James Cridland: 0:00

It's Friday, the 6th of September 2024.

Jingle: 0:04

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

James Cridland: 0:14

I'm James Cridland, the editor of Pod News here in Malaysia, and I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO of True Fans. In the chapters. Today does the podcasting community need a pod fund? And podcast listening is bigger than ever in Australia Plus.

Mike Russell: 0:30

I'm Mike Russell, and later I'll be talking about AI.

Russell Harrower: 0:33

Hi, it's Russell Harrell of CEO of Pod2, and I'll be on later to talk about our new pod fund initiative to help support independent Podcast 2.0 app developers.

Dustin Bluck: 0:43

Hey, Dustin Block here, owner of Castro. I'll be on later to talk about our new update to the Castro podcast 2.0 app developers. Hey, Dustin Block here, owner of Castro. I'll be on later to talk about our new update to the Castro podcast app.

James Cridland: 0:49

They 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.

Sam Sethi: 1:03

James. We don't normally do happy birthday greetings this isn't a normal radio show but I think this one's needed. Happy 60th birthday to my fellow Vergonian, Adam Curry, aka the Podfather, or maybe the Podgrandfather, you never know now.

James Cridland: 1:20

I mean, I would imagine that he would know. But yes, happy birthday, Adam Curry, Born on the 3rd of September 1964. Gosh, I wonder what it's like being born in the 60s.

Sam Sethi: 1:32

Oh God, are you that young? Thanks 1971.

James Cridland: 1:36

For me, yes.

Sam Sethi: 1:37

Yeah, now I'm a 60s baby. Okay, anyway, happy birthday, Adam. Now moving on, you mentioned you're in a foreign country again, James.

James Cridland: 1:47

Where are you? I am in Malaysia. I'm in Kuala Lumpur. I noticed that Matt Medeiros posted on Mastodon a couple of days ago. He said James is always in Kuala Lumpur and it certainly feels like it. But yes, I'm here for Podcast Day Asia, which took place a couple of days ago, and loads of people here.

Sam Sethi: 2:08

And what is the highlights? James Give us the report.

James Cridland: 2:11

There were some really interesting speakers and I should say I programmed the event, so I would say that. But one of the interesting speakers was Emma Lawson from the ABC in Australia. She was really good. She spoke about visualising podcasts adding video to podcasts, essentially and she spoke about the ABC's work in that field. She spoke about how they make those particular shows and there's one particularly good one, called If You're Listening, which is interesting. The way that they record it is they record it in video audio and video but they send the audio files and the video files indeed, to an audio team as well as a video team and they mix them separately to make them work.

James Cridland: 2:59

You know best. She was super good and so she goes through this, through this long thing, and she's got lots of examples both from the ABC and from other broadcasters and other publishers, and super confidently, and then right at the end, she says that was the first time I've ever spoken at a conference. Wow, and it was super good. So she was excellent and so I'm hoping that we see more of Emma Lawson in the future. We also had Emily Kwong from NPR and she was talking about she does a couple of podcasts, one called Shortwave, one called Inheriting, and she came all the way over from Washington DC, a place where nothing ever happens. She said which I think is slightly over-egging it but yeah, and so she was super good as well. Podcast movement yes, well, exactly, so, yeah, so it was a good day.

Sam Sethi: 3:53

Will we be able to see any of these online? Are they going to be on YouTube? Are they going to be somewhere on a website that I can go and look at some of these videos?

James Cridland: 4:01

They won't be. There have been some audio recordings, I understand, so they may pop up in the future. There are write-ups of quite a few of them, so there are write-ups. You know, I linked to a write-up of Emily Kwong's presentation earlier on in the week, put together by a bunch of really good students here, which was nice. But, yes, no, it was all a secret conference just for us, and if you didn't come, you'll never find out what was said. There you go.

Sam Sethi: 4:30

Yes, but you also bumped into a friend of yours, mike Russell, who's that?

James Cridland: 4:35

Yes, the second time I've met Mike. Actually, the first time he was on holiday in Brisbane, which was nice, so caught up with Mike and had a good chat with him. He was showing off AI tools and tools that you can use both to make radio because he makes radio jingles and stuff like that but also podcasts as well. He works for a company called Music Radio Creative, so I asked him what that was all about.

Mike Russell: 5:05

So we produce jingles music, voiceovers everything you can imagine for podcasters, radio people, djs and businesses, and we've been doing it oh my goodness me for like 20 years now, and AI is kind of starting to come in and do a lot of what we're doing, which is really interesting.

James Cridland: 5:24

Which is why you were talking about AI here at Podcast Day, asia. What were some of the things that you were?

Mike Russell: 5:32

talking about. Well, I love looking towards the future and what's coming next. I've been a big fan of tech all my life. I wish I had a nice title like yours Futurologist but like you said on stage, when you do what you love, you can kind of make the title up and enjoy it. So what did I feature in my session?

Mike Russell: 5:49

A lot of tools that I think radio people, audio people, especially podcasters, can use in their processes. So we took a little look at 11Labs with the voice cloning and interesting that a lot of questions came up about you know how commercially safe are. A lot of questions came up about you know how commercially safe are a lot of these tools, particularly as we've got big broadcasters here. So that was definitely an interesting debate and I think we're very much still in the wild west of AI at the moment and things are yet to be decided big legal cases and another thing aside all the great tools like voice cloning transcription summar was the ethics of doing things you know like do you have permission to clone a guest's voice and change what they say, and where do we lie with the ethics on all of that stuff? So very exciting, more than there was time to fit into a small 40-minute session, but it was great. I really enjoyed it.

James Cridland: 6:43

Where do the ethics go then in terms of this? I mean, if I make a change and I get a generative AI thing to make my own voice because I messed up Sam's name and I called him Steve, that's kind of okay, isn't it?

Mike Russell: 6:59

Yeah, that's okay. I think it gets a bit sketchy where you change the content of what people are saying, but I guess this is not new, right? Journalists have been used to cutting people to sound like they're saying a certain thing forever, so now we can just do it with ease with AI, and I think that's the difference. But, yes, I would certainly focus on the positive, like you've rightly pointed out there, that we can use these tools to help us to make a job that would have been really hard. Oh, I've got to go and rerecord that to. Oh, I can just use AI to quickly overdub that. So, yeah, it's, it's great stuff, and I'm definitely focusing on the positive human augmentation aspect and not the replacement aspect. Yet which?

James Cridland: 7:37

is kind of important. So so you mentioned 11 labs in there. What other tools were you talking about?

Mike Russell: 7:43

so in there, yeah, through a turn, actually, I did focus. I gave a use case for chat, gpt, for AI, sales and marketing. I also introduced a lot of the room to perplexity. Now, obviously you'll know that and we had a discussion earlier about all the wonderful ways you can use AI to search and summarize things on the internet, and I was stunned, actually, by your suggestion of the ARC browser. So I think that's going to be my next choice of browser. But perplexity I introduced certainly for summarizing things If you want to talk about them in a podcast or a radio show, as much of the audience were interested in here that you can quickly find relevant stories, summarize them and get, most importantly, citations.

Mike Russell: 8:23

So, unlike hallucinating language models, you know, tools like perplexity and others are now starting to show where they've got the information from, which is good. Still, you don't know if you can trust the information source, but this is the the wider debate here. I think of Radio Days, asia, of will it land back to the traditional media companies like traditional radio stations and newspapers? You go back to them and say, well, it's come from this source, so I know I can trust it.

James Cridland: 8:48

Now, you're no stranger to conferences and things, but is this your first time in Kuala Lumpur?

Mike Russell: 8:54

The second time. I did backpack through here once when I was doing my Aussie New Zealand tour and across the world, so I had one of those round world tickets. But it's nice to be here in a professional capacity and to me actually, so many amazing people, it's a really I think you've noticed this it's a warm part of the world. Everyone is open and welcoming, particularly the native Malaysian people of this country are just super friendly, super helpful, willing to answer questions. I've learned from everything from the favorite dishes of the country to the fact that they love tigers and it's a national emblem of this country. So yeah, I'm super stunned to be here. It's a second time, but I feel like it's really my first proper time here.

James Cridland: 9:35

And how do you see radio and podcasting the differences in the Asian market? Are there lots of differences or is it actually much of a muchness?

Mike Russell: 9:46

Interestingly enough, I had a few conversations and I discovered they really like true crime out here. That was one of my takeaways and I saw in your great session today at the Podcast Day Asia, you were showing the various different categories that were liked and, yeah, that did seem to be a theme. Also, I think they're using mobile devices a lot more here rather than listening in the browser or on the computer. So that's interesting. It's a rapidly developing area of the world. I wish that I knew more about it and I feel like I've been introduced to this part of the world just coming here and I'm like, hmm, this is really curious.

Mike Russell: 10:22

I would encourage anyone, no matter where you are in the world, to actually come out to this event next year and just take a look at what's going on in this region, because it's just the right size of conference as well. I'd say it's kind of in the Goldilocks area. It's not too big, not too small, and you kind of almost get to know most of the people or you certainly see the same faces and then you start to make friends, so you learn a lot. It's a big learning thing for me.

James Cridland: 10:47

And we know you, I think, for both the music radio, creative stuff that you do and, I think, free Jingle Friday. I want to say that's a thing, isn't it? But also you do an awful lot of YouTubing, and you particularly YouTube around AI tools and other tools for audio creators. Where can people, firstly, what do you do on there? And, secondly, where can people find that?

Mike Russell: 11:14

Well, thank you. So yes, as you rightly mentioned, I've been on YouTube 14 years as Mike Russell. You can search me under my name and you'll find all my audio tutorials dating back to 2010, when I first loaded Adobe Audition 3.0 and was showing my favorite sound effects in there. But now, earlier this year, I started a new channel called Creator Magic, and it's how can creators use AI in their process, and I count creators as everyone, from someone working in a radio station trying to figure out how they can get these tools and use them, to an individual podcaster with an idea in their bedroom or their living room, and they want to use AI in the best way possible.

Mike Russell: 11:54

So I try to make the complex tools, or I try to take the bunch of tools like. It's like for image generation, you could use mid journey or flux, or how about this? Or stable diffusion, and I say, well, how about this? Like this. I try to make it simple. That's my goal. So creator magic is the new thing and yeah, I'm just weekly. I do updates on the best AI tools for creators without overwhelming, because there's this whole thing of like you need to keep up. You need to keep up. It's moving so fast, you know, and it's like actually just find the good stuff that works for you and, I guess, rely on someone who's following it. So maybe that's me, but don't, don't stress, it's okay.

James Cridland: 12:30

And Music Radio Creative. How do we find out more about that?

Mike Russell: 12:34

Best place is musicradiocreativecom and if you need any help with voiceovers, jingles, music, anything at all, we even have a section on the website controversially, you could say doing AI voiceovers as well, but obviously it is the future, so we want to embrace that and look forward and see how these tools can help augment us. But I did stress yesterday in my talk and here at the event, it's important to keep that human connection. It's important. I think it's important to connect with people and to be at events, because that's really what keeps us human. Until it's Ready Player One and we put the headsets on and you know that's going to be a crazy new world, right.

James Cridland: 13:17

Mike, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you, james, great to be here.

Sam Sethi: 13:21

So Mike Russell there, yes, what a lovely man. He's got a great voice, hasn't he? He does, doesn't he, John? He's got a great voice.

James Cridland: 13:26

He's got a very good way of saying Malaysia, malaysia, yes.

Sam Sethi: 13:32

Here's a fun fact, james. You might not know. Mike Russell's company actually did all of the jingles for River Radio.

James Cridland: 13:40

Oh, there you go.

Sam Sethi: 13:41

There you go, there you go. He's a very nice man that he is, james. The other thing you did while you were there you presented, obviously, the keynote and you had some new data about what's happening with Spotify's dominance in Asia. What was it?

James Cridland: 13:56

In Asia, as Mike would call it. Yes, I had a bunch of data. You'll hate me for that. I've got a bunch of data from OP3. We looked at a week's worth of data again from the 4th of August to the 10th of August.

James Cridland: 14:11

You might remember we did this at the podcast show in London as well and I pulled off total downloads for a bunch of different countries, including a bunch of different countries in Asia, just to see who's winning Apple versus Spotify. So obviously it's not measuring YouTube and it is over representing Apple, because Apple has auto downloads, at least for most shows auto downloads but Spotify normally doesn't. So with those two caveats in mind, it was very interesting to see what is going on. So right now, 50% of all podcast downloads in the US through Apple Podcasts, only 18% through Spotify, which I thought was interesting. That's quite high.

James Cridland: 15:01

But the UK and Australia were the only other countries where Apple is in the lead. If you start looking at pretty well every other country, then Spotify has more downloads India, germany, but then, having a look into Asia, malaysia 57% Spotify, singapore, 46% Spotify, philippines, 72% Spotify, and Thailand and Vietnam as well, spotify also in the lead. So you know, really to many people in this part of the world. Spotify is podcasting. Spotify really has the market share and that, I thought, was, you know, very interesting. We've been saying this for quite some time, but actually taking a proper look into some of the Asian countries was really interesting.

Sam Sethi: 15:48

Yeah, and is there a risk though, that with Spotify having such a dominance? I mean, we talked about, you know, the problem we had in Mexico with Spotify pulling out of the market, or is that going? To be the same problem in Asia as well.

James Cridland: 16:03

I mean, spotify didn't spend as much in terms of content here in Asia, so therefore I don't think that there'll be the same cold turkey for the industry in terms of that. But I mean, certainly Spotify is very, very, you know, clearly dominant in this part of the world and you know we are, you know, pretty reliant on Spotify. It was interesting hearing a couple of speakers on stage who are really warning you about Spotify and about putting video onto Spotify, because as soon as you put video onto Spotify, then it only uses the video audio, if you like for the audio podcast. So you don't get any pass-through, you don't get dynamic ads, you don't get any of that. So Spotify is essentially, if you start doing video, then you are essentially cutting a large amount of the revenue that you have from audio advertising. All of that goes away, and there was quite a few warnings about that on stage which was interesting to hear.

Sam Sethi: 17:14

Well, I think, keeping on the story of Spotify, there's a story going around that Spotify is looking to integrate the I guess, listening behaviour of what you're doing music and possibly podcasting with Instagram. James, they've had this with Facebook in the past, but the Instagram integration is new.

James Cridland: 17:35

Yes, no, it looks very interesting and you know, I think Spotify is doing some very interesting things with, you know, tapping into other social networks. They're not trying to do an Apple and start their own social network, which you might remember, that Apple iTunes did a long, long time ago. Spotify is essentially jumping onto other networks, doing connections with those and using that within their apps. So that sounds like a very bright and clever idea.

Sam Sethi: 18:08

Yeah, it's what I always say. I think it is the secret sauce of Spotify, because they are everywhere. I mean, whatever platform you look at, there's always a Spotify client available, which is why I think you've been, you know, banging the drum for Apple to get on Android for so long, because clearly, the data that you've just presented in uh, you know radio days, asia shows spotify's dominance, but also and that's because of the android rather than iphone, availability. So, yeah, I mean again, spotify moving into instagram, apple, hello, anything, anything coming back, nothing.

James Cridland: 18:44

Well, no, and and uh, yeah, so that it would be good if, if, um, someone was to do something like that. I mean, interestingly, the Fediverse um things like Mastodon and um other activity pub, uh things is closer to Apple's DNA than anything else out there, uh, in terms of um, you know, in terms of something which isn't owned by someone else, and so you would expect that that would be something that they might be interested in using. But no sign of that quite yet. That said, of course, activitypub you've done some quite smart things with ActivityPub all week, haven't you.

Sam Sethi: 19:24

Yeah, we've been working on moving our integration forward.

James Cridland: 19:28

So last week we showed that and this is, and this is true, sorry.

Sam Sethi: 19:32

Yes, that's my new list yes, my true fan, ceo hat on now yes, takes off the pod news one.

Sam Sethi: 19:38

um, yes, uh, the the integration has moved forward. So, uh, in hopefully a week, maybe two weeks at the most, you'll be able to take your activity from True Fans and publish that to other activity endpoints. So if you want to follow Pod News Weekly, you will see when new episodes are published. Or if you want to follow James, you can see what programs James listens to, and we've also added the metrics listen time, percent completed and value paid, so you'll also be able to see how long James listened to an episode, what percentage was completed and if he paid any stats. So, yeah, all of that stats and data will be published if you choose James from your user setting.

James Cridland: 20:22

Very nice, and I think one of the issues with this, as as it is with pretty well everything, uh, in terms of new technology, is to dumb all of this down and make it as simple as possible for the, for the user, um, so that they understand what they're doing. Um, and so we're not talking about verbs and uh, you know. And federation we're talking about you know clearer, easier things, but this looks um super interesting and you can see that you know. And federation we're talking about. You know clearer, easier things, but this looks super interesting and you can see that you know. I mean, I would be very interested in learning what other people listen to in terms of shows, and you know this is a great way of doing that.

Sam Sethi: 21:01

Thank you, yeah, I mean, that's been our goal from day one. Uh, we're, we're close to it. So hopefully in a couple of weeks, as I said, we'll be able to put all the parts together and you'll be able to play with it. Now, um, talking of new things from down under, james, um, here's a question for you. What would happen, james, if the podcasting 2.0 apps went away? We've talked about how Podverse Mitch Downey has, you know, struggled and then went away for a while. He's now back building a new version. We've seen Martin from Podfriend sort of take a back seat a little bit now on that app I've talked on this show about. You know, over the summer I've had some challenges and I'm pretty sure if Oscar was talking he would say the same. So what would happen, james, if all the podcasting apps went away? What would we be left with?

James Cridland: 21:57

Well, that would probably not be a good plan, would it? And I think this is the interesting thing about the podcast ecosystem You've got podcast hosts that earn money, You've got podcasters that earn money in terms of sponsors and in terms of advertising, and the thing in the middle, the thing that makes everything work. The podcast app really doesn't share in very much of that cash, if at all, and the only current way of sharing is well, there's a little bit of affiliate money in terms of Apple podcasts, or there's a little bit of a share, I guess, in terms of streaming sats, but that's probably not going to be enough to pay anybody's salaries. So I think we should be thinking a little bit more about how we can support the podcast app ecosystem a little bit more.

Sam Sethi: 22:50

Yeah, I had this same conversation with a friend of the show, russell Harrower, who's the CEO of Pod2. And I actually asked him that same question what would happen if the apps went away? Because we, you know, we've tried look, I know Pocket PC. You've talked about the fact that there's an extensive number of people paying a subscription to get Pocket PC.

James Cridland: 23:14

You mean Pocket Casts, don't you there? Sorry, yes, pocket PC, how old are you? But no, you're right, you know. I mean, you know, some people do pay a little bit of money in terms of pocketcasts, some people pay a little bit of money in terms of overcasts. There are ads in things, as we'll hear from Dustin, from Castro as well, but it's a small amount of money and actually podcast hosting companies need podcast apps to survive. Or we can just give all of our traffic to Apple Podcasts and we're seeing how well that's going or to Spotify, and we'd probably rather not end up doing that. So you know, we do really rely on the podcast app developers and most of them are doing it for the fun of it and that's not really going to be a long term plan.

Sam Sethi: 24:03

I'm not a charity. I'm not asking to be a charity. We're going through a friends and family round and we are talking to VCs and if we as a business can't stand on our own two feet because we don't provide a product that people want and we don't generate a revenue, then maybe we do deserve to go away. But I do think the community has to understand the challenge that apps are facing and the worry if we all go away. So I thought I'd ask Russell, who's taken the bull by the horns, why has he started this Pod2 fund called the PodFund?

Russell Harrower: 24:35

Well, the PodFund is an initiative by Pod2 to help the Podcast 2.0 player ecosystem. We are hearing that really talented developers are thinking about chucking it in. They would rather go get a job, put food on the table for their family, which they should be doing and they're highlighting some issues with the Podcast 2.0 way that we do business. I guess we, as hosting providers, earn revenue. That's the cracks of it. We're seeing that developers are putting time, energy, equity into these apps and getting little to no return whatsoever.

Sam Sethi: 25:17

It takes a community to build an empire, and I know that the PodFund will do that, because we will help those who have five or more podcast 2.0 features in their app and a little bit more revenue what you're suggesting with the pod fund, if I've got it right, russell, is that the community members who are currently making a revenue from podcasting to dot o or just podcasting help the apps get a little bit of a longer runway to continue to develop before we can get a further external injection of cash.

Russell Harrower: 25:54

There are developers who are doing it to make a business, like yourself. And there are some developers who are doing it because they can't find an app that meets their needs and they might not have the business smarts or they might not have the time to go and pitch to VCs. Trust me, it is draining to be pitching to VCs. They're very tough. They will tell you everything wrong with your system and some people just go no, I just want to do this as an open source project. I've got a GitHub support link or I've got a PayPal donation button.

Russell Harrower: 26:28

To me it's like okay, well, look, we want to support the players that want the support. That's why, for us, yes, we go by the podcast index app page, so that's how we know that those features are actually inside those apps. Also, look, it's clearly an opt-in thing, so you do have to register on pod2.com forward slash pod fund, because I don't have all the contacts in the world to know all the developers at the moment, so it's a good way for us to get to know each other. For us, it's about supporting indie developers. Like, we can never give you all of the money that you need to. For example, true Fans would have cost I'm going to just hypothetically say hundreds of thousands of dollars to actually do and your team has done it, most probably not taking a big pay. There's been no pay, it's been Try zero, try zero, try zero. Join the club. I know that feeling.

Sam Sethi: 27:28

So I go to pod two, I go forward slash pod fund.

Sam Sethi: 27:32

I fill in a form, you then check out the validity and then you're going to create the wallet with splits, and it would be a good way of doing it. Maybe one way not everybody will qualify that way you might have to do some as paypals or stripes, but you know, it'd be lovely if it was using the podcasting 2.0 tech to actually enable the payment out to the actual developers. And then, I think, longer term though, if other hosts join in the pod fund you you and I have talked offline about I would love to see the fund itself managed and hosted by Adam and Dave, so that Adam's node would be the central repository for the 5%, let's say, from each host, and then Adam and Dave would then look at the apps that are registered in the podcast index and then put the split allocation into a wallet, and I think that would remove one of Adam's concerns, which is the administration of this, the overhead and the amount of work. I think we can use technology to seamlessly do it.

Russell Harrower: 28:42

I was just going to say the way that we're going to be doing it is, the more features you have, the more piece of the pie that you get. So clearly, true Fans is leading that way. I think you said off air about 31 features you'll have in total by the end of this week, or something like that. Crazy, yeah, it's crazy, I can't keep up. So the administration of it, just to be clear, everyone that opts in for Lightning Payments yes, we can do a split payment so that it's very easy for people to see. It will be 100% transparent. We are upping it to a minimum of $100 and I want everyone to have a piece of the pie. So would this be a great thing to be under the podcast index? Potentially, and I think it comes down to does Adam and Dave really want another thing that they have to look after? They do a lot for the community and there had been some great initiatives that have failed externally on podcastindexorg. Maybe the safe bet is to say okay, adam and Adam and Dave, do you mind doing this?

Sam Sethi: 29:47

Thank, you First of all. Thank you for stepping up to the plate, Thank you for taking the bull by the horns and doing it rather than talking about it, which often we hear. Lots of people say things but never do things. So, yes, remind everyone, Russell, if they want to apply for the PodFund, where would they go?

Russell Harrower: 30:08

Firstly, sam, anytime, like you know me, I would hope very well. We've only known each other for a few months. But firstly, if there is a developer out there struggling, reach out to me If there's a way that we can help you. We definitely will Make sure that you do register on pod2.com. Forward slash podfund Just quickly. Your app does need to be listed in the podcastindexorg site. It does need to have all valid features that you have. I will be personally testing your app if I've got a device that will work Clearly PodLP.

Sam Sethi: 30:40

I don't have one of those devices, but it's just the more apps out there, the better for us no-transcript and the fact that they take the RSS and it's not passed through and then Spotify uploads video, then they just remove it from the original feed. They are not interested in podcasting 2.0, or the community or the hosts and I've heard people like Todd Cochran talk about we shouldn't put our podcast over there. Adam does not put his podcast on Apple or Spotify. I know that certain other hosts don't do that with their own podcasts. I guess this is an initiative and we'll see whether it gets traction. But two last points I'd like to add. One is if True Fans gets to the point where we have got external VC funding, then we will stop taking money from the pod fund, but we will turn around and contribute to the pod fund.

Sam Sethi: 32:00

And then the last part you talked about and this is one of the critical things we had bumper on last week and we talked about first party data dashboards.

Sam Sethi: 32:07

You know, listen time, percent, completed value paid, the three metrics I think we really want to promote and I've said to you that you've stepped up to the plate to help us when we need it. We will then give you back that data in the form of an activity pub xml feed, so an activity stream of all of the podcasts that you host that are visible on true fans, so that you get that first party data and I think that should be part of the deal, certainly from true fans that any host that supports us we will give you back that data. That's the quid pro quo, I think, and you know that's again supporting the community backwardly because hosts will lose out on that first party data. Spotify, apple and I know YouTube's got an API, but I don't know how much of that they're going to give out. We'll certainly not give you the lion's share of that data. So, again, I think all the podcasting 2.0 apps could give you back that data.

Russell Harrower: 33:06

That enhances your analytics dashboard for your podcast creators we are seeing these major players and, of course, spotify out for what they do in their creators dashboard. They now have a host with us button. What cheeky sods. Like you're coming from my industry as well, like you're actually coming for the host providers. So this is where the host providers actually need to step up and go. Actually, let's help the little guys, let's push them. One of the things that we will be pushing for as well in in pod two is we don't get wrong, we have an embed player. That's great, but we want to give creators the opportunity to switch out our embed with, say, true fans or overcast or whoever offers an embed player. So that way, it's not up to us to say, okay, we're going to do that. It's actually up to the creators say, oh, I want v for v, so what players support v for v? And that, to me, is what we can do with the pod fund and working together.

Sam Sethi: 34:07

Exactly First they came for the apps and then they came for the hosts, Russell. Thank you so much, mate. Let's see what the community says. It'll be interesting to see the feedback. Speak to you soon.

James Cridland: 34:17

Speak to you soon Russell Harrower from Western Australia, from sunny Perth, talking about the idea of a pod fund. A really interesting idea of essentially 5% of Pod2's gross revenue to support qualifying Podcast 2.0 apps and TrueFans, of course, one of those.

Sam Sethi: 34:38

Yeah, and Russell and I, as you heard, talked about maybe other hosts getting involved and, if they did, maybe the podcast index becoming the central repository, using adam's node and then using technology to use splits to make the payments so that it's not an admin overhead for adam and dave, and that might be a good way of doing it. Now the psp, the podcast standards project, also are looking at putting together a similar fund. I got an email and I won't say from whom because that's not fair, but they are looking at a similar fund to what russell has put together and so hopefully they can combine and do something together. That would be really cool no, that would be.

James Cridland: 35:23

That would be very interesting and I notice, um, dave jackson and daniel j lewis, the idea talking about a pod camp, a small event, and you know again, that might be interesting in terms of um, in terms of app developers and in terms of understanding. You know where where that future is is is going, but it's important that all of the industry is taken care of and I like the way I like the idea, whatever you think of how it's going to work. I like the idea of taking a little bit of money from those who have the relationship with the podcast creator or with the listener, to actually then help the podcast app developer in the middle of that, and I think that that makes a bunch of sense.

Sam Sethi: 36:16

Moving on, james Ainsley Costello. You know her, don't you? The young singer from Nashville who's been doing great things with music and V for V. She's got a new album coming out in September, James, called Radio Detox. But I've been talking to her parents, who run Phantom Power Media, the record company that they have, about how we can promote Ainsley's new album.

Sam Sethi: 36:48

I wanted to use podcasting 2.0 tech to actually make the album launch a little bit more interesting, rather than just having 12 tracks on an album and then just releasing it as a feed. I actually spoke to Julie and James about doing something similar to Adam's Booster Ground Ball, where Ainsley would be interviewed about each track and then there would be a trailer of the track within the feed and then those trailers would be replaced by the full track when they were released. So that's nice. Yeah, thank you. They've got five tracks released on Wavelake, but Dovidas over at RSS Blue and I have been working together with Julie and Ainsley and basically what happened was Dovidas put the feed together. It's now available as a single RSS feed and you can then hear Ainsley talk about each individual track and what was the inspiration behind it, and then there's a bonus track which is going to be a video, so I think there's a lot of stuff going into this new example feed and I'm very excited for it.

James Cridland: 38:01

Yeah, it sounds like a good plan and you know all of this testing and trying stuff out is an important part. Shall we have a look at some exciting numbers? Yes, james, I'm going for the coffee. You tell me about them.

James Cridland: 38:16

Well, so of course, the beginning of the month means lots of numbers from John Spurlock and from others. John, for example, has worked out that Megaphone is now bigger than Omni Studio. It's now the fourth biggest podcast host, megaphone continuing to grow, spotify for podcasters actually declining and declining a fair amount. I think it's interesting to spot that Spreaker have just released a beta of a thing in their app which allows you to edit a podcast and produce it in the, the app which, if you remember, spotify used to have. But spotify have got rid of um over, uh, the last couple of months. So perhaps speaker will continue to grow, perhaps spotify will continue to fall, and spotting megaphone there at number four is interesting, uh too. So that's one sort of side. Another side is that PodTrack is now measuring 14% of all new episodes, which is fairly amazing, and according to Buzzsprout, our sponsor, both Spotify and Apple Podcasts saw increase in download share Download share, of course, different to actual download numbers, but download share last month. But more interestingly, I think Pocket Casts has almost doubled year on year, which I think goes to show that actually Pocket Casts is on a bit of a roll and perhaps that's something that we should be looking at a little bit more seriously, ios also increasing over Android, and maybe that's because Google Podcasts has gone away and people don't know how to listen to podcasts anymore. You know who knows.

James Cridland: 39:54

Yes, also numbers out of Australia. Australia is showing some nice podcast growth. Now it's a free report from Triton, I must say. It claims that podcast listening is up, or podcast audience is up by 9% year on year. That's what it claims. But then in the small text it says that when Triton onboard new clients, then that will make that number go up. So perhaps it's just that Triton have onboarded a few more clients. Perhaps these numbers aren't particularly helpful, but you know who knows A bunch of new numbers from the US as well, with Sounds Profitable, who've published the podcast Landscape 2024, which is a look at podcast consumption in the country.

James Cridland: 40:41

They say 53% of Americans aged 18 plus listen to podcasts each month. Edison Research claims 47% for Americans aged 12 plus. So those numbers are interestingly different but worthwhile taking a peek at. Finally, in terms of numbers, edison Research publishing the top 25 podcasts in the UK for quarter to 24. Goalhanger, having an excellent book with the rest is politics really high. The rest is football, the rest is history, both gaining the rest is entertainment is a nice debut at number 17. So we're just waiting for the rest is money and then it'll be. Then it'll be all of them in the top 25. So many congratulations to Goalhanger and Jack Davenport for the show and everybody else in the UK. The Tech Stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 41:34

Ah, yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday in the Pod News newsletter, actually twice this week, and we should thank RSScom for their kind support of that. Not that I've forgotten to put them in as a supporter for the last two weeks in the newsletter or anything, oh dear. And here's where Sam talks technology. What have you got, sam?

Sam Sethi: 41:54

So Headliner, they seem to be really, really busy. They've just done a deal with Simplecast to add an integration with Make by Headliner, and They've also been talking about Eddie and adding that to a service called Alice. I mean, it seems like Headline is the one because we've talked about them for the last couple of weeks as well. They're going out partnering with everybody at the moment.

James Cridland: 42:19

Yeah, they seem to be partnering with absolutely everybody, and good for them. I saw Neil at Podcast Movement and, yes, he seems to be very, very busy, and I saw Elissa as well, so it was great to meet her. She's been emailing me for the last six months or so. Yes, a bunch of partnerships that Headliner are making and it's those little things that podcast hosting companies don't want to do or that are just too complicated, and I suspect that we will see more podcast hosting companies partnering with Eddie, which is their version of Descript, I guess you could call it, and I suspect that we will see a bunch of those going on.

James Cridland: 43:05

Castos has just broken out Apple Podcasts web listening in its analytics. There's a bunch of people doing that to make sure that those are all listed. Chopperty has a new feature which is called Clip Anything. It allows you to find any moment in any video and turn it into a social media clip. There's a thrill. And Castro Now. Castro is an excellent podcast app which kind of languished for a while but is under a new owner. The podcast app for heavy listeners is what it calls itself, and the app has also launched a self-service classified ad tool. Sam spoke with Dustin Black and first asked him what Castro was.

Dustin Bluck: 43:54

We think it's the best podcast app on iOS. It's a uniquely differentiated podcast platform. It's a little more focused on productivity. The people email me listen to a lot of podcasts. It's a niche product. The people who love it really love it Need to broaden their appeal a little bit. But I think it's tough for some people to grok that. It's a little bit more like Gmail than Spotify. It's a little bit different.

Sam Sethi: 44:17

It's cross-platform as well, though Is it still on Android?

Dustin Bluck: 44:20

It's not Officially. Castro is only iOS right now, but we have an Android app and we're slowly bringing them together.

Sam Sethi: 44:27

Okay, but it's on CarPlay and it's on Apple Watch still.

Dustin Bluck: 44:30

Yes, the CarPlay app was just rewritten. We need to make the Apple Watch a little bit better. But, yes, we support both.

Sam Sethi: 44:36

Okay, so the latest version. You've updated it recently with some new features. What are they?

Dustin Bluck: 44:41

Yeah, we have an update coming today. I just got the email that Apple approved, so we're releasing episode artwork today. I think it's a very nice update. I actually started working on podcast apps because so few clients supported the episode artwork, so I'm very excited to bring this to Castro. In the intervening years, mostly because of Apple, other apps have started to add it, but I think it's really good that we're bringing it. End of line.

Sam Sethi: 45:05

So where are you in regard to supporting some of the podcasting 2.0 app features?

Dustin Bluck: 45:12

in terms of sorry, I'm a little familiar with this, but when you say podcast 2.0, do you mean the podcast tags or, specifically, like the blockchain portions?

Sam Sethi: 45:21

no, I mean there are 27 tags, so I'm not expecting everything to be done and dusted. But do you support the person tag? Do you support chapters? Do you support transcripts? Do you support the funding tag? Some of those lower hanging fruits?

Dustin Bluck: 45:33

Yeah, we support zero of those, but we have worked on the person tag a little bit and transcripts. I think transcripts is the first one that you're really going to see. I think if people are putting those into their feed, there's no reason cor should not be displaying those. So I think that's going to come relatively soon. I think the person tag is a pretty nice feature to add a little character to the app, so that's something I really want to do.

Dustin Bluck: 45:55

And then chapters and feed. I actually get a lot of emails. People who listen to podcasts with chapters are really into chapters, so I get a lot of emails about chapters and being able to display those. Right now, with the way it works on castro or most apps, you have to pull those out of the file if people are adding those to the feed, like we should be supporting that because it's easier for us and a better experience yeah, they're often put into the feed as a json file, so they're really easy to pull out and then display, especially if you're doing episode artwork, you can then get down to chapter artwork, which, which is really cool as well.

Sam Sethi: 46:26

So let's take a step back. I mean, castro has been around since at least 2016,. 2017. As a product, it's gone through a couple of iterations, so it looked like it was closing down. Then it went back to a VC or private equity company that was owning it. When did you then buy it and why did you buy it? I mean, why didn't you just start from scratch on a new product?

Dustin Bluck: 46:50

Yeah, I don't know as much about the history of Castro as even some of our users do, but the big reason I bought it I was working on a podcast. Anyway, it's very hard to get noticed in terms of a new podcast app, especially if what you're doing is not really that differentiated. So I was working on an Android podcast app. I think it's quite good. Castro was available. It's a great app, but it has a unique appeal and it has very passionate fans and it was available. I thought it made a lot of sense to sort of incorporate what we were doing and for me personally, it made it more of a real project rather than a side project. So to be able to incorporate that, I thought it made a lot of sense. Obviously, castro has been around forever, but especially over the last couple of years, it hasn't really kept up with the things that the other major apps are doing, so we're really trying to bring that in line. I think we have a unique offering and I hope we can grow it and make it a more serious player.

Sam Sethi: 47:43

So, in terms of monetization, then, dustin, how are you going to allow yourself to generate revenues through Castro?

Dustin Bluck: 47:52

Yeah, most of Castro's revenue right now comes from subscription. The people who like Castro really like Castro. So getting over the paywall is not that. We get really good conversion for people who understand the app and use it a lot. Our premium usage is really high, so you have that portion and then we sell ads on the other side. I think people who use our product the ad product are pretty happy with it. We've been getting a relatively high number of views for those and we have some changes coming up to make that a little better in terms of actually getting the people who would want to see this ad actually in front of them. There's some low-hanging fruit that we can do when we're starting to get there. So it's tough, right, podcast apps are not the best business in the world, but if you have those two pieces and you have people coming back, the good thing Castro has is the brand that people really like and you have those users who really love it and they are coming back every day, so there's value there. Now you've also launched a new self service classified ad tool. Tell me more about that.

Dustin Bluck: 48:56

Yeah, so casters had ads for ever, as far as I know, and they work well. They do well in the product. People like them. But it was a little bit difficult to. They were doing a lot of like one-off deals or it was difficult to actually get your ad in front of people. So we added that. Over the summer we We've been working on that. It works well. It works now. Go to CastroFMpromote or slash promote and add your ad. But we're still working on some explore features. So the number one cresting grid about that is get it in front of the right genre or people who are already listening to my type of podcasts. So that's what we're working on right now and should have a little more to share in a couple of weeks.

Sam Sethi: 49:26

A couple of other technical things. I noticed that Castro added support for WebSub recently. How's that going?

Dustin Bluck: 49:34

Good. I mean, I don't have great numbers in terms of how much it helps, but it definitely helps. It's crazy we get on the one end website owners will email me and say you're paying too much, but then the number one complaint from users is always my podcast don't update fast enough. So if you can sort of alleviate both problems so web sub is one way of helping to do that and then I think of the podcast people actually listen to. We're up to about a third with an active web sub, which is like a little more than I thought when we started working on it.

Sam Sethi: 50:03

so I think it's worked out well yeah, I mean true fans and pocket pc. Both support web sub, which is pretty cool. I'm not sure how many of the other apps do. Are you going to support PodPing as well, which is another way of getting fast updates down to your users?

Dustin Bluck: 50:19

yeah, I've looked into that a little bit. I don't know, maybe, the stats of how many feeds would support PodPing and not WebSub, but I think if, like I said, you have the big problem of the pinging feeds and the user complaints, so if that seems like another way to get at that problem, so I'm all for anything that helps that.

Sam Sethi: 50:35

Now. It is a good thing to look into, by the way, dustin, I highly recommend it. Now where are you going to be taking Castro next? What is the plan? So there's an Android app in the works. You're thinking maybe about adding some podcasting 2.0 features. What are your plans and what's the roadmap look like?

Dustin Bluck: 50:53

Yeah, the immediate roadmap is a better recommendation to explore. Castro's had this very old-fashioned sort of editorial page. It just doesn't get updated very often and it's super manual. So within a couple of weeks, hopefully, we'll have a much better page that really, you know, not just like trending podcasts, but like episodes, things relevant to you, like a lot of content in there, and I think that's really going to help the product.

Dustin Bluck: 51:17

I think people will notice with this update we have coming out today, it's a little bit disjointed. You have parts of the app that are 10 years old and haven't been touched in a long time, and you have other parts that, like you, have this fancy new episode details with artwork that looks a little shinier. So I know we're going to get some clients to that. We've already gotten some, but Castro hasn't shipped that much over the past couple of years and it's when you look at the dashboards, the thing that moves the needle is like new features. So we have this balance of we need to bring the app in line and up to date, but we also have to ship things. So this is like a big step in that.

Dustin Bluck: 51:50

Explore will be a big step in that, and then there's just a long tail of things that Castro was never able to add. We need a better watch app. We need better syncing across devices. I mean people email about the iPad app a lot. I don't know where that is in the priority, but people would love to see it. So just like I feel like just the basics of a podcast platform in 2024, there's still a lot to do.

Sam Sethi: 52:13

Where are you on two things One, video and secondly, progressive web apps, because obviously Apple recently produced a progressive web app. So where are you? First of all, on video? What's your thoughts? Are you going to support it?

Dustin Bluck: 52:27

Yeah, so my Android app supports video. A decent number of people email and ask about video. I don't have like a strong, I'm more of an audio guy, obviously, but I don't have a strong ideological opposition or anything. I would like to support video. I don't know how many popular feeds actually have video feeds, but you have also a chicken and egg problem with not enough podcast apps supporting it. Right, but, yeah, I think we'll bring video. One thing I know from Instagram is that video just moves the needle in a way nothing else does. So I'm sure it'd be good for engagement, but it's not like the top priority. But I, yeah, I think we'll do video.

Sam Sethi: 53:06

Okay, will you do a web app then? Do you think as well?

Dustin Bluck: 53:14

okay, will you do a web app then? Do you think as well? Yeah, it's not like that high on my list, we do get the occasional email about it, but I mean, right now, castro is so limited to one device. What we need to do is make it work well across devices and then adding things like that should not be as big of a lift, right, it's just a lot of other problems I need to solve before we really get there now there's a story out in the news that spotify is integrating with instagram.

Sam Sethi: 53:35

It used to do a pretty strong integration with facebook so you could say, hey, I'm playing this music and it would appear in your facebook thread and your friends could click on it and then join you and listen to whatever you were listening to. I think they're looking at doing something now with Instagram. Pretty much Facebook's a dead dodo. So with Instagram and your background in Instagram itself, is there any ideas that you might want to integrate Castro with something like Instagram or threads?

Dustin Bluck: 54:06

I don't know. I mean, I feel like the way Castro's user base is very specific, right? It's like I don't get a lot of emails asking for more social features. I'm open to things like that. It's just not something we've really looked at.

Sam Sethi: 54:21

Okay. So if I wanted to get a hold of Castro today, where's the best place for me to go and get hold of the new version?

Dustin Bluck: 54:28

Yeah, so we should have a new update in the app store today. I mean the app stores. They're always a place to go download the app, but we're very active on email support. If you have any questions, support at castorfm.

Jingle: 54:39

The Pod News Weekly Review. With Buzz Sprout Podcast hosting made easy.

Sam Sethi: 54:46

So, james, you've been busy also releasing new episodes or past episodes, I should say what have you been up to?

James Cridland: 54:54

Yes, so the Pod News Daily has only had the last 50 episodes in the RSS feed for quite some time, and there were a couple of reasons for that, but the main reason was that I didn't really want to put a whole bunch of episodes in there, because the RSS is quite big if you do that. But now that I'm compressing the RSS and I've worked out a few other ways of doing that, I thought, right, it's time to put every single show that I've ever done into the Pod News RSS, because that will help people find the show. As people search for keywords that I might have used two and a half years ago, then they will at least get a first hearing of the show and work out whether it is for them. So I put it was essentially another 1,550-ish shows or 1,600 shows into the RSS feed. And it turns out if you do that all in one day, then weird things happen, because you notice that some apps are doing strange things with downloads and particularly, you notice that some apps are doing strange things with downloads if you add 1,600 shows, because you see those strange things happening 1,600 times. So that's essentially what I've seen there. Yes, so we had a day of 20,000 podcast downloads, which is a massive number for me, so massive that John Spurlock friend of the show who runs OP3, he contacted me going is everything okay over there? You're getting an awful lot of traffic, as was he, and it's highlighted a few things.

James Cridland: 56:40

Now I don't want to say too much at the moment because I'm still sort of working on it for a story, but essentially I found at least one podcast app that will download every single show twice and which is making it appear twice as big as it really is. Uh in the, uh in the in the charts. That's probably a bad thing. I've also found another podcast app that um seemingly wanted to download, um, new episodes every hour on the hour, um, for an entire day, um, and it was downloading the entire episode and then an hour later we would downloading the entire episode and then an hour later we would download the entire episode again.

James Cridland: 57:15

What's been really interesting is reporting it to those podcast app developers. One podcast app developer has claimed that they're doing nothing wrong at all and blamed it all on my RSS feed. Except my RSS feed is doing exactly what they wanted it to do, and the other one hasn't even come back to me, even though I've very clearly spotted a bug in their system. So it's been an interesting experience, but I would like to dive into that a little bit more and see whether there are other podcast apps which are behaving well or behaving badly, but certainly what I've seen so far is a little bit scary, to be honest.

Sam Sethi: 57:54

I'm going to take a very brave moment now and say that the fact that you didn't contact me means that TrueFans was okay.

James Cridland: 58:01

I certainly haven't seen any. I mean, you don't do auto downloads, because you're a very different form of app. But yes, no, I think TrueFans is fine, so hooray.

James Cridland: 58:13

I noticed that it says that we have 1,684 shows in there, which is particularly impressive. So, yes, so all of that is good, and you know, just from my point of view, it does mean, then, that if you are searching for Apple Podcasts, ios 17, for example, then you'll find our coverage of that, even though that was coverage that was, you know, nine months or so ago now. So I think you know it's a useful thing in terms of SEO, podcasting, SEO, but just something that I that it's just been fascinating seeing what happens to podcast apps.

Sam Sethi: 58:48

If you do that, and finally you were listening, or well, when you were a guest on the Podcasting 2.0 show. They were talking about Libsyn. Again, it looks like they're about to hire a Podcasting 2.0 community manager to help them with Podcasting 2.0.

James Cridland: 59:07

Yes, this is what Rob Walsh has said. This was actually the episode after the one that I was on, but yes, this is what Rob Walsh apparently said to Dave Jones that they will be hiring somebody whose job you know among whose job will be to sit in those sorts of forums and get their head around it and participate, which is brilliant news. That's exactly what we want. So, participating, understanding what Podcasting 2.0 is all about, all of that is a super helpful thing. So, yeah, that is sounding very good indeed, I think.

Sam Sethi: 59:45

I'm very pleased that they're doing that, but didn't they have Dave Jackson?

James Cridland: 59:57

I mean they had Dave Jackson doing it. Dave may well have gone to the powers that be and said we should be doing podcasting 2.0 and told no, go away back in your box. I think for this particular case, um, it may be that they are beginning to take it a little bit more seriously. I know that Rob has chatted with Dave Jones earlier on in the week, and you know, so I'm hoping that there's been some good movement there. But you know, being open and for everybody to have carrots and nobody to have sticks is a very important thing. So yeah, I'm excited about that. Boostergram.

Mike Russell: 1:00:29

Boostergram Corner. Boostergram Corner on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 1:00:35

Yes, this is the bit of the show which is our favourite bit. It's our Boostergrams, all of our messages that you can do with a new podcast app. Just press that boost button and send us a message with a little bit of money attached, and that is a lovely thing. I've got the boosts in front of me but Sam can't see them, so I will quickly go through some of them. Kyren Mere Mortals podcast he's back. He's back. He sent us a row of Richards double one, double one sats. I'm back with a boost. Haven't had much time to dedicate to podcasts while travelling North America. Even met some people there who didn't know what a podcast is. Wow. Have yet to meet anyone in Brazil who doesn't know what it is. As long as I say it right, they pronounce it podcast-chee. Do you guys still meet unaware people and have to explain? My mother had no idea what a podcast was until about three months ago.

Sam Sethi: 1:01:28

Nice, nice that she keeps an eye on your career. Yeah, exactly, exactly Nice that she keeps an eye on your career.

James Cridland: 1:01:31

Yeah, exactly, exactly. That's rather what I thought.

Sam Sethi: 1:01:34

Out of sight, out of mind.

James Cridland: 1:01:36

That's what she says have you met anybody who doesn't know what a podcast is? Recently?

Sam Sethi: 1:01:40

Oh, yes, lots, yes, yes, it sadly is that's Marlowe for you? Yes, yes, the average age of 90. Yes, no, sadly. No, we still meet those people, but they won't be there for long.

James Cridland: 1:01:54

A boost 10,000 sats from the 60-year-old Adam Curry. Thank you, Adam. He'll be delighted to be saying that. I always add my ID3 tags that include license and copyright information, he says, since files have a tendency to travel and I want people to know what is appropriate use when the file is discovered outside the context of feed app or SEO. Yes, he makes a good point there. I was making a point earlier on in the week that it's a waste of time doing ID3 tags and nobody cares. So yes, he's done that. Good, I'm busy looking through my boosts and it does look as if they left me in the splits for a bit of the Podcasting 2.0 show From last week, From last week, yes, which is nice, Excellent, Excellent. Thank you for that. I shouldn't have said anything.

Sam Sethi: 1:02:47

I'm going to go for ages.

James Cridland: 1:02:50

Only a few, though, so perhaps it's just uh something weird going on with uh customatic, uh rw nash 1500 sats. Uh, he says happy autumn podcasting, value for value. Happy autumn, is it autumn?

Sam Sethi: 1:03:04

well, it was this morning. In the uk it's bloody cold.

James Cridland: 1:03:07

Ah yes, oh, yes, yes, it's autumn with you, isn't it?

James Cridland: 1:03:09

yes, well it's technically still summer until about the 13th of september well, I tell you what it's technically winter in, uh, sunny queensland and, uh, I think the temperature went up to 37, which is centigrade, not fahrenheit. It was very, very hot last week. So, uh, yes, rw nash, um, thank you for your 1,500 sats and Gene Bean, 6,000 sats. Thank you, gene wow Bean, just making up for not streaming this week. Keep up the good work. Well, thank you so much.

James Cridland: 1:03:40

Streams as well, from a load of people, including somebody called Sam that must be you the late bloomer actor, dwev, dave Jackson who else can I see just randomly scrolling through, adam Curry, of course, somebody called Bun, hello Bun and various other people. Thank you for streaming Sats as you listen. That's a really important thing. So thank you so much for that. Thank you also to the Magnificent Seven, our subscribers, our power supporters weeklypodnewsnet using their fiat coupons, ie their credit cards Cy Jobling, rachel Corbett, dave Jackson, mike Hamilton, matt Medeiros, marshall Brown and Cameron Moll, all very kindly giving us around about $5 each per month. So thank you all for that. Super kind of you. Weeklypodnewsnet is where you can go if you would like to do that. So what's happened for you this week, sam?

Sam Sethi: 1:04:37

Well, I've been enjoying watching Elon suffer. The protocol wars have kicked off. Brazil have closed down X in. Well, brazil and blue skies numbers have been rocketing. John Spurlock's been posting out numerous metrics about it. Well, brazil and Blue Sky's numbers have been rocketing. John Spurlock's been posting out numerous metrics about it. It looks like we're going to have a war between the AT protocol, which is what Blue Sky use, and the ActivityPub protocol and, I suppose, to a lesser extent, the NOSTA protocol. But actually, in hindsight, I think it's fine having multiple protocols and multiple apps. That's what the Fediverse is all about. We've seen it before, james, haven't we? With email, which is a federated platform, we had POP3, imap4, and SMTP, and all interoperate. So I think we will see multiple social media clients with multiple different protocols, and I don't think one has to be the winner.

James Cridland: 1:05:33

I think you've been listening to Dave Jones, haven't you? Because he's talking about it's all about the bridge. It's all about the bridges between the two. Take it to the bridge, as they say. So I would argue that POP3, rmat4, and those sorts of things are the equivalent of Mastodon and PixelFed and Acoma, ie, they're the software that runs on the protocol. But now I'm getting very bored. So, yes, no, you're absolutely right, but you've really had your head in ActivityPub, haven't you all week?

Sam Sethi: 1:06:01

Yeah, it's a dog to understand, but we're getting there and I'm really looking forward, on the 12th of September, to a non-conference. It's the Feddy Forum, so lots and lots of other companies who are developing activity, pub clients and services will be presenting online and it's free. So, 12th of September, go and have a listen. James, come on. What's happened for you, apart from your lovely trip to cool down in KL?

James Cridland: 1:06:25

Well, yes, here we are in KL. The current temperature is 29, but it's been pretty hot. Today I sat for most of the morning writing in a Starbucks because, obviously. But yes, no, it's been really good. It's been fun meeting quite a few listeners to this particular show. There's a nice man called Peter, who's from Denmark, who listens to this show a lot, and he was saying I listen to it a lot, I listen to it and you are so rude.

Sam Sethi: 1:06:59

You are so rude, so me, or me, or generally everyone, I don't know but he keeps on telling me how rude I am.

James Cridland: 1:07:04

So there you go. But yes, so that was. So it was great fun doing that, great fun meeting a ton of people. I've met a load of people from India who were at this conference. I've punted a few your way, especially one person who was talking about audiobooks, and so, yes, it's been good fun. I'm looking forward to going home tomorrow, I have to be honest, but nevertheless it's been an enjoyable time.

James Cridland: 1:07:30

The hotel that I'm in I don't know if I've told this story on the podcast, but the hotel that I'm in it's a halal hotel and so everything inside it is halal certified, except this time last year there used to be a bar if you knew where the bar was, and you could go and get some beer. This year, weirdly, it's gone and the only thing that you can get in there is orange juice. So I think somebody may have said something. But there's a little restaurant, a Chinese restaurant, very close to this place. So imagine we're right in the centre of Kuala Lumpur.

James Cridland: 1:08:09

There are loads and loads and loads of brand new blocks of flats all over the place, so brand new tower blocks. You know it's very, very built up, it's a city of lights. And then right in the middle there is a small dumpy looking building that looked as if it was built in the 1960s out of concrete, which is a Chinese restaurant. And there is a big sign outside it saying this land is not for sale. And you just know that as soon as they get bored running that Chinese restaurant and they want a little rest, you just know that there's going to be some large property company that will jump in and buy that block of land for a pretty penny and then stick up a massive, great big you know tower block on there.

James Cridland: 1:08:54

But, um, yeah, it's a. It's a really interesting place to be. So I've been enjoying that and I've just got lots and lots of data, what with op3, what with the site logs from when I added all of those new additional episodes into my feed. So I'm looking forward to getting my head into that as well.

Jingle: 1:09:14

This is a jingle to cover up an edit on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 1:09:19

And that's it for this week. If you've enjoyed this podcast, the newsletter is better. You can find it at podnewsnet. You've changed the little script here.

Sam Sethi: 1:09:29

You've got rid of the newsletter is better. It's not better. It's of the newsletter. It's not better, it's different, james.

James Cridland: 1:09:34

It's not better. Yeah, fair enough, you can get the Pod News Daily wherever you get, your podcasts as well. There are longer interviews of many things in the Pod News Extra podcast as well.

Sam Sethi: 1:09:45

You can support this show by streaming sats, you can give us feedback using Buzzsprout's fan mail, and you can also send us boostergrams or become a power supporter at weeklypodnewsnet.

James Cridland: 1:09:57

Our music is from Studio Dragonfly. Our voiceover is Sheila D. We use Clean Feed for the excellent audio that you can hear here, hear, hear. And we're hosted and sponsored by Buzzsprout. Start podcasting, keep podcasting.