James Cridland 0:00

It's Friday , the 18th of October 2024 .

Announcer 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 in Oslo in Norway .

Sam Sethi 0:18

And I'm Sam Sethi , the CEO of TruthFan , still stuck in Marlow .

James Cridland 0:22

In the chapters . Today Lipsyn has a new CEO , spotify expands its audiobook coverage , wondercraft adds director mode and this American Life says the bottom has fallen out of podcast advertising Plus .

Oscar Merry 0:39

Hey everyone , I'm Oscar Merry , and later I'll be on to talk about Fountain's latest release , 115 , where we've introduced a brand new content library , the ability to pay any lightning invoice directly from the app , and also music artist pages so you can discover all of the songs from your favorite artists hey Will .

James Cridland 0:57

This podcast is sponsored by Buzzsprout , with the tools , support and community to ensure you keep podcasting . Start podcasting , keep podcasting with buzzsproutcom . From your daily newsletter , the Pod News Weekly Review .

Sam Sethi 1:13

I thought Oscar Murray was doing the whole podcast for us there . He's been trained well , he has . So ,

Interview: Oscar Merry of Fountain

Sam Sethi 1:21

talking of Oscar Fountain , they have a new new release , james , I'm sure you're aware and I thought it'd be really good to grab oscar and find out what it's all about . In the release specifically , they've done a lot of work around offline caching , something called bolt 11 um artist pages , and we also talked , oscar and I about about the Forbes article that he was featured in with Dovidas from RSS Blue and Ainsley Costello , along with the fact that Fountain have remarkably , the customers of Fountain have given 1.6 Bitcoin , or roughly $100,000 of value to podcast creators . So I started off by asking Oscar tell us what's new in this new release of Fountain .

Oscar Merry 2:07

So we just released Fountain 1.1.5 . There's a massive amount of really cool updates in this new version , building on the 1.1 release which came out last month . So I'll go through it really quickly and then would love to just get into some of the more you know the deeper reasons on why we're building what we're building . But in Fountain 1.1.5 , we have a completely new content library architecture and this essentially makes the app way more performant , especially for online playback . So it took a lot of hard work to make this change . We've removed over 40,000 lines of code in the app . But , yeah , now Fountain is way more performant , especially in an offline playback setting . We've also added the ability to pay any Lightning invoice from your wallet in the app is . It demonstrates the interoperability of the Lightning Network and the payments within Podcasting 2.0 . So you can imagine paying for a coffee with the earnings from your podcast app , which I think is really cool , and it just shows how an interoperable payment system like Lightning can , I think , be the future of monetization within podcasting .

Oscar Merry 3:25

The final thing that we've added in 115 is music artist pages .

Oscar Merry 3:34

So I think everyone who listens to PodNews regularly will be aware of the new music podcasting features that are starting to be built out thanks to the introduction of the medium tag .

Oscar Merry 3:43

So we've supported music podcasts for a long time in Fountain , so you can listen to the introduction of the medium tag . So we've supported music podcasts for a long time in Fountain , so you can listen to the show , you can see the track list and you can actually click through to the track and save that to your library . That's really great . But we're missing a few things in terms of making Fountain a really great music listening experience . So with the addition of artist pages , now , wherever you discover that music in Fountain , you can click through to the artist page and you can see all of the tracks for that artist and you can see all of the social activity and payments related to that artist as well , which is really , really cool , because finding one track on a music podcast and then viewing the whole collection is something that's really important . So yeah , there's a lot in 115 , but we're really excited about it .

Sam Sethi 4:30

Cool . Lots and lots of hard work . As someone who builds an app as well , I know that takes a lot of time , energy and effort . So congratulations on that . Now let's unpack some of that . So let's start off with the offline capability and the core library stuff you did . Why did you feel you needed to make that change , and is that universal across both android and ios ?

Oscar Merry 4:55

yeah , so this is universal to ios and android and essentially this comes from our desire to make Fountain a multi-content medium app . We want people to be able to listen to their favorite podcasts , but also listen to the new music that they're discovering on podcasts , listen to live streams , which we're seeing a lot of new activity on . So we want Fountain to enable listening to any content type and over time , as we've added these new content types , it's kind of been building one thing on top of the other , whereas this new system is much more performant in terms of the organization of your library when you have all of those different content types . So that's the main reason behind it .

Sam Sethi 5:42

Now , one of the things you announced that was really impressive was that you've already paid out 1.6 Bitcoin . For those who don't know what 1.6 Bitcoin would equate to , that's just over $100,000 , which is really , really cool that you've seen that go through Fountain . Tell me more about what you're seeing , as the flow has accelerated .

Oscar Merry 6:04

Yeah , so we see regularly quite high payment volume being sent from listeners to podcasters and this is recurring revenue for the podcasters , because people love supporting their favorite podcasts and if you can make it easy for them and if you can build these social elements into those payments as well , like we do with Fountain , then people love to do it and podcasters love receiving it Not only the payment , but the message and also the interaction that's generated off the back of that . So , yeah , this is a credible way for podcasters to generate an income for their show and I would encourage any podcasters listening to try it out . Obviously , with new technology like the Lightning Network that comes with , you know additional things that you need to learn and it also comes with additional friction . For someone that's brand new to this , you know what is a Lightning Wallet , how does it work , but we've tried to make that as simple as possible in fountain and with every release it gets simpler . You know .

Oscar Merry 7:09

Withdrawing via bolt 11 is an example of that , and I think that , as we continue to solve the onboarding issues , as more of the traditional financial service companies adopt lightning , which they are doing financial service companies adopt Lightning , which they are doing , then paying Lightning invoices and sending sats from one app to another and back to your main banking app .

Oscar Merry 7:34

This will just become a normal thing and when that happens , I think the payment volume on apps like Fountain and the other podcasting 2.0 apps will really , really increase .

Oscar Merry 7:45

So , yeah , I would encourage any podcasters listening to get in now and check this out and figure out how can I do all of the things I need to do to increase that payment volume . The shows that are regularly successful every week on Fountain and earn a significant amount are the ones that do all of the things that Adam Curry always talks about . They get the ask right in the show , they read the boost , they reply to the boost in Fountain or Nosta , which is , you know , happy to talk more about that recent change . But , yeah , this thing is working . There's onboarding challenges with it , but I think it's the future and the fact that you can have these payments flow between the different apps and also the comments , the replies , flow between the different apps . This is the solution for the podcast industry because there's no other payment technology and there's no other social interaction technology that enables this . So , yeah , really excited to see what the number is next year , as I'm sure it will increase a lot more .

Sam Sethi 8:45

Well , as you mentioned NOSTA , let's cover that then . So for those that don't know , let's start off what is NOSTA , and then we'll go to how have Fountain integrated with it ?

Oscar Merry 8:57

Yeah . So NOSTA is a decentralized identity protocol , and what ? What Nosta allows you to do is have one social identity on the internet and bring that with you to all of the different apps that you use . You don't only bring your identity to the different apps , but you also bring your entire social graph and all of the content that you've created as an individual that wants to be social on the internet , which is most of us . What Nosta enables you to do is use all of these different apps and services with one profile , with one set of followers and with everything tied back together .

Oscar Merry 9:40

So , taking a step back to why we wanted to do this with fountain actually , the number one feature in fountain that podcasters love was our activity feed , because when someone sends a boost to an episode , that would go into the activity feed and not only do the podcasters get paid , but they generate discovery for their show for free , because everybody else would see that boost in the feed and they think , wow , 50,000 sats , this must be a good episode . Let me check it out , and we have heard time and time again that listeners have discovered shows on Fountain through the activity feed . So it was a feature that was working really well . But we had an issue , which is the fundamental issue that every new social app has , which is how do you bootstrap the social graph ? How do you get people following people with similar interests ? And the feature doesn't work unless you follow people that you care about in terms of their interests . What Nostra allows us to do is have people bring their existing follow graph into Fountain and then it also allows those boosts and those episode comments to leave the Fountain app and go and be discovered in other places . So these boosts and these episode comments can be discovered on the main Nostra clients like Primal , damus and Amethyst . They can also be queried by the other podcast apps , pulled into the podcast apps and used for cross app comment . So Nostra essentially superpowers the social features in Fountain and makes the discovery primarily way more powerful .

Oscar Merry 11:22

And since we launched this feature a month ago , there's a big change to Fountain and it's not a trivial thing to rip out your existing social graph and replace it with a new one . It was a lot of work , but we're already seeing this work incredibly well . So somebody's in the Fountain app , they're listening to an episode , they send a boost because they love the episode or they just leave an interesting comment that adds value to the content of the episode . That appears on the episode page in fountain like normal . It goes into the fountain home feed , like normal , but it also spreads out onto all of these other Nosta clients where people can see it , they can repost it , they can quote it , they can reply to it , tagging people that they follow saying , hey , this was an interesting comment .

Oscar Merry 12:08

So it just massively increases the discovery that the comments and the boost generate for podcasters and ultimately , that's what they want . They want new people to discover their show and I don't think we've ever seen anything like this in terms of a podcast app being able to generate conversation that then continues to happen on a regular social app like Twitter or something like that . So it's really cool . There's a lot still to do to polish the experience , you know , get the other podcasting 2.0 apps on board . So we are all using Nosta . I know there's other ideas , but yeah , I'm a massive believer in it and I think that as more and more apps join the Nostar network , there will be even more of a reason to adopt it and even more discovery opportunity for podcasters .

Sam Sethi 13:00

Oscar , thanks so much . Congratulations with this launch . Look forward to the next one . Speak to you soon , mate . Thank you so much . Congratulations with this launch . Look forward to the next one .

Oscar Merry 13:05

Speak to you soon , mate . Thank you so much , Sam .

James Cridland 13:06

Oscar Mary from Fountain FM . There's a full version of that interview in our Pod News Extra feed , which you can find wherever you get your podcasts . You're all sort of comfortable with the whole cross-act comments thing , are you now ?

Sam Sethi 13:22

No , not really . No , not yet . No , that's still a unicorn , that's still in the far off distance . Um , yes , things that we did do that I thought were great in terms of advancing compatibility between all the apps . So oscar was one of the people with dovi das from rss blue to come up with the idea of something called publisher feeds and artist feeds , and the idea was that , yes , you can have a I don't know , let's say , wondery could have Smartless as one of their podcasts , but I don't know all the other slate from Wondery . So with a publisher feed , apps can then say oh , look , here's all your other uh podcasts that you actually produce and we can put that on a single page . So it's a form of discovery . It's a great idea .

Sam Sethi 14:02

Well , strangely , oscar hadn't implemented it up until now , but they have put artist pages in . So Oscar and I took a Wave Lake music feed , an RSS feed standard , and inside that was a publisher feed , and I put it into TrueFounce , he put it into Fountain and magically it worked , and I love it when that happens . A couple of weeks ago , uh , bus sprout supported the guest in the person tag and and we added that in the admin in bus sprout and magically , I saw it just appear inside of true fans . And that's when I love when . What was this ? Um ? A theoretical conversation many , many months ago that we all had about , you know , guests in the person tag or publisher feeds , and then , when they're implemented and they actually work first time , it is like a bit of magic really .

James Cridland 14:50

It's a good thing . It's a good thing . So , yes , very smart . And yeah , you know , I think Fountain has definitely carved itself out as a bit of a niche thing all around Bitcoin and everything else . That's why you see an awful lot of shows in there , you know , focusing on that sort of side of podcasting . You know the Bitcoin bit of the podcast landscape . So I suppose the question is going to be how much non-geeks , non-bitcoin people are going to be interested in the app . And you know , time will tell . I guess .

Sam Sethi 15:28

Well , one of the things that differentiates Fountain from True Fans and probably Fountain from every other app out there right now is that Oscar has 110% decided to embrace what's called Nosta , which is another protocol for social media , and he's made big changes inside of Fountain and there were some people who loved it and there was people who hated it , but he has gone , I think , for a very geek-orientated early adopter market and look , you know , we all have our strategies . That's his and I think my concern and I did air this to Oscar which is you're trying to introduce a new app , you're trying to introduce a wallet , you're introducing something called the Nosta Wallet Connect , so multiple wallets in the future . You're introducing micropayments and you're now introducing something called Nosta for social discovery . That is a lot of new news things that people who are not geeky are not going to be able to get their heads around very quickly , and I think that's my concern .

Sam Sethi 16:29

In True Fans , we've deprecated all of that stuff down back to . It's just an app where you can listen to podcasts and as you peel the onion , you might find more of those things , but I don't think we want to lead with them . I think that's where I think Fountain is going to go for that very geeky early adopter and it's been very successful for them . Look , we talked about them . You know driving $100,000 through the platform and that's amazing .

James Cridland 16:51

That's a lot , that's a lot of money , that's a lot of money .

James Cridland 16:54

So yeah , yeah , no , it's impressive , impressive stuff what Oscar and Nick have been able to put together and , yeah , certainly worthwhile keeping an eye on what they're doing . And yeah , I mean you know . I suppose the question is you know how it all works with the rest of the podcasting . You know ecosystem and I suppose you know Nostra is something that only Oscar appears to be doing so far , but you know so how that might work in the future with ActivityPub or Blue Sky or X or any of these other services . Not quite so sure , but you know , I think certainly he's proved that you can do it , you know , using this tech . I suppose

Spotify adds audiobooks

James Cridland 17:48

Spotify has added a ton more content , at least in other countries . They've just launched audiobooks , haven't they ? In France , belgium , the Netherlands and Luxembourg .

Sam Sethi 17:59

Yeah , I mean again , god , I am not fanboying on Spotify I don't know what the alternative word is , but it's not a fanboy but I do admire their persistent growth and strategy . I mean , we've seen the share price . I really should buy Spotify shares at this point , although I won't because I'll be biased but this growth continuing . Daniel X said it's one year since we launched audiobooks for Spotify Premium Music . It's been really cool to watch the excitement . We've already paid hundreds of millions to publishers and our catalogue has doubled to 300,000 titles , and you know that's pretty impressive in one year .

James Cridland 18:37

Yeah , no , I think they're doing , you know , very impressive work . You know , I think now Spotify supports audiobooks , obviously , supports music and podcasts . It supports events because it does know what music you're listening to and so therefore can recommend you events and stuff like that , and I think it's done something around courses as well , hasn't it so ? Yeah it seems to be doing all kinds of things , but obviously from a proprietary point of view .

Sam Sethi 19:11

Well , it'd be lovely if the podcasting 2.0 community could do that . Oh , we can . It's called Medium Equals Audiobooks , courses , films , books , music and still we have no support from hosts for that . You know , we've built the UI into the apps . Oscar just announced , as he said , he's supporting MediumEagles music for artist pages and for music single tracks or albums . Again , rss Blue is when I say no host , that's not fair . There are hosts who are doing it . Podhome has supported courses fair , and there are hosts who are doing it . Pod home has supported courses um , and it's just . I don't know what the um , the slowness to adopt . It's a drop down where you put medium equals and you let the user choose what they want to tag their podcast as an audiobook , of course , yeah , I don't see the problem .

James Cridland 20:01

well , yes , but , but I think also , um , it needs to be driven by the creators wanting to do that sort of thing , and I suppose , at the moment , if you are producing an audio book , regardless of whether or not you put medium equals audio book , you are essentially giving it away . For most podcast listeners there's no , there's obviously no payment built into Apple or into Spotify or anything else . So I guess we're still stuck a bit in that Catch-22 spot , aren't we ?

Sam Sethi 20:36

Well , I did talk to Dave Jones , because Dave Jones released an audiobook and I spoke to Ivo Terra to set up an example . So again , we loaded up a book called Seventh Son on True Fans , where you can actually pay in fiat in advance for the whole book rather than , you know , pay nothing . So the idea is it's serial rather than episodic . So it's in the right order because we see medium equals audio books . And then we give the creator the option of one of three things Pay in fiat right , and you can't unlock the book until you've fully paid me . Pay in sats happy days . Or pay as you go , right , pay as you listen to the book , which is the value for value model , and so all three ways work and it's there , but we can't get momentum right now behind it and I think it's chicken and egg . We've done the UI again . We just haven't got a demand , as you said , from creators , but I don't think creators are being made aware .

James Cridland 21:35

How does the pay in fiat ? By the way , when you say pay in fiat , you obviously mean pay using your MasterCard or your Visa card . How does that work with RSS , though , Because surely anyone can ?

Sam Sethi 21:52

see the audio in an RSS feed . So we basically lock the a bit like we do the explicit tag . So when we see medium equals audio book , and in the backend , when you've claimed your RSS feed for your audio book , you can put a switch which is called locked , and what that does is it simply means that the play button is no longer active , so you can't click on it , you can't play it In your app , but in 99% of other apps , of course , it's still playable , isn't it ?

Sam Sethi 22:22

Yeah , and that's what I'm trying to say . We have to innovate and others can copy what we've done . You know , it's not beyond the realm of man or woman to do it , and unless we do something about it , again we're just simply saying , oh well , let's do nothing , which is the alternative , right ? And so I'm trying . So , as I said , I've worked with a couple of hosts to try and get examples working . I've done a course with Podhome to show how you would pay for a full course , and it's like an audio book . You set medium course and it then changes the order from episode one through to , or lecture one through to whatever you can pay in advance , pay theatre or sales or pay as you go same model .

Sam Sethi 23:06

All this works , and maybe I am the only one who's doing it as an app right now , in the podcast , in total space , and I'm not trying to blow my own trumpet , but what I'm saying is it's not that difficult . The first step is can we , can we get medium equals into hosts as an option ? And then , secondly , can we , can we work with some of your clients to create case study examples , because those are , you know what are going to make others say , oh , I saw somebody put that up there the other day and they charged for the course . So it's like , I don't know , we're rabbits in the headlights , we're not moving . And Spotify is moving and moving very fast and doing all the things we should be doing in podcasting 2.0 , but we're doing nothing .

James Cridland 23:50

But Spotify has a paywall and Spotify has rights management , which means that you don't get access to that content unless you pay , whereas OpenRSS doesn't have a paywall . I mean , that's the fundamental of RSS .

Sam Sethi 24:09

We've fundamentally created a paywall . I mean that that's the fundamental of of rss . We've fundamentally created a paywall around certain content by allowing the creator to change the capability of how the content is consumed but you haven't though , have you ?

James Cridland 24:19

because the content is still available in , in in the rss feed if it goes to any other directory yes , yeah , yeah , and that's so again , I don't know .

Sam Sethi 24:29

you know , do you have , like , Adam doesn't allow his podcast into Spotify or Apple ? Do you then say I'm not going to allow my audio book unless it's like True Fans ? Right , I'm not saying we should be the only one and I don't want to be the only one , but is that the starting gun for it ? You know , okay , sorry , buzz sprout , I only want it to go to that person . I don't know how we would do that , by the way , but I only want true fans to be able to consume that , not other apps .

James Cridland 24:56

Well , right now it sounds like a , um , a subscription kind of model , a premium subscription kind of model , which , of course , um , there are a number of different companies doing , one of them being Supercast , who are doing it through password protected RSS feeds , which are essentially , you know , obfuscated . They're still available for free , but there's a little bit of , you know , security put on top of that to stop people from sharing those . And obviously , apple Podcasts has their own , rather more you know , drm capable plan as well .

This American Life's ad revenue

James Cridland 25:34

And talking about those premium , you know , paid for subscriptions , that's where this American Life is going to . Did you hear what Ira ended up saying ?

Sam Sethi 25:49

I did . It was in Pod News Daily and I heard what he said .

James Cridland 25:51

I've got a little clip in case people don't listen to Pod News Daily and read our newsletter instead . But he ended up saying this hey there , podcast listeners , ira here .

Ira Glass 26:01

There have been some changes in the podcast industry . Basically , the ad market has dropped . It's harder to run a podcast by selling ads and it's affected nearly everybody who does a podcast . In the last few years we've watched friends at podcasting companies all around us as they made massive staff cuts . Some companies have gone under and , because of these changes in the industry , this coming year we expect our ad revenue to be a third less a third less than what we brought in just a few years ago .

James Cridland 26:32

That's quite a thing , isn't it ? A third less . The wording that he used in the email was fascinating in that he was talking about this American life support or this American lifeboat , talking about it as if it was just an existential issue , that essentially , this American life is going broke unless people start paying for his show , which I found really interesting because it's a show which is on public radio , which is on hundreds of radio stations across the US . I don't understand how public radio syndication works , but you'd have thought that there's some payment in terms of that . But then I had a look on the staff page on his website and he's got 36 people as staff listed as staff Plus . I know that that show uses an awful lot of freelance work as well , so he's paying more than 36 people . More than 36 people to do an hour-long show . Now , I'm not suggesting for a minute that this show is the same journalistic rigour as his , but you know we have a staff of two , don't we , sam ?

James Cridland 27:57

Yes , well yes , and I just can't work out I mean 36 people . I genuinely can't work out what all of those people do . And if you look at the BBC , for example , you look at a typical show like Woman's Hour , for example , which is an hour and a bit weekly on Radio 4 with lots of interviews , lots of in-depth reporting and blah , blah , blah . I don't think that that programme that does five times the amount of output has 36 people on that team . And I'm pretty convinced that if you had a look at any other hour-long show , you know I mean , even hour-long TV shows don't have that amount of people . So I'm just astonished by the amount of people that he has . I mean , I'm not turning around and saying that you know he shouldn't have , you know , concerns about paying those people and everything else , but I'm there thinking there must be some savings that you can make , you know , in terms of how you put that show together .

Sam Sethi 29:08

I don't know well , 36 people is crazy , but the other things are . It will be an interesting experiment to see , by putting it behind a paywall like supercast or apple podcast , what it does to their user numbers , because I suspect their user numbers will go down . And then they have to go back to advertisers again and say , well , actually we used to have this many people and now we've got a third half or even more fewer people well , and and so , and and so this is the weird thing .

James Cridland 29:34

so he is essentially doing a please , please , pay for an ad free version of the feed um and um , but you'll still be able to listen to the show for free if you want to . So you are really paying . It's a bit like a value for value type of model , in that at least you know you are paying not because you have to but because you want to . So I suppose there is that there . Of course , you can't set the price that you want to pay with either Supercast or Apple Podcasts . I suppose you've got that kind of side .

James Cridland 30:12

But yeah , and what I also thought was interesting is if they're expecting their ad revenue to be a third less than quote just a few years ago . Well , just a few years ago they were being sold by the New York Times . They've recently moved back to being sold by NPR's sales house , national Public Media . Is that basically saying that NPM is earning them less money than the New York Times ? Or I mean , presumably they wouldn't have moved away from the New York Times as their sales house if the New York Times was doing them good money . So I don't know . I'm very confused about pretty well all of this story , but you know , I mean Adam Curry , for example , has been saying that I only cover the positive news and not any of the negative news . This is very , very much some of the less positive news coming out of the podcast industry right now and I just thought , gosh , that's a story , isn't it ? It ?

Sam Sethi 31:25

my bigger question is why are advertisers not coming through for this american life ? And you know , I am forever saying I don't think there's enough metrics in the way that there's measurement in the podcast that gives advertisers security that anyone's actually listening to those ads and actually actioning it . And I think there are models and we have talked about them on here that people go no , I'll never take off , sam . But there are models which bumper have also talked about , which is first party data and apple , spotify , youtube have that first party data and I am sure that podcasts and ad agencies through them are getting the right data on how long people listen to the ad . Where did they drop off ? Did the third ad actually play ? And that's the sort of data that you're not going to get in many other places right now . And we need to give that , I think , to advertisers , to give them the assurity that the money they're putting into podcasting is actually , you know , actually giving them a return .

James Cridland 32:25

And it may well be that that exact data is shared within the NPR app and my guess is that you would have a fair amount of that podcast's audience consuming that show through the NPR app as well . So perhaps they've got some of that data . Obviously , you have to sign in for the NPR app as well , so perhaps they got some of that data . But , yeah , I find it fascinating and you know , I mean , obviously , whenever you move from one sales house to another sales house , you are going to lose out because you have to start again with some of your advertisers , lose out because you have to start again with some of your advertisers , um , um , you know , and , and and attract some of your advertisers all over again .

James Cridland 33:15

But , um , yeah , that that was , uh , that was quite a shock . And I think you know that , on the back of this week in tech , you know , having to make redundancies , um , um , or , for our American audience , having to fire people because they can't afford them anymore . Um , you know , I , I , I , it's , it's just that all is not well in the world of the podcast industrial complex .

Sam Sethi 33:37

At least four shows with that high staffing level but then again , you know the contrary to that is call her daddy joe roan and you know a host of others . I mean I'm going , let me try that again .

James Cridland 33:51

I bet you that Call Her Daddy , or Joe Rogan , don't have 36 people working for them .

Sam Sethi 33:55

No .

James Cridland 33:59

Maybe this is the thing , Maybe it's just purely that we are seeing the shakedown of overstaffed shows , that we are seeing the shakedown of overstaffed shows , people who haven't been canny and intelligent and have basically used the old broadcast model , the old broadcast staffing model , and not realised that you can do an awful lot with a lot less people . Maybe that's where the shake-up is actually happening . I don't know .

Sam Sethi 34:25

Well , I know Diary of a CEO has only got five people on it .

James Cridland 34:28

as an example , Well , there you go , and the Diary of a CEO produces much more content , albeit content in a very different way , but still interesting times .

Around the world

Sam Sethi 34:43

Zipping around the world . James , back to your homeland in Australia . What's ABC up to ?

James Cridland 34:49

Yeah . So the ABC , the Australian Broadcasting Corporation , they have been doing a test on using AI to optimise episode titles and show descriptions and I was actually talking to Craig McCosker , who is one of the senior people there , about this trial that they've been running over the last couple of weeks . Really interesting in that AI turns out isn't better than humans in most cases , doesn't necessarily do things faster or better , but it is quite useful for inspiration and quite useful for summarising stuff . But inspiration isn't too useful when you just want to get a you know a show out very , very quickly If you've not got an awful lot of time . You know you don't really want the fancy inspiration stuff , you just want a decent you know episode title US headline writer .

James Cridland 36:03

Would you know write a headline . And the way that a Australian or , you know , a UK English writer would write a headline , and there are differences . I mean one of the most obvious differences is that in the US a headline , every single word , is capitalised , whereas it's not in the UK or Australia . Similarly , there's an awful lot of colons in headlines . So you will see an awful lot of you know a headline that says something like you know , new development colon , such and such and such and such has happened , and so you've got all of that kind of standard way of writing things in American English , and the AI models haven't yet worked out that you know that UK English or Australian English is more than just spelling things a different way . There is actually a whole different culture in terms of writing stuff , so I found the whole thing is absolutely fascinating . There's a full paper for you to read that we link to from our newsletter a couple of . I think it was on Monday , and so it's well worth a read , I think .

Sam Sethi 37:25

Yeah , the American English spelling was deliberately done . By the way , after they got independence they did not want English words , and so they started to change the words in the Webster's dictionary to be different to the Oxford English , and that was a deliberate attempt to drop the words like colour without a U . And so one of my concerns with AI is we've gone full circle . Now . The LLMs that we have are very much driven by Silicon Valley-based companies , and I think we're going to have to get to a point where you get cultural LLMs , because otherwise you will have uniformity of one language across the world , and it may not be what we want .

James Cridland 38:08

Yeah , I would agree . I don't think they're all being driven by Silicon Valley companies in that . Quite a lot of the art AI stuff if you ask it , you know , draw a pretty woman or something then they are pretty well always Chinese . So you can actually see that there are certain LLMs that have been built out of China , some that have been built out of India , some that have been built out of the US and they all have their different sort of cultural values in the LLM and that you know , know , yeah , I think it's fascinating and that very , very much you know needs to be highlighted as a potential issue if you're going to end up using AI .

Sam Sethi 38:56

You know too much like this Sticking in your part of the country . What's ACRA then , james ?

James Cridland 39:02

The ACRA . Yes , these are the big commercial radio and audio awards and I think for the first time they had a big amount of podcast prizes . Podcasts , which is a company based in Melbourne and in Sydney but actually ended up making this particular show out of Queensland , out of Brisbane Hooray , that ended up winning Podcast of the Year , so that was nice . And also some data out of Triton showing a 9% increase in monthly podcast listeners in 2024 so far . So all of that was nice , as well as the Triton podcast ranker for Australia . Now , this I thought was interesting . Go on . Thought was interesting , Go on .

James Cridland 40:04

What a lot of radio companies are doing is that they are , and there's no reason why other podcast companies couldn't do this as well . They are publishing their full show , but they're also publishing little clips of that show in the same feed . So , instead of taking the breakfast show , for example , which in September would have been 21 breakfast shows because there were 21 weekdays in September Instead of publishing 21 shows , Ben Fordham , for example , published 160 episodes because you had his entire show and then four little clips or five little clips from each of those shows , which of course means much higher download numbers because automated downloads and , of course , all of those shows included programmatically inserted advertising as well did programmatically inserted advertising as well . I cannot imagine a single person who will happily listen to each of those clips plus the full show ?

James Cridland 41:15

I don't think that that's really an existing thing , because why would you listen to bits of the show that you've heard all over again ? Either you're going to listen just to the clips or you're going to listen to the full order , doesn't it ?

Sam Sethi 41:28

I mean , if it was like one of my favorite djs is chris evans on virgin . So if I had ? A feed of chris evans , and I just listened to yesterday's show and then there's a clip of today's show , like oh , he's got an interview with uh , james gridland . Brilliant , I'm gonna go listen to the whole show now .

James Cridland 41:44

Well , ah well yes , so it's the order that I think you put them in .

Sam Sethi 41:47

That will lead to you going from clip to full show rather than I've listened to the full show . Now there's a clip .

James Cridland 41:55

Well , there's an interesting thought . I'm looking at all of this and going this looks to me to be a bit of a cynical ploy to get higher download numbers . Um , and actually I looked at the average downloads per episode and those are really low for those shows . Um , as you would , as you would expect , they do very good numbers , but they're really low if you just look at um downloads per episode but anyway I think it's genius , I think .

Sam Sethi 42:25

If you , if you have a feed and you want to put in , it's not a trailer , I mean it would be tagged as a trailer because you couldn't tag it as a full episode , but you could tag it as a trailer in the feed . And then you go hey , if you want to hear a couple of really nice things because we've put those trailers out into social media , probably , so why not put it into your feed ? And actually , what would be clever for the radio station would be to cross-fertilise trailers into other people's feeds . So if you might have this feed from this one radio show , maybe there's other radio feeds and then you cross-fertilise them and then you say oh , you know what on drive today ? Did you hear what they did yesterday ? You might want to check out drive later , but I think it's quite genius to cross fertilise in that way and put clips .

James Cridland 43:08

Well , I think it's both genius and a bit cynical .

Oscar Merry 43:15

But yeah , no .

James Cridland 43:17

I thought it was interesting , certainly finding that , because it turns out that if you click on every single entry in the Australian podcast ranker , it says how many episodes were part of that particular show in that month , and that's where all of that numbers come from . Anyway , france , what's going on in ?

Sam Sethi 43:37

France ? I don't know . I've never known what the French have ever done . No , Sacrebleu . No idea they have Macron . No , they've increased year on year , it seems , the podcast consumption . The data looks pretty good . So , again , like Australia and this is the counterintuitive thing that you keep telling me about , james , which is the number of listeners keeps growing in terms of podcasting , but the number of advertising and the revenue keeps dropping- yes , who knows what's going on ?

James Cridland 44:06

It Might be something to do with the economy , who knows ? And talking about the economy in the US , both candidates for the US presidential elections are hoping to be on the Joe Rogan experience and , very cleverly , edison Research shared some data from Edison Podcast Metrics which actually showed the type of people who listened to the Joe Rogan experience . What I found fascinating from that is that 27% of the audience is Democrats , 32% of the audience are Republicans and 35% of the audience are Republicans and 35% of the audience are independent or something else . So actually it's an amazing podcast to get onto if you are either Harris or Trump , because you've got the , you know you've got 35% of that audience who are there for you to take . You know , essentially because they aren't already signed up . So that was really interesting . It's a really nice bit of data from Edison there .

Sam Sethi 45:17

Yeah , I think we talked about being the podcast president whoever wins this one , because they are going on multiple podcast shows . I mean , Trump was on another show recently . Harris has been on other shows yes , she's been on Fox as well , but within mainstream media . But they are doing a ton more of podcast media because I think they reach different audiences and they know that , and I think , actually , Harris going on the Rogan will be an interesting one . I think Trump on the Rogan is probably going to be . I could probably tell you what the answers are to the questions anyway .

James Cridland 45:50

Now right , yeah , well , with Trump , of course , you never know , because he does the weave , true . You know , interesting , I listened to a show from the ABC . It's called Are you Listening ? It's a very good , well-researched show and they were playing clips of Trump back in 2020 . And Trump sounded completely different to how he sounds now . I mean , he actually was answering questions rather than doing the weave and I just thought , wow , that's quite a change in the way that Trump ends up talking .

Sam Sethi 46:31

So Trump's new film's coming out , which will be really interesting , and I'll leave it at this . Nixon's PR man was the person who taught Trump to say you're never wrong , flood the noise and always , always fight , and basically that's what he's now done . So that person , who was Nixon's PR man , helped Trump to get the positioning that he does today . He'll never say anything that he's wrong . He's never going to admit that . So , yeah , it'd be an interesting film . Yeah .

People news

James Cridland 47:00

Well , moving on people and jobs and things , libsyn has a brand new CEO and when I saw this , I thought wow , because it is actually quite an impressive hire , because they have hired the person that made Megaphone what it is the former CEO and co-founder , brendan Monaghan or Monaghan . Co-founder Brendan Monaghan or Monaghan ? I don't know whether it's Monaghan or Monaghan , so I may end up saying both . But , of course , megaphone bought by Spotify in November 2020 for , I think , something like 235 million , something like that and , yeah , Monaghan , so much that I can work out . He left Megaphone in February 2022 . And I guess that he was unable to work for another podcast company for a significant time after that , so he worked for a car parts company weirdly , I know , but he's now very much back in the podcasting world and , yeah , I find that a really really interesting hire from those folks . So , yeah , that was quite a thing .

Sam Sethi 48:20

Well , again it'll be . I guess the proof is in the pudding . Let's see what he does with it . Right , you know he has got an impressive track record , but you know he's got to work within the bounds of what's available to him with inside the Libsyn walls .

James Cridland 48:33

Yeah Well , yes indeed , and there was a little paragraph right at the end of the press release announcing that Brendan Monaghan was joining , which was just a financial gobbledygook , but it did look as if what Libsyn have been having to do for the last couple of years is to pay , essentially , a fine to their current shareholders while they still weren't listed on the stock market , and so they've been paying these small well , I mean , I say small , I mean it's still been you know numbers , you know hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments to people because they weren't fully listed on the stock market , and they've finally reached agreement on that too . So that's pretty good . So at least Brendan Monaghan comes into the company without having that as a problem . I think there's still quite a few issues at that company .

James Cridland 49:44

If I was him , what I would be doing is I would be buying someone like Transistor , a modern podcast host , to get rid of all of the technical debt . I think that would be the most bright thing that he could do . I'm sure that he won't , but I think that that will be an intelligent plan , because what is very clear is that the Libsyn platform itself is pretty old and pretty broken . By the sounds of things .

Sam Sethi 50:22

Yeah , four or five , I don't know which one you want to talk about , but anyway , we shouldn't talk about either Over at Podbean Jane . What's been happening over there ?

James Cridland 50:31

Yes , norma Jean Balenki has left Podbean . She's not the only one I hear . Quite a few people have gone . I am trying to get to the bottom of this and trying to understand a little bit about what is going on over at that company . But Norma Jean was head of events for the company . She did an awful lot of live events and she'd worked with Podbean for almost four and a half years , so that's another podcast talent who is currently available . Of course , we carried the news , I think , last week , that Ariel Nessenblatt is no longer at Descript as well , so clearly there's a bunch of people who are now available . So there's a thing Jessica Radburn has been hired . Now this is a big hire as well for the Australian Broadcast Corporation , the ABC . She has been hired as head of audio on demand , so she is essentially head of podcasts as well as other things . She used to work for Wondery and Audible in a number of different countries across the world , so that's a pretty good signing from the ABC . So that's a pretty good signing from the ABC . Let's hope that she doesn't start moving all of those shows to be only available in the ABC's app , because that would be bad . But yeah , there's a bunch of news going on .

James Cridland 52:00

A weird one from the UK , a man called Tom Streetley , who I can't say I'd heard of in the past . A man called Tom Streetley who I can't say I'd heard of in the past . He's Global's Director of Commercial for DAX Audio , which is the programmatic advertising company that Global owns . He was asked a ton of random questions by a UK media website called the Media Leader . For his ideal dinner party , apparently he would have former US President Barack Obama . Tick former British Prime Minister Tony Blair . Tick former British Prime Minister David Cameron . So yeah , I thought that was interesting . Who would you invite ?

Sam Sethi 52:49

I'd tick to Barack Obama , Tony Blair no Weapons of mass destruction . Keep looking , Tony and David . No , we don't need another referendum . Thanks for Brexit , David Bugger off . Oh , you did . Sorry , I forgot , you did bugger off straight away . No I wouldn't have either of those two losers . Now you see's , that's interesting , because I would have told you I used to like tony because I I find it .

James Cridland 53:14

I find him fascinating . Yes , apart from that whole weapons of mass destruction thing , I thought he was quite , quite an impressive person , but uh , yes , apart from the viaducts and the irrigation , what were the romans ever done for us ? Yes , yes , he , he did . He did blot his copy book ever so slightly .

Sam Sethi 53:30

Yes , now I I'd have , um , uh , nelson mandela , probably jürgen klopp , um , yeah , a few people , but I certainly wouldn't have those latter two . Who would you have , james ?

James Cridland 53:42

oh , I can't , I can't think , I I doubt it would be too much political people . I mean , if Kenneth Clark is still alive , he would be fun , he is last . I heard , yes , he would be fun .

Sam Sethi 53:59

Did you say Farage I ?

James Cridland 54:00

thought you were going to say Farage , Although Farage is a very for . Whatever you think of his politics , he is a very clever operator . I've got no idea how he does what he does . He's a very clever operator , but obviously his politics stink . So there is that .

James Cridland 54:24

I nearly had dinner with him , as you know I said last week , but anyway , right next to him , moving on , I once had dinner in a fancy restaurant in the centre of London and we were being a bit boisterous our table and somebody came to , somebody sort of turned around and came over to our table and said excuse me , would you mind keeping your voices down ? We're trying to have a conversation over there . And it was none other than Bruce Forsyth . Oh , brucey , yes , so we were told off by Bruce Forsyth . Good game , good game . Who would have thought it ? Awards and amends yes , shall , we do some of those . Well , if we have to go , Good game good game .

Sam Sethi 55:07

Who would have thought it ? Awards in advance . Yes Shall we do some of those .

James Cridland 55:09

Well , if we have to go on then ? Well , no , there are some good ones , good and exciting ones happening . So the 50th Annual Gracie Awards are open for entry , which is all about women in media and honours outstanding content created by , for and about them . Also , the Independent Podcast Awards are next week , which is going to be very exciting . I am looking forward to giving away an award there , so that should be fun . Also , talking about events and things , if you are a good speaker and you want to speak at a good event , then you can now submit your session ideas for the podcast show in London and also for Podfest Expo in Orlando . Podfest , of course , happening in January , the podcast show happening in May .

The Tech Stuff

Announcer 56:12

So yes , if you have some good plans , then get in there . I would the Tech Stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review .

James Cridland 56:17

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

Sam Sethi 56:23

Well , it's not quite to do with podcasting directly , but if you've got a dot io domain for your podcast , um , us brits are giving away the country again . We've given it . Well , given it away , we're giving it back .

James Cridland 56:36

This time we didn't . Yes , we give , yeah well , we've sort of given it back only , only only after , only after , uh , all of the court cases .

Sam Sethi 56:44

Yes , yes , but we haven't really given it back because we've got the US and UK military bases there and so we've sort of said , right , what are we talking about ?

James Cridland 56:52

We're talking about the Chagos Islands , or indeed in the Indian Ocean , and therefore io is the domain name for that , and io will go away because the country will no longer be an independent country .

Sam Sethi 57:05

Why don't Mauritius just sell io , because it's going to Mauritius now ?

James Cridland 57:10

Yes , but Mauritius won't . It'll just be part of their country . So the rules are the ICANN rules are that no , io will go away . I don't believe that that's going to happen at all . I think what ICANN is going to do is ICANN is going to change io from being owned by the Chagos Islands to being a you know something like news or events or those sorts of things , and they'll just change it to be a non-geographic TLD . Now , those can't be two characters long , but ICANN are in charge of the rules and I suspect that that's what's going to happen . But anyway , if you've got a io domain name for your show , then you might just want to have a think about that , because it's not entirely sure whether or not the io domain name will actually continue to exist after three or four years time . I thought I'd better check out the ai .

Sam Sethi 58:14

you know who's got that one ? Turns out it's Anguilla , and guess what ? It's one of the British Overseas Territories . We might be giving that one back as well soon , james .

James Cridland 58:22

Might give that one back . Yes , also fm , the federation of micronesia , um , uh , so that's um , that's where , where , uh , true fans , uh , is , I think , isn't it clearly ? Clearly us and half the podcast industry . Yes , exactly so . Um and uh , dj I I once tried to get for a DJ friend of mine . That's in the African state of Dijibouti .

Sam Sethi 58:48

He says a friend of his , he doesn't mean that .

James Cridland 58:54

Yes , so there are all these weird things , mind you Bitly . You know B-I-T dot L-Y . That's Libya . That is , that's Libya , you know sticking there are , you know , government departments who are using bitly you know addresses in their QR codes . Yes , it's all entertaining .

Sam Sethi 59:16

Very good .

James Cridland 59:17

Anyway , what's going on with WonderCraft ?

Sam Sethi 59:19

They've added a thing called director mode which allows you to give more control over the AI voices that you have . It's a bit like saying I will want that person to be British , but I want them to be Northern , as opposed to just standard British . So you can change the person . You can make them sound more cheery , more sarcastic , laugh , cheer . So it's a bit more flexibility around the voice character , I think .

James Cridland 59:43

Yeah , I think it's a very clever idea . You really do need a bit more control over some of these AI . You know controlled voices . So , yes , I think it's a smart and clever thing .

Sam Sethi 59:57

And , by the way , I just got a note this morning from Descript saying that they've added a whole bunch of new voices as well . So it seems like voices are the thing right now to be adding . So you've got variety .

James Cridland 1:00:08

Yeah , indeed , and so you won't obviously spot them , like those two voices for Google's Notebook LM , which are now so endemic . You can very easily check for them . Check for them . But yes , new stuff going on in the podcasting 2.0 world . The podcast funding tag , that's the tag that you can stick a button in apps and things which says support this show . This show supports the podcast funding tag , and you will notice in the pod news podcast page for it . Then there's a button that goes straight over there . Now that has always been valid at the channel level , ie at the show level , but it's now valid at the episode level as well , which is nice so it's a smart thing .

Sam Sethi 1:01:06

Do you know why it's coming to the episode level ?

James Cridland 1:01:09

Well , I'm presuming that Adam and Dave's super secret thing , the super secret thing that everyone knows about . But yes , yes , that I was sent a username and password for , and I didn't even abuse the fact that they sent it to me by mistake .

Sam Sethi 1:01:26

Can I just say I didn't even get that , so you're lucky . No , no , I think Adam spilled the beans a couple of weeks back . Anyway , hyperlocal radio with episodes being shows out within a single RSS feed , and of course , you need to have different donating funding tags , because it's different shows with different links , and I think that's great . And so , going back to that Australian radio show that was putting multiple clips in , that's the sort of thing that I think radio stations who are putting out feeds should take advantage of , because each show can have its own different way of monetization well , and I look forward to the local stuff , also using the ?

James Cridland 1:02:12

um the updated podcast location tag , which I'm hoping um that people look at and go . That seems like a sensible plan . Um , let's go away and do that . Um that , haven't heard too much from that at the moment , so um , maybe I'll tell you more in a minute if you want , but you , you go on . Oh yeah , well , go on , then you can tell me more now . Well , um I bet you're supporting it , aren't you ?

Sam Sethi 1:02:35

we are yeah , I mean , come on , it's , it's true fans . We support . We support anyone , right ? We support everything . No , we , um , we , we love the idea of this location tag extension , where you can put subject or origin , and I think , yeah , it's a very simple change and we can then put it to a map as well , so we can start to put it there . One of the features that we want to add is then to look at categories or keywords as a secondary filter .

Sam Sethi 1:03:07

So yes , I want to find a location tag of somebody in Brisbane , but I want to find somebody who does a daily show at . Oh look , there's three in this area rather than there's 25 podcasts in this area yes . So a nice way of filtering down using keyword or category .

James Cridland 1:03:22

Yes , no , that makes a bunch of sense . Very nice . Have you done anything else in True Fans ?

Sam Sethi 1:03:27

Well , Ellie Rubenstein at Pocket Cast came up with a really good idea , which was to enable you to hide a specific chapter within a podcast episode . So maybe you're looking at your queue , you're looking at the chapter , you go yeah , I'd skip those ones . It's fundamentally skipping or hiding whichever word you want to pick .

James Cridland 1:03:48

Um , and then the audio will just jump from chapter to chapter oh , right , oh , I see , okay , right , yes , so you could mark this particular show and you could go gosh the the tech news uh session . Uh , it's , it's , it's , it's , uh . Yes , let's that and it would automatically skip that . Yeah , that's correct .

Sam Sethi 1:04:09

Well , we've taken that one stage further , building on the shoulders of giants , and now in your admin you can make those chapters private and then set a value to those chapters to be unlocked . So you might say I've got a particular show and this one chapter . If you want to listen to it , you have to pay me before it gets unlocked . And so , yeah , we've just added that as a feature . Don't know if it'll be used by anybody , but I thought it was a nice little idea to try .

James Cridland 1:04:37

Well , it's worth giving it a go , and ratings and reviews .

Sam Sethi 1:04:42

Yeah , again , apple lets anyone do any rating or review to anything , even if they've not heard the show . Spotify is 30 seconds , so we've added ratings and reviews . You have to be a fan of the show , so you have to subscribe to it , and you've had to listen to a minimum of 10% of an episode before you can leave a review , and we just added that . So the minute you finish listening to an episode , we'll just put a pop-up there , which I think is at the moment and the time when you might want to leave a review or rating . Yeah , um , and that's what we've done , and you can even leave a micro payment if you want as well . So you might say I really enjoyed your show .

James Cridland 1:05:17

It's five stars , loved it , and here's 200 sats and will you be sharing those on over activity pub as well , and will you be sharing those ?

Sam Sethi 1:05:26

on overactivitypub as well . Yes , they are going . So we've already got the rating and review going into your activitypub stream . Yes , it's already done , very nice .

James Cridland 1:05:35

Very nice , there you go . Well , if you want to play around with true fans , then the world's fastest growing podcast app . Thank you .

Sam Sethi 1:05:48

I've just made that up world's fastest growing podcast app . There you go , thank you , I've just made that up , and it was made up . Yeah , totally yes .

James Cridland 1:05:53

I wish it was . Then you should go and have a peek . Truefansfm is where to play

Boostagram Corner

James Cridland 1:06:00

with that .

Announcer 1:06:00

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

James Cridland 1:06:07

Yes , it's our favourite time of the week . It's Boostergrams and fan mail and power supporters and all of that I have had . I'm not quite sure why my little umbral at home hasn't been very happy , but nevertheless it hasn't been very happy recently but nevertheless we've still got a few boosts and things . A nice boost from Cole McCormick who said the most interesting thing . We of course , interviewed Sandy from YouTube . Was it last week ? It ?

Sam Sethi 1:06:40

was yes .

James Cridland 1:06:41

It was last week . Yes , and Cole says the most interesting thing Sandy from YouTube said in regards to YouTube music and YouTube main . She said people start , stop and pick back up in different places Makes me think , as a producer of podcasts , it's smart to have video as a part of the full package so I can take advantage of that consumption truth Be available everywhere . Even if the video is a static graphic , people will still see your brand . And if you make quality package , so I can take advantage of that consumption truth Be available everywhere . Even if the video is a static graphic , people will still see your brand . And if you make quality content , that it only helps , not hinders . Yes , agreed to a point . I think that those static videos don't necessarily always work on YouTube , but I think certainly making them available so that they are there , you know , is a good thing for people to hunt them out , so that makes a bunch of sense . 777 sats , so thank you for that .

Sam Sethi 1:07:38

We had a short row of ducks from a lyceum . I'll become a power supporter for your show as soon as I have the monthly budget for it . As a poor capitalist , I'm spending a symbolic one dollar on the podcasting 2.0 podcast per month via paypal . And then the last bit was james . Do you know the dot newy is a top domain in sweden ? Dot nu . And then sam re , jason fyi , I have a blue belt in jujitsu , excellent , so we can all have a little fight Great . And finally he says congratulations to Matthew Passi for his new job at Libsyn . Yes , indeed , congratulations , matthew . Once again You've got a new boss , and I like your conversation with Mark Asquith . I have to test out Spark AI in the near future . So , yes , he does a lot of testing of lots of people's stuff , so thank you very much for that .

James Cridland 1:08:32

Now , indeed . Also thank you to Matt Cundall , who sent 5,150 sats . Excellent interviews with Maya and Sandy yes , agreed . So thank you for those . Rw Nash has also sent us a couple of different messages , one of them saying I now need an Oktoberfest in the air podcast . Ok , and I think he's just busy testing whether or not our boosts and stuff are getting through . Much appreciated that . If you've got a boost button in your podcast app , then please use it . Or if you've got a Visa or MasterCard or an American Express card , then use that too at weeklypodnewsnet and you can join the magnificent 11 . Lots of people well , I mean 11 on that list Cameron Moll , marshall Brown , matt Medeiros , mike at the Road Media Network Rogue Media Network , I should say , not Road Media Network , that would be a very different network Dave Jackson , rachel Corbett , cy Jobling , david Marzell , jim James , rocky Thomas and Neil Velio , who I'm looking forward to meeting next week at the Independent Podcast Awards .

Sam and James's week

James Cridland 1:09:46

So what's happened for you this week , sam ?

Sam Sethi 1:09:48

Well , I was disappointed to hear and surprised that Trump was going on Joe Rogan . I was disappointed only because I thought why is Joe Rogan doing ?

James Cridland 1:09:55

it Is he actually appearing , because it does sound as if both of them want to appear , but it does sound as if Rogan hasn't necessarily confirmed either of them yet oh right , I see we'd like to be on your show .

Sam Sethi 1:10:09

No , you can't . You're not good enough . Well , that'll be I I .

Sam Sethi 1:10:12

My admiration for joe rogan would go up a notch , but you know yeah but uh , right now , if trump goes on there or anyway , we should keep out of politics . But I was disappointed to hear that um . But bigger disappointment , and genuine disappointment , is the number of podcasts that still don't have a GUID . We use GUIDs for pod roles , publisher feeds and everything to do with remote items . So , james , when we kindly , when you kindly , have a link in Pod News Daily for a show and you've got all the logos at the bottom , we have a link format which is truefansfm , and then the gooid , and then that links out to our page and what we're finding is so so many of those links don't work because they don't have gooids within them . And I'm like , hang on , it's 2024 , come on . When you look on the podcast index uh hosting page for guid support , there's quite a few hosts with guid support supposedly . But when you actually look at podcasts and you look at episode level , you look at um podcast level itself they don't have it .

James Cridland 1:11:23

I mean , megaphone doesn't do it , for example , and that's just disappointing no , I mean , I think the benefit of a guid is that , um , you can just look it up from the podcast index , um , so if the guid doesn't exist in the rss feed , you can look it up and you can , and you can back work it that way , um , but , um , yes , I mean you . Again , it comes down to the issues . Every single new podcast tag . It's well , why should I put that in then ? And certainly Spotify would see no benefit of sticking it in in either their Anchor product or their Megaphone ones . So , yeah , I think it's always going to be a hard one .

James Cridland 1:12:05

I think what will be useful , and something that I'm looking forward to doing in the next couple of weeks , is to have a full list of who is . You know , how many podcasts are supporting transcripts and how many podcasts are supporting the location tag and all of this kind of stuff . There is a public API , which is imminent , which I should be able to incorporate into the podcast business journal's data pages , and at least that will start us understanding how many podcasts are using particular new features and things like that , and that would , I think , be , you know , super helpful . But , yes , it'd be a good thing if they were to you know , fix all of that .

Sam Sethi 1:12:59

And , lastly , I was a guest , like you , james , on David John Clark's bloomer show , um , where a whole bunch of us were guests of his show , and that was really good fun , um , really like David . So thank you for the invite , david , and uh , sorry I was super late , but I was stuck in London , but I got there eventually . I think it was about midnight my time before we went on air , but hey it works still well , there you go .

James Cridland 1:13:25

It's almost as if you're you're you're planning something in london in that there london who knows , who knows ?

Sam Sethi 1:13:32

so what happened for you , james ?

James Cridland 1:13:35

um , I , well , you know what , what have I been doing , I mean , apart from being on uh , even more uh flights and things um , um , I , I actually wrote three quarters of a new uh podcast website , um uh , while I was on while I was on um one of my flights here .

James Cridland 1:13:53

Um , so that's nice , um , uh . Also , last week , I wrote a personal opinion piece about public service broadcasters and exclusive podcasts , basically saying that they shouldn't , um , coexist , um , uh , because I think that , think that that is a bad thing , and I ended up closing a website at the same time . So I wrote a piece of code almost a year ago , funnily enough , on an aeroplane . The website is at podprotectemail , and the idea was is that it was a email service that you could use . In your RSS feed . It would automatically strip out your you know , people contacting you just to promote your podcast and all that kind of stuff . I thought that quite a lot of people would want to use it , but it turns out that people don't really care that much , and that's all fine , because it didn't cost me very much either . So , yes , so that is currently winding down . I was rather a fan of how much it cost in the end , because , if you ignore DNS and domains , it cost 15 cents for the entire year to host the website and to run the email forwarding service .

Sam Sethi 1:15:11

So why not just keep it going ?

James Cridland 1:15:13

15 cents , because it's a piece of code that I have to keep updated and everything else .

James Cridland 1:15:18

So , yes , so a total of $6.15 if you include the DNS payment which I have to make to Amazon , and the domain , though , was $70 a yearemail . So yes , we'll get rid of that . I have had one person who said I'd be very interested in taking the code off you and buying the code , but I don't think there's . I basically said I don't think that there's any code really there to buy , it's just a forwarding service . Yeah , so I don't think there's anything there , but yeah , but you know , nice to play around with that and nice to host that as a completely serverless , you know , service . It would have dealt quite happily with thousands of users , but in the end I think we only had four . So probably , probably worth .

James Cridland 1:16:19

It Room for growth , room for growth Room for growth indeed , and it was lovely finally just to be on the Verge cast . This week there was a show all about the history of podcasting . It's part of a series that they're running around 2004 , because 2004 , 2005 was a very exciting time for podcasting , but also for other things as well . It's where you know . If you remember all the way back there , it's when you know Twitter was getting going , google was in . You know , google was actually an exciting company and came out with exciting things . All of that was going on and it was nice to be interviewed as part of the podcast episode for the Verge cast , and so that was fun . I ended up doing that from a hotel room in Canada , I think , but that went out this week , so that was good .

Sam Sethi 1:17:17

Very good . Only one correction in it . It said right at the beginning Dave Weiner invented RSS , he didn't . It was invented at . Netscape enhanced it . Other than that , it's not a little bee in my bonnet . Um , every time I hear that , no , not at all . No , I never , never , ever correct anyone when they say that , never do it . Yeah , other than that , excellent , excellent show it's well worth listening to yeah , it's very good .

Sam Sethi 1:17:41

Uh , in case I forgot , because I have um . Thank you also to Jim James for the invite onto his show . It was the Unnoticed Entrepreneur , thank you for that , and he's one of our power supporters . And also Heather Larson onto her Radio Detox show and she's a big Nostra and Bitcoin fan . But thank you for inviting me on there as well . So , yes , just thought I'd check those ones out as well .

James Cridland 1:18:05

Well , that's it for this week . Um . All of the stories covered in this podcast were taken from the pod news daily newsletter , which you can subscribe to at podnewsnet . There are longer interviews in the pod news extra podcast as well .

Sam Sethi 1:18:20

You can support this show using streaming satch . You can give us feedback using the buzzsprout fan mail link in our show notes and you can send us a booster gram or become the 12th power supporter .

James Cridland 1:18:30

You can find that at weeklypodnewsnet yes , our music is from studio dragonfly . Our voiceover is sheila d . We use clean feed for this audio and we're hosted and sponsored by buzzsprout . Start podcastinging , keep podcasting . Get updated every day . Subscribe to our newsletter at podnewsnet .

Oscar Merry 1:18:52

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