or XMPP or NOSTA or Matrix. So it's mentioning four different things. An absolute guarantee that nobody will put this in their app, because we haven't made a decision on which chat service to use. And, from my point of view, chat works absolutely fantastically. If you've got a podcast with 100,000 listeners like no agenda, if you've got a podcast with, shall we say, rather less, then that will be an empty pub and no one will go in. So I mean great.

James Cridland: 57:08

But yeah, I'm looking at it and thinking are you going to be I mean you, of course, will be supporting the chat tag and supporting IRC and XMPP or NOSTA and Matrix, won't you?

Sam Sethi: 57:24

No, no, we actually had a conversation with my developer last night about this. Strangely so, in the podcasting 2.0 live item tag they already have all of the fields filled in. We already have an icon on the episode page in Truefans. When you click on it it goes external to the chat window. We looked at it and we don't want it to go external. So we're trying to work out if there's any value of building a chat client into the episode page on the phone. So when you click on a different tab it will show the chat, but then it goes back to your point. Everyone then has to be logged in. Blah, blah, blah. This has to happen and I'll see. Right now it's not top of the roadmap, let's put it that way.

James Cridland: 58:11

It looks. I mean, if you're going to launch something like this to put in the spec, oh, it'll deal with IRC and NOSTA and XMPP. Okay, we get it. My brother worked on the XMPP standard, wow. And I spoke to him about very briefly over Christmas, about XMPP and would it be the right thing for chat and for comments? And he said absolutely not. It won't work on a mobile phone, it's not a thing. So you'll need proxies and you'll need all kinds of things because it just simply isn't built for mobile phones. And I said, okay, well, yeah, thanks, thanks very much, and that's the guy that wrote the spec. If you look at the, you know you look at the. Iscridland.

James Cridland: 58:55

Yeah, well, what's the name of the? The RFC? Yeah, if you look at the RFC for XMPP, then Dave is in there.

Sam Sethi: 59:04

I mean he should know, Shouldn't he really he might know, so I don't know. We have got another feature called co-listen that we're launching, which I think is a better way of doing it, but hey, I'll leave that for another day. Now, rss Blue the lovely guy is there, or Guy Dovidas has launched his RSS music charts showing the most widely played music tracks in podcast over the last 60 days. The company's also launched a service called Cupid, which is subscriber only tool that shows which podcasts are playing which tracks.

Sam Sethi: 59:36

Now, when you go and have a look at this I don't know if you have yet it's really cool. I really like it. It's like here's a track and you click on it and it'll tell you which podcast played that track. That's cool, right? Yeah, I think that's cool. Yeah, I think so too. So, as I said, let me firstly say I love what Dovidas has done and the functionality, and I love the fact that he's actually taken what Adam's been asking for, yeah, which is show me discovery capabilities of where tracks have been played, right, and now I dislike the way he's done it.

James Cridland: 1:00:13

Oh, here we go.

Sam Sethi: 1:00:15

I don't like the fact that this data is basically being scraped from the podcast index. I understand why and Dovidas has no other options. He has to do it this way. So it's not an attack on Dovidas or RSS Blue. As I said, I think what he's delivered is brilliant, but why, as an industry, are we not focusing on a W3C standard? I'm banging my drum. It's called activity streams.

James Cridland: 1:00:39

You're going to say activity streams, aren't you? It's called structured data.

Sam Sethi: 1:00:42

I think that's what RSS is. Last I looked, xml structured data. We don't have a hacky throw your audio up here. We have a structured way of presenting it and it works brilliantly. Activity streams are user generated RSS feeds that show what the user is doing with structured verbs that we can do like namespace extensions, and they can be published and the user can decide what they want to publish and what they don't. So the user doesn't want to be told that you know, I listened or played X track or this. They can for user privacy reasons. They can keep that data private, hacking it by scraping data or putting 1% splits in which I really hate.

Sam Sethi: 1:01:24

You know why are we doing this sort of dirty quick fixes? I'm sorry, adam, I don't like it. I'm going to keep banging this drum. Look at the activity stream. It's a standard. It's not somebody's basically white paper that's written on the back of a fag packet. This is a proper W3C standard and we should be using it. And so, as I said, I think what Dovidas has done is great. I really like it. But that could be delivered properly through structured data, which is XML based, and I don't know why we're not doing it.

James Cridland: 1:01:54

Sam Sethi has spoken. Ladies and gentlemen, sorry about that. We should have a. Sam Sethi has spoken, no.

Sam Sethi: 1:02:03

No, I just, I just keep banging this drum. And you know, we want cross app comments, we want other things. And Adam's pulling his hair out saying why have we not got cross app comments? Well, Adam, because we're trying to do it in a really bad way and all the app developers are going no, we're not implementing your 1% hack. Yeah.

James Cridland: 1:02:21

And also, and also again, cross app comments only works for a podcast with hundreds of thousands of listeners and doesn't work for the majority of podcasts on an episode level. So you've got that as well. So I don't know. Anyway, let's, let's jump in and move on. If you are a fan of podcasting history, I'm really excited that the ABC has done this.

James Cridland: 1:02:44

I found a documentary about podcasting from October 2004. I mean, this is literally made two weeks after podcasting was actually called podcasting by Danny Gregoire. It's a really good listen. It's got Adam Curry on there, dave Weiner, it's got plenty more people from the beginning of the of the industry. I found it on the ABC website.

James Cridland: 1:03:07

I dropped a friend of mine at the ABC and email saying is there a chance of getting the audio for this so that we can have a listen, and do you think it might be possible to put that back on the on the website? Because of course, it was just there for 30 days and they've done it. So yeah, so you can go and have a listen to that. It's a proper piece of history that, so it's worth a look at. You'll find a link to that, of course, in the pod news newsletter. What else is in here. Podbean has launched podbean AI, which is a set of AI enhancements for its podcasters, similar to what Buzzsprout, our sponsor, offers with cohost and magic mastering, but a little bit different. Worth a peek. Podc is a platform for unlocking the knowledge in every podcast, and they've launched AI generated mind maps and summaries. If you can't be bothered to listen to the podcast, then you can use that. That's absolutely fine.

Sam Sethi: 1:04:04

No, come on, that's like saying you can go read the transcript.

James Cridland: 1:04:08

Yeah, well, yeah, pretty well. There's also AI stuff from AdzWiz with synthetic voice ads transistor, which has AI transcript services coming out, which are very cheap and look quite nice. And some podcast platform called Truefans has launched a podcast RSS feed podcasting 2.0 validator. So, exclusively on this podcast, let's talk to the CEO of Truefans, sam Sethi. What is this thing?

Sam Sethi: 1:04:39

Well, I think you've heard. I really should go on holiday. I feel like I'm having a rant this week. You know, you've heard me say that when we've tried to take a new RSS feed, there's missing episodes, missing GUIs, missing this, missing that, and we were struggling with indexing some of the podcasts. So the validator is a free tool that you can go to validatorTruefansfm. You can see what's wrong with your podcast and you can fix it yourself. But what's also cool is we highlight what podcasting 2.0 tags you use and we've linked it to your new website, James, which is what Excellent, which is podcasting 2.0.

James Cridland: 1:05:17

No God, which is podcasting 2.org? I got it wrong all last week, Right? Yes, podcasting 2.org or indeed, if you like it better that way, podcasting 2.org. We can't quite work out which sounds better 2.org or 2.org. Have you ever been on a?

Sam Sethi: 1:05:37

call center. Let us know in the comments have you ever been on a call center where they've repeated your mobile number back to you, but they've done it in an odd way? Yeah, I know exactly.

James Cridland: 1:05:49

Yeah, exactly, yes, yes, so excellent. Well, that's a good thing. I just suddenly had a thought Right, you have on Truefans, you have a host's list of shows that you know, total shows that people have, and blah, blah, blah, from Blueberry and from Libsyn and everything else. What you should also have is you should have the list of failed validations, of actually showing which podcast hosts are producing badly validating feeds since you've got the data, wait a day or two and that might appear. Excellent, that's what we need.

Sam Sethi: 1:06:33

Actually, one of the funny things we are doing next week is we are allowing you to claim your podcast, change your tags and now export a brand new, fresh RSS feed. We are now going to add a recommendation engine to that which says based on the tags you've chosen, these are the hosts that you might want to use. Oh nice, I'm going to be hated.

James Cridland: 1:06:55

so much Nice. Well, we look forward to seeing all of those new features. Anyway, Boostergram, boostergram. Corner. Corner Corner On the Pod News Weekly Review. Yes, it's our favorite time of the week. It's Boostergram, corner, ton of. Well, we've got four. Is that ton? It's a ton down here, mate, yep. So Rw Nash, thank you for the 1000 sats using Fountain. We just have a little message saying thank you. Well, thank you too.

Sam Sethi: 1:07:24

That's very kind 10,000 sats from the pod father himself, adam Curry, love the podcasting2.org website. Disappointing. You kept saying podcasting2. Well, how badly you said it.

James Cridland: 1:07:37

Yeah, Now, I said podcast2.org and what I meant was podcasting2.org and yes, and then Adam went to see if he could buy podcast2.org, but somebody's already bought it. Anyway, it's podcasting2.org or, if you like it better that way, podcasting2.org, Let us know in the boosts. And he says uniquely British. To cock that up, I'd say Love from Texas, which is not the same as Austin. I don't understand either of those two sentences. Well, I always thought it was Austin Texas.

Stew Redwine: 1:08:10

Yes.

James Cridland: 1:08:11

Yes, I mean. What I think he's saying is that all of Texas isn't the same as Austin. Right, I think that's what he's saying, but I've never been to Austin, so I really don't know.

Sam Sethi: 1:08:24

Roe of Docks2222 from our friend Meemawtals podcast, Kyryn, Doing a solo show is definitely less fun than with others, but I think you pulled it off, James, as you did. Well done.

James Cridland: 1:08:35

Well, thank you very much. It was entertaining to, even if Adam didn't like it. Kyryn, thank you. You saw Kyryn in the flesh last night.

Sam Sethi: 1:08:43

We had man hugs last night and good old chowds. So I'm here in Brisbane with you, james, and we had a podcast meetup, which was really, really good, and I was so excited to meet Kyryn. We've chatted lots, yeah, and yeah, he's a really lovely guy. So, yeah, thank you, kyryn.

James Cridland: 1:08:59

That was excellent to see him. Sadly, trevor, satan's lawyer, was having eye surgery. He will no longer be wearing glasses. If he's actually face-to-face, does that mean he's seen the light? He's no longer a satanist. You should listen to his interview on Meemawtals. You'll learn an awful lot about him. But if he's listening, as I'm sure that he normally does, trevor, I hope that everything is good and I hope that everything is no longer blurry for you.

James Cridland: 1:09:28

And another row of ducks from Gene Bean. It was striking. He says that the numbers Amelia from Podscribe talked about, which was in last week's show, were all in the hundreds of a percent of change and all sub one percent totals. I'm not sure what to make of that and I would probably agree that. Yeah, I mean they're very, very small changes, but I do think that they are statistically acceptable changes in terms of that.

James Cridland: 1:09:56

And I I mean, at the end of the day, working out whether a podcast ad is successful based on how many people go to a website is really hard to do anyway. But if you're doing it on a relatively consistent way, then I think you can probably do that relatively well and at least you can see some trending information out of that. But yes, I would probably agree that it is a little bit weird, isn't it? So Sam and I share the money that comes in to the Pod News Weekly Review, separate from Pod News, and if you would like to help us, then weeklypodnewsnet is where to use your credit card, or you can press the boost button. If your podcast app doesn't have a boost button, then grab a new one at podcastingtoorg slash apps. So what's happened for you this week, sam?

Sam Sethi: 1:10:50

Well, I've been in Australia for the last two and a half weeks.

Anthony Nwaneri: 1:10:54

Yes.

Sam Sethi: 1:10:55

It's very nice. Actually it's like Britain on sea with the weather, nice weather, right the sun. Yeah, you drive on the same side, the food's pretty similar, people talk kind of the same. Yeah, they shorten everything, though. Avvo and Australia yeah, they just shorten everything.

James Cridland: 1:11:12

Yeah, australia, yeah, and we've got. If you want to buy a bottle of beer, then you go into a bottle shop. It's not called an off license or a liquor store. Yes, no, it's a good thing. Are you planning anything? You're flying back to Sydney in two hours, my watchers just told me. Are you doing anything exciting in Sydney?

Sam Sethi: 1:11:33

Yeah, I'm walking the bridge, so if I'm not here next week, I've fallen off the bridge.

James Cridland: 1:11:38

Many, many hundreds of thousands of people have done that. You'll be fine, the bridge, not fallen off the bridge.

Sam Sethi: 1:11:43

Thank you very much. Yeah, now I think I'll be okay. Now I've had an amazing time. I mean you could have done that here, yeah, but it's not planned. There's no actual.

James Cridland: 1:11:51

That's the story bridge.

Stew Redwine: 1:11:52

Yeah, no. Yeah. Okay, I think I'll have to last night's drinks.

Sam Sethi: 1:11:56

That wouldn't have been sensible. No, it's been brilliant. I mean I've seen Paul Weller at the Sydney Opera House. We saw an outdoor cinema in the West packet on, overlooking the Opera House and Bridge at night. That was amazing. Gone up to the Blue Mountains, gone over to Kigari, driving on the beach. I mean it's just been brilliant. I love it here.

James Cridland: 1:12:17

Yeah, it's good, isn't it? It is, it's good, isn't it?

Sam Sethi: 1:12:19

You're not that far away?

James Cridland: 1:12:20

No, not, really Not. If you like, planes you do so, james.

Sam Sethi: 1:12:25

what's happened for you this week?

James Cridland: 1:12:29

I've had an entertaining week of still trying to work out all of the bits of the website that broke when I moved to PHP 8. So yes, gosh, that was a nuisance, but still no. Apart from that, I also sanded the table on the deck to make it look nice, just for you, sam, thank you for noticing I did. Yeah, you could still smell the oil, but yes, so that was all very excellent. So it's been fun to see you down here in this part of the world. Now I've been to Marlowe and you've been down here.

Sam Sethi: 1:13:07

It's all been very excellent. It is, it is Brisfagus, it's lights, lights, lights. It's action all the time down here.

James Cridland: 1:13:12

Yes, indeed, and that's it for this week. Thank you to our guests. You can also listen to the Pod News daily, of course. Subscribe to the Pod News newsletter For more of these stories and much more. Podnewsnet is where to go.

Sam Sethi: 1:13:25

You can give feedback to James and I by sending this show a boostergram. If your podcast app doesn't support Boost, then grab a new app from podcasting2.org.

James Cridland: 1:13:37

Our music is from Studio Dragonfly. Our voiceover is Sheila Dee. We're in the pod at edgestudioproductions in Brisbane. We're sponsored by why your Podcast Isn't Growing a new podcast for podcasters? And hosted and sponsored by Buzzsprout podcast hosting Made easy. Get updated every day. Subscribe to our newsletter at podnewsnet. Tell your friends and grow the show and support us.

Speaker 2: 1:14:04

The Pod News Weekly Review will return next week. Keep listening.