James Cridland: 0:00

It's Friday, the 4th of October 2024.

Speaker 2: 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

Yes, I'm James Cridland, the editor of Pod News, and I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO of True Fans.

Sam Sethi: 0:18

Now, James, you've been a globetrotter recently. Where in the world, Judith Cridland, have you been?

James Cridland: 0:25

Now, why are you calling me Judith Cridland? Because I have a feeling that people won't understand that reference.

Sam Sethi: 0:30

There was a wonderful travel show in the UK with a person called Judith Chalmers. Hello and welcome once again to.

Maya Prohovnik: 0:37

Wish you Were here.

Sam Sethi: 0:39

Behind me is the world's newest airliner it's the Boeing 757, and it's the first one in Europe.

James Cridland: 0:46

Yes, yes, lovely, yes. So gosh, she was posh, wasn't she? Where in the world am I? Today, I'm at home in Brisbane, but over the last week, this time last week, I was in a Pacific island of Niue and since then I've been to Dubai and back. Why not? Because you know why not, but it's lovely to be back here in sunny Brisbane. In the chapters today, lots and lots of data from the UK and from the US and from sports podcasting plus.

Ross Adams: 1:18

Hey, it's Ross Adams, ceo of Acast, and I'll be on later to talk about our emerging markets and established markets research that we have just released.

James Cridland: 1:27

He will, and we've part of an exclusive chat with Spotify's Maya Prohovnik, who heads up the Spotify podcast product team, and we ask her questions like how important is Open RSS to Spotify and how will you continue supporting it? And later and in full in the Pod News Extra feed.

Gautam Raj Anand: 1:46

This is Gautam Rajanand, founder and CEO of Hubhopper. I'll be on later to speak about the Hubhopper podcast awards and how we're taking these awards to the global market.

James Cridland: 1:59

He will. This podcast is sponsored by Buzzsprout, with the tools, support and community. To make sure you keep podcasting, start podcasting, keep podcasting with buzzsproutcom. From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly Review.

Sam Sethi: 2:14

So, James, last week we covered the closure of Spotify's Chartable. We said that it was a new focus for the company. Well, today it looks like you've had a really good interview with Maya Prahovnik. James, tell me more.

James Cridland: 2:27

Yeah, she heads up the Spotify podcast product team, so essentially the app and Spotify for podcasters that you see behind the scenes. And we were offered the chance of an email interview and you'll see that interview in the PodNews newsletter today in our newsletter at podnewsnet. But Maya also does a few different podcasts of her own, so I knew that she owned a microphone, so I thought I'd cheekily ask if she would answer some of the questions on the mic for us and she said yes, so that's nice. So I started by asking her what is a podcast?

Maya Prohovnik: 3:00

I love this question. This is something that I've thought about a lot over the years. As I think you know, I was the first employee at Anchor back in the day way too many years ago. I stayed with the company through our sale to Spotify and now I lead product for Spotify's podcast team. Lot of thoughts from creators and from listeners, and I also have a few podcasts myself, so I've seen this up close. Everything from how people distribute to what formats they're producing, to how they find new audiences and how they interact with the people listening.

Maya Prohovnik: 3:35

A lot of that has been changing and sort of questioned over the years. So where I've landed is, I think it's less about the delivery mechanism or whether it's audio or video. It's also really not up to me or any person or company to define, I think, a podcast is whatever podcast creators and listeners say it is, and they're telling us more and more that to them, a podcast can be video, it can be interactive, it can exist outside of an RSS feed, and since all of those things introduce new great opportunities for podcasters, I don't see why we wouldn't lean into them as an industry. I will try to answer your actual question, though I think that at its core, the things that attract people to podcasts as a medium have remained the same, even as all of these things have been evolving. It's about information, connection, great storytelling, and I don't really see that changing, despite you know, whatever continues to happen with the format itself.

James Cridland: 4:32

And I guess one of the things that are continuing to happen is video. Spotify are seemingly very interested in video, so I also asked her how important video is for podcasters.

Maya Prohovnik: 4:45

Well, this is certainly the question of the hour. This is what everyone asks me pretty much every day. I'll start by saying that Spotify will obviously always be an audio first platform, just like we'll always be a music first platform. But you're right that we are very focused right now on video For podcasters. The data that we have strongly suggests that at this point, including video in your show helps you find an audience faster. We just put out our annual fan study this week, which has a bunch of new data on video podcast performance, and it showed that more podcast consumers than ever are choosing video over audio. They stick around longer with video versus audio only episodes and they increasingly expect to be able to choose between watching or listening when they're consuming a podcast. And we're seeing this all around the world, and this is why we've worked really hard to make it easy for all Spotify users, whether or not they're paying for Spotify premium, to find video podcasts and to switch really seamlessly between watching and listening. We know that's really important to people and really helps people get more comfortable with you know, video as a part of their podcast experience. That said, I am a podcaster, so I understand what you're asking and I know firsthand that it will not make sense for every single audio show to make the jump to video. I think it would be silly for us to pretend that it does. I don't think, you know, for example, anyone wants or needs to watch me talk about the Big Brother reality TV show in video form. I think that would be a waste of everybody's time and it's certainly not worth the extra production effort for me to invest in video there. But you know for one of my other shows that I do spend more time on. It's a little bit higher production value.

Maya Prohovnik: 6:23

We've just started doing video instead of audio and I was actually very pleasantly surprised by how natural it felt which I didn't think it would Um, and how positively my audience responded to having the video option.

Maya Prohovnik: 6:36

Um, I sort of thought people would not watch it in the foreground and wouldn't care that it had video. Um, and we got a lot of foreground um consumption, um consumption, and we got some feedback from people that they really liked having the option to look at us while we talked. So, um, I'm, you know I'm I'm excited to keep going with that show. But I think in general my advice to everyone is always to go with the format that works best for you and your show. That goes for audio or video, that goes for you know the kind of interactivity you want to have with your audience, or whatever. But I will say that I think video is definitely worth considering because it can really, at this point, improve your ability to find new audiences and help deepen people's connection to you and your show. So if you're thinking about it, I would try it out, see if it works for you.

James Cridland: 7:18

I think she wants us to be on video. Sam, what'd you think?

Sam Sethi: 7:20

No no, oh my God, and the makeup that would take hours in the morning for me to do.

James Cridland: 7:26

Imagine, imagine. And thirdly, talking to Maya, I was curious as to the answer to this question.

Maya Prohovnik: 7:35

How important is OpenRSS to Spotify and how will you continue supporting it? So obviously, one of the main benefits of podcasting has always been that creators can really easily distribute their content to multiple platforms and consumers have the choice of where and how they want to listen to it, and I think the benefits of wide distribution for creators in particular are more apparent than ever. You've seen this reflected in Spotify's strategy, with shows like Joe Rogan and Science Versus going back to being available everywhere. So we understand that RSS plays an important role in giving creators more control over their content, and we definitely plan to continue supporting both on and off platform distribution for shows that are hosted with Spotify, as well as allowing podcasters to keep distributing their content to Spotify from other hosts over RSS. Nothing is changing there.

Maya Prohovnik: 8:23

That said, we do have more tools and functionality on Spotify that goes beyond what RSS supports, and for us, that's not about exclusivity. We want to be able to keep innovating on the format and opening up new avenues for fans and creators to connect with each other, for creators to have options about how to monetize and how to express themselves and customize their show. So we will keep doing that, but, as you've noted, and hopefully most of your audience have noticed throughout this year, we're going to continue to invest in the open ecosystem as much as we can. It's a really big priority to me to make sure that all podcasters can get the most possible value out of Spotify. So whether it's through RSS or through our own tools, either way, that's always. Our goal is just helping podcasters get the most out of our platform.

James Cridland: 9:10

Now there's the full email interview in PodNews today, and if you get the podcast business journal, you'll also read in that email too. Now, it's not perfect doing an email interview, but they've got their own procedures to follow, I guess. But it was super helpful for her to record some of the answers as well. The open RSS question was interesting, wasn't it? Sam?

Sam Sethi: 9:30

I mean, she actually mentioned it in both clips the use of RSS and why they're doing it. Look, let's be really clear. The RSS answer is we don't want to do it. We're having to do it because our creators want to be on more or broader platforms. I think they've seen with those exclusives that quite a few of them lost listeners and they weren't happy with their numbers dropping and they wanted wider reach. We've seen that with you know, rogan Obama, everyone and I think that's the only reason they're doing it.

James Cridland: 10:03

I didn't hear her saying that she didn't want to do open RSS. I heard her saying the opposite, and I think that there are two sides to this. Firstly, yes, you've got people on Spotify who publish on Spotify and they want to be heard in other places. But I think also you've got the many people who are podcasting away from Spotify that Spotify wants the content from, and the only way that Spotify is going to get the content, the most efficient way for them, is to use OpenRSS. So I see there being great opportunity and great benefit in terms of that.

James Cridland: 10:35

One of the questions that I asked her in the email was about transcripts and saying you know, creator produced transcripts are in RSS feeds from a number of different podcast hosts. Now they're used in places like Apple Podcasts and Spotify and Pocket Casts now, and so I asked when will Spotify support creator produced transcripts? And she can't give me a full answer quite yet, as you would expect, but she does say that they are actively working on expanding it and building support for creators to customise their transcripts and so on and so forth. So at least I think she's understood that there are new things available in RSS these days. But I guess on the other side, why would they bother?

James Cridland: 11:22

Because so many podcast hosts haven't bothered with any of the Podcasting 2.0 additional features, so why would they spend time doing something? I mean, you know we talk about transcripts as being the thing that Podcasting 2.0 has achieved. Less than 10% of shows out there have transcripts on them. We can't even manage the transcripts, let alone anything else. So I suppose you can look at it on the other side and go. They're following the market and the market right now has not embraced the new features in Podcasting 2.0. And part of that is Spotify's fault, if you like, for not implementing them, but there are many other podcast hosts that haven't implemented them either.

Sam Sethi: 12:08

Look, spotify are the market leader right now in many markets and they are eating Apple's lunch right now, along with YouTube. I think. Why would they wait for a committee? I mean, the PSP has just adopted one new tag, which is the pod role. We haven't seen them support video. We haven't seen them support video. We haven't seen them support many other things, and I think it's the speed of execution.

Sam Sethi: 12:32

You know, I've said it on this podcast. I have been highly admirable of Spotify's strategy in terms of supporting courses, supporting video, supporting many other things, ticketing events. We're not seeing that in the podcasting 2.0 space right now and you know, if I was in her shoes or or any of the spotify strategy team, I'd be going. Yeah, we're not waiting for you guys, and their share price is proving it. They've, they've grown user numbers. Their share price has doubled, nearly tripled. Yeah, I, I mean we and I'm putting myself in this camp as an app have to do better, right? I've supported all 27 tags. As TrueFan CEO, I can't say that my nearest competitor as an app is even half of those tags in their platform, yet you know, we have got to start to execute better and we are not doing it.

Sam Sethi: 13:26

We're not doing it quick enough and I don't know why there is a real desire not to implement video as a supported thing within hosting. It's a you know, I've spoken spoken to some hosts who go it's too expensive. Spoken to others who go it's not expensive at all because we get unlimited bandwidth right. I don't know where they sit in this, that's just all. Because we get unlimited bandwidth right. I don't know where they sit in this. That's just one example.

James Cridland: 13:47

Nobody gets unlimited bandwidth, if they're actually any big as a company. So you know we can assume that they're tiny little companies who are saying oh yes, we get unlimited bandwidth. You know video is expensive and difficult to do right, particularly if nobody is really supporting it. Apart from you know, video is expensive and difficult to do right, particularly if nobody is really supporting it. Apart from you know, pocket Casts will play video, Apple Podcasts will play video, but neither of those two promote it very much. I do notice that Pocket Casts has a little video icon in a video podcast, which is nice, but I'm not sure how you can search in Pocket Casts for just video as one example, and I'm not sure it's a very good experience either, which is the other, you know, issue that we've got. So you know, video aside, I think you know what one of the benefits of the podcast standards project was going to be that, pretty well, all of the industry was going to support a few of these new features so that you had certainty that they would be taken up by a lot of people. And I'm not sure, necessarily, that we've actually seen that you know either. So it's you know, I think we've got a long way to go.

James Cridland: 15:00

I think the bottom line with it is that, you know, I was impressed at Maya's answers. I was asking her what they're focusing on next, what podcasts she listens to as well, and the best way to give her and her team feedback as well. If you want to learn all of the answers to that, you'll find that in the Pod News newsletter. But you know, I've, I've always, you know, I've always thought looking at somebody who is a podcaster, as we've heard, who is, you know, genuinely wants the best for four podcasts, is a very is a very different conversation than the more sort of content focused people at Spotify Studios who have a slightly different view in terms of what they want to end up doing. So I was quite impressed, it has to be said. What would be interesting is to hear the same sorts of questions from the folks at YouTube.

Sam Sethi: 15:56

We might do that next week. You never know, James. We also were in touch with our friends at ACOS this week, Ross Adams, They've released a new report about emerging markets and established markets and what's going on, and I thought the report was very interesting. You know ACOS do a lot of these. Some of the stats that came out of the report were very interesting. Certainly, people are more inclined to listen to podcasts now than they were before. More than 50% of podcast listeners from emerging markets and nearly 40% from established markets are increasing their listening time. They trust their hosts more. The medium is much more established in terms of people wanting to buy from those hosts that they trust. What did you think? Did you read the report?

James Cridland: 16:46

Yes, I read some of the report. It's a very text-dense press release with all of the details. I think one of the things that I would say about these reports is that they are survey-led, so it's people saying something rather than data led people actually doing something, and from that you get a slightly different point of view. Looking at the time spent listening, for example, to two shows, that is a number that, as far as I'm aware, isn't actually increasing and hasn't increased for quite some time, in terms of the amount of time that podcast listeners are spending with their shows during a given week, and that, to me, is a bit of a concern.

Sam Sethi: 17:35

One of the other standout elements from it, though, was that people are spending more time watching video, and they've watched more video podcasts recently, and they've discovered new content via YouTube, and the other thing that stood out was that and the audiences are saying that they would attend live events for the podcasts that they follow, and more than 30% of them have said they've already done that, so I think you know. What I took away from it was that people are now there is a new growth back into listening to podcasts. I think there's a new trust with podcasts. Longer form podcasts seem to be coming back. That it isn't just a report about the US We've got enough reports about the US thank you very much.

James Cridland: 18:32

It would be lovely if there were more reports from other parts of the world and really useful to see, because ACAST is a global company and one of the world's largest. Really useful to see some of this data coming from other markets as well. So you wanted to learn a little bit more, as did I. So you managed to catch Ross Adams, friend of the show, on the phone earlier on this week, or even on the mic, and you asked him what this report is all about.

Ross Adams: 19:05

This is basically about another bit of research for us looking at one of our USPs which is international and approaching the space on a global basis. We are different from many of the other players out there, but for us it's about providing a global perspective on the podcast industry, especially for International Podcast Day.

Sam Sethi: 19:25

So you've split this report into both emerging and established markets. Let's define what you call the emerging market and what you call the established market. Which countries cover which?

Ross Adams: 19:33

That's great. So we selected kind of the countries based on where we see podcasting continuing to grow in popularity, with new content being created and large audiences consuming that content, and Podchaser has helped us with some of that data set. But if we look at the emerging markets, we've got India, Brazil, Singapore, Italy, Japan, Indonesia, the Netherlands and Spain, and on the established side that's Canada, the US, Sweden, Australia and the UK. We divide those into emerging and established categories based on ad spend and market maturity for each of the regions.

Sam Sethi: 20:09

So, overall, I think the report which you did on 13 countries, as you say has said that the amount of time people will spend with podcasting is going to increase. Is that just something that we're now seeing the popularity of podcasting coming back, or is there another reason why people are spending more time with podcasts?

Ross Adams: 20:44

platform onto different channels, from video to audio. I think there's more and more audiences that are discovering podcasting continually. I think if you look at the US as a market and you have a hundred or just over a hundred million uniques listening to podcasting on a monthly basis, the market is 350 million plus in population size, so a lot more have got to discover it. So we're still in that kind of growth curve in my opinion. But yeah, things like video helped that and what we kind of discovered was more than 50% of podcast listeners from emerging markets and almost 40% in the established markets plan to spend or increase their time spent with the medium in the next kind of six months, which is a really good signal for podcasting.

Sam Sethi: 21:19

Is TV and radio the loser? We only have finite attention as humans, so if we're spending more with podcasting, we must be spending less somewhere else with the mediums. So is it radio or is it TV that's losing out?

Ross Adams: 21:34

I think so. I think it's a blend here, I think it's TV, radio, I think press as well, I think now that a lot of publishers are putting out audio in terms of news and people can catch up in that way, and the good thing about an audio-led medium is that you can carry it anywhere you want, and not just in the commute, but actually if you're working out or walking the dog, et cetera, et cetera. So I think that is an advantage for this medium. But I do think there are traditional mediums like linear TV, like radio, that hours will be spent less. It doesn't make them any less effective as a medium, but hours were definitely, I believe, spent less on those channels.

Sam Sethi: 22:09

One of the things from the report. It talks about engagement and, oddly, the emerging markets are more engaged with podcasting than the existing or traditional markets. Is that because we've got more distractions in these markets where we are here in the UK, US and less distractions, or what is it that you think might cause the emerging markets to be more engaged?

Ross Adams: 22:32

Yeah, I think it's a good argument there. I think if you look at the maturity of content in certain markets, it's a busier market. There's more to engage with, as you said, and therefore there's only finite time to consume that. And also this medium is becoming fairly prevalent in these emerging markets. So as a newer medium, people want to spend naturally a bit more time with that as they're starting to discover it. But I do think you're right there in the fact that existing established markets do have a lot of content being produced in a multitude of mediums and therefore it's a busier market, so time spent will naturally be slightly less one of the things that you highlight is 46 of the audiences in the uk, 53 in the us but a whopping 68 in india discover new content on youtube.

Sam Sethi: 23:16

Now we've seen the rise of youtube over the last couple of years and this is obviously the rise of video podcasting, and I've given up on saying it's an audio podcast or video podcast. It's just podcasting. Now, how you consume it's up to you lean back, lean forward but what we are seeing is that it's a younger audience that is going towards that YouTube market, rather than the older audience. Is that going to cause any difference in the way that people consume the content, as in trusting the content now they can see the people, or is it just young people like to watch and old people like to listen?

Ross Adams: 23:52

I think there'll be differing trends and I think it's up to the creators to ask to surface that data and then to segment how they put that content out. I think video as soon as you've got a video in front of yourself, I think the kind of narrative slightly changes when it's just audio based. But the younger audiences they're used to the likes of reels, stories, short form content, so they do have a shorter attention span. Those dopamine hits right. So I think naturally, if you look at podcast clips on the likes of TikTok or podcast clips on YouTube in forms of reels, that younger Gen Z audience engages massively with it. But it is short form. It's up to us how we find formats that effectively work there for an advertiser. But I do think that younger audience will engage with podcasting in a different way and then that will kind of evolve the medium over time. But I do think audio is still going to be incredibly powerful for them. It's yet maybe a frontier that they need to kind of get across.

Sam Sethi: 24:50

So what does this all mean for ACAST? Does this mean that you're going to be spending more time in emerging markets? Does this mean that you think you're going to be doing more video advertising? Does it mean what to the ACAST user and customer?

Ross Adams: 25:03

I suppose yeah, I mean I think if you look at kind of ACAST, 90 plus percent of our revenue comes from advertising. So for us it's about those advertising solutions with our podcast creators. As you said earlier, podcast or podcasting as a format has changed beyond just audio now, and video is here and it is established as part of the kind of ecosystem. It's then up to companies like ourselves. When you have creators who put content out on a multitude of platforms in the likes of video format short, long form, audio too how do we engage with those audiences and connect those audiences with our advertisers? So I think it is a real opportunity for companies like ours and we've seen a huge trend in cross-platform, omni-channel platform campaigns being delivered.

Sam Sethi: 25:50

So that's a big opportunity for ACAST which Apple, spotify and YouTube tend to get from listener behavior. How does ACAST get that data? Because we know that the download now is becoming a secondary metric. It's, in effect, not a listen. You can't say a download equals a listen. A listen to an advert is different to a download. So how are you now trying to inject yourselves into the stream in order to get that first party data?

Ross Adams: 26:30

I mean I think when you think about first party data, I mean it's really age and gender, that is the kind of the core parts. But nobody has all of the data of podcasting, because a video podcast would go across tens of platforms and therefore the audience is incredibly fragmented. However, understanding pockets of first-party data allow you to extrapolate from that onto what in general is happening. So it's an even playing field. So, whilst there might be an advantage from a platform having some first-party data, as long as you have a section of first-party data you can extrapolate from it. It's the tools you build around that.

Ross Adams: 27:04

So I believe contextual targeting, as we've kind of made a bet on quite a few years ago, is going to be the way that people are going to be planning their media and making sure that the advert is not only targeted towards the right audience but mainly within the right context. So I think that's inherently a big advantage for podcasting. We transcribe all of our content that's hosted on a cast, we run it through natural language processing and then we kind of look at what conversations are being had, what keywords are being mentioned and then what areas around that would make sense for an ad to fit around. That content to cut through that much greater and be that much more relevant. That's a real opportunity for the entire long tail of podcasting. So it doesn't worry me that we don't have first-party data on all the streams. As long as you have some, it allows you to extrapolate with 90-plus percent accuracy for advertisers.

Sam Sethi: 27:56

You've got this bucket of wonderful data and you've been doing it for a few years now. Will you ever release the transcriptions back to the actual creators so they can put them in their rss feeds, because you're one of the massive sources of this? By the way, we are nudging apple to do exactly the same. They transcribe everything. We know why you want to transcribe it yours is a business reason for advertising. Theirs is probably for apple intelligence. We don't know. It's just one of those lovely opportunities you have that, but you don't actually release that transcription anywhere, from what I understand.

Ross Adams: 28:30

Yeah, I think that's more of a question for our product team and their roadmap, but I think, if you look at what transcriptions do, I think for us it's about what data does that enable and how can that data help a creator understand their audience in a better way and understand what content and what parts of their content is working in a more effective way. So that's a roundabout way of not answering your question, but answering it.

Sam Sethi: 28:54

That's fine when are you going to be my local mp? No, that's fine, ross. Look, if I wanted to read the full report, where would I go and get it?

Ross Adams: 29:04

you can access this on advertiseacastcom. That's where I will go next.

Sam Sethi: 29:10

Thank you, ross. So much for this report. I'm looking forward to the next one from ACAST.

Ross Adams: 29:14

Speak soon. Appreciate being on the show. Thank you, Sam.

James Cridland: 29:16

Friend of the show Ross Adams from ACAST, and there's a full version of that in the Pod News Extra feed which is available wherever you get your podcasts.

Sam Sethi: 29:25

James, one of the things that I asked Ross about was there is radio and TV losing out to podcasting and, given that you're a radio futurologist, do you think, because we have limited time and attention, that is where the mediums of radio and TV are losing?

James Cridland: 29:41

I don't believe that radio is losing, because I think if you look at any of the large radio broadcasters whether that's, you know, iheart in the US or indeed Odyssey, or whether that is you know, Bauer in the Nordics or Global in the UK, they have all understood how to integrate podcasting with their broadcast.

James Cridland: 30:01

So I think it's not really a threat to them and in fact it's probably an opportunity to them. They are the experts in audio after all. Where it is a little bit of a threat is companies like Acast, who do a pretty good job of talking down radio sometimes, and advertisers getting a little bit confused in terms of how all of this works. I mean, ross, I think from memory, used to work for Capital Radio in London and so therefore he knows more than anybody else. You know how radio fits into all of this, but no, I think podcasting sits quite nicely together with radio in that way. I think the interesting sort of other point that he was making was around AI and how Acast have actually been using AI for a number of years in terms of contextual advertising, so they don't have to worry too much about some of the other data that other people are concerned about, because they've got all of that data in terms of contextual advertising, which is certainly one way of putting it, and I found that that was quite interesting too.

Sam Sethi: 31:12

Yeah, it was a dodge around the first party data requirement that Bumper were talking about. You know which Spotify, youtube and Apple have, because they don't have that first party data, but I think you know this is their alternative. Their view, if I read between the lines, was because of our contextual advertising and using AI, we can give you more reliable advertising that will be highly targeted. Therefore, we are expecting the listener to listen rather than skip, because it actually reaches the people who want to hear it.

James Cridland: 31:44

Yeah, and they can also see the same numbers from Apple and Spotify as everybody else can, so they can see how people are consuming it. But the benefit of the targeting the way that ACAST do it is that it's GDPR compliant. It's not spying on people. It's a very private way of targeting and it's a good way of targeting. From my point of view, that's probably the difference between a European company, as ACAST is, and a US company, which has been very much more focused on spying on audiences and working out exactly what they're doing. There's an awful lot of inference going on, or inference, and if you infer something, that's another fancy word for saying saying guess, that's what that's what you're doing um, you, you can, you can infer the sex of a listener from uh, their ip address, um, but realistically, that's just going to be a guess.

James Cridland: 32:43

So, um, I think, I, I think acast of uh doing some very interesting things. Now, of course, how that fits with video is another thing, but I'm super interested in hearing Ross and it was great to get him on.

Sam Sethi: 32:57

I thought we talked about Acast getting into video advertising a few months back.

James Cridland: 33:02

Yeah, I mean they are talking now. When you see press releases from Acast, where they've got a new podcaster to join their platform, they are now very deliberately talking about video as well as audio. So my guess is that they are selling what they call sponsorships and what the rest of us call host-read ads. They are selling those into YouTube because they can, because that's one thing that you can get into YouTube. So perhaps that's ACAST's plan there. It seems to make quite a lot of sense. So, yeah, I think video is going to be interesting to see how more companies earn money out of that, but certainly ACAST seems to have a good plan there.

Sam Sethi: 33:46

Now other reports that we have seen the UK's Raja, which is the radio have seen um, the uk's raja, which is the radio.

James Cridland: 33:57

Uh, yeah, raja, it's raja, because it's, of course it's radio. Um, but yes, but um, so raja is the um is the uh radio, uh, joint, um, uh audience research company. Um, there you go, I knew you'd know, there you go, and they have released it's probably radio and audio, joint audio research. Now, I don't know, know, who knows. Anyway, they've released their MIDAS study for summer 2024. Midas again stands for something, but I've forgotten what it stands for and I can't be bothered to look it up. But it looks at audio consumption in the country. If you look at their weekly reach figure, that is 23%. So the number of British adults listening to podcasts every week is 23%, which you might look at and go. Well, that's quite low. These numbers are always lower than other numbers that I've seen.

James Cridland: 34:41

I think it's the way that RageR do these figures. So, yeah, I don't worry too much about the number. It's the trend and the trend is it's up. So that's really all that we need to care about. Podcasts only account for 6% of all time with audio, according to this data. I've seen other data saying quite similar numbers and to me that's the number that we should be focusing on To all time with audio 6% or even better, just a number. You know, one hour, 10 minutes or whatever it is a week, that's the number. If we can manage to double that, for example, then that means double the time spent with podcasting probably means double the amount of money that we can earn out of it as well. That's what I would like to see increase. I'm not too concerned about any of the weekly reach figures anymore. I don't think that they're particularly helpful.

Sam Sethi: 35:40

Again, it backs up what Akos was saying, which is the growth in podcasting is continuing, Okay, and also Sports Social. They've also put out a report.

James Cridland: 35:52

James. What have they said? Yeah, so it's more trust. Podcasting always does very well on trust, and Sports Social have realised this and they have gone to take a look at sport podcast listeners and how they trust the ads that they hear in comparison to ads that they hear on sports radio or in the sport print media, and apparently sports podcast listeners 2.3 times more likely to trust podcast adverts than those others. According to new data, podcasting always does fantastically well on trust, so good to see that, and Tom Webster has taken a look at the Persuadables. This has come out of Sounds Profitable's podcast landscape 2024 report.

James Cridland: 36:37

According to Tom, 20 million people in the US don't listen to podcasts right now, but they could easily be persuaded to, and his report has lots of details about what's needed to get them tuned in. Apparently, they prefer video, so again ties in with what Maya was saying earlier, but they are more open to considering podcasting and there's some good information there. One of the things that I am going to be spending a little bit more time on, I think, over the next six months, is actually seeing how podcasters are promoting themselves away from podcast apps and away from podcasts. There is, you know, some more podcast advertising in the wild type stuff, because I would like to understand a little bit more about how we can be growing our industry a little bit further, because I think that that would be a healthy thing for us to end up doing. But that's a pretty useful thing.

Sam Sethi: 37:38

Yeah, I mentioned last week I'm going to start experimenting and I did try this week, but the video that I did in Descript of the interviews with Ross and previously with Mark Asquith, I clipped them up and I used Headline and I've set it all up. Actually, it's pretty quick and simple, once you've done all the hard work, to create reels and clips and distribute them out to multiple endpoints like TikTok and YouTube. I'm not going to do it straight away, but I like experimenting with it. The tools there now are making it much, much easier.

Sam Sethi: 38:14

You know, um, we talked about me using dscript, new rooms, which is still in beta. Um, it's got a few things that it still needs to get ironed out, but generally it's pretty good and it goes straight into dscript and then, with the underlord ai, you can create clips pretty quickly. So I think all of these tools are going to enable podcasters now, if they want to do video, to do it. You don't have to, of course and it also enables you to quickly get the AI to pull out clips for you and you can choose which ones and then distribute them pretty much with one click as well.

James Cridland: 38:51

Now Spotify versus the rest of the world in terms of numbers. There's a bunch of numbers which have come out from that. Firstly, john Spurlock, showing that Buzzsprout, our sponsor, is showing a massive rise in Spotify share this month, up to 40%. There's a big drop in Apple Podcasts share as well. They're down to 28.7%. Similarly, data from Libsyn that we saw last week, I think, showing again another record low for Apple Podcasts as well is doing in terms of podcast hosting. They are doing nicely as well in terms of the Livewire data. But you ended up looking outside of the US and outside of the Western world and you ended up talking to Gotham Raj Anand, didn't you? Yeah?

Sam Sethi: 39:49

we've spoken about what's happening in what is now the third largest podcasting market, which is the South Asia market, and Gotham, with HubHopper, has a very good eye on it, and I kept asking him what is going on with Spotify and what is happening with native apps, as well as the emergence of YouTube as well.

Gautam Raj Anand: 40:10

Spotify is not. It's not a monopoly game in India. So there's a major platform called Wink Music in India which is essentially a telco owned streaming platform. You know, one of India's largest telecom operators named Airtel basically ran a company called Wink underneath their umbrella and Wink recently announced that they were shutting shop. Now that's a major, major deal because you're talking about 50, 60 million monthly active users. Just because of the sheer volume of how widespread Airtel and the telco is itself, you can sort of imagine the number of people that this would be impacting. But that doesn't necessarily mean that all of this traffic is going to move to Spotify. It's going to move to other indigenous platforms, it's going to move a little bit to Apple and it's going to move to Spotify as well.

Sam Sethi: 41:07

Two other players in the Indian market I just wanted to touch on briefly. One is Amazon and one is YouTube. I mean, one of the things I often say to James is that I don't hear about Amazon, not just in the Indian market but just globally. They seem to occasionally pop up. I suppose their big thing is Wondery and Audible and they do very well through those two channels, but never hear it of amazon, particularly as a company. It's often through those subsidiaries of amazon that you hear about podcasting. Is that the same in india as well with amazon?

Gautam Raj Anand: 41:41

actually no, weirdly enough, I would give amazon a lot of credit. Amazon music recently took out a study where they stated that their second largest consumption market on earth is India, which is a big deal. I mean, at least for us it's a big deal. And also, having worked very closely with the Amazon India team, you know they are doing a very large amount, as are the other platforms, as is Spotify, but, but Amazon, because it's being spoken about right now Amazon's doing a lot for highlighting creators. They just had a bunch of creators showcased on Times Square Indian creators, which was really exciting.

Gautam Raj Anand: 42:25

Now the other two players that one would sort of be speaking about would be GeoSavan. Geosavan I actually think they are one of the reasons why podcasting is where it even is in India, because they punted on podcasting before any other platform did so, even prior to Spotify entering the India market. They had original shows, and so large amount of credit goes to their founders, rishi Param, because they, you know, were way ahead of their time and continue to be so. With podcasting, the YouTube phenomenon in the India market, it's had a double edged impact. One thing is that it's caused podcasting to essentially go supernova Every single person and their aunt and their aunt's aunt wants to start a podcast or has started a podcast, but because podcasting was fairly young in the India market, there's mass confusion around what a podcast is right now.

James Cridland: 43:25

And there's more from that in the Pod News Extra feed, which you'll find wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2: 43:31

The Pod News Weekly Review. With Buzzsprout Podcast hosting made easy.

James Cridland: 43:38

I mentioned Libsyn just a little while ago. You've been taking a look, as have I, through the Libsyn stockholder presentation, which was quite an eye-opener, wasn't it?

Sam Sethi: 43:51

Well, I needed something to get me to sleep. But yeah, it was, uh, it was wonderful, um it uh. Libsyn revealed it lost its largest advertising customer, responsible for 40 of its revenue. No wonder the ceo was uh asked to take a short walk off a long plank, or a long walk of a short plank. Even try that one, um. But um, yeah, no, I think it's interesting they have. I was going to ask you who the new ceo is, but it looks like chuck cargill has been the cfo, has now made the interim ceo. Um. So again, good luck lips him, you know, but it's a company that I think is becoming more of an advertising player than a host oh, it's most definitely an advertising player.

James Cridland: 44:32

I mean you can. You can see that from the numbers that they've got that they make significant money. Libsyn Ads earns twice as much as its podcast hosting business, but there again, libsyn Ads is much more expensive to run, significantly less profitable, which is why they keep both of those going. Some other fascinating things going on about Libsyn. So the stockholder presentation was just incredibly rude about some of the acquisitions that they made during Brad Turpak's time 2021 to 2022. It sounded as if Julep was just losing money hands over fist and they're delighted to have got rid of it and various other things. They also say that if Libsyn wants to go back onto the stock market, then it will cost them more money than they make a year, which is quite interesting to see. So they've not made any decision yet to return to the stock market.

James Cridland: 45:38

Changes, too, with Apple. Apple has launched a brand new chart. Their chart is for series. So if you are a serial type show, if you start at episode one and you go to episode eight and then you've got a new season and so on and so forth, then you will appear in this brand new chart, which is available in the Apple Podcasts app, both on iOS and on macOS, as of today. Today, you will also see a celebrated show in some countries called Series Essentials. Ghost Story from Wondery has been given a big push. Interestingly, wondery are republishing that particular show at the moment ad-free, just to sort of show off that they've been selected by Apple. So many congratulations to Apple for launching that. I mean, I would rather that they were focusing on, you know, video and other things, but still, even so, nice to end up seeing that and also talking about Apple.

James Cridland: 46:43

Apple transcripts have also been expanded as of today. So we are seeing now Apple supporting transcripts in a number of different languages. Eight additional languages Swedish, danish, norwegian, finnish, portuguese, brazilian, portuguese, italian and Dutch. So, and they can also the app can now also detect when more than one language is spoken in an episode. So even if you are speaking two or more supported languages, the transcript will still be automatically generated for you. So some good additional work from Apple going on there. Yeah, no, that's nice.

Sam Sethi: 47:29

Very nice. Now zipping around the world, james, to where you were, judith, in Dubai. What were you doing there? Come on, reveal more about what you were doing.

James Cridland: 47:39

So I was speaking at the Podfest there. That's not a Chris Krimitzos Podfest, that's a different Podfest, but it was a very interesting day. The Arab world is growing and growing and growing in terms of podcasts and podcast consumption and podcast making as well, and you know there was a big room with lots of talks going on, but there were also smaller rooms where there was an awful lot of creative work. So I peered into one room where somebody from TikTok in the UAE was giving people advice on how to use that particular platform to promote your show. So there's quite a lot of that stuff going on, a number of different podcast companies there, but all podcast companies from the Arab world, apart from Shure who were there, the mic manufacturer. They had a room and in fact, if you listened to the Pod News Daily on Monday, then you would have heard me in that room because it was a nice quiet room and there was nobody there when I walked past it and I thought, right, I'll go and record in there then.

James Cridland: 48:50

So that was quite fun, but, yes, definitely a growing thing. One of the people there was Podio. Podio is a company that recently announced it's raised $5.4 million, so it's done tremendous funding round there. It is trying to become a more global company and it was good to see their CEO and co-founder. I think I saw them twice during my couple of days in the UAE. So, yeah, they're doing a bunch of very, very interesting things, so it'd be good to get him on at some point soon.

Sam Sethi: 49:25

Yeah, I've reached out to him on two different channels. I think he's still celebrating the 5.4 million. So I don't know. I won't smirch his character by saying he's drinking because you know it's the UAE and Dubai and the Saudis, but he's probably is drinking I would be after a 5.4 million round. So yes, so if he does answer my request for an interview, we will have him on the show.

James Cridland: 49:48

Yes, yes, no, absolutely. What else is going on in America? What's going on in America?

Sam Sethi: 49:56

Sam, you're a big fan of all things American a podcast network called the Podmatch Network, and they will be focusing on serving independent, interview-based podcasters who release daily episodes. There you go, james, up to you. They're going to come and get you, I don't know. No, they're not going to do anything with you at all.

James Cridland: 50:24

They're not going to do anything with me at all because I'm not an interview-based podcaster, but what a clever idea. To focus on one particular niche of I mean quite a large one, but one particular niche of podcasting and be able to network those together makes a bunch of sense. They've got an event coming up on the 17th Podcasting Made Simple Live. You'll find more information on that at podnewsnet slash events. And one of the nice things that he says is I've been positioning pod news as our official newsletter. We don't have a newsletter and we never will, so at the event we'll be telling people to subscribe and making it appear on screen for them to do so. What a nice what a nice man.

James Cridland: 51:09

So yes, so there's a thing Talking about people. Nathan Gathwright, friend of the show, has got a job as senior product designer at Linktree. So good to see that he is gainfully employed at a big company, so that's very good news. Millie Boats has been promoted to VP of product at Acast. And also brand new news from Listen, the company based in London. They have a new Director of Marketing and Partnerships. She's called Emma Williams and she used to work at Diary of a CEO and so moving over to Listen, that's a pretty big deal. And so moving over to listen, that's a pretty big deal. So that's very smart to end up seeing Listen making loads of different shows at the moment. And you know, I think you can certainly see from that point of view that you know, hiring somebody with that kind of experience is really helpful. So many congratulations to them is really helpful. So many congratulations to them. More jobs and people news and all of that are on the Pod News website at podnewsnet.

Sam Sethi: 52:19

Moving on, James, let's go to awards and events. Lots of winners and lots of winners everywhere around the world. Where should we start, James?

James Cridland: 52:26

Yes, indeed so in the US, but it was a global thing. The winners of the 19th annual People's Choice Podcast Awards were announced. Those are the ones run by Todd Cochran, and the People's Choice Award went to let's Get Haunted. That's a great name, let's Get Haunted. So loads of people winning. Adam Curry, I think, walked away with two awards in that particular award, which was nice In. In fact, I think he walked away with more.

James Cridland: 52:52

Um, really, he ended up walking, greedy I, I know, I know well, so he's got an award which is named after him. Uh, the adam curry people's choice award. Um, you can't win your own award. No, he didn't. He didn't win that. Amusingly, best podcast listening platform went to spotify uh Curry, no, that would be funny.

James Cridland: 53:17

And then right at the bottom of the list and loads of people entered it and loads of people were taking part in it and everything else but the 2024 Podcast Influencer of the Year. The list includes Adam Curry as the 2024 Listener Influencer of the Year as well. So congratulations to Mr Curry for that and all of the other winners of the People's Choice Award. It's been going for years and years and years, as you can see. Also an award that's been going on for years and years and years the British Podcast Awards 2024. They were announced. The BBC ended up winning nine of the podcast specific awards. Acast were second, with five, audible winning three awards, including podcast of the year, which is interesting because I'm not sure that an Audible show is a podcast. But you may wish to give us feedback on that using the link you'll find in our show notes and let us know what you think. I wonder who the sponsors were. Oh well, there's a thing.

Sam Sethi: 54:17

No, not that I'm dispersing them, but check the sponsors Well.

James Cridland: 54:22

Podcast of the Year went to an Audible award. I am, yes. Well, I mean, you've got me wondering now who the sponsors were. I know that the sponsors have been Audible in previous years. I'm not sure that Audible were sponsors this year and I think it would be cheeky for us to say so even if they were. But I don't see any sponsors on the website at all, in fact. So that probably tells you what you need to know there. But yes, but you know, interesting seeing a great big list there of those particular shows. I can't even tell you what Press Play Turn On is all about. I did have a quick listen purely for research reasons, james, purely for research reasons.

Sam Sethi: 55:14

Smut, smut, smut, smut. But hey look, it's well done, but to your point, I couldn't download it. I couldn't certainly put it into any other RSS feed. It's not even a paid for audio book, so I don't really know how that qualifies as a podcast.

James Cridland: 55:33

Well, who knows? Also, very, very quickly, the host of the Independent Podcast Awards, which is happening on October the 23rd, has been announced as Esther Manito. She is a British-Lebanese comedian and podcaster. She'll be doing it again, because she did it last year. The winners of the Black Podcasting Awards 2024 were also announced. That was a global thing. The African Podcast and Voice Awards winners were also announced. We've got a full list of the African winners in. You want to, you can vote for the listener's choice in every category. The website claims already, as we're recording this, 10,741 votes, so it'll be interesting to see how many votes that they end up getting. But lots of recognisable large podcast companies, mostly American, but it is nice to see some small indies also being recognised in there as well. Differente Creatives, science Wise is a finalist in the science category, for example, which is a very small indie podcast company. So that's always nice to end up seeing lots and lots of those awards. Are there any awards going on elsewhere in the world? Sam?

Sam Sethi: 56:51

Yes, there are the South Asian Podcast Awards. They are in their fourth year now. There any awards going on elsewhere in the world? Sam, yes, there are the south asian podcast awards. They are in their fourth year now. It's organized by hub hopper and they are accepting submissions now, but also, interestingly, starting for the first time ever to accept submissions for video podcasts, not just audio podcasts. They are expanding it as well to a region called MENA, which I didn't know, which was the Middle East and North Africa, or, as some people are now beginning to call it, west Asia, and they're also accepting awards from the Asians in the wider diaspora. So I think it's quite good. I just realised, though, when you just said something they should call the awards the Indies, because it's reaching out to establishing markets. That's very nice. That would be even funnier. Yes, anyway, the.

James Cridland: 57:35

East Indies. I know too soon, Too soon.

Sam Sethi: 57:40

Yes, but anyway I thought I'd catch up with Gotham and ask him all about the awards and why they're doing them.

Gautam Raj Anand: 57:48

This is the fourth edition of the podcasting awards that we've been hosting, and it's basically to recognize and shed light on creators out of the emerging markets that oftentimes get less recognition and less sort of pats on the back, and that's where the history of these awards came from as well. There'll be eight categories for these awards and we'll be accepting entries, and entries are completely free for anybody that wants to participate, as long as you meet a couple of criteria. So criteria being the fact that you've had to have released one episode at least within this year, so it can't be a podcast that you were running, let's say, three years ago. You have to have at least five episodes that you've published in the history of your podcasting journey. And this year we're also accepting YouTube podcasts and video podcasts to sort of move with the tide of how the industry is evolving, as well as audio podcast.

Gautam Raj Anand: 58:44

Up until now, it was only audio podcast that were RSS backed that we were accepting. But yeah, we're super excited because this year we're going global. Up until this point it was just for the India market. Our vision with this is to bring recognition to more emerging markets, especially in the Asian region, so expecting a lot of entries coming in from different parts of the Asian market. So, if I'm not mistaken, I know that this was the first podcast awards that started in the India market, and a lot of our creators oftentimes do remind us because they won a couple of times over and excited to win this time round as well. But I don't know whether there are other awards in certain other territories in the Asia market, but we're excited to take this and bring this out to folks in and around the countries that surround India.

James Cridland: 59:38

And there's more from Gautam in the Pod News Extra feed this week and plenty more, so you should go and check that interview out. One final event to tell you about is podcast. One final event to tell you about is PodCamp 2.0, which is happening, and it's got a website now. Sam, this is the one that you're organising the website's at podcamplive.

Sam Sethi: 1:00:01

It is. Yeah, it's an Eventbrite site at the moment, but it will be a full website. We've decided to do it the day before the London podcast show, not on the actual two days, so it's going to be on the 20th and I'm glad to say our first sponsor is Captivate. Thank you, mark Asquith. I will say I hate asking the same people all the time. It's always Captivate, acast and RSS who step up to the mark and support the industry, and thank you to those three companies.

Sam Sethi: 1:00:28

But I wish the wider podcast community would step forward. I don't't have that, so I'm reaching out to you now and asking anyone who wants to support PodCamp Live please contact me. It is a value for value thing. There is no price for the tickets. We are looking for time, talent or treasure. So if you can support the event 500 pounds would be great. If you can give me your time to help organize the event, I will love you and I certainly need talent. We have some great speakers already lined up, but if you want to speak about podcasting 2.0 again, just reach out.

James Cridland: 1:01:01

I will be reaching out to lots of other people and announcing some of those in this show over the coming weeks excellent, sounds very good and the day before the, the, the podcast show makes a bunch of sense because people are already getting into London at that point and that makes a load of sense, so all sounds good. Podcamplive is the place to go. The. Tech Stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 1:01:27

Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday in the Pod News newsletter. Here's where Sam talks technology. What have we got here, Sam, this week?

Sam Sethi: 1:01:36

We talked about Notebook LM last week. It now can summarise YouTube videos and podcasts, which is quite clever.

James Cridland: 1:01:43

Great. Maybe we can ask it to summarise this one. Who knows?

Sam Sethi: 1:01:46

No, everyone else is.

James Cridland: 1:01:50

The Podcast Standards Project has issued an update on its work. It's working on enhancing the people feature and I'm looking forward to them talking to somebody about that, because they've not actually communicated outside of that group at all yet and I think that there's an awful lot of learning and help that the rest of the internet can actually give them. So, looking forward to that at some stage in the future. I wish I understood what the Podcast Standards Project was doing, but anyway. But they've also adopted the pod role as a standard, which is a good thing. The pod role feature in Podcasting 2.0 is a really, really good one in terms of being able to recommend shows for other people, and it's good to see that that appears to be getting the grown-ups, if you like, the product managers, if you like excited enough to be able to take that one forward.

Sam Sethi: 1:02:47

Yeah, I'm a little confused because I read the press release and, like you, I'm very excited that they've adopted the pod role as a standard, which hopefully means more hosts will implement it. But I'm confused as to why they're suggesting new features for the people or person tag. Are they now becoming the same as the podcast 2.0 GitHub community? Because that's where I thought, where new features and functionality was discussed and then it was adopted by the community and Dave Jones probably has to ratify it before it then gets put forward as a potential standard in the PSP. So I'm a little bit confused. So anyone who wants to answer that question would be wonderful. I'm also a little bit frustrated because obviously you know I was involved.

Sam Sethi: 1:03:34

I think there are three things that we need to decide as a community. I think the podcast taxonomy sits with another group. It hasn't been updated for three, maybe four years. We talked about AI as a new potential role for hosts to mark that that hasn't been added to the podcast taxonomy. Nobody seems to have control of it.

Sam Sethi: 1:03:56

I did try and see if the PSP would host it or the podcast index would host it. We need that. We need a secondary role within the person tag, because you can be a singer and a writer or a host and a producer like you are for this show, james, and also we need new UI features as well. So I think there's a lot there that needs to be done. Someone needs to own that taxonomy. Somebody needs to own the music license that was co-developed with True Phantom and Phantom Power Media, and also Wavelate produced a wonderful music category, an extensive category list. So, yes, the Apple podcast category list is great, but when medium equals music, you can switch it to the music category. But that's sort of hanging around in the ether as well. So I just think, as in grouping, one group, be it the PSP or the podcast index, needs to take all of those things and take ownership, and I don't know who's going to do it.

James Cridland: 1:04:54

Yeah, I mean, I think certainly working together with the existing groups makes a bunch of sense, and I'm a little confused as to why that isn't actually happening and why we seem to be forking the idea of the people feature and you know, and somebody else is going to have a look at that, and then somebody else is going to have a look at, you know, the people IDs and everything else.

James Cridland: 1:05:14

It's absolutely fine for people to be suggesting ways to make these features better. That is kind of you know the thing. If that isn't, if the podcast standards project doesn't think that the Podcasting 2.0 GitHub is the place to do that which, by the way, it might not be then I think we need some form of understanding of you know where we go. I would like to spend some more time with the location tag, fix some of the problems that the location tag currently has and make that more fit for purpose, but I've tried to raise that in the podcasting 2.0 GitHub and have got nowhere with that. So I think you know there's a lot of questions to be asked there and to be answered there in terms of how this might actually work. But yeah, so it would be just nice for us all to be pulling together, you know, in terms of that.

Sam Sethi: 1:06:16

Well, one of the things, that we did have was Russell Harrower on the show a few weeks back, talking about something called the PodFund. I'm pleased to say that, as of today, he's made his first payments out of that PodFund so, which he set up to support apps. So True Fans, podcast, guru, fountain and PodLP applied and we've all just had our payouts. It's small, I grant you, but it's a massive gesture and it's a direction of travel. Now I do know that the Podcast Standards Project have talked about setting up a fund to support apps. So far, though, I've seen no action from that. I'm looking forward to it. I hope they work with Russell Now he's got a mechanism set up, rather than set up a secondary mechanism, but who knows? But it's good to see that that's the first step in a pod fund, so congratulations to Russell.

James Cridland: 1:07:15

Yes, it's our favourite time of the week.

James Cridland: 1:07:16

It's Boostergram Corner. As a reminder, Sam and I share everything from this. It doesn't go to the bigger, wider pod news empire or whatever it is. So thank you for your support, which you can do either by hitting the boost button or by going to weeklypodnewsnet. People who've hit the boost button this week include Gene Bean 2,222 sats from that. Very nice, Gene Bean.

James Cridland: 1:07:45

Bravo, James, for your description of X when talking about headliner. Ah, yes, yes, I think I may have called X. I think I may have called X X-I-T-T-E-R, which, if you pronounce that the correct way, it sounds like shitter. Yes, so yes, Hurrah, it's always worth a rubbish joke such as that. And RW Nash happy Oktoberfest. It's always worth a rubbish joke such as that. And RW Nash happy Oktoberfest. 1,225 sats. In fact, RW Nash, you will be quite impressed to learn that when I was in Dubai earlier on in the week, the hotel that I was in weirdly had a German pub in it and they were very much enjoying Oktoberfest, as was Emirates Airlines is currently covered with Oktoberfest material and, given that you can't get a German beer on an Emirates flight anyway, I'm not quite sure what was going on there, but still Thank you, IW Dash, for that. Thank you also to Nicholas B58, the late bloomer actor, Colm O'Comic One and Brian Entsminger for being part of our sat streamers last week.

Sam Sethi: 1:09:03

Well, james, now let's move on to our power supporters. Wow, well, we've gone from eight to nine. Well, we're now at legs 11,. James, we have to welcome and thank Neil Velio, who goes straight to the top of the class with his $10 per month. Thank you, neil.

James Cridland: 1:09:20

Yes, that's fantastic. So we are now the magnificent 11. Thank you to all of you Neil Velio, rocky Thomas, jim James, david Muzzle, si Jobling, rachel Corbett, dave Jackson, mike at the Road Media Network, matt Medeiros, marshall Brown and Cameron Moll for your very kind support. And yes, neil is currently at the top of the tree for giving us the most, so it just goes to show if you co-host the show I mean, both Rachel and Neil have co-hosted this show in the past. So, yes, it's wonderful to see you all. So, thank you very much. Weeklypodnewsnet is where to go if you would like to support us a little bit more. So what's happened for you this week, sam? Well, I've been jaunting around the world. Have you read Steve Pratt's new book yet?

Sam Sethi: 1:10:08

Yes, yes, we both were lucky enough to get early copies of it. So, yes, well done to Steve. The book's actually out now, so please do go and get it. And, of course, james, in your generosity, I mean, I might have to change you from Judith Cridland to Santa Cridland. Soon You're giving away a first chapter as well.

James Cridland: 1:10:27

Yes, there's a password to get your first chapter. Whether or not you want the printed first chapter, or if you're lazy and you can't read like Sam and you want it read to you it's in a second language? Then that's absolutely fine. You can get the audio version as well. Just go to the Pod News website, search for Earn it, and you should find the review in there, which has a code for you to get hold of that too. Are you reading any other books at the moment?

Sam Sethi: 1:10:56

Malcolm Gladwell's new books just dropped Revenge of the Tipping Point, so that was his famous book. Again, highly recommend it if you want to go and read. It came out on October the 1st yeah, new book on my listening list.

James Cridland: 1:11:09

I'm still ploughing through the Michael Wolff book all about, uh, the murdoch's, so um that that that has been accompanying me on on flights and things also on on the flight. I, I, um, I still have the last ever grand tour to watch as well, which I'm looking forward to watching at some point I'm off to see yuri as well with his.

Sam Sethi: 1:11:28

He's in live in london at the how-to academy this week, so he's going to be talking about the book I was reading last week called Nexus, so I'm looking forward to seeing him in London, I thought you were talking about. Uri Geller there for a minute.

Sam Sethi: 1:11:39

No no no, no, bendings, no, bendings, no. So that'll be good. And there was a really good article if you haven't read it in Forbes about the Valueverse music, which covered RSS Blue, fountain and Wavelake and what they're doing with helping music artists use micropayments to get rewarded. And, on that note, a quick congratulations to Fountain They've sent over 1.6 of Bitcoin, or roughly $100,000, to podcasters and artists who they support directly, so congratulations.

James Cridland: 1:12:12

Yeah, it's a very excellent thing, so well done to them, james come on, then what's happened for you? Well, I mean, you know, obviously I've been kind of all over the place.

James Cridland: 1:12:24

I can give you two pieces of useful information as opposed to the rest of this show yes, as opposed to the rest of this show yes, you said it which is that the Pacific Island of Niue is a very fascinating place to go to. So one of the things that I learnt about it was that the roads are all in excellent condition, right, they're beautiful new roads and they've all got little sort of signs next to all of the junctions saying that they were paid for by the Chinese government. So the Chinese government has essentially come in and rebuilt all of the roads. It wasn't a loan, it was a gift, but obviously a gift which will come back at some point and they'll say have you forgotten that we built all of your roads? But yeah, really, really interesting.

James Cridland: 1:13:19

I enjoyed seeing the Chinese government, which is paid for all of the roads, New Zealand, which is paid for most of the country because it is part of the realm of New Zealand, and also Australia, good old Australia. Every wheelie bin that you walked past had a little sign on it saying donated from Australia aid. So well done us from that point of view. Incredibly tidy island, though Really really tidy.

Sam Sethi: 1:13:47

I don't think you know those roads. I don't think I saw they're called Silk Roads. They're called Silk Roads, are they? Yes, it's the Silk Road Strategy, china's Silk Road Strategy. There you go.

James Cridland: 1:13:56

Anyway, sorry, it was very good, it was very good, so, anyway, so that was nice. And then after that, obviously, dubai, which has changed so much. I last visited in 2007, and it's had so much growth, uh, since, um, there's a, there's a big metro typical for the uae uh, the, the. There is a special gold carriage on the metro that you pay extra to go into um, and that one apparently is is the most crowded uh of the train, because everybody, right, everybody, ends up doing that. Um, and I went to various other places the dubai mall and sky view, and I went to the museum of the future, which is an amazingly beautiful building outside, and I thought this is a wow, an amazing piece of architecture.

James Cridland: 1:14:44

I read your review it wasn't glowing, no, it's. Uh, the museum bit is just pointless bling, which I know in Dubai is a surprise, it's the point, but it was just. It had no academic or thoughtful basis to anything. And you go in and you know some of it was quite nicely put together, but it was just put together of you know, look, here's a space station. And you know and you're wow, you're now in space. And it was just. I was there thinking this is, this is nothing to do with the future, this is just an excuse to show off that they can buy fancy, you know, large screens, so, and 60 US dollars to go around as well.

James Cridland: 1:15:27

So really, quite, quite a thing and you paid that, yeah, and I paid that because I, because I thought I, I thought it would be worthwhile going around um. So my, uh, my advice to you if you're going to dubai and go, because it is a, it is an amazing place to go, to go and see um. If you're going to go to the museum of the future, go to the museum of the future, look at, look at the building, um, go inside the hall, um, the entrance hall, and look inside it because it is amazing. But don't bother going around the museum because it's an utter, utter waste of time and effort. But, you know, accepting that most most amazing thing. The one thing that I really enjoyed actually was on the day after the podcast, the podfest, we had a get together in I think it's called the Media Hotel, which has got a bar in it, and there was a big podcast get together from a lot of people who were working in the UAE doing podcasting and we all sort of came together and again, that was a really good event. So Tamara Zubiati, friend of the show from Barometer, she was there and you know she was, you know another foreign guest alongside me, but plenty of folk who are based in the UAE there, so it's a really growing part of the world in terms of the podcast community. So, yeah, that was certainly a thing.

James Cridland: 1:17:05

Well, where are you off to next? Come on, where am I off to next? Well, I'm going to Canada on Monday, so we need to talk about how this show is going to work next week, but I'm going for a big public media conference out there, so it's another one of the September October tour, so we'll see how my jet lag works that way. That'll be fun, but that's it for this week. All of the stories covered in this podcast were taken from the PodNews Daily newsletter, which you can subscribe to for free at podnewsnet, and there are longer interviews from this podcast in the PodNews Extra podcast. You'll find that, and the PodNews Daily wherever you get your podcasts as well.

Sam Sethi: 1:17:52

You can support this show with streaming stats. You can give us feedback using Buzzsprout's fan mail the link is in our show notes and you can send us a boostagram. Or you can become the 12th power supporter by the magnificent 11 at weeklypodnewsnet.

James Cridland: 1:18:09

Our music is from Studio Dragonfly. Our voiceover is Sheila Dee. We use Clean Feed for this audio and we're hosted and sponsored by Buzzsprout. Start podcasting. Keep podcasting. Get updated every day. Subscribe to our newsletter at podnewsnet.

Gautam Raj Anand: 1:18:26

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