James Cridland 0:00

It's World Press Freedom Day , Friday , the 3rd of May 2024 .

Speaker 2 0:05

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

James Cridland 0:15

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

Sam Sethi 0:17

And I'm Sam Sethi , the CEO of True Fans . And to all Star Wars fans , may the 4th be with you tomorrow , gosh .

James Cridland 0:23

In the chapters . Today is Apple's Messages app the latest new podcast player . Why YouTube is not a podcaster's friend and Spotify overtakes Apple for the first time Plus .

Kevin Finn 0:35

Hey , I'm Kevin Finn , co-founder at Buzzsprout , and later I'll be on to talk about fan mail .

Mark Asquith 0:39

Hey , this is Mark Asquith , managing director and co-founder of Captivate , and I'm going to be on the show later talking about Captivate's brand new YouTube integration .

James Cridland 0:54

They will . This podcast is sponsored by Buzzsprout . Podcast hosting made easy with easy and powerful tools , free learning materials , remarkable customer support and now fan mail .

Speaker 2 0:59

From your daily newsletter , the Pod News . Weekly . Review your daily newsletter , the

Interview: Kevin Finn, Buzzsprout

Speaker 2 1:04

Pod News .

Sam Sethi 1:04

Weekly Review . James , in the truest sense of AOL , you have fan mail , or at least Buzzsprout tells me you have fan mail . What is fan mail , James ?

James Cridland 1:12

I don't know . You had a quick chat with Kevin Finn from Buzzsprout and I think you probably started by asking what is fan mail .

Kevin Finn 1:21

Oh , fan mail is our solution for the best way for a podcaster's audience to connect with them , and so it is as simple as tapping a link in the show notes and then any podcast listener .

Kevin Finn 1:34

Once they tap that link , it will open up their messaging app on their phone whether that be an iOS device or an Android phone or probably anything else and it allows the listener to go ahead and send a text message right to the podcaster , and so fan mail is what we're calling it , but it's really like a full featured inbox that lives inside of Buzzsprout and it lives in our iOS app and it lives in the desktop app , so you can check your messages either place . It's really nice if you're on an iOS device right now and Android soon , because you'll also get a push notification that you just received fan mail . You can tap on it and you can see whatever your audience is saying to you , whether it is words of encouragement or feedback from the show , or if you're asking specific questions , or let your imagination run wild with everything that you can do with it .

Sam Sethi 2:15

I've got some ideas of what you could do with it , but anyway , because we've enabled it already and yeah , so we're going to be playing with it . We talked about it on the show today , so hopefully people will start to send us some fan mail and we can read it out on the show next week . That'll be great . Now , what really drove you to do this then ? Was there a business problem that people kept coming to you with ? Or was there something in the team that said I think I've got a great idea ? How did it come about ?

Kevin Finn 2:40

Yeah Well , at Budsprout , we try to do two things really well . Yeah Well , at Buzzsprout , we try to do two things really well we try to help people start podcasting and then we try to help people keep podcasting . And one of the things that is a struggle for a lot of podcasters is that it feels oftentimes like you're speaking out into the void . It feels like a very one-way communication system that you're working with and you're sending out great content all the time , but it's very infrequent that you have listeners reach back to you , and so there are plenty of ways to do that . Like you can set up emails and you can set up voice messaging systems and everything else , and we've tried all of those for our show , buzzcast , and we've worked with customers to help them explore a bunch of different ways , and a few months ago , we started experimenting with this texting solution for Buzzcast and the response has just been overwhelming and like we can guess and hypothesize about . Like why is texting so much better ? At the end of the day , we really don't know , except the fact that it is like people were very open to the idea of just tapping a link and shooting a text . I think it's just so simple People text all the time , it doesn't feel intimidating , it doesn't feel like I have to have my email configured properly on my phone , or maybe an email feels like I should say a lot versus a text where you just say something short .

Kevin Finn 3:52

But we don't really exactly know . All we know is that we've tested it . It performed way better than anything else that we'd ever tried , and so we said , hey , like every podcaster should be able to do this . Every podcaster should be able to click a button , turn this on and then have their audience shoot them a text . And again we're just blown away . We rolled this out fully in production about a week ago for our last buzzcast show and over the weekend it was like push notification after push notification coming in on my phone about all these listeners who were just shooting us quick messages of encouragement . We ask questions on our show , so some of them are answering the questions , some of them are just saying we enjoy the show . But probably throughout the weekend we probably got 25 or 30 responses in our fan mail inbox and that is so encouraging . As a podcaster , we've never had that level of engagement with our show before .

Sam Sethi 4:39

Can you respond to those through the same mechanism ? So , as the podcast creator , could I get a message from you , Kevin , saying love the show , blah , blah , blah , blah , blah and I go ? Oh okay , Kevin , thank you so much . Whatever , I want to say back to you , Is it a two-way mechanism or is it a one-way mechanism ?

Kevin Finn 4:56

Right now it is a one-way mechanism and so we definitely have the ability to make it a two-way mechanism . But we didn't start there and so we think right now how we're using it on our show and how we rolled it out for version one is that we think the best way to respond is to read those out on your show and give shout outs on your show and respond to the ones that are appropriate for you to respond to in your content . Like , I think that's the most fun and rewarding way for both sides . So I'm listening to a podcast , I tap a link , I shoot them a text message and then I listen on the next week show and then I hear that they got my message and they're responding to it . I think that's exciting and it also encourages your audience to come back and listen to the next episode , because I shot you a message . Explore that . But for right now , we're really excited about letting the audience connect with the podcaster and the podcaster . They already have their way of connecting with their audience and that's doing your show .

Sam Sethi 5:52

Yeah , look , I'm old enough to remember writing into radio stations to say can you do a shout out for me and say happy birthday to me ? And then I'll wait for the DJ to come along a week later going and happy birthday to Sam .

Kevin Finn 6:06

Exactly yeah , it's a big rush , we like it ?

Sam Sethi 6:09

How do you enable it in Buzzcast ? Then what do we do ?

Kevin Finn 6:12

So for right now yes , we're talking on Thursday and this is going to come out tomorrow , so probably early next week you'll be able to enable it from anywhere when I say anywhere , either desktop or the iOS app . But , as of today , the only way to enable this through our iOS app . So we can talk about this just a little bit . I know we've already covered this in the previous weeks , but within the past month or so , we released an iOS app for Buzzsprout and this was sort of the real big driving factor of thinking through new solutions like this , like what are really good mobile first experiences that we can bring to people as a podcast host , and so we developed fan mail as a mobile first experience , and it's the first mobile experience that we brought to Buzzsprout , and so it's really great on desktop as well . But it just made sense since we started thinking about it as a mobile first feature .

Kevin Finn 7:02

Again , those push notifications just make it really feel like you're getting text messages directly from your audience , and so if you have the iOS app , you go ahead and launch it .

Kevin Finn 7:09

You click on more , you'll see the fan mail icon , tap it , walk through the little setup thing and enable it , and then it goes on all your podcasts . It drops that link in all your podcasts Again . By the beginning of next week , probably , you'll be able to log into the desktop site as well and you'll see a fan mail link . Click on that and enable it the same way and it does work great in both instances . It's just we don't think the idea of like having to go check your fan mail , like you sit down at a computer and check an email , was as fun or as delightful as it is to be able to get like real time push notifications from your audience , as they're sending them Again . Like I was saying this weekend , the weather here is beautiful this time of year , so I was out relaxing around a pool and message after message kept coming in and I was just like endorphin rush after endorphin rush . I'd be like we aren't just speaking to the void , there's actually people listening to our show and they're interacting with us now .

Sam Sethi 7:55

Yeah , no , that feels good . Now . Quick question then is it free or is it part of an advanced plan ? I mean , obviously you've got great AI tools which are an extended payment . So fan mail where does that fit in the packaging ?

Kevin Finn 8:09

Yeah , we're including it with any of our paid plans . So our paid plans start at $12 , go up to $24 a month . We also have a free tier , which is like a free trial for anybody who wants to give the system a try . It's not included with the free trial , but if you are in any paid plan , at no additional charge , you will get fan mail . So , kevin , with fan mail .

Kevin Finn 8:32

Obviously I saw it was a US number . How does this work internationally ? Sure , yeah , so anybody who can text a US number internationally , it should work just fine for them . But what we have heard is that a lot of our international listeners because again , this is on the listener side are saying that there are fees associated with texting a US number , and so we are exploring the idea of procuring a few other international numbers to be able to hopefully reduce the cost of listeners being able to reach out to podcasters . So that's experimental Right now .

Kevin Finn 8:57

We're figuring out how many numbers we have to procure . How do they work ? The same way , international texting and all that , but it is compatible . The challenge is just that it might cost a few cents to go ahead and send a text to the US . Upside to that is that texting doesn't really have a huge spam problem and it's because it does have a small cost associated with each text . So we did build a blocking system . If you happen to turn on fan mail and you happen to get a few spam text messages , you can go ahead and block those numbers . But typically spam is not a huge problem , at least for US numbers with texting and , like I said , it is international and additional improvements are continuing to be explored .

Sam Sethi 9:36

Excellent . Now , one of the things that you have launched . Obviously , we talked about the iOS app , we've talked about fan mail , but you've also got an ad platform . Now , that's been out for over a year now , but you've recently enhanced it . So what have you done ?

Kevin Finn 9:51

Yeah , so Buzzsprout ads started as us dabbling into the podcast advertising space to see if we could figure out a solution to enable independent podcasters to make a little bit of money doing a little bit of advertising within their podcasts with a very low light lift on their side . And so you can think about this as what other platforms might call programmatic . We just think about it as Buzzsprout ads . And so we have our own marketplace where we sell the ads and then we make those opportunities available to our podcasters and then they can review the ad and they can choose to accept it into their podcast if they want to . And then from there we make it completely simple . Like we automatically find the ad placements , we let them customize their intro and outro , the transition in and out of the ads , and they just run and they get paid for every download . They get paid about 1.4 cents US per download . That has been working really well .

Kevin Finn 10:46

But what we're hearing from more and more advertisers is that they get matched with so many podcasts . It's very hard for them to go through the long list of podcasts that they were just matched with and figure out if they want to allow that podcaster to run the advertisement or not . And so what we've done now is we've always had the matching side on the podcaster side , like they can review the ad before it goes into their podcast . Now we've just added the ability for advertisers to go ahead and accept the ad on their side as well before it will go live . So what that means is basically we've taken a one side match and we've made it a two side match . So now the podcaster accepts the ad and now the advertiser says hey , buzzcast just accepted your ad . Do you want to review Buzzcast and make sure that you're happy with them running the ad ? So it's a setting that they can toggle on and off .

Kevin Finn 11:34

If they want to run like what we call auto approval , the way that it used to work and it continues , that's still an option . But if they want more control , then they can turn that on . And option . But if they want more control , then they can turn that on . And so what it really allows advertisers to do is target specific podcasts . If they just want four or five shows to run their ad , they can totally do that . If they want hundreds of shows to run their ad , they can do that as well . So really what we have now is kind of more control for the advertiser in running campaigns that can be as targeted as they want or as broad as they want .

Sam Sethi 12:03

Nice and remind me , if I wanted to do an ad with Buzzsprout , where would I go on Buzzsprout ?

Kevin Finn 12:09

Sure , you just go to buzzsproutcom slash ads A-D-S , and you sign up and create an account and we have the system all set up that you can advertise a product , a service or a podcast , and so that pretty much covers it , like , regardless of what you want to advertise . You just create your ad , you upload it . They're audio first ads . So you upload a recording around 30 seconds or so , upload it into the system and then you immediately get matched with podcasts . Again , based on the criteria that you select . You get matched with a certain number of podcasts and then those podcasters review your ad and they say , yeah , I think this would be a good fit for my show . And then again , if you want the control to then approve it before it actually starts playing and you start paying for it , you can have that control as well .

Sam Sethi 12:49

Now it's dynamic ad insertion , so you're using clever technology to work out the right place to place those ads as well within the audio .

James Cridland 12:58

Right .

Sam Sethi 12:58

Now , james and I , we have auto transcription . How does DAI from Buzzsprout work with your transcription ? Because a lot of people talk about I've done my transcription , it's timed and then suddenly boom , someone sticks a DAI ad in and suddenly all my transcription's all over the place . Have you fixed that problem ?

Kevin Finn 13:16

Yeah , same problem exists on chapters and transcripts , in that they're based around timestamps and so as soon as you change the duration of the audio , the chapter markers and the transcripts need to shift .

Kevin Finn 13:27

And so we have gone ahead and built some technology to shift that stuff based on dynamic content is what we call it , which is you're changing the duration of your audio . So if you drop in a 30 second pre-roll , we will time shift all the timestamps for your transcript in the background automatically , and the same thing for your chapter markers . So if you set chapter markers at a minute 30 , but then you drop a 30 second pre-roll , we're going to time shift that chapter marker for you out to two minutes , and so it's not everybody that does that . It's one of the things that we think makes podcasting a little bit easier , so you don't have to worry about . Oh , if I accept this ad or if I do this piece of dynamic content , is it going to mess up my stuff for a while until I pull it back out At Buzzsprout again ? We're about making things really easy and lightening the load for podcasters , so we've taken the time to automatically build these transitional shifts into chapter markers and transcripts .

Sam Sethi 14:17

Awesome , Kevin . Thank you very much . Thank you . From your daily newsletter , the Pod News Weekly Review

Integrating YouTube into RSS feeds

Sam Sethi 14:24

.

Sam Sethi 14:25

From your daily newsletter , the Pod News Weekly Review . A few months ago , adam Currie pondered if it would be possible to view YouTube videos in podcasting 2.0 apps . Now I thought , hmm , that would be interesting , wouldn't it ? So , as CEO of True Fans , we set about looking at if this was possible , and it turns out it is . You can take the share URL from YouTube and put it into the alternative enclosure and then , within the app , you can switch between the audio and video . And what makes it even nicer is that YouTube hosts the video for us . So , yes , low cost , and you get one user experience . Now , james , what did you think of that ?

James Cridland 15:02

first of all , yes , I think it's a wise plan . I think being able to switch between video and audio , that's what people are expecting in Spotify , that's what people are expecting in the YouTube Music app itself . So being able to do that in any podcast app kind of makes quite a lot of sense , and I quite like the idea of using the YouTube video where you have . It is an interesting way around of doing it .

Sam Sethi 15:29

Now there was a little bit of controversy , I guess , because the initial way that we did it was we used video slash mp4 as the mime type . Yes , which was wrong ? Which was wrong ? Yes , I accept , I put my hand up and I say I was wrong . James , you were right . But over in LA I managed to speak to various companies Captivate , blueberry , hubhopper and RSScom who said they would all implement the alternative enclosure and enable the YouTube feature . One company , I'm glad to say , did implement it . Captivate implemented it this week and they launched their integration with YouTube . So I thought I'd catch up with Mark Asquith , the MD of Captivate , to find out more about it .

Interview: Mark Asquith

Mark Asquith 16:08

To be completely honest , it's something that we'd been thinking about and then you brought to us as well this idea of number one . People are publishing on multi-platforms and we know YouTube is essentially a first party host for videos and so many people need to be on YouTube , want to be on YouTube . We know that the algorithm is different . We know discoverability and surfacing videos is different . We know that viewer intent is different to podcast listeners . We know the behavior is different , but it's still becoming a major part of the podcasting ecosystem , whether we like it or not . Whether we say it's a podcast or not , no one really cares anymore . If my mum or if someone like one of the builders that we've got working here says to me I watched this podcast on YouTube , I'm not going to say technically that's not a podcast , I'm going to say thanks for watching , you know . So what we wanted to do was give our creators a way of bringing their audio and video a little bit more closely together . So what we've done is we've just implemented what is actually a really simple method of saying look , here's my audio and here's the YouTube version of it , and you can pop a URL in and you can put a link , you can put an embed code . Whatever you want , captivate will sort the rest out Into a specific audio episode . You can then allow that to display in a couple of different places . So a really simple one is it will display on your Captivate website . So if you go to , for example , with one of my shows inandaroundpodcastingcom or glugccom , click on one of the episode details and not only will you get the player , you'll get the episode notes , but you'll also get , now , the embedded video , which is all just done for me . You'll also get it in your embeddable player . So there's a little video icon where a video is linked and when you pop that up you will see the video version , which will link to YouTube . And we chose to link to YouTube because people want YouTube , the experience , as much as anything else , as opposed to . We didn't want to play in the player because YouTube's good at what it does .

Mark Asquith 18:05

But we did another couple of things that made this really quite interesting . So the two things that we did that took it a bit further was we were huge believers in discoverability . We want people to really have their shows surface to the right people . But once they've been surfaced , we don't want people to bounce . We want people to say , oh , actually , look , there's other stuff that Sam's done that I would be interested in . So the first thing that we did was , in our podcast player , the Captivate Embeddable player , when you click to look at the episode video that's connected to the audio version , you'll also get a couple more videos from that creator's channel , because it's all about just keeping people within your own creator ecosystem . Then the second thing that we did , which is something that I mentioned earlier on , that you and I spoke about , that you brought to us and encouraged us to work on , was this idea of using the podcasting 2.0 , the podcast namespace , alternate enclosure tags . The theory with this is that you can deliver an MP3 file in the enclosure tag , which is what we do as providers of compiled RSS feeds . We deliver the MP3 file that you upload to Captivate in your RSS feed within an enclosure tag and that tells the apps here's where that file lives . Go and look at it . So this concept of this alternate enclosure was quite interesting to us In its most strictest sense , its most original specification , it was intended to upload another version of a piece of audio , whether that's a video version in MP4 format , whether that's a translated version in another language , it doesn't really matter , and the theory here is that a podcast player could look at that tag and say , oh , actually here's another version of this .

Mark Asquith 19:48

So , yeah , you press play on the main version , but actually here's some interface elements that will allow you to play another version , whether that's video or a translated version , whatever that might be . So what we did was we dug into that spec and we looked at a couple of the things that people like James Cridland had suggested . We looked at some of the things that were potentially almost arbitrary blockers for this . So things like actually , should we be using the alternate enclosure tag , if we can ? Actually that the type of file is actually a YouTube link . It's called the MIME type , as we know . This is a type and it's YouTube . So that's what we implemented .

Mark Asquith 20:31

So what will happen is when I link a piece of audio to a video on YouTube and I publish it as an episode on my Captivate feed , the Captivate feed will have the audio file as normal and its enclosure tag . It will also have this alternate enclosure and it will give places like TrueFans , which I know supports this . It will give them the title of the YouTube video , because that may be different because we may be doing some YouTube SEO versus Apple Podcasts or Spotify SEO . It will give you as the player , so TrueFans in this instance . For example , it will give them the location of the YouTube video , so the link to it , and another couple of things as well . So it will basically just tell you what the type is Like . I said this mime type .

Mark Asquith 21:14

The really cool thing with this is that it just feels like sort of the tip of the spear . It feels like we're just starting to explore . Actually , if I'm a creator , if we want open podcasting to genuinely serve creators , one of those jobs has got to be to move effort and work off that creator . So we were really keen on looking at okay , here's the spec for , for example , this alternate enclosure . It feels a little bit rigid . Maybe open podcasting can be a touch more flexible and we can implement it in its truest sense , which is to help further the benefits for the creator . So that's what we've done .

Mark Asquith 21:56

I use it on a couple of my shows . I run a golf podcast , which is really cool . I run , obviously , in and around podcasting and what's been fascinating is that a part of my workflow is , for example , creating the visual assets for the golf podcast . That's a great example . You know , I go and create a thumbnail now because we implemented chapters into the Captivate player , which are really cool . I think it's a really powerful implementation of chapters . So I'm creating these images anyway . Using something like Canva or , you know , using some of my actions in Photoshop , I can quickly resize this to a YouTube thumbnail and it's almost a no brainer to try and access that audience . So , yeah , that's what we've done . It was Pierre internally here at Captivate that worked on it , and some of the other team just around getting that out . So props to them . It's been a great implementation . I'm I literally started using it the day it went out . Yeah , no .

Sam Sethi 22:42

I was practically dancing around the room when I saw you announce that , because I've been banging the drum for the alternative enclosure for over a year now and you know I've tried with Todd at Blueberry , because when I look at people who've got audio and video podcasts right , it makes total sense to me to combine the two and give the user , the listener , the option to lean in or lean out . So I want to just go for a jog or walk in the dog , I'm going to listen to the audio , I happen to be at home and I want to lean back and I want to watch the video bang and I have that option to switch and that's all it is . I'm working with Adobe right now and nudging them because they want to use the alternative enclosure for foreign language inclusion , and so thank you , captivate and Pierre , for implementing it , because you know now I'm hoping that other hosts like Blueberry , rsscom , hubhopper and others who I've talked to , will accelerate their development and implement it . And I think one of the problems we have is YouTube , friend or foe to the industry . I know when I hear James go , their PR people never talk to the press and don't tell us what they're doing , and I don't get involved in that side of the business . That's James's , and I go okay , that's a bit odd . And then we go and see Kai Chuck and Alison Lomax and all these great people at YouTube , but they never say anything , they never tell you anything , they never give you anything new . And then I won't say who it was , but I was speaking to a leading host who said they'll never support YouTube because YouTube don't do pastry . So what they want to do is suck all the RSS from hosts and then repurpose it locally and then not give an RSS out . And so what is YouTube ? It's basically trying to kill the open RSS industry . So again , I hear so much .

Sam Sethi 24:34

I looked at all of the event seminars at Podcast Movement Evolution and so many of them were how to make money with YouTube and your podcast . And I'm like , oh my God , you realize what you're doing . Your turkey's voting for Christmas . Right now You're literally saying we're going to hand over all of our stuff to YouTube and they're not going to give us it back and they're going to monetize it themselves and give me a little bit of a shekel , but that's about it . So I think what you've done , and I hope the others do , is allow people still to use YouTube to host the video , which is what they're good at doing , but bring it back into the players locally . Okay , with my TrueFans hat on .

Sam Sethi 25:11

Yes , we allow the user to switch between audio and video , but what we do and again , just one little feature is because we use micropayments for audio . We actually have micropayments for video , so you can actually monetize it as well , but it's a simple inclusion and I'm so glad that you added the MimeType YouTube because that will stop James telling us that we can't do this . Sorry , james , but I was very frustrated when we thought we'd cracked a solution and then James is going but it's not technically the correct solution and we have to change it and you can't use this . Video equals mp4 , mind type , so that's the way around it . So quick question I've already seen a couple of your users already on LinkedIn and Twitter being very excited about it . Do you think many of your users will A get what you've done and ? B use it ?

Mark Asquith 26:06

Yeah , I think it's one of those features that implements podcasting 2.0 concepts without being overtly podcasting 2.0 technically , because people relate to YouTube already and I think , just to kind of contextualize this through something that you mentioned earlier , I'm one of the leading hosts saying we'll not do it , we'll not implement YouTube , we'll never support YouTube because of pass-through or a lack of pass-through capabilities . I totally get that , but I think there's such a multi-layered issue here . Insofar as you know , if I'm a huge creator of a media business and a podcast is one of my main channels , I will either have or will be working on a major video strategy . Now , if I have a studio and I'm recording a podcast , you can pretty much bet that , unless YouTube is only going to be used to promote another channel , ie push people to a podcast or a written piece of work , whatever unless that's the case , video will be a major part of my content . And if I'm recording in a studio anyway , why would I not just use the same thing and maybe potentially slightly edit it differently ? Because we know that , for example , jump cuts and visual elements are required a lot more to keep attention on YouTube and maybe titling is different , thumbnail strategies are different , but I'm going to be using the same type of content and I think because of that , there's a couple of ways to think about this . I think , yes , the standard creator will get it because they're already thinking about YouTube . Yes , they will use it for that very same reason . We've got platforms like Squadcast , riverside and so on that allow us to do talking head videos , overlay some graphics and off we go , we can be there . Whether the channel will grow with that content , that's debatable because it's a different channel and it requires work to grow . But it's better to be there than not . So that's the sort of logic , I think , for the base creator and yes , I think people will use it . I think people already are . But when you look at the kind of bigger players , it's a funny scenario , because we talked about it on the IAB episode of In and Around Podcasting .

Mark Asquith 28:12

Youtube measures everything differently . We can't , I wouldn't want , pass through . Why would I want pass through ? Because all that raises is why is Captivate different to YouTube ? Because it is different , because it's a different type of media . I don't measure books the same way that I measure the use of instruction manuals for Ikea furniture , but they're both written word and they're both essentially printed on the same type of thing and if you were to really kind of bring it to its basic level , they could be argued to be the same thing , but they're not . They're very different use cases and contextually very different .

Mark Asquith 28:45

Now that's a very flippant , extreme example , but the point is that I wouldn't necessarily want YouTube to be sat alongside my podcast download numbers or listener data or whatever that is . So I think when it comes to , like , the bigger hosts thinking we're not going to implement it , I don't necessarily think that's a problem . I think it just illustrates that we've still got to be really good at podcasting and the audio art form . And if podcasting in the industry , as we know , is coming up to 2 billion in ad revenue per year , is that really counting YouTube revenue or is that being reported differently ? So what I'm I think what I'm trying to get at is that we're coming to a precipice where there will be a split in the way that we measure podcasts on different channels , but that will be unified when potentially selling podcasting as a channel . Because if I turn up and I'm selling a massive show with 5 million downloads a month , 10 million downloads a month , 10 million downloads a month . 30 million downloads a month .

Mark Asquith 29:48

How do I go in and pitch it to a buyer ? Do I go in and say , here's the podcast , and this is what we get via audio , this is what we get via video . Do I bundle all the numbers together ? If I bundle all the numbers together , how do I report on purchase intent or the warmth of any leads that come through , because we know everything's very different on YouTube . How do I report on YouTube's advertising strategy and their dynamically inserted content and ads ?

Mark Asquith 30:13

So I don't think it's quite as simple as the will . Creators love it , because the basic creator that's like me and enjoys working on a golf show yeah , they'll get it , they'll use it . The bigger picture is , right now we can say we don't do YouTube , or we do YouTube or we don't support it , or we do support it , or YouTube's coming for podcasting , or YouTube's not coming for podcasting . That doesn't really matter . It will be in three years time that has shaken out and ad buyers are looking at it in a way that we might not yet understand , because they don't know how it's going to shake out yet . So yeah , it's a bit of a long-winded answer , but it's such a fascinating problem . I think it's such a multi-layered challenge that the entire industry is facing .

Sam Sethi 30:55

Yeah , I tend to agree . And out of that comes about five questions , by the way , mark . So let's rapidly go through them . First question will Captivate ever become a video host ?

Mark Asquith 31:07

Not in the short term , just because it's expensive to do it . People that want genuine video podcasting , ie videos delivered via RSS , a few and far between , and the people that you see wanting it and you do see more people wanting it , but they represent such a specific type of creator , so I don't think so in the short term .

Sam Sethi 31:27

The solution you've put forward now fixes that anyway . Put it onto YouTube and then bring it back into Captivate . So if that really addresses that whole problem without having to become a video host yourself , the next question is can you put your global hat on for a second ? One of my favorite shows is with Emily Maitlis and John Sopel , and you know it's the news agent , and one of the things they do is they produce a video version of their podcast . Would global now adapt and support the alternative enclosure in the way that Captivate's implemented it , so that I could then have a copy of the news agent with an RSS feed and the alternative enclosure contains the video of the same show ?

Mark Asquith 32:12

I think it's an interesting challenge that , because you've got so , something like Global Player which is , you know , it serves millions and millions of users every single month active users listening to this is a bit of a flagship product for Global , but it faces the same type of challenges that something like Captivate faces , in that you've always got 5% of people being as loud as possible about a specific feature and that happens multiple times .

Mark Asquith 32:35

You've got 5% wanting this , 5% wanting that , 5% wanting something else . I would like to think that video will become , and continue to become , a bigger part of something like global player and if that comes to fruition through podcasting , the news agents is a prime candidate for doing that . It comes with inherent challenges because , as an app developer and someone that's building a business around an app , you want people to be using that app , and it comes with content suitability challenges . It comes with brand safety challenges around the potential of inserted ads , the potential of related content thereafter . I know there are , you know there are code based ways of mitigating those risks , but ultimately , those risks still do exist .

Sam Sethi 33:35

And I know that video , the video strategy , is something that I'm always talking to the podcast team about , and everyone at Global is thinking about video audio , which is fundamentally still hosted on YouTube . Anyway , that's just a wish . Now . We talked about , or you talked about on your last show , in and around podcasting , about the slow demise of the IAB , which feels like it is in a slow demise , with Spotify certainly looking like they've pulled out . I'm sure that will lead to others maybe considering their position there .

Sam Sethi 34:04

We know downloads don't mean anything really in the industry . It's an old metric based on the fact that old broadband was poor and so Apple auto-downloaded stuff so it was ready to listen to straight away . James talked about this whole metric with you about dynamic ad insertion and delivery of ad being the metric on payment , and I sat there and I listened to it and I went , but that doesn't still tell me if anyone's listened to the ad . That just tells me you've served the ad , and is that what we have as an industry now as a standard ? I've served the ad , therefore pay me , but no one's actually telling me if anyone listens to the ad . Is that the best we can do ?

Mark Asquith 34:45

I think , again , that's a bit of a multilayered challenge . I believe you've got , as James mentioned on the show , you've got people that just want numbers and you know if I'm extrapolating radio data , you know the sort of Raja data out . You know I just want the numbers to go up . If I'm looking at TV broadcast numbers , I want the numbers to go up . If I'm looking at TV broadcast numbers , I want the numbers to go up . If I'm looking at outdoor advertising , display ads online , I just want the numbers to go up . That said , I believe podcasting is at a point now where we've reached enough ad revenue to require specificity in measurement , and I mentioned it on In and Around Podcasting . I believe one of the ways or one of the things that we should be looking at is intent . We've got a bit of tech called productivity , which exists for a very specific reason around capturing user intent , and it's I believe that is number one a very important place that we should think about heading as a podcast industry . I'm not sure the IAB can handle that . I'm not sure the IAB has the scope and the depth to be able to go too deep into podcasting the industry and to maintain a set of standards that are so specific that we never see fluctuations between hosts , and so I believe intent is something that , as an industry , we should be working on , either with the IAB , with something like James mentioned , the podcast advertising bureau that we may , who knows ? Maybe we'll create that , maybe it'll be led by pod news , the podcast standards project , global and ad swizz and all the big players , the tritons of the world . Maybe we get everyone together and we try that . When it comes to the , was my ad listened to ? That's where I believe we're going to see we've got a bit of a coming inflection point . I don't think we're there yet , but let's say we've got $2 billion right in advertising running through podcasting this year , let's assume , and next year everything renews on the basis of podcast .

Mark Asquith 36:44

Advertising is good , we've got impressions . I just wonder the shelf life of that . If I'm pitching a hundred million dollar campaign or a 10 million dollar or whatever the spend is , I've got to go sit in my boardroom and I've got to go get the budget approved for next year and I've got to go do it again the year after and then the year after . At what point does someone on the board say impressions are great , but what have we actually got from it Now ? I know that's a very simplistic look , because brands measure brand uplift . They measure brand recall . Not every campaign is intended to deliver direct on the boots , on the ground sales , roi .

Mark Asquith 37:30

I get that , but I just wonder if we've got that inflection point coming where people do start thinking well , look over the last 10 years , since the whole boom in 2016 , 2017 , we've actually put a hundred million quid into podcasting . 2017 , we've actually put a hundred million quid into podcasting . Is it not about time that we measure how this has done for us before we sign off on that next 10 million ? So , measuring intent , measuring the way that we analyze the sentiment , I think has to get better . You know , sentiment of a listener with regards to a brand has to get better .

Mark Asquith 38:05

Downloads are the best we've got . First party data as it exists in Apple and Spotify is good data , but it's first party data , you know , unless they either start passing that first party data around listener engagement , as Apple shows like an engaged listener that's listened to 40% of an episode , for example , unless that starts getting passed back , where we can build dashboards and we can build the you know , the hub spot of podcasting where we can pull everything in and say here's analysis of everything . Unless we can start doing that , I just worry that we're going to start to see advertising revenue slow down as it starts to come into the industry .

Sam Sethi 38:43

Yeah , I think three points there , a hundred percent agree . Someone's going to ask one day , where's my return on my investment of this podcast advertising ? You can't just keep saying , oh , I think someone heard this , I'm pretty sure someone heard this , but I can't tell you . You know that's a rubbish model and people will take their money elsewhere if that keeps up A bumper talk about which is you know that's a rubbish model and people will take their money elsewhere if that keeps up . A bumper talk about which is you know , jonas voos and dan meiser talk about listen time and percent completed as a good metric and there's a model beyond that , but I won't get into that today . But the other thing you know you talk about is this whole concept of sentiment and intent . Again , that's critical . What's funny is I got an email yesterday from podcast movement evolutions , the event that you know you hosted literally , and it was called real podcast monetization strategies for the future of your show or network , and that came out yesterday . So it's available for people to go .

Sam Sethi 39:39

Look , and me and rob walsh , I think , had a heated debate on stage and rob was arguing from the point of and I fully get his point of view podcasting 1.0 is where he was arguing from . In that model , downloads are the metric . That's all we can give and it's working because people are believing or not questioning the model . But , as you said , some point a person in the boardroom is going to say well , why am I signing off 10 million every year when I don't know what's coming back and downloads don't equal listened and listens don't equal actually heard ? So I think there's a big issue there .

Sam Sethi 40:15

But I think the other one was . I basically said I think and you were there I said to the audience put your hand up if you actually skip past the ads , and I know that most people put their hand up right . So unless we fix these problems , I think we're going to have a bigger issue down the road for the podcasting industry , and I don't know if the IAB is going to be the thing to do that . The Podcast Advertising Bureau will be an interesting one , but again , I still think it has to have the right metrics . So my last question to you here , mark , is if all that first data is held within the apps , all that hosts can do is still give analytics on downloads . They don't have that data . So will we end up seeing hosts buying apps to get that first party data ? Or do you think Apple and Spotify will release it ? Because I don't think they will release it . Why would they ? It's not in their interest .

Mark Asquith 41:06

Yeah , that's a funny thing . I mean , apple and Spotify feel different right now . You know , spotify is an audio business that is driven by keeping people inside their app to sell advertising revenue , which is fine . That works . They made a billion last quarter . It's working . Yeah , exactly , something's working somewhere , isn't it ? So Apple feels differently with podcasting to me , and I'm yet to understand the long-term motivations for Apple continuing to push ahead with podcasting the concept because it doesn't make a ton of money for them in context of them being bloody Apple . And yet the team is passionate , the people are good and they seem to be moving a little quicker than they have in the past . So we've got two hats that we can put on here . We can put the cynical hat on , which is Apple is going to do what Spotify have done and sell advertising . I don't think they'll ever go down that road .

Sam Sethi 42:05

I think they iAds was a massive failure and I think they've now gone down the road of ads are bad and privacy is good and so they're anti-ads . So I don't think they'll ever switch that model .

Mark Asquith 42:16

I totally agree . And if we were to go completely the opposite way and let's assume this is benevolence you know we just want to support podcasting and open podcasting and the creator economy . And you know it's cool because people still use iPhones and buy iPhones because it's got cool podcast stuff on it . That's a really basic , naive version of the thinking . But if we go down that path , there's an argument of why would they not give the data out ? Because there's almost no point not doing . You know I want to log into something else . Does apple get positioned better as a creator supporter if they pass data back through ? So I think those two companies are slightly differently positioned and think of it differently .

Mark Asquith 42:55

To the point about podcast hosting companies buying apps um , we've looked at it in the past as captivate . Before , you know , pre-global , we thought about building a listener app , but then you've got marketing . You've got to get some market share . We've looked at it , we've . We have looked at it , um , because if you control the ecosystem end to end , you can do some really freaking cool stuff . And as you were true fans , you know you will generate early adopter interest and you will do some cool stuff and you will be able to give an experience that no one else can , which eventually will get more and more people interested and , importantly , the right type of people that are going to then advocate for that thing .

Mark Asquith 43:40

So I think , conceptually , yes , the challenge is there are only so many decent apps with enough market share that you'd be able to extrapolate any data out of them and take it and genuinely look at , you know behavior , trends and you sort of if you're not careful sadden yourself with a code base that you might potentially regret . I'm not saying that is the case , but there are technical considerations around it as well . But logically and theoretically , it is something we thought about pre-global and I do think it's a strategy that could help creators to understand not only how to grow their show more , but how to access diversity , monetization , because we see behaviors , we know where to put things and what to sell . So , yes , logically , I think it's sound .

Sam Sethi 44:30

I think the answer to your question , though and I think you said it quite well was why doesn't Apple release that data ? They're not making money from that data , they're not trying to sell ads , so why won't Apple release that data back to us , certainly when hosts are working with them ? There was that , you know , hosting onboarding program that Apple had I can't remember what they even called it now and you know everyone was told to to get on board and support Apple in doing this , and I thought the quid pro quo would then be okay , you've helped bring more people to the Apple ecosystem , apple . Why don't you now give those hosts who supported you first party data back , allow them to add that to their analytics dashboard , and suddenly you know okay , that's maybe 35% of the industry then . And then you have the listen time and you have all of that metric data .

Sam Sethi 45:21

Spotify's never going to give it to you , youtube's never going to give it to you , and maybe 35% of the industry . Then you have the listen time and you have all of that metric data . Spotify is never going to give it to you , youtube's never going to give it to you and , as you rightly said , the podcasting apps are too small right now to actually matter in terms of the amount of data they'll pass back . So Apple seems to be once again either the enabler or the blocker . I can't work out which side of the fence they're sitting on . Maybe they're not even aware that they've got this data and what to do with it . Maybe they're just sitting there aimlessly going . I don't know , but that would be my logical route . If Apple gave all the hosts first party data back , that would be a solution .

Mark Asquith 45:58

I think one of Apple's challenges is it almost I don't want to say the words don't that it doesn't realize the power it's got . But I think sometimes it's overlooked just how important a direct relationship with Apple can be to a company . So , as an example , when we first started Captivate , we got a lot of work done with Apple , we did some really cool stuff with them and then one year , because of COVID , we weren't at an event and we were left out of the integration for direct delegation I forget what it's called , the one where you can pass , basically subscriber audio in . We were just left out of the first round just because we weren't at an event , because of COVID . And that's super frustrating because you've got you know , they've truly got the power to determine whether a user goes with you as a hosting company or not , because you don't or you do have that tick box and that's a real challenge and the reason I say that is not to have a dig . I've spoken to apple about it , I've told them this directly . The reason I say that is if you look at pass-through of data , if you look at passing first-party data back through to all the hosts , it would Apple and those that happened to have turned up at a meeting because they were able to fly 8,000 miles , and it just becomes the entire industry moving forward , with Apple spearheading that , as opposed to just we're sort of rolling that out to some people , because if we genuinely want the industry to move forward , we all have to move forward .

Mark Asquith 47:48

I've been like this since I got into the industry . It's an all ships rise thing . I've never put competition down . I would never slate any other hosting company because there's no need . We all do better when we all do better . And I just feel like Apple could put their arms around the entire indie industry and just say look , let's do this , we're Apple , let's do this . And they've got a great team , passionate team , run by very smart , creative people that are very human . So there's no real reason I can see unless it's an Apple business decision that we simply don't know about for this kind of thing not to happen . So I'd really encourage that , I think the problem with Apple is they're myopic .

Sam Sethi 48:27

I think I've been inside big , large corporates . They don't look outside the corporate wall . I think they're just a little bit myopic about what they can and can't do . I think you know I was in the browser wars , fighting for Netscape and open standards against Microsoft and the closed market . Along came Google , eventually with Chrome , and they held that role of don't be evil and they really made Microsoft sit up and have to change the game .

Sam Sethi 48:55

I think Apple can be the game changer and make Spotify change . I think Apple could do more to support you know they've supported the transcript tag . They could do the person tag , they could do five or six other tags quite quickly and become part , really part , of the podcasting 2.0 movement , not just a tangential side observer in the PSP or whatever . I think they could take a much more diligent and leadership role or at least , if not a leadership role , an active role , and that would force the likes of YouTube and force the likes of Spotify to come open . But while Apple sort of sit on the fence and do nothing and they literally do nothing , then I think the problem is that Spotify goes .

Sam Sethi 49:41

Yeah , we're making a billion . Who cares ? Apple's not doing anything . You know I don't care , and YouTube goes , yeah well , you know , we're just Google , we just do what we do , right ? And so I think Apple has a role within the industry If it wants to choose to play that role of being the kingmaker . I think they could really make a difference but I don't think they will .

Mark Asquith 50:05

That's the problem . Yeah , it's a difficult situation , is it ? I mean , if you were to go real extreme with it , apple has the money and it's a relative drop in the ocean to simply buy every single hosting company . The podcasting industry is not big enough to warrant silly prices , and it's not 2018 anymore . You know we aren't seeing the big , crazy acquisition boom . So I totally agree If you want to rival a Spotify and a YouTube , you mop up every hosting company and you simply become creator first , which they would have to see a return from . But I think if you can control the ecosystem , the return and the ability to create return on that kind of investment becomes so diverse that it becomes relatively impossible to fail with it . Yeah , so yeah , and I get that . Maybe that's number one , a very extreme example , and number two might be quite a naive example , but it's sort of what spotify are doing , so why not ?

Sam Sethi 51:03

Yeah , anyway , mark , we could talk all day . The industry is fascinating . Thank you so much for your time . Congratulations with the YouTube integration and , mark , you're going to be at the London podcast show . What are you going to be doing there ?

Mark Asquith 51:16

Yes , I'm excited . So I'll be on boots on the ground exhibiting with Captivate . We've got the team down there giving out a little bit of merch and doing what's what in the creator village , and then we've got a couple of talks actually . So I've been working with the podcast show guys on what this creator stage and the whole creator village looks like this year . So we're going to be down there . I'm doing a solo talk on podcast growth mistakes to avoid and what to do instead .

Mark Asquith 51:40

And then I've got the wonderful Sarah Ray from Global , who's Global's head of podcast sales . And then we've got Jordan Harbinger . Both of those guys are going to be joining me on a panel about the future of podcast monetization Not too dissimilar to the one that we did in Los Angeles , but with a slightly different angles . I'll come in the audience and I'll heckle you . Yeah , come along , give us a heckle . And then we've got , obviously , global . We've got a massive suite up in the top corner where we're going to be some talent up there . We've got a lot of meeting space , there's going to be some drinks , there's going to be some beer up there , allegedly . And then we've got our Captivate meetup on Thursday evening .

Sam Sethi 52:16

So all welcome Mark Asquith , co-founder of CatFace . Thank you so much , mate . From your daily newsletter , the Pod News Weekly Review .

Stats - including Spotify at #1

Sam Sethi 52:26

Op3 , John Spurlock's project has got some new data out . James , what's he been talking about this month ?

James Cridland 52:32

The main thing that he has highlighted is that Spreaker is now number two in terms of share of new episodes . Spotify's anchor product , spotify for Podcasters , still way out at number one , of course , but Spreaker at number two , just passing Buzzsprout at number three . One of the reasons why is that Spreaker now supports Podping , so that means that every single new episode which is published by Spreaker is now spotted by this Livewire tool , and so there's a hint and tip If you are a podcast hosting company and you are not yet supporting Podping , then it's dead easy to do so . I mean , it really is . I can do it , so therefore you can . It's one line of code , quite literally , so make sure that you are there , and you can probably get a little bit higher in this chart as well .

Sam Sethi 53:20

The other thing that I spotted in one of John's charts was that Spotify is now passing Apple Podcasts . That has to be the first time , it's done that .

James Cridland 53:31

Yes , so this is according to Buzzsprout . In fact , according to our sponsor , buzzsprout's global statistics for April showed that Spotify slipped in front of Apple Podcasts for the first time in terms of total downloads . Now you're probably thinking but hang on , james , spotify is number one anyway , isn't it ? And it is but for listeners , not for downloads . At least , that's always been the case up until right now , and I think it's a particular achievement for Spotify , because Apple Podcasts , of course , also auto downloads by default and Spotify doesn't . So actually , spotify is always going to have slightly lower figures than Apple , but the fact that Spotify is now bigger on Buzzsprout's service than Apple is , I think , really interesting to end up seeing . What did you think of that ?

Sam Sethi 54:18

Yeah , I mean , look , spotify's had a hell of a start to 2024 . You know , their revenues are up , their numbers are up , their share price is up and now they're knocking Apple off number one . You've got to argue that . You know , at the moment the proprietary , closed platform of Spotify is knocking everyone else out the park . And you know , if I was inside Spotify and I was their product manager , or I was Daniel Ek , I'd be going exactly keep going . So you know it's a bit of a worry for the rest of us who are pushing the open . I suppose industry standard that you know the closed , proprietary platform is getting to users and they like what they're getting .

James Cridland 55:01

Well , how is Spotify a closed proprietary platform anymore ?

Sam Sethi 55:03

Well , it's closed and proprietary . Because they don't have an open standard . It's their standard . Are polls just a standard format ? Are chapters a standard format ? Are the way that they do video ? Is that standard ?

James Cridland 55:17

Ah , yes , well , you make a good point there , I think one of the things that I did notice I thought well , you know , is Buzzsprout just an outlier here . So I went to have a look at OP3's data . Now I just pulled off 1,000 downloads from an hour ago and then 1,000 downloads from 13 hours ago , because I thought that that might be quite interesting just to have a quick play with . And what's quite fascinating about that is so 6am UK time or 3pm Australia time , 22% of all downloads were from Spotify and Android in absolutely by far the lead in terms of downloads . So 131 downloads to Android , 88 downloads to iOS . So I thought , firstly , that's really interesting that you've got this part of the world when this part of the world is awake and online . Then you've got a lot of Android usage and , of course , apple Podcasts isn't available on Android yet because they're not stupid .

James Cridland 56:18

Spotify is really cleaning up in terms of Android , and that's what you would kind of expect , because in this time zone there is also , of course , all of Southeast Asia , Vietnam , indonesia , the Philippines , all of that kind of stuff which is heavily , heavily Android , heavily Spotify . Therefore , if you wheel it back 13 hours ago , so that would be 6pm in the UK , 1pm in New York , 11am in LA . So you're talking Europe and North America and I thought what do the numbers look like there ? And even for Spotify ? So , firstly , Spotify is bigger 27% of all downloads . Secondly , spotify on iOS is bigger than Spotify on Android , which again is a massive thing .

James Cridland 57:12

I've always thought that Spotify is just the podcast player that most people use on Android , because there isn't anything decent now that Google Podcasts is closed . But no , spotify is bigger than Apple Podcasts in terms of downloads and , again , that's a fascinating thing too . So really interesting . Now , that's based on a thousand downloads from OP3 . But even so , just looking at that as just a grab of a little bit of data , spotify seems to be doing something very , very well in terms of this , so even more important than they have been in the past , I think .

Sam Sethi 57:45

I think one of the things if I look at my two teenage daughters , they don't use Apple for anything music , podcasts or anything . They are purely Spotify . And I think you know you've been going on about Apple how stupid you are not to have an Android version of your platform . I think the numbers now are beginning to have an Android version of your platform . I think the numbers now are beginning to bear out what you've said , james . But also I look at my children . You know whether they're in the car , on an Alexa , on a mobile phone , on their laptop , spotify is everywhere . They have done something which I've , you know , always talked about , which is they are a platform agnostic . They are just everywhere , whereas Apple is just on iOS , and I think that's beginning to hurt Apple now and if they don't change , they are going to see these numbers drop further and further , I think .

James Cridland 58:34

It's a big missed opportunity for Apple . And once again , just let me remind anybody that says that would be a silly idea Apple TV is available on Android . Apple Music is available on Android . The only big media consumption thing that Apple produces that isn't available on Android is Apple Podcasts . So yeah , there's a thing .

Sam Sethi 58:58

Well , I'm sure that the corporate spreadsheet bunnies are looking at this now going , hmm , better get on with it . I'm sure they're not . No , exactly Apple's myopic . Now , moving on

Blubrry adds host-read ads

Sam Sethi 59:10

Blueberry , todd Cochran , friend of the show They've launched with a partner called Backbeat Media , and they're working together for premium host red ads . And this sounds very much like what Red Circle are doing , james , to me . What do you think this is all about ?

James Cridland 59:27

Yeah , very much so . So BackBeat Media look after sponsorships for premier products and sites . That's the plan that they end up doing , and a guy called Dave Hamilton has jumped in with Blueberry to offer those tools to the Blueberry folks . Blueberry has a lot of these deals with third-party companies in terms of ad sales , in terms of sponsorships , now , in terms of host reads , whereas Red Circle does it all for themselves . So OpenRap , which is Red Circle's equivalent , which is seeing tremendous growth at the moment 38% growth in downloads since announcing OpenRap . You know Red Circle does everything for themselves and is , I think you know , the better long-term plan , although obviously you've got to staff that up and everything else . But , yeah , so you know more people helping you monetize is always a good thing .

James Cridland 1:00:24

There was an

Round the world

James Cridland 1:00:25

interesting thing in the Pods . The North newsletter , which is Canadian . Katie Law wrote something about Canadian podcasters prefer the Canadian way to monetize , which is , firstly , to apologize and , secondly , to give you some chips with cheese on top of them and thirdly , to monetise using collaborative host-read ads with brands they trust , which I think is a lovely thing . It probably tells you quite a lot about how Canada works , but she ended up writing a really good piece which we linked to all about how podcasts work in Canada .

Sam Sethi 1:01:03

In Japan , otonal Inc and Asha . I wish you had done this bit piece which we linked to all , about how podcasts work in Canada . In Japan , otonal Inc and Asahi . I wish you had done this bit . The Asahi Shimbun Company have jointly released a survey .

James Cridland 1:01:15

I tell you what ? Yes , let's go around the world .

James Cridland 1:01:21

And in Japan . Otonal and the Asahi Shimbun Company have jointly released a survey of podcast usage in Japan . You'd never know , that's completely seamless , sam . Nobody would notice that there was an edit there at all . Anyway , the data is interesting . It shows that 15.7% only 15.7% of Japanese adults listen to podcasts . I think that's a monthly figure , although that number is much higher if you're young , between 15 and 19, . That number goes up to about a third .

James Cridland 1:01:51

Typically , japan is a very strange country in terms of audio consumption . It doesn't do an awful lot of it . They're used to a lot more video . They're used to having televisions on in the background rather than a radio on in the background , and all of it . They're used to a lot more video . They're used to having televisions on in the background rather than a radio on in the background , and all of that . But podcast listening is as popular as TikTok . Consumption in Japan is the headline that they would probably prefer , that we pointed at . Hopefully we'll hear more from them at Podcast Day Asia , which is coming up in September in Kuala Lumpur , powered by Pod News . I can now say Wow , so that's exciting , bolder than you . Yes , so that's data from Japan , data from America , sam .

Sam Sethi 1:02:32

Yeah when listening to ad-supported audio , americans are spending more than three times longer with the radio than with podcasts . That's according to the Record , which is new data from Nielsen and Edison Research . However , younger listeners 18 to 34 , spent more time with podcasts and radio , which is about equal , really 37% to 45 . My view was that old people just can't get to the radio quick enough because it's really old people listening to it . That's the only reason .

James Cridland 1:03:00

I've fallen . I can't get up . I don't want to listen to this advert , but I can't move . Stop it , Stop it .

James Cridland 1:03:06

I mean , I think this data is interesting in that it is time spent listened and , as you'll know , I keep on banging on about time spent listened because I think that that's the most interesting stat that we can actually get out there . Time spent listened is the one that we need to increase , not monthly reach . You know the amount of people listening . It's time spent listened . If we double time spent listened .

James Cridland 1:03:30

I know that your friend , James from One Fine Day , gets very annoyed when I say this . I'm going to say it again the longer that people listen , the more money podcasting makes . The longer that people listen , the more money podcasting makes . So if we double the amount of listening , we double the amount of money that podcasting can make if you're charging on a cost per thousand basis . That's how it works . James Bishop , very , very annoyed with me for saying that , but anyway . So from that point of view , yeah , interesting seeing this data and interesting seeing again that for younger listeners and this time younger isn't 15 to 19 , it's 18 to 34 , because that's America , for you are listening to podcasts pretty well as long as radio , which , by the way , is the case here in Australia as well , and data from India as well Only 12% of Indians are currently engaged with podcasts , which I think yeah .

Sam Sethi 1:04:26

can I just point out that 12% is 120 million people .

James Cridland 1:04:30

Yes , yes , exactly which the podcast Pulse , which is a good piece of research from Unpack Research and Idea Brew Studios . Again , hopefully , they will be speaking at Podcast Day , Asia in September . Yes , they point out that India is already the third largest market for podcast listeners , even though only 12% of Indians actually listen to them , which leaves , as they say , a vast untapped audience waiting to be explored . And they said something about people are pretty new to podcasts , aren't they in the country ?

Sam Sethi 1:05:08

Yeah , I mean , it's only about a year or so . So you know companies like HubHop , who we spoke to , gotham were saying that 98% are on Android and they're only just getting into podcasting , but we also talked about Pocket FM , who recently raised $103 million . So there's a lot of companies , I think , targeting the Indian diaspora and the Indian market itself , or you should say now the South Asian market , because India is just one part of it . I think it's a massive opportunity and also , you've got to remember , english is still one of the major languages across the whole region . Indeed , I don't think it should be something that European and Western companies ignore .

James Cridland 1:05:49

Yeah , there are massive , massive opportunities . And one of the things that I would say if you are doing a podcast that you think would work in India and quite a lot of entrepreneur podcasts do particularly well there Then make sure that you're on the local podcast apps there , apps like GeoSarven and Awaz and many others . That's where you'll get the numbers . You won't necessarily get the numbers from Apple Podcasts or from Spotify .

James Cridland 1:06:16

In the US , two pieces of news from there Twit is to close its studios in Petaluma in the next six months . According to Leo Laporte , he's spruiking it as an environmental thing . That's a good Australian phrase , isn't it Spruiking it ? But anyway , he's saying that it's an environmental thing , saying that our 15 employees won't be driving all the way to Petaluma anymore . They'll be staying at home , although , of course , he'll be saving himself an awful lot of money doing that as well . It's a great shame to see the brick house I believe it's called , but it's a great shame to see that close .

James Cridland 1:06:48

And also in the US , audia , which is the company working on a podcast app that skips the ads . Basically , they were going to get chucked off the NASDAQ because their shares fell so low that they were out of the rules there . So they've done some clever financial manoeuvring that I don't really understand , but their stock price has lost two thirds of its value in the last six months . But good news for them is that they have gained a patent for ad skipping live radio , and the patent appears , if I'm reading it correctly , to be pretty close to ad skipping podcasts as well , in terms of what the patent is actually looking after . They actually put that patent in in 2020 . So it's taken quite some time for that patent to be granted , but granted it has

Events, including new ones!

James Cridland 1:07:37

been . Podcast events on the Pod News Weekly Review .

James Cridland 1:07:41

Time for some events and all kinds of things going on , including , of course , the podcast show in London 22nd to the 23rd of May . Also , the podcast Power Up Summit is happening in Toronto in Canada . There's an early bird price of 75 Canadian dollars , which is about $2.40 , isn't it , if you're quick ?

Kevin Finn 1:07:59

I am of course joking If you keep long enough .

Sam Sethi 1:08:02

They owe you .

James Cridland 1:08:03

Yes , yes , exactly . Anyway , that's on Sunday . Some really good speakers there Katie Law of the North Newsletter , which we mentioned earlier . Dane Cardale from Gumball , Laura Mayer of X of ABC News . X of ABC News , no , currently of ABC News . And Eric Newsom of Magnificent Noise Plus . Of course I'm popping up , because of course I always do , so that'll be fun , but I'm only talking for 10 minutes , so that's good , and then I'm out to the pub , so that's going to be nice . Also , the New Zealand Podcast Summit is happening Saturday , may the 11th . It's happening in Auckland , speakers from Auckland , speakers from across the country , and that should be good , fun to go to as well , and plenty and plenty of other things . Now you are doing some interesting things in terms of webinars . Aren't you for Podcasting 2.0 ?

Sam Sethi 1:08:55

Yeah , with my podcast standards project hat , one of my goals was to reach out externally to the non-technical , non-geek groups to try and get them to understand a little bit more about what was going on with Podcasting 2.0 . So I've partnered up with the Podcast Academy , michelle Coombe , and we will be doing a series of webinars . They start on the 21st of June and then another one on the 16th of July a little bit of a holiday period and then back in September . They're going to be non-technical , they're going to be looking at why anyone would want to do or extend their RSS with some of the new podcasting 2.0 extensions and how to do it . I think this will be interesting . We'll see what the feedback is . But yeah , I think this is the first step that I've taken to try and reach out beyond the small geek group that we normally talk to .

James Cridland 1:09:47

Yeah , well , that all looks very excellent , so watch out for that . If you're a member of the Podcast Academy , it's worthwhile taking a peek at and the Global Podcasting 2.0 Festival or maybe it's the Global Podcast Festival 2.0 , or maybe it's something else . Yes , what's it called and when is it and what is it ?

Sam Sethi 1:10:09

Well , we'll decide on the final name in the near future . This again was something that I'm a little bit frustrated . I went to Podcast Movement Evolutions in LA and I looked at all the seminars and it was like how to make money with youtube , how to make money with advertising and subscriptions , and it was like , okay , is anyone talking about podcasting 2.0 here ? No , no , no , okay , that was a loss . And then I looked at the agenda for the london podcast show and I reached out to Jason Carter back in November and I said , look , I'll run a separate seminar . We had the BBC R&D asking for it , we had Fountain asking for it , we had Podhome , we had loads of other people I mean Hub Hopper , flying from India . There could have been a stream that we ran at the London podcast show , but nope , we're going to have celebrities telling us how they make money , but we're not going to have anybody talking about podcasting 2.0 .

Sam Sethi 1:11:06

So I was really , really frustrated that these two big events were doing absolutely squat to extend the industry . So I said , look , should we do an event in real world , you know ? Should we do it in Dallas , new York ? Should we do it in Amsterdam ? Where should we do it ?

Sam Sethi 1:11:21

And then it dawned on me that I had done , in 2019 , a podcast festival online that followed the sun . It started with James actually in Australia and ended up with Kara Swisher in New York , and I thought , well , let's do the same thing again . So , um , james , if you're up for it , you'll be the opening keynote and Adam Currie will be the closing keynote , and we will have many other speakers in between . There will be a website available very shortly and there will be submissions for speakers as well . So I think we should , as a group , put our own event on and reach out , and the one caveat is the only way to watch it is to use a podcasting 2.0 app , and there won't be any ticket payments . It'll be purely on a V4V basis . So streaming , stats , boosts or any other means of payment . There you go , I think that's a very exciting thing .

James Cridland 1:12:14

I like the idea of keeping it to a podcasting 2.0 app . So you have to , you know , download one of those or go to your website and um and uh , yes , and then you get access to that . So I think that's a smart plan . Um , uh , do you have any dates for that ? That you're um hoping for ?

Sam Sethi 1:12:34

yes , looking at wednesday , september the 18th , uh , I think , um , we'll see whether it'll be a one day or a two day event , depending on the number of people who make submissions , but I'd like to start off with a one day event . It'll be long enough , starting in Australia and ending in America . That'll be 12 hours probably . But yeah , I'm very keen to get this because I think there's so much more we can do and so much more we can say . So sounds fun . I've stuck my hand up again , james . Why do I keep ?

James Cridland 1:13:02

doing it , foolish man . Well , more information of that to come in the next few weeks . Podnewsnet , of course , is where to subscribe to our newsletter , and if you're organising something or if you're looking for something to go to , then podnewsnet slash events lists all kind of events and things like that

The Tech Stuff

James Cridland 1:13:24

. The Tech Stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review . 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 . Here's where Sam talks technology . What have you got for us this week , Sam ?

Sam Sethi 1:13:37

Last week we talked about it briefly that you found out how to use Apple's Messenger app and turn it , maybe , into a podcast player . I know you said that's not really what it is , but you were using something called the Open Graph Protocol .

James Cridland 1:13:51

Yeah , so I've been supporting OG Audio in the website headers headers of PodNews for some time , and it was actually just a mate of mine that forwarded a link of a day's PodNews to someone else and just sent it as a text message in Apple's Messages app and was amazed to see that there was a play button in there , as was I , to be frank , because I had no idea who uses the Open Graph audio standard . Anyway , it turns out that Apple Messages does . So if you send just podnewsnet to a friend of yours or even just to yourself using Apple's Messages app , then you'll see that there's a little play button there which will play you some audio , which is quite nice . I tipped off a few people .

James Cridland 1:14:52

I know that support for that is coming on the rsscom podcast websites that they run . It's already live on Podpage . So if you have a Podpage website , like Boostgram Ball , then that will now work for you , because Brendan has added the OpenGraph tags and , similarly , captivate has also added those links as well . So that works perfectly , and even if you've got a trailer set , then it will automatically play the trailer if you just share the URL to your podcast on their platform . So I thought it was quite nice . There's a lot that you can do with the Open Graph standard , and I would like to see more apps support the Open Graph audio standard . I haven't found anyone , frankly , who's doing it other than the Apple Messages app , and there must be more . So if anybody knows anybody else who's using the open graph audio tag , I would love to know well , I did have a quick look around , actually .

Sam Sethi 1:15:48

Um , facebook used to be a massive proponent of this . They had the facebook open yes , didn't they ?

Sam Sethi 1:15:54

and I thought , oh , let me try and share from pod news into whatsapp and share into various other facebook related platforms nothing , nada , zip . So I think they've removed all support from it . Um , and then , and share into various other Facebook-related platforms Nothing , nada , zip . So I think they've removed all support from it . And then I looked around at who came up with the idea of the Open Graph Protocol , which is and I never understood this when I first heard about it the RDFA extension . I never understood that when it first came out . But it was a friend of mine , mark Burbeck . We share the same birthday . He's based in London . There you go , yeah . So , uh , mark , I might try and find , find him on linkedin and see what he's up to these days . But , um , yeah , these are old technologies . What I'm finding really funny , james , is that activity pub 10 plus years . Open graph protocol 10 plus years . Um , it makes me wonder if micro formats will make a comeback as well , because they were big in the day 10 years ago .

James Cridland 1:16:47

No , I think all of this is really interesting , and in fact , quite a lot of the conversations that I've been having in the podcast index GitHub at the moment has been trying to stop people reinventing wheels , adding new tags of stuff that already exists .

James Cridland 1:17:05

And it strikes me that podcasting has gone through 20 years of not really having anybody in charge of it or at least specifying how the RSS should really look like , and so there are a few things that could do with a little bit of sort of tidying up of actually , you know , here's how you lay out the generator tag and here's how you might want to generate a GUID for a podcast episode , and so on and so forth . So I think quite a lot of it is just taking old technology that we already have and just putting a few guidelines , a few best best practices . There is a website called podinfranet , which I snagged for some reason , and that is that has a ton of best practices on there , and perhaps we might , you know , put a few more of those in there , but maybe that's the plan , I don't know . James , you put something on GitHub .

Sam Sethi 1:18:05

I found really interesting , only because I wanted to ask you to elaborate more on it . Oh yeah , somebody said you know we were talking about the generator tag and we're talking about this tag and that tag and replacing iTunes colon with podcast colon , whatever , whatever , replacing iTunes colon with podcast colon , whatever , whatever . And you said I don't believe the goal of podcasting 2.0 , the namespace is to replace the iTunes namespace , and I thought , hmm , I'm sure I've read Dave and Adam say that that's the overall goal . So what's your thoughts ?

James Cridland 1:18:38

I think I don't believe that the goal should be to replace the iTunes tags , and I think I mean , quite apart from anything else , is that that is an unachievable goal and I'm quite a fan of smart goals that you can actually achieve , and that is not one .

James Cridland 1:18:56

So I think what I've seen other people say , and what I think I've seen Dave Jones say particularly , is that the podcast namespace goal should be to enhance the existing standards which exist out there .

James Cridland 1:19:13

And if you're going to enhance something , then yes , you do need a new tag . But I think that a lot of the tags at the moment that are being proposed as a new standard are tags where people haven't actually looked at what RSS is capable of , particularly just bog standard RSS , let alone the additional iTunes tags that go on the top of that and other namespaces which also exist as well . So , but in terms of just replacing the iTunes tags with a podcast tag , I just , I just can't see that ever actually happening . And it seems , change for change's sake , because what's the point in doing that ? You know , you know Apple , Apple isn't going to go rogue on us , or at least you know , hopefully won't go rogue on us . So I think , from that point of view , we're all fine . I think that we should not necessarily worry too much about trying to replace the iTunes namespace . I think if we can come up with better things , then that's a good thing .

Sam Sethi 1:20:22

One of the things I think people were talking about was the fact that you know , for example , the iTunes category list has not been evolved . It doesn't allow it to be evolved . It's owned by Apple and we are beholden to Apple , who aren't doing anything with it . So shouldn't something like that come away from Apple's namespace into a more open podcasting namespace ?

James Cridland 1:20:44

tag . Well , I mean , I think you know , again , you will still need to support the iTunes category list , because that's what Apple have spent the last 20 years working on . So I don't think that it's realistic to look at replacing the iTunes category list . But there is work going on on an additional form of categorisation , whether that's linking to existing data which is already out there , or whether that's using , you know , free tags and free text to actually link through . You know . But again , I mean , nobody's going to stop using the iTunes category list . So I mean , that's just simply not going to happen .

Sam Sethi 1:21:25

You can take what's there and extend and enhance it . I think I'm not sure it will happen . I mean , I've been working with Wave Lake recently on a music category list and that's something that we use which says , okay , the only category is music , or music interview in the itunes category list . But yeah , that doesn't address the category of rock , soul , you know , punk , whatever you want . So how can we adapt ? So when medium equals music , we we switch in with the new wavelength category list and that really works for categorization . So so I think there is place for some changes to the iTunes namespace . I agree with you , it's not a goal to replace it .

James Cridland 1:22:10

On Well , yeah , I mean , you know , if you've got something which is better , which enhances the functionality , then absolutely , that's exactly what the podcast namespace is there for . If you just want to want to change , you know , itunes owner to podcast owner , um a , I don't see the point of that . And B , you'll never succeed . You will never , never succeed in doing that . I mean , you know iTunes in terms of the , in terms of the um , existing iTunes tags . There are new tags that Apple put into the iTunes namespace four or five years ago now , which still podcast apps don't support and podcast hosts don't support . So you know and the trailer is a good example of that which is only supported by about half of the podcast apps out there . So I think you know it's unrealistic to expect that we will ever get rid of the nasty iTunes namespace and replace it with our flowery one , because it just simply won't happen Now lastly , james , I wanted to ask you because you wrote about this you know Swifties Beliebers what's the name of your listeners ?

Sam Sethi 1:23:24

Miles Marcello suggested you should have a name for your fan base , so I just wondered . You said Pod Newsers , but I thought surely it's got to be Critters . It's got to be Critters , hasn't it ?

James Cridland 1:23:35

No , no , we're not doing any of that nonsense . Not doing any of that nonsense ? No , I think you know pod newsers or pod news hounds or I don't know or something . But yes , I mean he's pointing out Swifties Beliebers , if you give your fan base a name , then that's probably a good plan . I think you know . If you have a look at what Adam and John C Dvorak do in terms of their listeners for no Agenda they call them all kinds of different names and things it makes you feel as if you're in a club , which is quite a nice idea .

Sam Sethi 1:24:05

I was going to say answers on fan mail . You can send us fan mail . Now , what should we call James' fans ? What should they be called ? There you go , We'll have a .

James Cridland 1:24:15

Indeed , use fan mail , however that works , and that would be a good thing . And if you don't understand how fan mail works , just rewind to our interview

Boostagram Corner

James Cridland 1:24:25

with Kevin .

Speaker 2 1:24:25

Boostergram , boostergram , corner , corner , corner On the Pod News Weekly Review .

James Cridland 1:24:32

Yes , it's our favourite time of the week . It's Boostergram Corner . A row of ducks from Andrew Grumet . Appreciate the weekly review , as always . Thank you for keeping us all informed . Thank you , andrew .

Sam Sethi 1:24:49

We should get you on , um , also a row of ducks from gene bean . Uh , this is one for you , sam . There was okay . There were several interesting things mentioned in this episode that would have been nice to see links for in the show notes . Do you publish links somewhere else instead ? No , we do them , gene , within the five minutes after james publishes it . Um , I do actually get on with putting . You can go back and look , they're all in there , and also chapter art and also all the guest icons as well .

James Cridland 1:25:10

So under the person tag , Sam normally does a bunch of that . I publish this podcast in the middle of the night and then Sam will wake up in the morning and do a little bit more of that . But of course , you can also do a search in the Pod News website and find anything that we have talked about as well , because all of the stories are linked to from the Pod News website too . Dwev 10,000 sats Thank you , dwev . There's a good amount of money . Tim Tams are available in the UK now via Waitrose and Ocado .

James Cridland 1:25:42

Yes , not sure about individually wrapped versions . No , no , exactly Individually wrapped versions are the ones that we need for the podcast show . So I'm going to see if I can find those Lesser known alternatives you could bring . Include Cherry Ripe no , I won't , because they're disgusting . Violet Crumble no , I won't , because they're a poor man's crunchy . Or even Pizza Shapes no , I won't , because they're a poor man's crunchy . Or even pizza shapes no , I won't , because they make your fingers turn orange , I just made myself hungry . He said Thank you , dwev , for that . Cole McCormick1 sent us a row of ducks and says I really enjoyed the interview with Shark Party Media . Yes , catherine was a good interview , so thank you for that . Also , seth's appearances with curry and barry were great uh seth .

Sam Sethi 1:26:28

No , americans . Americans do that to me so often really because they see sethy , yeah , and seth is such a common american first name .

Kevin Finn 1:26:36

Yes , I often get called hey seth , how's it going ?

Sam Sethi 1:26:38

man like yeah , no , try sam , uncle sam , you know , remember him . He an American , easy to remember as well . I'll forgive you , I'll forgive you .

James Cridland 1:26:48

Adam Curry sent us 10,000 sats and said name check boost . That's Adam Curry , adam Curry , everybody , adam Curry . Adam Curry sent us 10,000 sats . Name check boost . He says Adam Curry , everybody . Namecheck boost . He says Adam Curry , everybody . Also , adam Curry sent us another 10,000 . Says net income , like other accounting measures , is susceptible to manipulation using such techniques as aggressive revenue recognition or hiding expenses . Yes , this is talking about Spotify's accounts from last week . By claiming , through the addition of audio books , they are now a bundle offering . They can pay out less to copyright holders of music . Yes , they can .

Sam Sethi 1:27:24

It's nothing to do with podcasting , though , so I'm not going to talk about it here , but yes , yes , you cut that to the cutting room floor last week , so just in case we did have a piece on it .

James Cridland 1:27:34

Yes , yes , sam had spent some time writing a piece on that , which I summarily deleted . But , yes , lots of people , lots of musicians , unhappy about Spotify and the way that they are paying musicians . The only thing that I would say is it's not the way that Spotify are paying musicians , because Spotify don't pay musicians . Spotify pay two sets of people the publishers and the record companies , and it's up to the record companies and the publishers to pass the money to the musicians , and that's all that I will say on that .

Sam and James's week

James Cridland 1:28:03

What's happened for ?

Sam Sethi 1:28:03

you this week . Sam Steve Jobs penned his I hate Flash post this week in 2010 and then summarily went and built Flash 2.0 , which I call iOS apps . Totally closed proprietary single platform with no . Seo . So welcome to Flash 2 if you're using an iOS app .

James Cridland 1:28:24

If you're not calling them the new Internet Explorer , you're calling them Flash 2 .

Sam Sethi 1:28:29

Oh yeah , completely rubbish they are . Wow , now also just to make you feel old , james . No , you're younger than me . Even the basic programming language turned 60 this week .

James Cridland 1:28:39

Yes , I wrote a telephone billing system in BASIC . Ah , there's a thing for a BBC computer .

Sam Sethi 1:28:45

You're still earning royalties from it today . That's the BBC's main switchboard , yes , which is very good .

James Cridland 1:28:52

Have you done anything exciting in terms of true fans recently ? I'm guessing that you probably have .

Sam Sethi 1:28:59

Yeah , no , we talked about the YouTube integration , but yes , we've pushed live now artists and audio book publisher feeds alongside podcast publisher feeds . So they're all live now and they follow the phase seven spec . So , uh , yes , we work really hard to make sure they all are compliant and we work with wave lake , as I said , very much on getting the artist one working and , yes , we'll have Sam Means and or Michael on the show later this month , because they've done a lot of work on not only publisher feeds , but also they've done work on a lightning wallet and they've done work on the music genre . So time to have an update from Wavelake . I thought so , yes , we've done work and that's gone live . So that's good .

James Cridland 1:29:44

Well , we're all just pushing along trying to figure it out , out out . All your anticipation pulls you down when you can have it all . Did you enjoy Take that the other night ?

Sam Sethi 1:29:58

No , my wife decided to have . It's her 60th birthday celebration . She's having a year of celebration oh , she'll love you for that .

James Cridland 1:30:08

Yes .

Sam Sethi 1:30:10

God , I mean , if anyone saw me , my street cred went through the floor . Take that , it was a bunch of 10,000 ageing OAPs with their daughters singing along . Oh my God , help me . Anyway , I got through it . Two and a half hours of gritting teeth yes , there you go .

James Cridland 1:30:29

I don't know what you're waiting for . Sam , your time is coming .

Sam Sethi 1:30:32

Don't be late , hey , oh my God , yes , look , I've got PTSD from that . Don't remind me , please , james . What's happened for you , my friend , what's happened for you ?

James Cridland 1:30:47

So what's been happening for me ?

James Cridland 1:30:48

I've been playing around with a few things on the PodNews website .

James Cridland 1:30:51

If you do a search for I don't know Captivate , or you do a search for you know Libsyn or something , then you will now find the PodNews directory is given front and centre as the number one thing that you will see Returning from the PodNews search .

James Cridland 1:31:19

It's linking to a directory of the industry that we discovered that the IAB has a fearsomely overcomplicated API to get lists of people who are certified for IAB podcast compliancy and you need bearer tokens and all kinds of things . They couldn't have made it more complicated if they wanted to , but I coded it up yesterday . So now I've got a little script that runs every single day finding out if there's been any change in the list of compliant companies for the IAB , but also pulling that information through . So if you have a look at , for example , captivate's webpage on the PodNews directory web page on the pod news directory , then you'll see captivate , is iab certified , when it was last certified , what certification it has currently and what it is certified for . So all of that information coming through the iab api , which is a thrill a minute .

Sam Sethi 1:32:16

Let me tell you what you did it .

James Cridland 1:32:18

You coded it okay and that's it for this week . Thank you so much to our guests this week Mark Asquith hey , it's me , mark Asquith . And to Kevin Finn Hi , I'm Kevin . I'm not going to do an impersonation . You can also listen to the Pod News Daily . You can subscribe to the Pod News newsletter for more of these stories and much , much more too .

Sam Sethi 1:32:37

You can support the show by streaming sats . You , by streaming sats , you can give us feedback with a boost gram and you can also stop using old podcast 1.0 apps like Apple , spotify or YouTube . Those legacy apps don't support streaming boosts or pod rolls Flash 2.0 .

James Cridland 1:32:53

Flash 2.0 . Yes don't use it .

Sam Sethi 1:32:55

Every time you use an iOS app , you kill the open web . That's my new t-shirt . Don't be a Luddite . Yes , don't be a Luddite . Instead , grab a new Podcasting 2.0 app from podcasting2.org . Forward slash apps .

James Cridland 1:33:12

Yes , our music is from Studio Dragonfly , our voiceover is Sheila D , we use Clean Feed to get our audio in , we use Hindenburg Pro to then leave lots of it on the customer and floor , and we're hosted and sponsored by Buzzsprout Podcast hosting made easy . Get updated every day . Subscribe to our newsletter at podnewsnet .

Kevin Finn 1:33:33

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