Podnews Weekly Review
The last word in podcasting news.
Every Friday, James Cridland and Sam Sethi review the week's top stories from Podnews; and interview some of the biggest names making the news from across the podcast industry.
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Podnews Weekly Review
Lower Street's Pacific Content Acquisition; and the future of Descript
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Join us this week as we reveal the fascinating details behind Lower Street's acquisition of Pacific Content. We sit down with Harry Morton, who shares his admiration for Pacific Content's creative work and how this acquisition is set to reshape the branded podcast industry. We also discuss how the integration of these two powerhouse brands will foster innovation while maintaining their unique identities.
And we chat with Andrew Mason of Descript into the past, present and future of Descript, the revolutionary podcast production tool.
https://extra.podnews.net/ for more from Andrew - including his funding journey and some of his plans for where the product goes next.
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It's Friday , the 2nd of August 2024 .
Speaker 2The last word in podcasting news . This is the Pod News Weekly Review with James Cridland and Sam Sethi .
Speaker 1Yes , I'm James Cridland , the editor of Pod News , and I'm Sam Sethi , the CEO of TrueFans In the chapters . Today is Acast profitable . Yet what is Magellan AI tracking Plus ?
Speaker 4I am Andrew Mason . I'm the founder and CEO of Descript and I'll be on later to talk about the past , present and future of Descript .
Speaker 5And I'm Harry Morton , and later I'm going to be talking about Lower Street's very exciting acquisition of the Pacific content brand .
Speaker 1They will . This podcast is sponsored by Buzzsprout , with the tools , support and community . To make sure you keep podcasting , start podcasting , keep podcasting with Buzzsprout . From your daily newsletter , the Pod News Weekly Review .
Speaker 3So , james , you and I were not in Nashville last week .
Speaker 1No , I think we were the only people not there by the sounds of the Podcasting 2.0 podcast . No , I think we were the only people not there by the sounds of the .
Speaker 3Podcasting 2.0 podcast . Yes , I did have a little bit of FOMO , but firstly a big congratulations to everyone involved in the Bands at Bitcoin . It was a live concert with Joe Martin Ainsley Costello and it was a big success . The concert was organised by Wavelake and Phantom Power Media Music . Do we know how much was made ? Yes , they made just nearly 4 million sats 3,782,000 sats so that was very well done 4 million sats .
Speaker 1In case you're wondering 2,500 US dollars .
Speaker 3So that's a decent amount of money . The number of boosts that came from podcasting 2.0 apps was about 1.8 million and the number of zaps that came from I assume 2.0 apps was about 1.8 million , and the number of zaps that came from , I assume Nostra apps was equally 1.8 million , which is quite nice , but they don't account for streaming sats anywhere , and so I think the number would be much higher . But we as an industry , I think , fail to take into account when we talk about sats earned , streaming sats . It never seems to happen . I listen to podcasting 2.0 on a friday night every week and it's all we are boost , boost , boost , boost , boost . But you know there's people sending in five , six thousand worth of sats for streaming and zero mention of them yeah , and , to be fair , I think that's something that we do as well .
Speaker 1It's very easy for us to read out the boosts , but we don't read out the Don't say we do it as well . But we also do a little bit of yes , not necessarily reading out the streaming sets , because there is an awful lot of streaming sets as well .
Speaker 3Now , let's move on then .
Marker 3
Speaker 3First story you have an exclusive Lower Street , was in the market to buy Pacific Content and you caught up with Harry Morton . What happened ?
Speaker 1Yes , I mean Pacific Content has been something that I've been following for a long , long time Harry has been following for a long , long time as well and Pacific Content , as we heard only a couple of months ago , was slated for closure . But now Pacific Content has been sold to Lower Street .
Speaker 5So I caught up with the founder , Harry Morton , and I firstly asked him what Lower Street was Lower Street is a branded podcast agency founded by me here in the UK , initially in London and now I'm in Somerset . But we are a fully remote team , so we are spread between here in the UK and North America , spattered around Europe and beyond a little bit as well , and we serve clients actually largely in North America , but all over the world . Really All that we do is podcasts with brands . That's entirely our focus .
Speaker 1Podcasts with brands , which sounds very similar to the way that Pacific Content talked about podcasts with brands or stories with brands . We heard earlier this week that you'd bought the Pacific Content brand . Lower Street has a great brand . Why Pacific Content ?
Speaker 5Yeah , firstly , it's a huge milestone and really exciting opportunity for us . I , you know , honestly can say we were just a huge admirer personally , a huge admirer of of steve pratt and his co-founders at pacific content and the work that they did . So we began lower street in the beginning of 2017 and so pacific content had been around for um a couple of years before that and sort of in the early days of of me slowly building up . I mean , in the early days of me slowly building up , I mean in the early days it was , you know , me and my underpants in my bedroom saying , you know , we Lower Street , but very much it was just me and really sort of , you know , aspiring to the amazing work that they were doing back then .
Speaker 5And you know , it's been a real sort of mission of ours to build up to the sort of calibre of work that they're doing and I'm really proud to say that over the last couple of years I think we've really achieved that and really solidly competing with the likes of Pacific Content and others in the space and really trying to push the industry , the branded podcast industry , forward . And so when the opportunity came up to buy the brand , obviously we were like . Firstly , when the news broke that Pacific was shuttering , I was genuinely sad to hear that . You know , I am a real fan of the work that they're doing and a huge supporter and yeah , and as I say , fan . So it just felt too sad for that to completely disappear and not continue , and so we sort of began discussions and it's sort of developed from there .
Speaker 1What was it about the brand that attracted you ?
Speaker 5Yeah , as I say , I was a huge , been a huge admirer for a really long time and of course you know their work is exceptional .
Speaker 5They do incredible creative work and , as a company , they've talked for a long time about this idea of creative bravery and really pushing brands to do interesting , inspiring work in podcasts , and that's something that we massively believe in and agree with . Not only that , but also the founders and many of the team at Pacific were just hugely generous in sharing the things that they were learning with the industry in an attempt to sort of build branded podcasting up and kind of push the space forward . So it was a combination of all of those things just a huge respect and admiration for the work that they do , but also what they stood for and what they were trying to do in the space . It was really , when the opportunity came up , it was kind of a no-brainer , because I think we share many of those values and we're really trying to hold them up ourselves and in sort of purchasing the brand , we want to sort of continue that mission onwards , I suppose .
Speaker 1So you've . You've bought the brand , so you're not buying employees or clients or anything else .
Speaker 5I guess that's right . I mean , we have a number of um the pacific content team are gladly joining us um , so we're really excited to to welcome them um . In fact it's a funny time for them to join . We've got our company company retreat in France in a couple of weeks' time , so they've got a bit of a trial by fire . They'll be meeting everyone in person in a couple of weeks , but that's really exciting to welcome a few of those as well .
Speaker 1But you're right , I mean , quite a few of them are Canadian , so they'll deal with the French perfectly well .
Speaker 5Exactly , They'll slot right in , but , as you say , we weren't purchasing the entire sort of company , as it were , as more so the brand .
Speaker 1So how did the sale come about ? Was it something that you were offered by Rogers , who've been looking after that company for a while , or did you suggest the idea to them ?
Speaker 5I suppose it was a rather organic conversation . You know , I have a really great relationship , I'm very glad to say , with Matt Mize and the leadership team at Pacific Content , and so we've been in touch on a regular basis anyway , and so , as things unfolded , we just sort of kept the doors open and the conversation alive , and then it sort of organically developed from there really , so how will the two brands work together as you move forward ?
Speaker 5Lower Street has a really strong brand in its own which we're really proud of , and we're certainly not going to be watering down through this . As that develops over time , I think we will see what happens . Certainly , there's just a huge amount of equity inside of the Pacific Content brand . We're hugely proud , as I say , to be the new stewards of it . So exactly what the future looks like , it's too early to call .
Speaker 1But yeah , really , really very proud to sort of carry that , as I say , the sort of mission and the values that they held forwards under the Lower Street brand . Do you get to keep all of the blog posts and stuff like that ?
Speaker 5Because they did some really good work in terms of educational stuff there , didn't they ? They really did . I mean , it was just phenomenal stuff . I was an addicted reader and still am . I haven't stopped and , yes , so we do get to maintain all of that as well . Dan Meisner actually reminded me of a pizza related article that he wrote a while ago . So we got the entire oeuvre of the Pacific content blog . So we're very excited about that of the Pacific Content blog , so we're very excited about that .
Speaker 1And how is the branded podcast market ? You wouldn't have bought this brand if you didn't believe in it , but is it going well ?
Speaker 5It is going well . I mean , there's no getting around the fact that I'm sure every person listening to this will agree that the last 18 months has been less sexy , shall we say , than the sort of COVID years perhaps for podcasting , but we have , regardless , seen steady growth over the last few years . We've not stopped growing . I think we've spent the first let's call it at a push the first 10 years of branded podcasting . We've seen early adopters and some really ambitious creative projects , but it's still very , very early in the adoption curve and I think that we are continuing to see a really strong appetite from a number of brands that are seeing their competitors and their colleagues in the space begin experimenting with podcasting , and it's my strong belief that any brand that can , any agency like ours , but I think any brand in podcasting that can sort of ensure that their business model is sustainable .
Speaker 5I have a really strong belief that any brand that can , any agency like ours , but I think any brand in podcasting that can sort of ensure that their business model is sustainable . I have a really strong belief that the next few years is going to be a really um , good one for the podcasting industry , and for branded podcasting specifically . So so yeah , as I say , the last couple of years haven't been so sexy , but I do have a really strong belief that there's there's a lot of growth to unlock as more and more brands realise that the relationship they can build with audiences in podcasting is a hugely powerful complement to the other kind of content marketing efforts that they'll be making in other areas .
Speaker 1And I think we forget , don't we , that actually branded or at least I forget that branded podcasts , although they sound deeply unsexy , they're actually listened to by loads and loads of people . I noticed on your website you say that you earned the number one spot on Apple podcast charts more than 100 times , and you wouldn't be doing that if the podcasts themselves weren't any good . So I think you know from that side . That's certainly something just to bear in mind as well . Absolutely .
Speaker 5I don't know what you you mean , james . I think branded podcasts are the sexiest thing going uh . But no , you're absolutely right , look they are . They're inevitably niche . I think that is the the thing that you will . If you follow me or any of my uh colleagues , um , uh , you know or fellow agency owners in the space , you will see us talking about niche audiences a lot , um . So there's no denying that we're not likely to be competing with most , at least most branded podcasts are not likely to be competing with , you know , the top ten in the in the broadcast charts too often , or at least on a first , on a sustained basis in terms of raw number of listeners . But you know there are real passionate , engaged audiences around branded content and I think some of the studies that that Jeff Fiddler and his team and uh and tom webster has um put out , um over the years has really shown that actually people really value content from brands , um .
Speaker 1So so yes , I would agree with you completely so where can we go to find out more about you and your company um ?
Speaker 5thank you , james , real pleasure to chat to you . You can go to lowerstreetco All the information is there and you can go to our blog to read about our exciting news and other things . And I spend a lot of time being a gobby person on LinkedIn , so you can find me there as well .
Speaker 1Yes , and you're very good at coming up with podcast strategies for individual brands as well on there , which I rather enjoy , so carry on doing that .
Speaker 5Yeah , that's always a bit of fun . Yeah , thanks , yeah .
Speaker 1Harry , thank you so much for your time . Thanks , James .
Speaker 3Harry Morton . Oh , I do like Harry . I mean visions of him sat in his underpants is so funny .
Speaker 5No .
Speaker 3I always think this is an interesting acquisition . It's a brand acquisition , as Harry said , with some of the staff going across , it adds to the bottom line on the accounting for a short period of time because it's brand asset value . But it's only a honeymoon period and I think one of the big questions that Harry couldn't address and you asked was how will he merge Lower Street as a brand with the brand of Pacific Content ? You know which , would you say , has higher brand value ? James ?
Speaker 1I think Pacific Content has higher brand value in the premium branded podcast space and what I expect Harry to do is to have Pacific Content as the silver service . You know what do they call it ? White glove service . You know the big ticket shows and have lower street for all of the other shows that that company does , and I think that there's probably something to be said for that . It's difficult , if you're a founder of a company , to basically say we are going to be the , you know , the cheaper brand and the brand that I've just bought is going to be the expensive brand , but that , I think , would make an awful lot of sense . But you know , we will see . Yeah , well , good luck .
Speaker 3Harry , we really like you and hope that this is a massive success for you . We'll watch this space . Indeed , now , descript is a product that I've used . I didn't realise I've been using it since 2019 . I look back to my first interviews I edited in Descript and I thought , you know , we've spoken to Jayla Burf , who's now at Adobe , in the past , and we've spoken to Laura Burkhauser , who's lovely , who's now at Descript , and I thought , actually , you know , I'd like to talk to Andrew Mason . And actually the opportunity came around . Ariel Nissenblatt reached out and said , look , we should talk to Andrew Mason . I thought , yeah , I'd love to . He's a very successful entrepreneur , having done Groupon in the past , and I wanted to find out from the horse's mouth what is going on with Descriptcript , what's the past , present and future of dscript . So I asked him if you've been living under a rock .
Speaker 4First of all , tell me what is dscript dscript is a audio and video editor , but instead of being a timeline editor like you might be used to , it reinvents the interaction model to where it feels like you're just editing a doc , so everything is transcribed , and then , when you select text and delete it , you're not just deleting it from the transcript , you're deleting the audio or video as well , so you can cut , copy , paste , you can even write , and it will generate audio in your own voice .
Speaker 4That's the basic idea . We started the company as an internal tool inside this other startup that was called Detour . It was an audio tour company , but really just like a glorified podcasting studio and got a real appreciation for how tedious and time-consuming it was to work with narrative audio . I actually started out , went to school for music technology , worked in a recording studio , had a lot of experience working with music , which is what most of these traditional tools are designed for . We thought it would be cool to reimagine what the stuff work looks like using the AI that was quickly developing for an experience that's driven by narrative media . Yeah , we've been plugging away at it for quite a while now .
Speaker 3Now , fast forwarding towards today , you come up with Underlord . Tell me a little bit more about Underlord .
Speaker 4Yeah , so Underlord is what we have branded our AI assistant editor , and it's a play on the concept of the AI overlord that nobody wants , but we thought it wouldn't do any harm to have a nice AI underlord that'll do your bidding at least for now , exactly . But it's like kind of a joke but kind of serious in a bunch of ways , and one of the things we wanted to get across is the importance of having the creator and the driver's seat of this stuff . So there's a lot of really magical new generative AI tools that are kind of like great , as long as you want what they give you . And I think what we wanted to do was implement it in a way where it was always secondary to the creator . We still focused on enabling the craft of the creator , because what AI is going to do is reduce the marginal cost for creating this kind of 80th percentile level of content , and it's still going to be , I think , for quite some time , the human being's ability to edit and craft and go in with some precision to get stuff done .
Speaker 4So so what underlord does is like a lot of the tedious jobs . If you do an unscripted recording of something , it'll go through and remove filler words or rambling digressions . If you do a scripted recording , it'll remove multiple takes that you did . We're close to launching , on the video side , some underlord powers that will automatically what we call window dress your video . It'll storyboard it out and suggest scenes that go through , but then all just doing this in the context of the editor , where you can go in and change whatever you want . So we're just quite simply asking ourselves , for podcasters and content creators , what are the most tedious parts of the job . Let's figure out how to automate those and and free up the creator to focus on the , on the fun stuff let's just go back , uh , probably six months .
Speaker 3It was quite a an interesting acquisition squadcast . Why did you go and acquire squadcast ? Clearly , clearly that wasn't about editing . That was now about creating the production of the podcast itself . What was your thinking ?
Speaker 4You know , since very early on we've wondered what to do about remote recording . It's a critical part of the workflow for most podcasters . That was true before the pandemic and it just skyrocketed during the pandemic . But we were hesitant to take on the task of building it ourselves because we had enough humility to realize how you can't really do something like that as a side project . They can't go down right . Yeah , reliability is paramount . Yeah , and we had so much to do with just trying to get the core dscript editor really strong .
Speaker 4At the same time we knew it was important to own that part of the offering , to have an offering for our podcasters , like they asked for it all the time . It just felt like it would be incredibly cool to have an experience where it was really deeply integrated and we tried a bunch of things . We tried oh , you can just record computer audio and hook up your Zoom in a certain way Tried a couple like half-baked ways to allow people to get a decent experience and nothing quite felt right . And we got to know the Squadcast guys over the years , really came to like and respect them as human beings and as entrepreneurs and they're local here and at some point it just felt right to team up and see if we could do this thing together . So we did that acquisition and we've been hard at work at building like a new and improved integrated experience that we're going to be shipping in like next month one of the things that most people are worried about today is companies using their transcripts for ai training or selling their transcripts for AI training .
Speaker 3Adobe , famously , was changing their terms of service . How are you going about protecting users' transcripts from AI , or are you using that internally ? Where are you with that ?
Speaker 4We definitely don't sell that information and have no interest in doing that . People either opt in or opt out to allowing us to use their materials for training , so it's something that we put really prominently in the onboarding flow and you just make a decision about whether you opt in or out .
Speaker 3Okay . Do you believe that we should label content that's been ai generated as such as ai ? How do you think we as humans should start to , I suppose , understand the differences , because it's very easy to fool people with ai generated content . So should d script let's just keep it into the four walls of d script ? Should you label content that's been changed through overdub ?
Speaker 4I think there are more great examples and use cases here where the answer is a little bit more like black and white and that would be like if you're making an AI avatar with completely AI generated voice , then sure like you could definitely make the case that that kind of thing should be labeled . So I remember being like surprised the first time I saw an NPR producer that was making like a kind of prestige audio . Is it's a lot right ? If you went in and you look there , there's often clips every five seconds or something as they're tightening stuff up . So this stuff is deeply manipulated . Now it's okay because you trust the credibility of the creator and we've all have a kind of understanding that that person's reputation will be in tatters if they do anything to mislead people . But they easily could right .
Speaker 3Correct .
Speaker 4So the way that we've been using AI , this overdub feature is , in spirit , allowing you to do do something similar . You can only clone your own voice . We have protections against that , unlike a lot of the other ai speech companies that have come around , and you're typically doing it to save yourself some time instead of needing to go back into the vocal booth and re-record something which you could do because you have possession of your voice . You're able to type a character in there , so does that need to be labeled ? When you start looking at something like that , it's just an example of a different flavor of a editing technique that feels spiritually very similar to something that people have been doing it for a very long time yeah , I think it's more in the case of where you write a transcript and then you have a third party ai voice actually speak that whole thing and then it's not labeled in any way .
Speaker 3That was an ai generated voice of sorts , because you do have studio voices as well yeah , if I'd be supportive .
Speaker 4If that's the direction things go , that stuff needs to be labeled .
Speaker 3That feels fine to me so last thing then what's next for dscript ? I mean , you've talked about translation , you've talked about the desktop , you've talked about underlords , you've talked about ai , but is there a vision that is within your head , andrew , that we don't all know about ? Is there anything that we can look forward to coming down the track next ?
Speaker 4Gosh . I mean , I feel like you can probably guess , just based on what we're building , what we want to do . There's nothing that crazy . Okay , so I'm going to be at podcast movement . I'd love anyone who's like a listener that wants to , and especially if you're a user of Descript , but also if you're not , come by the booth and say hi , I'd love to learn about how you use the product . Anyway , by then we'll have launched some new stuff . We'll have launched this new integrated remote recording experience , some really cool video podcasting stuff around making the layouts experience much more powerful . I think we kind of have two main areas of investment going forward , and one is just continuing to make the tool simpler and more powerful at the same time . But , in short , allowing creators to practice their craft with a really great precision editing tool , and then giving Underlord more powers and making it better at taking all the tedious stuff off your plate so that you can get your ads done faster , and you'll just see us like plugging away on those two vectors .
Speaker 3Andrew Mason , thank you so much . Thank you for Descript . It saved me hours of my life , so thank you for that . Congratulations on the recent updates , andrew . If anyone wants to know more about Descript , where's the best place to go ?
Speaker 4Oh , descriptcom , you can email me too . I'm Andrew at Descriptcom , andrew , thank you . Thank you , sam .
Speaker 1Andrew Mason from Descript , and there is a full 30-minute version of that interview in the Pod News Extra podcast which you can get wherever you found this particular podcast . He goes into lots more , including the technology behind the web media playback engine versus the desktop engine . He talks about funding , how the company got going in the first place , and there's loads more . You can find all of that in the Pod News Extra podcast , wherever you got this one .
Speaker 3If I look at what Andrew said in the round , I think they've consolidated their position . I think they're firming up . You know their AI . They're integrating with open AI . They're putting more effort into making video simpler . I don't think we're going to see a massive leap in terms of technology now out of Descript for a little while . I think they're trying to bring squad cast into the family and make it part of it , not a bolt-on . So that's where I think they are . I think they've got real competition , though , from Riverside at the moment , and I think that's going to be the one to watch if Descript isn't going to be the one .
Speaker 1Yeah , I think you're probably right , and I think actually what they've ? You know , they certainly had first mover advantage in terms of this sort of service , but you've got Adobe , you've got Riverside , you've got Eddie from Headliner , you've got a bunch of other services as well , and I think Treble is another one of those . And so they just have to keep on innovating , don't they ? They have to keep on moving on . Hence why he's there talking about video all the way through there as well , because actually that's super important for him too .
Speaker 3Yeah , I think video is a very different beast we have said it so many times to audio podcasting and I think that emphasis has been one of the things that I've not enjoyed about d script , because I'm not a video editor and I'm not a video producer , so I I sort of ignore 50 of the product in many ways . Now , moving on , james uh mcgallan ai has been coming out with a report recently that said that podcast ad spend increased by 22% , which is great year on year , but the amount of ads actually within a podcast increased by 20% , which I wouldn't go yay on . But is that something that we're going to see as a trend ? Are we going to see more and more ads packed into podcasts to try and generate ?
Speaker 1revenue . Yeah well , that was not a number that was particularly highlighted in any . I mean , they don't press release it anyway , but it wasn't particularly highlighted in any of the write-ups . But yes , the amount of advertising in shows has increased by 20% year on year , which is quite a thing . That essentially means if you've got a show which is now long as this one is , then 4.3 minutes . On average , 4.3 minutes are advertising . Now , this one clearly does not have 4.3 minutes of advertising , but on average an hour-long show does , which is fairly incredible . They look at a number of different shows , not just in the US but also in places like Germany and the UK and Australia and various other places as well , so it's not just a US thing . But I'm just a little bit worried by all of that , I have to say .
Speaker 3Well , again one of the things with your radio background , I mean , 4.3 minutes is like a blip in radio , isn't it ? I mean you're looking at what 29 minutes in one of the radio station reports you were talking about .
Speaker 1Yeah , so I actually , when I reported this the other day , I ended up having to listen to two hours of the WCBS , fm WCBS .
Speaker 3FM . Wcbs FM and WCBS FM HD1 . New York WCBS .
Speaker 1FM HD1 , wcbsfm , wcbsfm and WCBSFM HD1 , new York , wcbsfm HD1 . So I ended up having to listen to that's what American radio sounds like we .
Speaker 3Brits can't just do that , I have to say . I know we just don't get it right , do we ? I mean , you know , if we tried to do an Adam Curry voice , we'd fail both of us .
Speaker 1Yeah , no , absolutely , absolutely , anyway . So I was listening to he was on Z100 , I think , but anyway I was listening to so good they closed it down . But I was listening to WCBS FM and , yes , 29 minutes worth of ads in two hours . So only two ad breaks but even so 29 minutes worth of ads . I mean , if you're flicking around , if you're driving into work , all of a sudden you go into an ad break and that ad break is eight minutes long and you think , wow , that is quite a thing .
Speaker 1But even if you listen to NPR's Morning Edition now , people think that NPR is commercial free . It's still got underwriting on there . It's still got these , you know , velvet sounding people with some horrible smooth jazz telling you that this segment has been sponsored by the so-and-so foundation and all this kind of stuff . They have more advertising right now than podcasting does 7.3% advertising just on WBZ on a typical morning edition from them . So there is a bunch of advertising out there on radio and I kind of worry that podcasting is learning from radio that loads of ads are good , whereas what really podcasting should be learning from radio is managing your yield .
Speaker 1Managing your inventory is the number one thing that you should be doing as a media seller . That you should be doing as a media seller . You shouldn't be selling more and more and more ads . What you should be doing is you should be saying no , we only have two minutes worth of ads because we want them to work , and they will be more and more expensive , but instead we're just allowing people to buy more podcast ads and shoving more ads into our shows , which I think is a bit of a mistake .
Speaker 3There was a couple of reports around that I was reading . The Wall Street Journal was saying that all the money's going to the top end , which seems to suggest that if you want to put your price up on your ads , only those at the top end are going to be able to be brave enough to do it . The rest of us are all scrabbling in the dirt . For you know , any ad we can get at any price we can get .
Speaker 1Yeah , and the Wall Street Journal . By the way , that story , apart from the fact that some of it was inaccurate , that story didn't match the headline . The headline said that only the big shows are making money . But actually , when you read the story , that's not what it said at all . And I think quite a lot of people have jumped to the conclusion oh well , no podcasts are making money . But actually , when you read the story , that's not what it says at all . And I think quite a lot of people have jumped to the conclusion oh well , no podcast making money other than the top 25 . And that I don't think is entirely correct . But yeah , no , you're right . You're right , there is still some of that .
Speaker 3And James , we started off this section talking about Magellan AI , or is it Magellan AI ? Who knows ?
Speaker 1It's Magellan AI because they're American . And they laughed at me the last time that they saw me at Podcast Movement because they said we've heard you calling us Magellan . Yes , so it's Magellan AI . But yes , you're absolutely right . We started talking about Magellan AI and we learned that John Goforth is stepping down as their chief revenue officer . He said in a LinkedIn post it's time for me to get back to my roots as a publisher . I wonder what he means . Anyway , he's worked at the company since 2019 . Before then , he worked for various publishers , including , from memory , places like iHeart and others as well . How Stuff Works Wait what and SXM Media , you know as it is now . So he's worked with a bunch of these individual people . It'd be interesting to find out what he does next .
Speaker 3Now a story that I got initially excited about and then less excited about after I actually read it , but I'll still talk about it anyway . Limonada Media announced Limonada Books . I thought , yes , they've got into audiobooks and they've worked with a division of Simon Schuster . I thought brilliant , only to find out that they're actually getting into producing real books and I can't quite understand this . But please tell me why they're doing this .
Speaker 1Yes , they're getting involved in real books , I think partially because books and podcasts seem to go together . Tom Webster has a new book out as well , so they clearly seem to go together quite well . And I think that the deal here isn't just that they have announced a new book imprint is , I believe , the phrase that they use but the real deal is that they're working with a division of Simon Schuster , and Simon Schuster is one of the very , very big publishing houses , so they're working with Gallery Books , which is a division of them . I wonder , partially , whether or not this is fattening them up for a sale . They're on the block anyway . Yeah , a sale .
Speaker 3They're on the block anyway .
Speaker 1Yeah , I mean , they are on the block anyway . So I wonder whether this is in response to some of the comments that they've had from people that might have been buying them . But yeah , I mean , you know , it kind of makes a bunch of sense for them to release books associated with the shows that they end up doing . Roman Mars has done that in the past , pod Save America has done that in the past , and so I kind of think that it makes sense In terms of audiobooks . Yeah , maybe , but I think it's more an old-fashioned printed book thing .
Speaker 3Well , my new favourite company or at least if you listen to the last three weeks , it feels like oh yeah , spotify .
Speaker 1I know I know Sam and Spotify sitting in a tree . I'm just buttering up their PR for the Daniel Ack interview .
Speaker 3don't you worry , They've added another 1,000 audiobooks to premium subscribers . They've done a deal with Ingram Content Group , who have the distribution rights for a lot of small publishers and independent publishers , and I think again they're doing everything that I would say is on the money . I mean , they are just literally smashing it out of the park at the moment and you know , sadly this will not be medium equals audiobooks . But again , no other host is actually doing this either . I just I'm pulling my hair out . I will be bald at Podcast Movement because I'm frustrated .
Speaker 1Yeah , I mean , medium equals audiobooks . It's a lovely idea , but it means giving stuff away for free and hoping that your audience pays for it , which is not the business model of any book company that we've ever seen . And so it's less of a technological thing and far more a whole culture thing of if we give our stuff away , will people actually pay for it , surely ?
Speaker 3thing of if we give our stuff away , will people actually pay for it ? Surely it is . I mean , when I spoke to Greta Cohen , the CEO of Pushkin Industries you know they've got a big audiobook catalogue as well and I tried to explain to her about V4V and the model and the micropayments , it's far too early in her thinking . So I understand that most audiobooks you know Audible and the others won't go down this road right now . We as a podcasting 2.0 community need to prove that actually there is a third model . You know . Ads is one , subscriptions is another , prepaid books maybe in that same category , but pay as you read is a third viable model .
Speaker 3I don't think it's there yet , but there you go . That's where we have to head to . Yeah , it's just . Again . I'm frustrated because I can see Spotify is just executing excellently on a strategy and they just seem to be drilling down on each segment each week and I just find that you know we as a group are leaving them behind or they're leaving us behind , and I just can't seem . You know we as a group are leaving them behind or they're leaving us behind , and I just can't seem to find a way for us collectively to try and close that gap .
Speaker 1Yeah , and Spotify , of course , announcing this week that Megaphone is now IAB certified again . You might remember that Pod News reported back in April that Spotify had quietly tiptoed away from the IAB . There were pitchforks . I can tell you there were pitchforks and there was chanting and everything else . People were not happy . But Megaphone is now IAB certified the second company to make it under version 2.2 . The first was Captivate , of course . So again , you know Spotify doing the right thing . Probably a mistake of theirs to walk away from the IAB , but they heard what their customers were saying and they're now back IAB certified , which is a good thing .
Speaker 3Do you think they'll sponsor the show now ? No , I'm only joking . I'm only joking .
Speaker 1They've been a very good uh a , we've got buzzsprout , which is much better , sam , yes , yes , and also , um , they have actually sponsored a few things in the pod news , uh daily newsletter , which has been nice . So , um , but you know , uh , you , you know me , I'll say whatever I want . So regardless of whether you sponsor , so still , there we go .
Speaker 3Yes , we have called out Spotify enough times anyway . Now moving on ACAST , they released their Q2 2024 financial report . Net sales grew by 24% and James , are they profitable yet ?
Speaker 1Are they profitable yet ? No , I mean the figures . They talk about their figures as being another step closer to profitability . Now I know what you're thinking . You're thinking , james , didn't you report that they had made it into profit at the beginning of the year ? Well , yes and no , it was an adjusted EBITDA figure , so you can kind of claim that you're making profit , but it's not really real profit and they're still way away from real profit . But getting closer and closer , which is a good thing .
Speaker 3And try and work out with ACAST . Let's say they get to profitability and they do start to hit some velocity . They're already IPO'd , they're already a market player . What is the future for ACOS ? Is it just rinse and repeat , I mean , and grow and then get on the treadmill of quarterly returns ? I mean , it feels like I can't quite work out where ACOS goes .
Speaker 1Well , I mean , you know , continuing to operate a fantastic company . I would think about ACAST that they are very big in certain parts of Europe . They are growing in America , but nowhere near as large as they would like to be in America . There are many other places in the world . I mean , they have offices here in Australia , but there are many other places in the world where ACAST isn't around and I think really ACAST needs to focus on that and needs to focus on growing as a global company rather than growing in just a few places . Now their strategy has been to focus on North America . That's doing really well . North America was the bit that grew the most of the company in their quarter to 24 financial report . So you know , so they're certainly doing a good thing there , but I mean , clearly there are opportunities for them in other parts of the world as well , and maybe that's the focus is to actually continue . You know , continue growing as a company .
Speaker 3I wonder whether an acquisition would accelerate their I don't know trajectory into profitability it feels like , because they haven't made any , from what I can read , for a long while and they haven't done anything in that space . And I think sometimes a merger or an acquisition can actually change the strategy , the velocity or even the profitability of a company .
Speaker 1Yeah , and they certainly bought a few things over the last few years . There was the acqui-hire of Radio Public , which they've shut down , but Matt McDonald is working very much for ACAS these days . There was the acquisition of Podchaser , which is , you know , again very much around the data that Podchaser has in it . Not a particular fan of that service , but you know , I mean it's certainly there Fiendishly expensive if you want to pay for it , my goodness . But you know you can very much see that it's a very useful tool for the ACAST team as well . So I think that they're certainly doing that . Where the next steps are , I mean maybe if you're a large broadcaster in one part of the world , maybe ACAST would be a good acquisition target for you . Maybe that might be part of it . Or maybe they grow by acquiring smaller organisations . I mean , should ACAST be buying Audioboom as a case in point ? Maybe that might be an interesting thing .
Speaker 3Isn't Audioboom doing better than ACAST in terms of its eCPM , which I didn't even know what an eCPM was .
Speaker 1I didn't even know what an eCPM was . Yes , well , I'm quite a fan of this eCPM thing , which is revenue per 1,000 downloads , and yes , I calculate . The Acast's average eCPM is $39.63 . So they earn $39 per 1,000 downloads . Audioboom work out that they earn $60 per 1,000 downloads . Audioboom work out that they earn $60 per thousand downloads . So I think that's rather a useful figure , although it does reward people who throw 10 ads in a row at the beginning of a show . So I guess , be careful what you wish for , it's always there , okay .
Speaker 3Don't block those ads , don't skip Right , moving off around the world , james , what's going on in Dubai ?
Speaker 1Yes , the Al Arabiya Network has launched a new global Arab language podcast network called Mazeej . So much growth in Arab language podcasting right now and simply nobody is covering any of it , but useful to see the growth going on there . In the UK , another one bites the dust . Beecast is a podcast hosting company which is to close . They say it hasn't been possible to sustain the amount of usage with the revenue generated . I'll tell you how you make a podcast hosting company not possible to sustain is if you sell lifetime deals really , really cheaply to earn a little bit of cash right at the beginning and then all of a sudden you realize that you have to support these people from here on into eternity , which is what that company did into eternity . Which is what that company did In 2021 , they even tried to cancel the lifetime deals that they had sold people and you can imagine that that went down not entirely ideally .
Speaker 1So yeah , but yeah , so much excitement . I noticed that somebody has spent quite a lot of money buying lots of classifieds in the Pod News Daily saying you know , are you on BCAST , would you like to move to our service ? Which is lovely , but I would just point out there are only 350 shows on that hosting company that are actually active right now . So I'm not sure that it's a massive winner . But uh , if you want to advertise that way , then you know why not , I guess well , you know 350 .
Speaker 3Don't sniff at it , james . You know it's not the end of the world . Um , it's not . It's not the biggest fish , but it's not . You know , chump change . Um , friends of the show persifonica have moved to sheffield . I can't deal with sheffield accents so I won't try I was going to try , then Was that where you were going ?
Speaker 1I was going there .
Speaker 3And then I thought I have actually no idea what Sheffield is . It's one of those weird places in England between Yorkshire . Well it's not really , is it ?
Speaker 1It's sort of it's on the border of Geordieland Back to school for sound sething , if anything . So I did the hugely popular Sunday breakfast show on Sheffield's Hannam FM for five years . I got more people tuning into that show than anybody else during those years anybody else during those years because obviously there was nobody else on Anyway . So , yes , and if you're clever , what you say is South Yorkshire and the North Midlands , right right , because right to the south of Sheffield is Chesterfield . Chesterfield is not in Yorkshire and is very upset if you ever claim that they are in Yorkshire . But you've also got , you know , obviously , sheffield , barnsley , rotherham , doncaster , all of that which is most definitely in Yorkshire .
Speaker 1Anyway , the reason why we say all of this is that Persephoneca , which is Dino Sofos friend of the show's podcast company , they are moving their headquarters although not all of their operations to Sheffield . Part of that is because Dino is from there and is a big fan of Sheffield . Part of that as well is that they have been paid to do so because there are grants and things for you to grab if you end up doing that . But I think it's a good thing . There aren't too many podcast companies based , certainly in South Yorkshire . There are a few based up in Leeds , so good for them , I think .
Speaker 3Now this last one , from the UK , is a bit of an oddity . I didn't really understand it . Are you a UK podcast company ? Because Audio UK is working on lobbying the new government for tax relief for podcast and the audio book sector Tax relief . What would you want ? Tax relief for podcast and the audiobook sector Tax relief what would you want ?
Speaker 1tax relief . For Well , once upon a time , in a land far , far away , there was a new government and a man called Sir Keir Starmer was in charge of it , and so that's why Audio UK is getting very excited . Tax relief happens in quite a few areas of the media , but doesn't happen for podcasts and for audiobooks . So you do get tax off if you are making movies , if you are doing certain TV productions it depends where you are in the UK and various other things , but there is tax relief built into that . There's also tax relief builds into that .
Speaker 1There's also tax relief here in Australia as well . Particularly the Queensland government goes mental If anybody wants to shoot a movie . There are a couple of streets in Brisbane , literally a couple of streets in Brisbane that look a bit like New York if you squint , and so occasionally you'll get some very exciting . You know Marvel films being shot here where everybody's pretending it's New York and pretending it's cold and driving yellow taxis . It's the weirdest thing , but anyway . So yes , so Audio UK is just basically saying to the new Labour government you know that tax relief that you give other parts of the media sector , you should really be giving that to the podcast and to the audiobook sector as well , and they need some numbers in order to justify that . Hence why they're running a survey . So if you are a UK podcast company , please go and fill out their survey , which you'll find in the Pod News newsletter .
Speaker 3Good idea . Now people and jobs . James , the big reveal . Dave Jackson , I'll be honest and say I got it wrong . I didn't have him down as going to where he's gone , no , I didn't . I thought he was joining Todd at Blueberry . I'll be honest and say that's where I thought he was going .
Speaker 1Yes , Well , so Dave Jackson is on the new media show this week with Rob Greenlee and Todd Cochran .
Speaker 1That should be in your podcast feeder right now . But , yes , he's been revealed as the new head of podcasting for Podpage , which I think is a really good move Because , firstly , dave has always been a massive fan of that company . Brendan , who I've met , who runs the company , is a really good bloke . He understands what he's into . He thinks that , you know , he sees the big , real future in what he's doing . He thinks that he sees the big real future in what he's doing and I think the clever thing is that , with Dave's knowledge and understanding , it means that if you are , for example , a Podpage elite customer so you're paying for the top tier of your Podpage website then now you will be able to get hold of podcast coaching sessions from Dave at no additional cost , which is a great thing . But also , dave will host free weekly sessions for folk as well , which is good marketing for pod page , and he'll also help with some of the customer service as well . I think it's a very clever move and so so well done , dave , I think .
Speaker 3Yeah , no , well done to both of them for the , you know , getting Dave on board . But I think Podpage is one of those services that I suspect will be bought within the next 12 to 18 months . I can't see it as a standalone business going much further . I think one of the hosts would be smart to buy that because because most the hosting web client platforms are pretty awful um , they're basic if anything , and I think buying pod page and adding that to your service would be a real big win . So , yeah , that's my prediction .
Speaker 1Well , I think , yeah , I I think two things on that . I mean , if you look at at Libsyn's podcast pages that they produce for their customers , those are embarrassing I mean , there's no other word for it . Clearly no work has gone on those since 2006 . It's just embarrassing . Whereas if you look at our website , weeklypodnewsnet , which is from our sponsor , buzzsprout but even so , it's a very nice looking website , works very well . Similarly , if you look at any nice website from the Captivate lot , they've done a pretty good job there .
Speaker 1But , yes , I would agree , most of the other ones are not good . Most of the other ones are not good and either , if you're a podcast hosting company , you should just be buying a white labeled version of the pod page service for your users and go for it that way , or , yes , absolutely , as you say , you know , just buy the whole thing . So you know , I'm surprised that more podcast hosting companies haven't done that . But maybe , you know , maybe they're ceding um some control or some , um , you know , competitive advantage to those companies like Captivate and Buzzsprout who are doing a decent job .
Speaker 3Well , just an idea , guys . If you fancy taking it , I would have thought that'd be useful .
Speaker 1Other people who are moving and things . Uh , well done . Jimmy Buckland , who's a very good man who works for News UK , works for Rupert Murdoch . I would have thought that'd be useful . Other people who are moving and things . Well done . Jimmy Buckland , who's a very good man who works for News UK , works for Rupert Murdoch . He's now very , very important in News UK . They're the people who own Times Radio and Talk Sport and Virgin Radio in the UK and other places . Susie Grant has been named head of visualised podcasts at Listen in the UK . It's part of their strategy to focus on video a little bit more . Good luck with that .
Speaker 1And a man called Zy Bennett Sam is going to be . Well , he's going to be the new CEO and chief creative officer for BBC Studios Productions . So he's basically making all of the BBC's radio stuff and all of the BBC's podcast stuff , which is massive . But then he moved . He's currently managing director of content for Sky , so he's making all of this amazing TV and all of a sudden he's moving to work for audio , which I find a really interesting move . Do you think that's a step up for him ? I mean , he's working for the BBC , I suppose , but what do you think of that ?
Speaker 3Well , I don't know . It depends if his salary went up .
Speaker 1I'm sure it will have done .
Speaker 3Yes , so does he really care then ? No , so I guess yeah , it'll be interesting . Well , I've reached out to Zai and Jimmy and I expect one or both to be on the show in the coming weeks .
Speaker 1Oh well , jimmy would be excellent . He's a good man . I've known him for years and years and years . So yes , we will see . By the way , on the BBC , what the BBC's press release won't tell you this week is that the new data from their BBC Sounds app shows that they are down 5.5% total plays down on the quarter . It's seen a 2% drop in weekly audience as well . But good news for the BBC 3% higher podcast downloads via Open RSS . So yay , open RSS going up . Boo , bbc Sounds , horrible proprietary thing that nobody likes going down . At least I don't like . Quite a lot of people like going down . So there you go . That's how that works . Podcast events on the Pod News Weekly Review .
Speaker 1Yes , quickly zipping through , the Australian Podcast Awards is happening in Sydney's Darling Harbour on November the 21st . I know where that is now .
Speaker 3I know where that is now . Yes , it's nice , isn't it ?
Speaker 1It's going to be in the Sofitel Hotel , which is very fancy . There's also the Podcast Days Awards open for entry in Spain . By the way , it's too late for you to enter the Australian Podcast Awards , so you can just go . The British Podcast Awards they've announced the nominations for the 2024 awards . You can now go and do the People's Choice vote for those . The winners will be announced on September the 26th in central London , hosted by Marcus Brigstocke . And then two exciting events coming up Podcast Day Asia , which is happening on September the 3rd in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia . Tickets just $99 . You can use code PODN10 to save and buy me a beer , except you won't be buying it in that particular hotel because it's a dry hotel . And Podcast Movement , of course , which is happening in August this month in Washington in DC . Very much looking forward to that . Code . Pod News saves money on passes as well . Mr Ballon , the latest big name to be confirmed Am I going to be there on my lonesome Sam , or is there going to be ?
Speaker 3I still can't tell you , Sam are you ?
Speaker 1really Lord , move on .
Speaker 3I'm just bracing myself with the oh . Do I have to deny or do I have to say , Good Lord , let's just move on it might be a last minute Charlie . Last minute , charlie , who knows ?
Speaker 1Well , there are more events , both paid for and free , at Pod News . Podnewsnet slash events is where to go . 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 Sam talks technology . What's going on , Sam ?
Speaker 3Well , your favourite app keeps updating itself quite a lot . James Overcast's got a new version . I'm not an Overcast user , obviously . I like what Marco's doing . But one thing stood out it's launched on Vision OS , so Zach will be using it seriously soon , I hope .
Speaker 1Yes , I just saw . Well , of course he won't be . He'll be using Apple Podcasts , which also works on Vision OS , which works great , or if he's in Canada or the UK or Germany , then he'll be using Radio Player to have a listen to his favourite radio stations .
Speaker 1So , yes , you're absolutely right Back on track , you're absolutely right . Vision OS for Overcast , and what I'm quite excited by in terms of Overcast is just the amount of releases that are now coming out . I'm on the test flight for it , so I must get a release every day or every two days . Marco is busy explaining what he's fixed and what he's added , and et cetera , et cetera . So he's very clearly now got a service which he can move quite fast on , which is nice . Yes , what else is going ?
Speaker 3on Podcast Addict has closed its customer feedback and ideas forum . After user voice removed its free tier , it now asks 899 a month . Yes , well , that's not no surprise there , is it really ? Uh , in the words of todd cochran get your own feedback and ideas forum . Yes , and before you say it , I'll say at first yes , we built our own one at true fan . So there you go , did you really ? There's a thing ? Well , that kind of makes sense . If I could be bothered , I'd build my own , but I can't be bothered . Yes , we built our own one at TrueFan . So there you go . Did ?
Speaker 1you really there's a thing ? Well , that kind of makes sense . If I could be bothered , I'd build my own , but I can't be bothered , so I don't have one at all . You just don't want feedback . Microsoft Research . Yeah , I just yeah , yeah , exactly . Microsoft Research , or Microsoft Research , depending on your point of view is demonstrating a tool it calls GraphRag , which uses podcast transcripts to produce a knowledge graph of a podcast , making it easier to search . Sam , why have you put this into the script for this week ?
Speaker 3Well , I really find technology like this really interesting , because what they're using is , you know , new technology to take all the transcripts from podcasting and look at how they connect . And I think you know I've been looking at what we do with transcripts going forward as true fans , and I was looking at word clouds and they don't work . They're pretty rubbish as an idea . And then this came along . I thought this is really smart . I mean , again , visualizing the way a transcript looks is actually , and being able to then move within it as a visual object . I think it's a really clever idea . I don't know how it will work within a podcasting app right now , but it's something that I thought , hmm , I'd like to look at this more . So , yes , I was very excited .
Speaker 1Yes , it does look . I mean , it's very , very techie and very , very academic as well . There's an archive paper , paper , there's a short demo and all kinds of stuff . But yes , it's a smart old thing now moving on .
Speaker 3We talked about Magellan AI earlier , james , and they've also announced support for something that I'm not really sure about , so I'm going to ask you to give a full explanation of . They've announced support for something called UID2 and ID5 , which is there to help advertisers measure campaigns , and it's there to replace cookies and IP tracking .
Speaker 1So over to you , james . Tell me more hilariously bad , because what they basically do is they go . Okay , we've spotted that someone at the end of this IP address has listened to this particular show , which had our ad in it , and then we have spotted that someone at the end of this IP address has bought the widget that we were selling , so therefore it must've had something to do with the podcast ad . There is already a bunch of problems with that , but let's not start there . But that is already a ridiculous way of working out how well a podcast is doing .
Speaker 1Now , what UID2 and ID5 are is they are . So UID2 is much clearer in the spec than ID5 because , yes , I am boring enough to have read both of the specs . Uid2 will take your email address when you register and will encode it in a form that means that nobody can quite understand what your email address is , but nevertheless , that is then a consistent ID for you . It's an anonymous ID which is then passed around willy-nilly , so it means that advertisers can see that this particular UID2 has listened to this particular show . They can work out what your UID2 is once you've gone to a website and bought their widget , so they can chase you around the internet , all over the place . There is one central hub that has all of the encryption keys for UID2 and all of the additional salts that they add to make those encryptions stronger . So , therefore , there is one place that can decrypt absolutely everything and work out who everybody is .
Speaker 1Are you scared yet ? That is basically how the whole thing works . It's a terrible , terrible , terribly privacy invasive way in of working out whether or not somebody has listened to an ad and has bought a widget because of it , but anyway , it's clearly the way that online advertising is going . After the end of the cookies , after the end of third-party cookies , which apparently is a thing , and yes and so UID2 and ID5 are two competing ways of basically tracking you across the internet . To me it sounds absolutely dreadful , and all it takes is for one person to get your UID2 . And then , theoretically , they can work out exactly who you are and track you all over the place . It sounds awful , but anyway , that's just me . I'll get off my high horse now .
Speaker 3When will cookies go away , because that's the thing I'm looking for in Europe .
Speaker 1Well , yes , third-party cookies I mean third-party cookies go away . If you use the Safari browser , third-party cookies go away . If you use Firefox , if you use Chrome , then people can still third-parties can still dump cookies on your system . That's fine , doesn't matter too much to podcasting , in that we don't use cookies . We do use IP addresses and those are kind of going away as well . Obviously , vpns and Apple's private relay and other tools mean that IP addresses are going to be harder , and apparently one of the things that Google has worked out that they're going to do is they've said that they're no longer going to be blocking third-party cookies , but they are now talking about hiding IP addresses from Chrome . So if you're using Chrome to surf the internet , it's going to do something which probably people will get very upset about to hide what your IP address is . So , again , that's going to do something which probably people will get very upset about to hide what your IP address is . So , again , that's going to make it harder for advertisers to work out how well your particular advertising is working .
Speaker 3Google says many things . They said that they were going to kill Google Podcasts , James , but it seems they haven't quite done it . It's got to hand out the graveyard again , James . What's going on ?
Speaker 1Oh well , they've pretty well killed it . They've given people an extra month to take their subscriptions out of Google podcasts , and that's probably not a bad thing , um , so , uh yes , and I'm and I'm not just saying this because I know that a couple of people from Google podcasts are going to be a podcast movement and I might bump into them . There's a , there's a worrying thing now , um , but uh , yes , I saw this story , um .
Speaker 3last one um , I saw this story about apple and youtube have applied to barb in the uk , which is the online tv ratings body , and and I was reading it and it was just like interesting . Okay , what's going on here ? The thing that got me was Apple are considering putting ads into Apple TV and I thought hang on a minute . Apple don't do ads . Iads was the other big failure of Apple's strategy in the past , so are Apple putting their toes back into advertising ? And the only reason I mention it is would they then consider bringing advertising back into podcasting ?
Speaker 1if they did , Well , so they've never had advertising in podcasting in terms of that , they have , though , used Apple advertising . They have , though , used advertising in other products anyway . So within Apple News , for example , and Apple Stocks , there are advertising in those services already , and you know that horrible thing that you sometimes see at the bottom of newspaper websites called Taboola .
Speaker 3Yeah , that horrible thing Spam , spam , more spam .
Speaker 1Spam , spam and more spam . There is a technical uh phrase for them they are chum box uh , chum box ads apparently I've got another phrase , but I can't use it yeah , uh , clickbait , um shocking ads designed to grab your attention , often , uh , found at the bottom of an article . Anyway , tabula has just um struck a deal with with Apple to sell ads in Apple News and Apple Stocks .
Speaker 3I mean , that is barrel scraping , that is really barrel scraping , Is it not ?
Speaker 1And I mean , lots of people have said this is exactly what Apple should not be doing .
Speaker 3Well , sticking with Apple . Just real quickly . They released their first iOS 18.1 beta for developers this week , which featured Apple intelligence . I can't play with it , james , but are you playing with it Cause you've got a shiny iPhone 15 .
Speaker 1I . So two reasons why I can't play with it . Firstly , I only have a 15 plus , not a 15 pro , so therefore I don't get any of that AI stuff . But also , secondly , I'm in Australia , where I don't believe that I get it either . I think it's only available to you if your phone is in US English . Perhaps it is available to us here in Australia if your phone is in US English , but my phone is not good enough for that , unfortunately .
Speaker 1I did notice you say that it's the first beta . It's the first public beta . It's not the first developer beta . We're on developer beta four right now , and I do notice that . And again , I'm very new to the whole Apple world and this may have been a thing that existed in previous iOS's , but now that it's a public beta , we can actually talk about the camera . I took a photograph of a snake that was in the back garden the other day . I saw that , yes , and Apple comes up with that photograph , comes up with a little thing with some form of AI logo on it and a little icon of a snake , and if I pressed it , it told me exactly what species of snake it was , whether or not I should be worried about it or anything else . It was a carpet python and I thought that's amazing . That's really cool . Did it have a label on run for hell ?
Speaker 3That's really cool . Did it have a label on ?
Speaker 1Run for Hell . It didn't . It didn't .
Speaker 3Oh , okay .
Speaker 1No , so yeah . So I thought that was a pretty amazing thing . I mean , I don't know whether that existed , you know , in previous iOSes , and I noticed I also took a photograph of a water dragon in the park and again it recognised it as a water dragon .
Speaker 3So yeah , quite , quite , quite an impressive thing well , on the podcasting side , this new release has got a new feature called precise sharing . It shares a link to a specific time from the transcript . So yes , one new little feature coming to apple podcasts yes , one new little feature .
Speaker 1There is another little feature as well , which is if you scrub , if you hold on the playback bar and move your finger forwards and backwards , then you can see the chapter points now , which you never used to be able to . So that's another good thing . And this podcast , like many others , uses chapters , so it's a good way to skip around . If you're bored of the tech stuff already , then it's a good way to skip around . If you're bored of the tech stuff already , then it's a good way to skip forward to the Boostergram section . But there's no need to skip forwards because it's here now Boostergram , boostergram Corner . Corner Corner On the Pod News Weekly Review .
Speaker 1Nearly done , sam . Yes , it's time for Boostergram Corner , it's our favourite time of the week and , yes , a tonne of boosts . What have we got here then ?
Speaker 3We've got a thousand sats from Creativity Found With regards to videos . There is also a cost implication for creators , whether that be time or money . There is a pressure felt by indie podcasters to produce video for fear of being left behind , and even with the wonders of AI , this involves extra work . It is , of course , easier for shows that already have the equipment , time , talent and money . Yes , it is an extra cost and , james and I've said on numerous occasions , it's not for everybody and it's certainly probably only for the mainstream high end who are probably going to do it .
Speaker 1Yeah , I think it just adds extra complication to people and probably is responsible for the fewer amount of shows that we're actually seeing launch and update , because everybody thinks , oh well , I've got to do video now , and then it makes it far more confusing for them . I think it's a bad plan . Thank you , I think that's Claire , isn't it ? So thank you , claire , for dropping us a note there . Rw Nash 1,500 sats . Thank you , no boost so far . That can't be right . Well , in Fountain anyway . No , that was not right because we had had a boost , so I'm not quite sure why it said no boost so far . But thank you , rw Nash , for your 1,500 sats , much appreciated .
Speaker 3We had 100 sats from somebody called Sam . Yes , there you go , james . I sent you 100 sats , for some reason .
Speaker 1Yes , well , because it says here , using our new Lightning Wallet , you've done a clever thing within True Fans , haven't you ? If you're a fan of boosts and streaming sats and all of that , and you're in America good news so far as I understand .
Speaker 3Yeah , last Friday we pushed it and we did a test of the podcasting 2.0 show with Adam and Dave . Yes , we now have lightning wallets available on true fans for all users of new and existing accounts and yes , we have them in the US as well . So it's global . It still uses our Albi hub as our back end , but we now have 100 control of the wallet , which is great , means we can also stop spam and other accounts that we want . We couldn't do that when it was an albie account , so we can turn on our new or previous gamification engine and give everyone 5 000 sats again when they start .
Speaker 3Um . And also , james turned on yesterday our subscription capability , something you have said for a long while . So now you can say I would like five pounds or five dollars or ten dollars a month , and we will then just do that as a recurring payment if you want it to be recurring , or a one-off , and that will go straight into your wallet and it's a fit and forget solution . So your budget is ten dollars a month . Just go in and subscribe for ten dollars a month and we will just update that every month for you , and then you can play with streaming attention , tokens or sats , and then you use those if you want or listen for free if you want . You can choose it's value for value .
Speaker 1So in english if you want , or listen for free if you want . You can choose . It's value for value . So , in English , if you want to support your favourite shows , you can now at truefansfm . It's as simple as that . You've not been able to sign up everywhere , but now you can truefansfm . Go there and sign up today . How's that ? 1,000 sats from Cy . Now Cy says there's been several comments about missing podcast 2.0 features in most RSS feeds , so could we revisit a service like FeedBurner that used to enhance RSS feeds as a proxy with additional tags for supporting apps ? There might already be something out there like this , so my boost is just a lazy . Let me Google that for you , sam . Is there something a bit like a service like FeedBurner that allows people to add missing podcast 2.0 features , and would you happen to know what that service is called and how people could sign up ? Now ? Let me think about that .
Speaker 3Yes , james , we called them super feeds and we launched that a couple of weeks ago . I know we launch things every week , but we did launch that a couple of weeks ago . So you can claim your podcast , whatever it may be , go into your creator's dashboard and then there's an export function . So , first of all , what you can do is just go in and add any tags you like we support every podcasting 2.0 tag and , as Adam and dave says , some that aren't even supported yet and we then allow you to then export that if you want , just so you can check it works , and you can put it into rss validators . Or now you have one click publishing to the podcast index . So what happens is the audio stays exactly where it is with your current host , but you've added every tag that you want to add from podcasting 2.0 . And then other apps like Fountain , podcast Guru or whatever , even they can then use that new feed and you will then have all of the extra tags supported in those apps visible . So , yes , it's like FeedBurner , but it's now called SuperFeeds .
Speaker 1And yes , what you need really is you need something on your website which explains how somebody can actually do that , because you don't really have that .
Speaker 3Yes . You need somebody to write some FAQs for you and a whole yes , all of that stuff , yes , I had Dave Jackson going you need a podcast , mate , Get a podcast and I'll edit it for you . I'm like , yeah , I need a podcast . We have one called Fan Zone . We've not pushed it . We need a blog . I had somebody else tell me , update your bloody blog , mate . And I'm like , yeah , you're right .
Speaker 5Everything I need an . Faq I need marketing materials .
Speaker 3I need a blog and I need a podcast . I'll get on with that soon .
Speaker 1Yes , yes , and some sort of yeah , some sort of polish of making the complicated simple is , I think , a thing , my goodness . But yes , so anyway , Si , the answer is yes and it already exists . Go to True Fans and take a peek around . That that's a thing . And 10,000 sats from Adam Curry . Thank you , Adam . Micah should consider looking at what's been built over the past three years .
Speaker 1A very ignorant fellow Adam's talking about Micah from the Adblock podcast app that we had on last week . Couldn't disagree more , actually , Adam , I have to say I think that it was an interesting new model and I think that there is something that we can learn from that . But thank you for your sats and thank you for getting in touch . If you would like to get in touch , you're more than welcome . Normally , I'll just agree with you . That's absolutely fine . If you've got a boost button in your podcast app , then hit that boost button . That would be lovely . And if not , go and get yourself a new podcast app . That would be a lovely thing . I would recommend True Fans or maybe Fountain . That'd be a good thing . Also , you can support us with cash , raw , hard cash , like our power supporters have , including Rachel Corbett , Dave Jackson , Mike Hamilton , Matt Medeiros , Marshall Brown and Cameron Moll . So what's happened for you this week , Sam ?
Speaker 3Well , we just talked about the fact we launched True Fans Wallet and recurring payments . You'll be glad to know we're not stopping . Next week we will have our Activity Pub server live . The cool thing about all of this is you'll be able to then share out to social media platforms like Mastodon all of your activity If you want to . It'll be , you know , obviously with your permission . So I listened to this podcast for 80% and I paid 10,000 sats . That's strong first party data signals out to your social network followers that you know maybe this is a show or episode worth listening to . It could be done with clips as well , or it could be done with boosts . So that will be live next week . The critical thing is now that we have our own wallet . We actually have one single login for TrueFans , one single login for your wallet and one single login for your ActivityPub server . So , yes , it's going to be a simple way to get hold of podcasting , wallets and social media in the Fediverse as well .
Speaker 1I love if you , dear listener , heard me having a little chuckle it because sam has has copied a steve jobs quote and then and then has changed it slightly .
Speaker 3So it's not talking about the iphone , it's talking about go on , then you read it out the uh yeah , the hoots part .
Speaker 1I'll do the first part shall I ?
Speaker 3I'll do the first part . I steve well , I loved that whole thing from steve jobs . An ipod , a phone , an internet communicator are you ?
Speaker 5getting it .
Speaker 3These are not three separate devices . It's one device and we're calling it the iphone . And I just went . It's a podcast player , a wallet , an activity pub client . Are you getting it ? These are not three separate apps . This is one super app and we're calling it true fans .
Speaker 1There you go and just in case any of our friends from Apple are listening . I know that Sam has got Steve Jobs' quote wrong . Of course , steve Jobs would not have said we are calling it the iPhone , because iPhone never has a the in front of it . It's always iPhone . We're calling it iPhone . Okay , yes , so that's all good . So you can presumably follow you on ex-formally Twitter to learn more about that and what you're working on there .
Speaker 3No , that's going soon . I've had enough of Elon . I've had enough of I don't get that much engagement on there . I don't know about you , james . I spend most of my time now on Mastodon with the podcasting community . I spend a bit of time on Threads now because it's federated . I spend a lot of time as well on LinkedIn . I spend no time on X and the quality of the responses on X is pretty low as well . So as soon as my ActivityPub server goes live and I can use that as my primary mechanism , I'm going to move over . I just oh , and the other thing this week they've turned on um without permission uh , the ability to spy on all your tweets to train their ai called grok , which is an awful name . Um , so you have to physically go in and turn that off and other than that , I think elon is just weird as well . So , um , yeah , goodbye x , it's yes , he is properly weird .
Speaker 1Um . So I moved um from uh for the pod news uh account on twitter and I'm still going to call it twitter . Um I um . That is on a delay , so so anything that goes onto that service gets seen half an hour after it's been seen on the Fediverse and on , you know , blue Sky and various other things , because I think that that's the right way of doing things . I think X is just such an awful , awful thing . Unfortunately , there are a few people on there who I still find really interesting . I wish they would move off it , but yeah , it's a dreadful , dreadful thing .
Speaker 3I might start DMing friends who I want to move off it and say come on , move off .
Speaker 1Move over to truefansfm . Move over , here's 5,000 cents for you to start .
Speaker 3Well , that's true . None of that . What you said was wrong , but I'm not advocating that . They have to move to true fans , indeed , but I do think it would be on them to move across to the Fediverse . Yeah , I think that would be a good thing . Now , James , less of me , more of you . What's happened for you this week ?
Speaker 1I have mostly been trying to stop Google from breaking my website , basically so far as I can work out .
Speaker 1What have they killed now ? Well , they keep on . So Google , but also Microsoft's Bing . I've basically said you know , please don't hammer my website , please don't . You know , please don't try and grab lots of resized images , which are all resized on the fly . I know my mistake , but they're all resized on the fly . I know my mistake , but they're all resized on the fly . And Google is , you know , coming along and helping itself to 60 images in three seconds , with the result that my server goes oh , I don't know how to cope with all of this and falls over . And so I've just had . You know , it's just been a continuous game of whack-a-mole trying to stop these services from . I don't mind you coming to grab webpages . Please do come and grab webpages , come and grab images , but do it in a , you know , in a sustainable way . Don't come and essentially give me a denial of service attack on my website .
Speaker 3They're busy people , google , they haven't got time to wait .
Speaker 1So , yes , so that's one thing . Another thing that I've been doing is focusing a little bit on speed apart from on lowering my AWS bill , which has begun to be a little bit insane is focusing on speed , and one of the things that I realised is that Amazon's API , which I have private access to so I can find out where your podcast is on Amazon Music for the three people that might use Amazon Music , that API is currently taking over five seconds to return any information , and the way that my podcast pages work is that that's five seconds that you've got to wait for that podcast page to come back . So , as a result , I'm no longer checking in Amazon Music because nobody uses it anyway . What's the point ? So , yes , and I'll be doing a few more of those I think Amazon Music is gone . I think Odyssey is gone as well , because that was very slow . So , yes , I should rebuild that better . I know I should rebuild it better just before you write in , but yes , there's the thing .
Speaker 3A genuine note right , amazon Music podcast stroke . Whatever I thought at the london podcast show they were , they were everywhere . You know , we had megan and we had various other people and we got nicely invited to their party and it felt like the first time in many years that amazon podcasting element of amazon music was actually putting its head above the parapet and doing something . I thought , oh , is this the start of some exciting new strategy ? They're going to be coming out and going aggressively into Apple Music and Spotify , right ? Nada , since I mean , we do this show , you do it daily , I do it weekly and I go through every story and Amazon Music doesn't hear anything , nothing .
Speaker 1Yeah , it's a strange organisation . I think that they just don't have enough people to actually focus on it and I think it's just a difficult , strange organisation for them to actually , you know , focus . But yeah , but I mean , in terms of people using Amazon Music as a podcast player , I mean , it's tiny , it's absolutely tiny . I remember when it first went live and everybody was getting very , very , very excited In July , in the whole of July , the Pod News Daily , which gets , you know , tens of thousands of downloads a month in the whole of July .
Speaker 1Well , I'll tell you 62,000 downloads in July . Do you know how many of those were from Amazon Music ? Ten , two , oh , I know you were saying ten , just to be funny . Yes , no , two , that's even funnier , yeah , and so you're just kind of looking at that and going it's yeah , so I'm not going to spend five seconds waiting while your slow API comes back to me . Thank you very much . That's not going to happen . So , yeah , so that's what I've been doing , as you can tell very dull and very boring , and I got a haircut , sam .
Speaker 3So that's always I've been doing , as you can tell , very dull and very boring . And I got a haircut , sam , so that's always exciting in time for podcast movement ?
Speaker 1I'm guessing , yes , but precisely that ? Um , yes , I got a haircut and I've taken my suit to the dry cleaners , so that's always a thing you know that's going to be in the Smithsonian Institute in the future .
Speaker 3You know you're gonna have to donate that suit yeah , what that suit .
Speaker 1Somebody did , uh , send me something saying you know , know , the best , the best dressed man in podcasting , which is absolutely not true , apart from when I'm doing a keynote . So if I'm , if I'm on a stage , I'm on a stage and it's just me in one session , which is an OSHA session , which you should come to , which is all about tools for podcasts run by AI that you might want to use , and I will be wearing my suit there and I'll be all smart and dressed up . But if I'm just on a panel , it's the usual polo shirt and jeans . I'm afraid that's all you're going to get , but yes , I'm looking forward to it .
Speaker 3The Gareth Southgate of podcasting .
Speaker 1Yes , I'm not so sure about that . There's a reference that nobody will get and on that bombshell , yes , that's it for this week . If you've enjoyed the podcast , the newsletter's better . Find it . It's certainly shorter . Find it at podnewsnet , the Pod News Daily , wherever you get your podcasts . There are longer interviews in the Pod News Extra podcast as well .
Speaker 3You can support this show with sats . You get your podcasts . There are longer interviews in the Pod News Extra podcast as well . You can support this show with sats . You can give us feedback using the fan mail link in your show notes or send us a boostergram . We love all of those .
Speaker 1Our music is from Studio Dragonfly , our voiceover is Sheila D , our beautiful , beautiful audio is from Clean Feed , with a bit of Descript in there as well , and we're hosted and sponsored by Buzzsprout . Start podcasting , keep podcasting .
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