James Cridland 0:00

It's Friday , the 1st of November 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 0:13

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

Sam Sethi 0:16

And I'm Sam Sethi , the CEO of True Fans , back in a sunny Marlow .

James Cridland 0:19

Yes , in the chapters today PodTrack have some new country rankers . The Spanish newspaper and the download a tale Plus .

Chinny Ukata 0:29

Hi , it's Ginny from it's A Constant Podcast and I will be on later to talk about winning the Independent Podcast Awards .

Jamie East 0:35

And I'm Jamie East , and a bit later on I'll be chatting about the big expansion for the Daily Mail's podcasts in the US they will .

James Cridland 0:42

This podcast is sponsored by Buzzsprout , with the tools , support and community to ensure you keep podcasting , start podcasting , keep podcasting with buzzsproutcom

Interview: Jamie East, DMG

James Cridland 0:51

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

Sam Sethi 0:57

Now the Daily Mail is a Marmite paper here in the UK . Some people love it , some people hate it , but they have got heavily into podcasting over the last few years , and one person that has joined them is called Jamie East . Now you managed to get a hold of him for an interview .

James Cridland 1:14

I did , and one of the things that he was keen to talk about is , firstly , just the success that the Daily Mail has had in terms of its podcasts . It's doing a very different thing , I think , to other newspaper podcasts , particularly some of the newspaper podcasts mentioning no names coming up later in this very show . But no , they are doing some really really good numbers . So I was keen to look at that , keen to also look at some of their plans to expand as well and to expand into a 24-hour-a-day podcast creation machine . It was great to catch up with him . The first question I asked because he's head of podcasting for DMG , and the first question I asked him was who DMG was .

Jamie East 2:02

Yeah , good question . Dmg are the company that run and own and publish the Daily Mail , metro , new Scientist , inews . You know a whole bunch of a plethora of publications and I was brought in predominantly to look after the Daily Mail's slate , but I'm sort of overseeing the vast majority of all of them .

James Cridland 2:26

How long have you been with DMG so far ?

Jamie East 2:28

I started August last year . So what's that ? 15 , 16 months , something like that , 14 months , although , you know , on some days it feels like 10 years and others it feels 10 minutes .

James Cridland 2:39

What's your background ? You have a radio background , I think , don't you ?

Jamie East 2:42

Well , a bit of a jack of all trades . Uh , james started off in online publishing . Uh , started off in online publishing , ran a couple of websites , sold them to endemol back in the day . Then that brought me into tv . Uh , did a bunch , spent a few years in front of the camera , then spent a few years behind the mic at virgin radio and talk radio . I was a film critic and then slipped into podcasting and then did that for a couple of years and then the pandemic hit and then everyone became a podcaster . So I've stayed doing that since and I feel like I've found my home .

James Cridland 3:16

So since you've been with DMG , I've seen an awful lot of new shows coming out , of course , an awful lot of new shows um coming out . Of course . The trial um the lucy let be uh show was uh massive for you , but um you're , you've just released that um . Downloads of daily mail podcasts have soared . Um , there's a good tabloid word yeah to over 32 million . Yeah , what are you doing ? That is succeeding the test .

Jamie East 3:42

The test that we had was you , you know the . You know I cannot , sadly , can't , take credit for the trial of Lucy Letby . That was already running by the time I launched , uh , by the time I arrived . But you know , I like to think uh helped it solidify and we've built it into , built the trial into a , into a , you know , a bit of a juggernaut of a franchise now and it's on its 11th series and you know it's absolutely flying . So but what I think the key was is working out how to work best with the papers and work best with Mail Online . You know they've already got huge existing audiences . They have great data on who those , who those audience are and what they like , and it was kind of a good exercise to spend a few months having a look at that and working out what's going to fit .

Jamie East 4:26

Um , there was a lot of low hanging fruit , a lot of easy wins . Uh , not all of them worked . I'm a big fan of failing quickly and not adding to the podcast graveyard , so I like to think that the ones that work , you know , stick around . Uh , you know pretty quickly the ones that are going to work . But you know , 32 million is a huge number really to come from in what two years , I think since their first ever podcast . There's no real secret to it . You're long in the tooth as well , James . You know it's all about the storytelling . As long as you get the storytelling right , there's not much else that can go wrong .

James Cridland 5:01

So what sort of shows have you been launching ? Because I've seen some very journalism-led shows like the Lucy Letby trial . You've also launched a bit more sort of entertainment-led shows as well haven't you ?

Jamie East 5:21

Yeah well , you've got the Daily Mail newspaper , which has a certain audience , which we service really well with things like the Trial . We've got a lot of the forthcoming slates over the next couple of months is leaning a bit more into that . But then there's the male online audience , which is just absolutely massive and you know we're huge on . We are the biggest news publisher on TikTok as well . We've just broken 20 million followers on TikTok . So there's such a wide variety of user . There's no typical male reader or male listener or male viewer . They cover almost every single demo .

Jamie East 5:53

So if you're a 20 something in New York , then you're a very different . You have a very different experience or very different touch point to the male brand , as you would make a 60 year old in Devon , for instance . So we have to cater for all of those and there are enough of all of those to work . So it's it's . It's a blessing and a curse . Because it's a blessing because you can generally find an audience in any genre that we want to try and experiment with , which is also a curse because you feel as though you've got to try everything .

James Cridland 6:27

Now you mentioned New York . There you are expanding to the US . What's the reason for that ?

Jamie East 6:35

Well , I mean , we've got a massive audience over there . So DailyMailcom , which is the US brand of what we know in the UK , as Mail Online is massive , you know , it's a huge , huge brand out there and it's also really quite a different brand . You know , mail Online has its own perceptions of what it is and what it does in the UK , but over in the US it's seen as weirdly , it's seen as like this cool new kid on the block . So it's quite exciting to be able to tap into that . And with the Diddy scandal that kicked off , you know what six weeks ago or something like that , we were able to leap onto that . We'd already been pre-producing . You know we were in full production for a series on Diddy six months ago , using a brilliant journalist from the mail out , based out in LA , called Marjorie Hernandez , and having the luxury and the ability of being able to go .

Jamie East 7:26

You know what I want to do a podcast series on Diddy . I'm going to phone up the person that knows the most about that and they're on our books . They're really keen on experimenting and having a go at making a podcast . We've got the facilities to do it , we've got the people , we've got the willing and the desire . So it's a pretty straightforward leap , and using the trial brand to do that has been great . So we've launched the trial of diddy um in the us . That will eventually become the trial usa and we'll cover . We'll cover more and more trials as they happen , um , and we're doing the same in australia with the trial of erin patterson yes the mushroom mushroom lady .

Jamie East 8:06

People may not know Erin Patterson but they certainly know the mushroom lady . Yeah , exactly Both fascinating cases with a huge public interest which have already proved to have been a great success . You know I'm not underestimating the scale of trying to launch . In the States it's a hugely solidified market . Compared to the UK it runs very differently . You know they run on volume where we , you know , in the UK , we don't have that volume . We have to work on engagement and creating a community . So it's going to be a fun one .

James Cridland 8:44

The trial of Didi is already broken into the top 100 by the looks of things . Yeah , Top 10 hit all over the world . Yeah , yeah , and it says here boosted your overall US podcast traffic by over 25% . So you're basically saying there that you have one big hit but you can cross promote , I guess , other shows from that one big hit to increase all of your slate . Is that right ?

Jamie East 9:08

Yeah , I mean , you know it was always an ambition and a plan when I took the gig , which you know there's no point in just launching all these kind of standalone podcasts . You know we've got the ability to build a network and you know , you see that with what Global have done , you see it with News UK and Bower of trying to do , you know it's not an unusual thing Wondery do it particularly well . So the cross-pollination , the cross-promotion , is always a key driver in promoting different podcasts . You know , we all know that . You know the best way of promoting a podcast is word of mouth , but the second best is by promoting it on another podcast . You know there's way of promoting a podcast is word of mouth , but the second best is by is by promoting it on another podcast . You know there's no , there's no better way of doing it .

Jamie East 9:49

So if you've got you know we've got three , four you know we've got like 11 feeds of the trial in its various guises we know that those people and those listeners are engaged . They listen to almost every single second of every single episode , single second of every single episode . So you know the chances . It's not a big stretch to imagine someone who's interested in the trial of Lucy Letby , would also be interested in the trial of Aaron Patterson . That's proved , you know , proved true . And with the US traffic , you know the trial as a brand has been , you know , huge in the UK , huge in Australia as well . 23% of the traffic comes from Australia , but a very small percentage historically came from the US . So to go from 3% to 28% or whatever it was , with the launch of Diddy's , that's exactly what we want , but also don't want to stop there as well , because there is a big audience out there .

James Cridland 10:42

So when you're talking about expanding your podcast operation to the US , this isn't just from an editorial point of view . You've actually got people on the ground there . You've got offices there where you're actually making this stuff .

Jamie East 10:54

Yeah , we've got our offices in New York , we've got a base in LA , we've got in DC as well . We're starting to plan about staffing that up permanently . The beauty of having you know and it's from a selfish point of view I'm really looking forward to doing it , because all of a sudden you can have a 24-hour operation . You know there will always be an editor available to cut something . If you've got someone based in , you know , melbourne or Sydney and New York and London , there's not an hour where you can't have a team working away . So the efficiencies are brilliant and you don't have to have all the expertise in every single pocket you know there might be .

Jamie East 11:33

You know our artwork might always come from london , uh , uh , you know our legal may always come from , you know , from australia . You know the of of the DMG empire , so to speak , is that is , that we can really utilize that . That international um kind of all the international bases that we have . So we're putting producers in . Uh , we will have producers in in each of those pockets eventually takes time , you know it's it's it's a tricky one to manoeuvre , but yeah , that is the ambition . The short-term ambition is to get them all up and running and have people there working on them .

James Cridland 12:09

And I guess I mean it's not a particularly well-known thing that the New York Times Daily , for example , is edited in the UK .

Jamie East 12:15

Yeah , exactly , and there's reasons for that . I imagine most of it is to do with money .

James Cridland 12:18

Yes , well , money and time . Money and time , yeah , yeah , money and time . Money and time yeah yeah , no indeed , that's really interesting . That's really interesting and in terms of the podcast slate to come , I mean , are we expecting a Daily Mail equivalent of the Daily ? Are we expecting you know what sort of shows are you actually working on ?

Jamie East 12:39

You know I get asked that a lot about the Daily News one . You know , you'll know I cut my teeth in news podcasting over the past four years with the Smart 7 , which is still going strong , which was the podcast I launched with Liam Thompson back in 2020 . Daily news is really difficult to do . It's really expensive , it's really time consuming , it's really labor intensive and the gains nowadays are pretty small in that and the gains nowadays are pretty small in that . I'm sure the Telegraph are looking at their stats advent of how you know I'm a big advocate of AI and how we can use that in terms of efficiencies , in terms of making podcasts not necessarily in any editorial decisions , but at the moment , no plans for daily news . We will be leaning into a lot more of the journalism . You know we've got big plans in the true crime stuff and I'll give you the exclusive on all of that when I'm ready to announce it all . But there's there's big plans coming in january and february for that um which lean into the newsroom . You know there are hundreds and hundreds of incredible journalists , uh , working for dmg and there is also an unbelievable archive , um . So in terms of historic cases , in terms of historic true crime in terms of historic , you know , just general news stuff and celebrity and showbiz and whatnot . It's a bit it's rich pickings there , so we will definitely be leaning into that .

Jamie East 14:16

A lot of returning series are coming back . Apple and the tree was a big success for us . Queens kings and dastardly things was also a big success . Both of those are now in pre-production for their second seasons . Some haven't made it back , you know , no fault of their own . We've just they just haven't performed well , so they're going . No shame in that . I wish more people would do that . So you know it's , but it's good . You know it's a good test and learn bed , and it always will be . You know I'm a big fan of just trying out lots and lots of different things .

James Cridland 14:45

And in terms of the final question , really is , in terms of the monetization side , these will be ad-supported or will there be a premium subscription as well ?

Jamie East 14:56

At the moment ad-supported . You know we've got a big commercial team behind it and we're lucky to have some big commercial partners coming on board . Plans are afoot for all avenues of revenue .

James Cridland 15:06

Yeah , no , indeed Indeed . And so do you sell these shows directly in the US or are you working with a partner there ?

Jamie East 15:16

US is . You know it's very early days . We're looking . You know we're now eyeing up how best to kind of go and speak to partners . We've got a good commercial team out in the states . Uh , don williams is our kind of chief commercial officer in the uk , has been out there the past couple of weeks starting to put the feelers out for that and how we build that . At the moment we've only got one title that's predominantly angled at this at the us . So as they grow then the team will grow and you know it's a different ballgame out there . You know the whole MailChimp kind of angle kind of is a winner over there . It's less successful in the UK because , again , it's volume . You know the pickup on those kind of deals is very low but when you've got , you know , an audience of 300 million it's worth doing Over here less so . So it's very different and you know we need to work out what fits best for the business .

James Cridland 16:09

Well , it's super good to speak with you . I've been following what you've been doing for a while now , so it's great to actually speak . Yeah , likewise , jamie . Thank you so much for your time . Jamie , thank you so much for your time . I appreciate it .

Speaker 2 16:19

Thanks , James . The Pub News Weekly Review with Buzzsprout Podcast hosting made easy .

James Cridland 16:25

Jamie East from the Daily Mail .

Sam Sethi 16:28

Given Jamie's track record in TV as well , do you think they'll go video ?

James Cridland 16:34

I mean , who knows , you would guess that that might be a plan for them . I should point out , by the way , that , in case you , can hear people in the background .

James Cridland 16:49

it is Halloween as we record this and there are a lot of very excited 11 and 12 year olds who are just coming back to the house . So that's what's going on in the background . But yeah , you know , I mean you could see that . You know , video might be good for some of the things that the Daily Mail is doing . But look , I mean , at the end of it , they've got a tremendous platform , a very highly trafficked platform , which they can drive an awful lot of audiences from .

Sam Sethi 17:11

So , yeah , I think it's a good thing

Spotify's Open Access and paywalls

Sam Sethi 17:14

Now moving on Spotify , barcelona-based podcast hosting company Mumbler has partnered with Spotify through their Open Access programme . So , james , first of all , can you explain what the Open Access programme is from Spotify ?

James Cridland 17:30

Yeah , so if you want to buy access to a premium podcast subscription on Apple , you end up buying it through the Apple Podcasts app , and that's basically how that works . Spotify , it's a little bit different . They've got this thing called Spotify Open Access , which is essentially an OAuth connection from your Spotify app to a membership that you might have elsewhere . So far as I can work out , spotify don't earn any money out of it , but it's obviously a good way to keep people consuming all of the podcasts that they consume within the Spotify app , and so Mumbler is now selling shows premium content onto the Spotify platform , which makes a ton of sense , and you can very much understand that from their point of view . You know it's another place for them to sell premium content and premium shows Now there was a big hoo-ha on Mastodon two weeks ago , where Was there ?

James Cridland 18:31

Oh , I missed this . I missed this , Sam . Was there ? A big hoo-ha .

Sam Sethi 18:34

You kept out of it very well . Well done sir .

James Cridland 18:36

Yes , it was talking about paywalls , wasn't it ? And whether or not paywalls Shh shh , shh , shh , shh , shh , Don't mention the word paywall .

Sam Sethi 18:45

Oh God , if you mention the word paywall , they lose their shit and they go mental , because God forbid that anyone dare talk about RSS and money together in the same sentence . No , shouldn't be allowed , shouldn't be allowed . But premium content is fundamentally what we don't have within the podcasting 2.0 space right now , and I know that your answer to it may have been that spotify has drm and they have other things , but there are other ways that we can look at putting in , I suppose , controls around the rss that enable it . Now , one company that's working on this is Pod2 down in Australia , who've been trialling the use of something called L402 . L402 , without getting too technical , is a mechanism where you present an invoice for some content , the invoice gets paid and this is a micropayment invoice and then , once that invoice is verified , then the content is delivered . So it's not DRM , but it's delivery of content upon payment , and that's what I think is an interesting new model .

James Cridland 19:50

yes , I don't think that the payment issue is an issue here . You are talking , you would imagine , for a subscription service . You you were talking about $4 , $5 a month . You can take $4 or $5 a month perfectly happily through Stripe or through any other payment platform . So I think that the benefits that Lightning and that Bitcoin have go away once you're talking about $4 or $5 a month . So I don't think that you need to worry about any of the you know L402 or the Lightning network at all . I think you can now deal with you know a credit card and everything else .

James Cridland 20:37

This is obviously very different to value for value . Value for value is , if you like this stuff , give us some money , time , talent or treasure . That's absolutely different to . I have a piece of content here which I would like to charge for , something like Spotify Open Access , which , if I understand it correctly , is essentially it's an OAuth connection to a platform that might be Supercast , it might be Supporting Cast , it might be another one of those platforms , and what that platform then does is it supplies a bespoke RSS feed to your player .

James Cridland 21:17

So you've signed in , you've now got access to this bespoke RSS feed , which contains some of the content there that you have paid for . So that's a separate RSS feed . So therefore you don't need to worry about DRM and you don't need to worry about anything else , because the DRM is on the RSS feed itself rather than on the audio file , and that means that it'll work in pretty well anything . And I'm there kind of thinking surely the way of supporting paid for premium content is to basically do Spotify open access , but do it in a different , you know , but do it in a different app that isn't Spotify . I mean , I'm guessing that Spotify's open access is hidden away under NDAs , but surely we can reverse engineer that to work out what's the benefit of Podcast Addict to end up doing it and perhaps that's the issue that we've got here it's that we actually want to support the podcast app as well as support the podcast creator .

Sam Sethi 22:31

Yeah , the way that we've looked at doing it is that the creator claims their feed . They can then lock the feed , which blocks the play button on the front until the payment's been confirmed and then we unlock the play button . Now that's not to say and you've pointed out correctly that in the rss feed there is still the audio file . So we are trusting the apps to do the right thing when we consume the rss , that we don't enable the player to actually freely give out that RSS file or the enclosure . So we lock it and then , when we receive payment , we unlock it .

Sam Sethi 23:10

Now that isn't perfect , but that is a step one . But what it does allow me to do is to take a small percentage because of splits from that . Or , if it's a fiat payment , we convert the fiat payments micro payments and then we take the split . So we can take some small amount one percent , two percent for the app , as well as providing the rest of the money back to the creator . So in the case where you were saying podcast addict wouldn't make any money , or mumbler , you know , providing content , and spotify make no money in this model , using the , the micropayment model , but taking the money in fear and converting it , you still do get the app , having some small amount . That's what we're trying anyway yeah , well , it's , it's uh .

James Cridland 23:56

All of that stuff is really interesting . I would very much like to see some kind of way that podcast app developers can share a little bit in promoting shows . I mean , interestingly enough , apple Podcasts itself has an affiliate program . So if you sign up to that affiliate program , I think you get the first month , you get the 30% from the first month . So if it's 799 , then you get whatever 30% of that is for every single person that you sign up . So it actually makes quite a lot of money that way . If there were affiliate deals , frankly , with SportingCast and Supercast and a few others of these uh companies who are already offering this service as a you know , as a product , then perhaps we're three quarters of the way there . But it would be nice to make some form of open um plan there as well , I guess .

Sam Sethi 24:53

It's early days and and I'm sure that we will tread on many toes , but , um , I guess we are experimenting right now and I think pod 2 uh has just done the first test with l402 for an audiobook payment . Uh , we did it with uh true fans , so it's it's working . Is it smooth ? Is it the right way ? Well , we'll find out in the next few weeks , I guess yeah no , indeed

Spotify now has 6mn podcasts

Sam Sethi 25:16

sticking with spotify . This number seems mad to me . Spotify now says they have six million podcasts in their directory . James , why ?

James Cridland 25:25

Six million podcasts . Yes , according to the company's investors page . Somebody from Spotify came up and whispered into my ear last week while I was in Norway I think that's nice for you , yes , and because I think I stood there and I said Apple has 2.9 million or whatever the current Apple figure is . And yes , the lady from Spotify came over and said well , actually we've got over 6 million . The podcast index says , again from memory , something like 4.9 million , so an awful lot more with Spotify . My suggestion with that is that they are mostly Anchor exclusive and are mostly people just sort of fiddling around , and I'm sure that the amount of test one , two , threes on the Spotify platform is particularly high . But nevertheless , interesting to see that Spotify essentially has twice as many shows in its platform as Apple Podcasts does . Now , I mean , you know , I've spent the last week .

James Cridland 26:29

A very respected person who works in the podcast industry but is not necessarily what I would have called a podcaster .

James Cridland 26:36

He has produced a new show which he made available on Spotify and I said great , you're making it available on Apple Podcasts as well , aren't you ?

James Cridland 26:46

And he said oh yeah , I'll get that sorted Came back to me two days later and what he'd done is he had individually uploaded each individual audio file into Apple , which you can do , individual audio file into Apple , which you can do , but that essentially means that it's an Apple podcast exclusive and not , therefore , something which is available in Podcast Addict and in True Fans and in Pod News , for that matter . So I said no , no , no , you're not doing it right . I mean , if people who are involved in the podcast industry are now getting confused about this sort of thing , then that does worry me slightly . So , yeah , but it was interesting seeing that Six million podcasts I believe that Apple Podcasts itself is just claiming 100 million episodes are available on that platform , so it's doing very well . I think that figure is 168 million on the podcast index and so forth and so on . So some really really big numbers going on there . Not so big numbers in terms of comments , though Comments on episodes , sam .

Sam Sethi 27:54

Yeah , I mean is that because well , ok , let's start

Spotify's improved comments

Sam Sethi 27:59

off with . Spotify has improved their comment system . Now they're going to automatically publish them , so maybe we will see more comments , because maybe creators have sort of said no , I'm not really going to allow comments through , they're not really great . I'm not sure this is going to be good for people to automatically publish . I can see the benefit to Spotify , which is more content seeping through to the app , but , as I've said in the past , my wife used to run MSN and the comments section was gutted . They had to close it down because eventually it was just a game of whack-a-mole trying to keep the spam out . And I don't know if Spotify have had to face this problem yet and when they do , what they will do is probably change it back to not automatic .

James Cridland 28:45

I'll be fair to Spotify . I do think that they are doing something quite clever . There is some machine learning going on with the comments , so it will . There are three settings . One setting is publish everything . That's absolutely fine . Setting number two is don't publish anything , and let me approve everything first . And the third setting , which is probably the most sensible setting , is go through , you know , do some checks and if you think that the comment is OK , then you can publish it , and that's what I suspect that most people will end up going to .

James Cridland 29:32

So not every single comment will be published , but comments that look as if they're proper comments will will be published , and everything else will be will be held for you . Of course , we shouldn't forget that . For example , going back to our first story , the Trial is a podcast which is all about currently existing court cases . Now , the law in the UK is that you cannot talk about a currently existing court case without being really , really careful about what you say , and so most people will want to turn the comments off for that . And what I like about this is the fact that you can actually turn the comments off .

James Cridland 30:01

You look at Apple Podcasts . You can publish anything you like on a podcast level and you know , and it can be as positive or as negative as you like . So I think that Spotify , much that pains me to say it , I think that they might be doing it correctly here . There's no API , by the way , into their comment system and I have asked whether or not they will make it available in the Spotify for Developers API , which is a very good API , and the answer is I'll take it to the team and see what they say . So you know , there's a thing .

Sam Sethi 30:34

They have added keyword blocking , again another good feature to add into comments as well .

James Cridland 30:40

Yeah , and that's a brilliant thing . So you know , if we wanted to , we could block any comment that was . You know , if we were doing the Tesco podcast , then we could block anything that mentioned Sainsbury's . Or similarly , if we were doing the Trader Joe podcast , then we could block anything that mentioned Walmart . So I think , again , that makes a bunch of sense for a lot of reasons . So yeah .

James Cridland 31:04

I think that they've clearly thought a lot about how comments are going to work . My only you know slight frustration is that it is a you know it's a tool which is only available if you use the Spotify app . Wouldn't it be interesting if you could sign in with your Spotify account from other podcast apps and leave a comment that way ? That'll never happen , of course . Why on earth would they do that ? But I think that that's certainly an interesting thing too .

Sam Sethi 31:32

Yeah , I mean they say that over 650,000 podcast episodes since , uh , since july um have had comments within that . 44 million new episodes in that period , which you think suggests about 1.5 percent of new episodes have attracted a comment , which is very low .

James Cridland 31:50

So maybe this will increase that to maybe eight or ten percent , it's still going to be low , though I think and I'm also being very um lenient on spotify there , because my assumption is that nobody will go back into the archive and leave comments on those . So the figure is probably actually rather lower than 1.5% , so it would be nice if that was a little bit higher . I believe that this show has had two comments left for it on Spotify , so we will see what happens , but a little birdie tells me , by the way , that there will be a big announcement from Spotify on November the 13th , remember , remember , november the 13th . So more information on that doubtless to come .

Sam Sethi 32:37

Now the other thing that Spotify launched is a new ad exchange in the US . James , tell me more .

James Cridland 32:42

Yes , it's an ad exchange , so it'll be easier for ad buyers to directly buy advertising on the Spotify platform if it's in video and all of a sudden you go ah , I now understand why Spotify has been so excited about video , because , of course , that's where they can make their money in terms of this . So , yes , it's a new ad exchange . Sounds great . Only available in the US . Well , that's kind of as you would expect , but video only for now . So that's why everybody in Spotify is very keenly talking up video , because they can make more money out of it .

Podtrac's country rankers

Sam Sethi 33:23

Now PodTrack , not something that I really follow too well . I know you know more about it than I will , but it's expanded its service to list 100 top podcasts in 30 different countries . Right , tell me more about PodTrack , james , because I don't really know a lot about it .

James Cridland 33:37

Well , so PodTrack in the US at at least , is a company that you put a prefix in your podcast enclosure tag , much like you do for OP3 , and it counts the amount of downloads that you get . And why that's useful for PodTrack is , firstly , they sell that data to various people . But why it's also useful is that PodTrack is owned by Authentic , which actually is a podcast ad seller , so it's very useful for them to have all of this data . But you know , I report every single month on who the number one podcast is in the US , but also who the number one podcast publisher is , and so on and so forth . What they've launched in another 30 countries is that they have launched a country ranker showing the top podcasts in all of those countries and that , on the face of it , sounds pretty good . Right , it does what's not to like . What's not to like ? I'm not sure . I'm not sure that the numbers really mean an awful lot . So , firstly , you have a look at the methodology and it says that they are made possible by PodTrack's proprietary download measurement and estimation systems , which include all podcasts in a region . So , unlike the numbers that we get in the US , where everything is measured by PodTrack and every download means a ping to PodTrack and PodTrack counts all of those . That's not what's happening in these other 30 different countries and I think it's quite telling that they don't have a top podcast by country list in the US using this particular method . What's going on across these other countries is that it's , as you can see , it's got a little bit of PodTrack in there , but it's also got some estimation systems and I don't really understand how those estimation systems work , really understand how those estimation systems work .

James Cridland 35:43

I thought it might be interesting just to sort of have a check of what PodTrack says about Australia versus what Triton says about Australia , because Triton is measuring by looking at people's log files , so looking at actual downloads , and they publish the actual downloads . So we know that the ABC's Conversations podcast , for example , it's number one in Triton , it's number one in PodTrack 2.5 million monthly downloads . So that's all very nice . So you would expect that everything else should kind of follow the . You know that PodTrack should kind of follow the Triton list , but PodTrack is obviously measuring more , but that's not really what's happening . But PodTrack is obviously measuring more but that's not really what's happening .

James Cridland 36:22

You end up with , you know , like really weird things like what's that rash ? Is it number five in PodTrack and number 57 in the Triton Ranker ? Because it only does 273,000 downloads a month ? You know , number seven is how Other Dads Dad with Hamish Blake Not a very big show . It's number 90 in the Triton Ranker with only 171,000 downloads in September , but in September on PodTrack , which is actually number four in the Triton list with 1.6 million . So 1.6 million is at number 11 on PodTrack's list , but just 171,000 is at number seven on PodTrack's list . I don't get it . So I looked at these numbers and I thought , okay , well , I mean it's nice , but I I just don't see how these fit with the actual download numbers that we can actually see in some of these , uh , in some of these countries . So , um , yeah , so I'm not . I'm I'm not so sure , to be honest you just proved my point .

Sam Sethi 37:36

Which is it ? They , they were all . No , I can't say rubbish , because that's not fair , but they all just have different ways of measuring and you can't you're measuring apples and oranges . I mean , there's no .

James Cridland 37:49

Well , I mean , in this case they're not measuring . They're estimating you know , yeah , even worse . I mean to be fair . You know , you look at the UK numbers and they look as if they are probably about right . You know , the rest is politics at number one , the newsagents at number two , the rest is history at number three , the archers at number four and newscast at number five . That's probably about right , but you know once you get actual data to compare it next to you go . I'm not so sure .

Sam Sethi 38:24

I'm with Dan Meisner , you know I am A download is not a listen , and until we move the model away from downloads to actual listen time I'm sorry these figures are just Mickey Mouse to me Automated downloads mean that those numbers even are just inflated anyway . We saw that when Apple cut it last year we have talked about . Will Apple turn it into a switch which says I want to auto-download , not have it as a default ? The numbers would drop like a rock . I mean just yeah .

Sam Sethi 38:56

It's . I will say it till I die it's the emperor's new clothes . We are telling advertisers that they should look at the number of downloads . Downloads don't equal listens . Why are we doing this ? I'm persisting with a model that I think is just ancient and broken .

James Cridland 39:11

Because it's the only thing that we can measure , and that's the thing , yeah .

Sam Sethi 39:14

I get it . I get it , but Spotify don't . I mean Spotify have first-party data and I but Spotify don't . I mean Spotify have first-party data and I bet they are telling accurately the advertisers how long their advert was heard , who listened to it and when and where . I mean they've got that data .

James Cridland 39:28

Oh , exactly right , because Spotify will most certainly be doing that , and that is a bit of a concern . I am speaking this time next week Well , not quite this time next week , I'll be on my way home , but I will be at a conference in Venice in Italy , which is a conference all about measurement , and there is a podcast session in the middle of the day talking about measurement , next to radio measurement and TV measurement , and I think that that's going to be a really fascinating conversation Two hours of talking about how podcast measurement actually works and kind of how it doesn't , and a bunch of really good researchers talking about that and me .

Sam Sethi 40:17

So that should be fun

Choosing a default podcast app

Sam Sethi 40:20

now apple uh released ios 18.2 and I loved john spurlock putting close but no cigar , which was basically fundamentally saying you can now change only in the eu , of course uh , your default mail , your default browser and your default messaging system , but the close but no cigar is the fact that you can't change the podcast app , and that would be the thing that I've said on this show about six months ago that I would love them to do . They haven't done it and I can't see them doing it anytime soon either , sadly .

James Cridland 40:54

No , they haven't done it for a couple of reasons . Firstly , iOS 18.2 is coming out probably in December , so next month as you're listening to this , so it's not yet out anyway . But I think you know I hear people in the podcasting world going wouldn't it be great if we could have a default podcast player ? The point is that we don't have a default way of signaling a podcast yet . There isn't a standard way of doing that . The only way really of doing that at the moment is there is a schema called podcast . You can type in podcast colon and then an RSS URL and that will open Apple Podcasts , I think on various devices , but not on all devices . And there was another one called ITMS which does much the same sort of thing . Obviously , nobody else is going to be using that for a long , long time because it only opens Apple podcasts , and so therefore , there isn't a standard way .

James Cridland 41:59

There is a standard way , if you use an email , for you to go oh , this is an email , you want to send an email , Okay , I will open my default email app . There's a standard way of oh , this is a URL , I will open my default browser . There is no standard way of saying this is a URL , I will open my default browser . There is no standard way of saying this is a podcast , please open it . And I think , until we have that , then I think it's a little bit naive of the podcast industry to go oh well , we want a default podcast player . Well , there's no standard way of linking to a podcast . That's the whole point of why I sit there and fiddle around with code every single day to get the pod news , podcast pages to work , because there was no standard way of linking to a podcast . So therefore , that was the only way that I could actually do is to build my own , my own page . So yeah , so I you know , I hear what he says , but also I'm not so sure .

Sam Sethi 42:53

I didn't realise that what you just said , that there was no way to actually and it makes so much sense now you've said it , why ? I don't know what the answer is to that . I guess I don't know how you'd fix that .

James Cridland 43:04

I don't know what the answer is , because it would be lovely if yeah , it would be lovely if somebody set a schema .

James Cridland 43:10

And it's the wrong way of doing it these days , but it will be nice if somebody set a schema that was basically , you know , podcast , colon , slash , slash , and then the RSS feed , but then not everybody uses RSS , and I mean Spotify wouldn't want that because they don't have open RSS feeds for so many of their shows . So you know , we end up , we end up in a problem there , but yeah , but you know , end up in a problem there , but yeah , but you know . I mean , you know , at some point it would be nice to have a method of saying a default podcast app . But you know , but Apple I mean Apple could , under the rules of their app store , actually decline every single podcast app if they wanted to decline every single podcast app if they wanted to , because one of the rules in the app store is not to replicate existing functionality within iOS , which a podcast app very clearly does . So every single podcast app is on borrowed time , one would suggest . If you actually read the rules that iOS works .

Sam Sethi 44:18

I think there'd be a collective sigh of get the lawyers if that ever came to pass .

James Cridland 44:22

I would completely agree with you , but that's what it says . Thank God , I'm a .

Sam Sethi 44:27

PWA . That's all I'll tell you now . Yes , Anyway , moving

El Pas and the auto downloads

Sam Sethi 44:32

on Now , you had an exclusive this week about a Spanish newspaper . Tell me more .

James Cridland 44:37

Yes , so this is a podcast from a Spanish newspaper . The newspaper itself is called El Pais and it is massive . It is easily the biggest Spanish newspaper online . It got over 118 million visits in September and it's got a very big podcast called Today in El Pais , or that in Spanish . Of course , it has been claiming very , very high download figures and I've always been curious as to those high download figures and I thought I wonder what happens if I visit the El Pais website and have a look at what it's actually doing .

James Cridland 45:14

And hey , presto , if I change my web browser into something that says that it is an iOS web browser , ie something directly from an iPhone , you visit alpaiscom and one of the first things that it does is it downloads the entire podcast for you , just in case you wanted to have a listen .

James Cridland 45:39

So it wasn't happening if you were accessing it from a desktop , but was happening if you were accessing it from a mobile phone . So , firstly , bad on them for giving every single visit to the homepage of the El Pais website another 14 megabytes of bloat , because that's bad , but also , secondly , bad on them for preloading that individual piece of audio in case you might want to listen to it , because basically , that means that most of those downloads were never listened to and , so far as I can work out , that podcast contained a programmatic ad , which means that the programmatic ad that was bought in that show was never listened to either . So , yes , so I spotted this , contacted the newspaper , I said if you do this and this and this , this is what I see . Do you see this as well ? And please could I have a statement ? And they quietly changed their code so that it no longer automatically downloads . And yes , and haven't given me a statement at all , but nevertheless that seems to be fixed . So it's all a bit weird .

Sam Sethi 46:55

Okay , so playing devil's advocate . What's that different to Apple auto-downloading , then ?

James Cridland 47:05

Well , the difference is , if you open Apple Podcasts up five times , you don't download every single podcast five times . So it wasn't actually keeping the podcast at all , it was just loading it on a page load . So it's different in terms of that and different in terms of even if you'd listened to it , it would still have automatically downloaded it , just with a refresh of the El Pais front page . Oh , okay .

Sam Sethi 47:27

So not doing local storage ? No , no , no , just basically reloading each time no local storage , just loading it .

James Cridland 47:33

What I suspect was happening is , three quarters of the way down the page there was a player . What I suspect was happening is that that player was loading all of the audio so that if you were to press the play button it would be nice and fast , and what they had forgotten to do is to add in the audio tag a little thing saying you know , don't download this audio . That's what I suspect was going on . But yeah , so all of the figures that you saw and they were claiming all kinds of numbers , but all of the figures that you saw from that particular podcast were totally bogus because it was just essentially , you know , automated downloads . They were claiming 20 million downloads for the previous series of that particular show .

Sam Sethi 48:21

And yeah , and it's all not true , I'm afraid , with the iHeart auto download incident that happened in 2018 , did the advertisers go back to iHeart and sue them ?

James Cridland 48:33

I don't believe that iHeartMedia for that particular show . I don't believe that iHeartMedia actually had any advertising in that particular show . So this was something back in 2018 . Over 1,000 different radio stations had an embedded player that just downloaded an entire show , but I think it was a two minute show and it was you know what's . You know they called it Snackable Podcast and , if you remember , they managed to convince our friends at PodTrack to start an entirely new chart , so that presumably so that they could be number one in another chart , and you know , and that's basically how that works . But , yeah , I mean , you know , if I was an advertiser on the El Pais podcast , you know you might be asking the question I deserve some money back because I don't think I have reached the amount of ears that I have paid for . Um , you know , I mean the , the numbers . I mean what I think concerns me a little bit more is they were hosted by triton .

James Cridland 49:47

Triton should have spotted this in their podcast stats . Yr , and I calculate it was somewhere in the region of 85% of all of the downloads to that show were happening through a browser . Yr , 85% of this show happening through a browser . That is very much different to every other show we have on our platform . So why weren't they doing that as a podcast host , but also on a wider level , why is Triton's Latin American podcast ranker ? They weren't even a Latin American podcast , but why was Triton's Latin American podcast ranker saying that it was the 12th biggest show by downloads , when no one had checked whether or not these downloads were actually happening on a mobile phone browser or not ? I'm not the world's biggest internet sleuth , but it didn't take me too long to work out what was going on there , and it's concerning that neither Triton as a podcast hosting company who are also selling the advertising for them and Triton as a ranker seemingly didn't spot that and seemingly aren't running those pretty simple checks for everything that they're actually doing there . It's not in their interest .

Sam Sethi 51:06

I mean , if advertisers are saying how many downloads have you got and you report back X number and they pay you on that basis , what's in their interest to reduce the number of downloads or to actually check if they're getting a nice amount of money coming in based on fundamentally false download numbers here ?

James Cridland 51:23

Well , perhaps that's one way of looking at it . I mean , I've got no proof that anybody has done anything . You know knowingly , you know untoward here I'm not saying they're doing it knowingly .

Sam Sethi 51:39

I'm just saying they've got no value in stopping it .

James Cridland 51:42

I mean , one would hope that the metrics , that the ranker side of Triton , have some concern with making sure that their ranker is actually correct , and that's a worry if they're not actually doing that . But doubtless when I see Triton next week in Venice , because they will be speaking as well , then there will be a conversation about that . But yeah , it lowers my trust in a ranker if they clearly haven't bothered checking that these downloads are actually real downloads , which , by the way , was the issue that I had . You know , for all of the you know , the top 10 or the top 20 shows , just to make sure that the data looks right . You don't have to go that far into it , but just make sure that the data looks right . If there's something really weird going on with one of those shows , it's probably worthwhile to look into . Wouldn't you have thought ?

Sam Sethi 52:53

I wonder how many others in that rank , but anyway , moving on , let's not get into that one . Yeah , me too . Off you go , sherlock , find out

Michael Parkinson AI podcast

Sam Sethi 53:01

more . Now here's an interesting story , a podcast hosted by an AI replica of Sir Michael Parkinson , who was very famous on the BBC here in the UK . He was a talk show presenter . He's passed away . He was a talk show presenter . He's passed away , sadly , michael Parkinson , but his estate or his family are allowing an AI company over in Cardiff to use his voice and then to do new Sir Michael's family estate , which is worthwhile pointing out .

James Cridland 53:27

And , yeah , it's a very interesting idea of taking someone's you know human IP , if you like . It's easy in this particular case because Sir Michael ended up doing 2000 , 2000 interviews . So there's an awful lot of stuff to train an AI powered , you know , llm on , to understand what sort of questions he would ask , to understand how he would ask them , you know , so , on and so forth . So I find that fascinating . It's going to launch , I think , later on in this year or maybe even next year , but it was a really interesting idea , so definitely worthwhile having a look into that . Now it turns out I mean , you know we joke , sam , that you know everybody , but it turns out that you know Sir Michael's son , mike Parkinson . Yes .

James Cridland 54:34

You know , who would have even thought that the son of Michael Parkinson would be called Mike Parkinson . But anyway , and yes , and it sounds as if you may have him on the show .

Sam Sethi 54:39

Yeah , it looks like we'll have him next week . So Mike lives in our village as well , because of course he does . Well , I'm sorry to say yeah , he does . And so I pinged him and said look , would you want to come on the show and talk about it ? He's very keen to do that and yeah , so we'll get him on and talk about it .

Round the world

James Cridland 55:00

Right , let's go around the world . 46% of Germans regularly listen to audiobooks , radio plays or podcasts . That's according to new data from an audiobook company that also does podcasts Audible . Company that also does podcasts Audible . Surprise , surprise . The crime and thriller genre is number one in audiobooks , although they also say that 32% of Germans choose content to help them fall asleep . How do they know this stuff ? They just ask so , when you are listening to a podcast , do you listen to help you fall asleep or no ? Yeah , or nine , yeah , um , also too soon also in uh , the uk .

James Cridland 55:44

uh , new radio figures from raja . Um , they say 34 percent of brits listen to a podcast at least once a month . Um , which is a nice figure , until you realise that 88.3% of Brits tune into the radio at least once a week . So clearly we've got a long way to grow , and that's a good thing . Bbc Sounds not doing very well . That's the BBC's proprietary radio music and podcasts app . They're claiming a 2.3% increase in total plays Yay , but what they were slightly less excited about claiming was that their weekly audience has actually dropped by almost 4% , which is not so good . Their podcasts on OpenRSS , though , going up by 2% . So it's almost as if keeping things exclusive on an app that nobody really wants to download is not a good plan . But anyway , I will be diving into a little bit of that data as well over the next couple of weeks . And in terms of people and jobs , lizzie Pollitt from Acast , who I saw in Copenhagen , did you ?

James Cridland 56:57

She has Were , we all inenhagen for the week or something . We were all in copenhagen and it's just that we , we did . We didn't actually catch up , but anyway . Um , yes , uh , she has launched a podcast of her own called bit fit , bit funny . Um , uh , it turns out that she is also a comedian , uh , as well as being a runner and as well as being , you know , the second in command at Acast Possibly not second in command , but very high in Acast .

James Cridland 57:22

Yeah , anyway . So I think that's pretty interesting , and one of the articles that I'm kind of threatening to write at some point is people who are very senior in podcast companies . What is the podcast that they do , and are there any that don't do a podcast ? Because I suspect that there are quite a lot of people who work quite highly in podcasting but actually don't produce a podcast of their own , and wouldn't it be helpful if they did so ? Yes , I think Todd Cochran says this constantly .

James Cridland 57:57

Yes , that's right , todd , I would guess that he says that a lot and I think that , yeah , it's really interesting . I mean , as you have done , trying to interview very senior people in the podcasting industry and they come on , you know , using AirPods in the middle of an open plan office , and they think that this is how to using AirPods in the middle of an open plan office and they think that this is how to do a podcast interview . So I would like to , I would like to know a little bit more about that , so that might be fun . And , yeah , so , if you are a fan of comedy podcasts and she's interviewing a lot of very good comedians Jeff Lloyd is in there and others who I've forgotten Then find BitFit BitFunny wherever you get your podcasts .

Interview: It's A Continent, winners of Independent Podcast Awards

Sam Sethi 58:39

Awards and events . James , we were in London last week . Where were we ?

James Cridland 58:43

We were . We were at the Independent Podcast Awards . You are listening to a show with two nominations in the Independent Podcast Awards , which is an award by itself , but no winners . But no winners and no winners .

James Cridland 58:56

One of the people who actually won , rather than just being nominated , were Chini Ukata and Astrid Madimba , who won for a great podcast which is called it's a Continent Africa is not a country , it's a continent . As if you didn't know , and they were absolutely thrilled . I ended up giving them the first award of the night and they were absolutely thrilled at that , so I can't imagine what they must have been going through when they won another award and then the biggest award of the night , the podcast of the year .

Sam Sethi 59:32

But you managed to catch up with Chinny , I think yes astrid's off in peru , sadly so I couldn't get hold of her , but I caught up with chinny and I started off by asking her how she felt about winning three awards on the night yeah , it has definitely been a bit of a whirlwind .

Chinny Ukata 59:48

I think we're still taking it in so many congratulatory messages from such lovely communities of people . So , yeah , it's just felt amazing this past week .

Sam Sethi 59:58

Astrid was so excited she got on a plane and went to Peru .

Chinny Ukata 1:00:01

Yes , yes , we have a speaking engagement in Peru actually happening next week , so she'd planned to spend a week out there already and I'll be joining her soon . So , unfortunately , that's why she's not able to join us today .

Sam Sethi 1:00:14

No worries , now it's a . She's not able to join us today . No worries , now it's a Continent . What's it about ? First of all , why did you want to put a podcast together ? How did you come up with the name and what do you cover as a topic ?

Chinny Ukata 1:00:24

Yes , so we're a podcast that focuses on African history and , as it happens , we kind of straddle both the history and educational piece there . We were having a discussion one evening in 2019 talking about how , actually , we didn't really know much about each other's history so I would identify as a British Nigerian , Astrid , British Congolese and we realised we didn't really know much about each other's cultures . I was then thinking I don't even know what Congolese food is like , you know . So we then thought let's sort of take a step back and think about how we can learn about not only our own history but also the African continent as a whole .

Chinny Ukata 1:00:58

And the name it's a Continent kind of came about from the generalization that we do see with the continent . How many times have we heard Africa described as a country ? Or how many times have we heard Africa just been generalized ? So much just in mainstream commentary , much just in mainstream commentary . So we brought about it's a Continent to sort of counter those two things , to highlight key areas in African history , but also to highlight that Africa is not a monolith and there's just so much richness and diversity of culture within countries , let alone the continent as a whole .

Sam Sethi 1:01:27

So when you decided to do a podcast together , everyone has that moment of what's the podcast going to be called ? How long should the length of the show be ? What's the subject ? I mean , did you have a background in podcasting or radio or speaking at all ? Funnily , enough .

Chinny Ukata 1:01:45

No , I guess my editing skills literally just came from a GCSE in music way back then , so I knew how to do audio production and I think we just had a passion . It was a passion for our subjects that led us to this . We both enjoy a chat , so it was about taking that chat to a wider audience and sharing in that with us .

Sam Sethi 1:02:06

And what's been the initial feedback from people ? Was it initially friends and family who listened and then did you get a wider audience ? How did you market this podcast to a wider audience ?

Chinny Ukata 1:02:17

yeah , we kind of just started at first doing a little bit of a pilot to friends , close family , just you know , what do you think about this ?

Chinny Ukata 1:02:25

And we wanted to cut the history in a way that was actually relatable and that was something that not not to say dumbed down , but in a way that would make it easily digestible . So we are not kind of coming in with like hard copies of you know papers per se , but we're reading those papers and translating it in a way that relates to where we are from a modern perspective . So we often tie it into current affairs just to bring the history to life a bit more . So we shared that initially with family and friends and then we kind of took to social media and I think it's the social media aspect that really made it grow , finding those audiences that really wanted a piece of African history , and then it was from there on social media that we then got approached around writing a book about the same topic . So I would say that social media , for all its its ills , really helped us spread the message and really accelerated our audience in that way .

Sam Sethi 1:03:19

When did you both think you know what ? We've got something good here . We're in season 10 now , so you've had a little bit of time to practice and look at it . Practice makes perfect . You won the award . But when did you actually think you know ? Was it season one , season two , episode one ? Even when did you really think you know ? Was it season one , season two , episode one ?

Chinny Ukata 1:03:35

even when did you really think , yeah , we've got something good here you know , I think probably would have been just as we got into the flow of things and we got such nice and lovely feedback , not just from Apple reviews , as you know , but also commenting on our socials . And I think it was when we had built a community that not only listens but also participates in a sense , because we sometimes get and we love it . When we had built a community that not only listens but also participates in a sense , because we sometimes get and we love it when we do get this listeners DMing us , emailing us suggestions . Hey , why don't you guys cover this topic ? So , for example , we covered the Chagos Islands . None of us knew about it , but we covered it because a listener emailed us in and said can you guys cover the Chagos Islands ? You guys will make a good episode out of this .

Chinny Ukata 1:04:15

Here's all my sources . Here are my Kindle notes , here's a documentary and , yeah , best of luck with it . So that's when you then know that actually you know what . I think we've got something good here .

Sam Sethi 1:04:26

Yeah , I listened to the most recent repeat episode you've put out , which was about repatriation , and it's a topic that many British Indians also feel very strongly about and it's currently very hot within the discussion around the Commonwealth and the King being down in Australia being told by the Aborigines . I think for most British people they do not know or feel or understand the pain , the hurt and the anger that so many of what I call badly named commonwealth , because it's not common and there's no wealth shared . But when you cover topics like that , which are very personal , very strong , do you get a lot of negative feedback as well as positive ? Do people come back at you and go ?

Chinny Ukata 1:05:11

that's not true yeah , those sort of people are not generally the target audience , but you know , it is unfortunately common that you would get negative reviews or emails relating to the topics that we cover , saying that we're complaining when we're actually highlighting things that need to be brought to the forefront of discussions and conversations . But those people are in the minority . We have got an excellent listening community who are very supportive , so thankfully those sort of comments are kept to a minimum .

Sam Sethi 1:05:44

Thank God we know all about Henry VIII , because that's the important stuff . Well done , British history . Now I mean looking at the next step for you and astrid . Then , what would you say to doing video ? I mean , at the moment you're of audio first podcast . Would video be the next thing that you guys look at ?

Chinny Ukata 1:06:06

yeah , we have spoken about it . It would be great to check and see what other kind of media forms we can move into . You know , a dream of ours would be to do some kind of documentary style visual presentation about some of the topics that we cover and just kind of bring those audio topics to life a bit more . So that's definitely a dream of us as huge documentary fans . If we were able to do something like that , covering the continent , would be amazing .

Sam Sethi 1:06:33

Have you been approached by bigger production companies since you won the award or in the past , even before you won the award ? Because I think , if you want to grow to the next level , it feels like being independent and then going under the wing of a larger organisation with deeper pockets , better marketing opportunities , let's say that feels like the next natural stage . Is that something that you've been approached or something that you'll be keen to do ?

Chinny Ukata 1:06:59

it's definitely something that we'd be interested in doing . As we say , it's great being an independent podcast , as we have our full control and we know we're part of a small sort of network that we're part of . But I guess , as you say , to get to that step , change would require more marketing and visibility , which you know we'd love to have the opportunity to spread the message to a wider audience . It's been great that we've also been approached by publishing company . So we do have it's a continent the book available , which covers a lot of similar topics to what we speak about in the podcast , in that it goes in depth about each country within the continent . So it's great to have that recognition from publishers . So , yeah , we just have to wait and see what could happen as a result , but our ultimate goal is to get this message and the topics that we cover out to as many people as possible .

Chinny Ukata 1:08:04

Would you venture into live audiences ? Is that something that would excite you both ? And then we covered a film that looked at . It's called Aya Capitano , where we looked at , you know , really part of the reclaiming our narratives with the Black History Month , reclaiming that narrative about the journey from African countries across the Sahara Desert to the Mediterranean and ultimately say Italy , for example , which was in that film . Quite often that story is just misinterpreted and vinalised a lot in the British press in particular . So this was an opportunity for our audiences who were interested in the film , but also audiences that are interested in our podcast , to get together , watch the film , have a great post-film discussion about this topic and , yeah , we found that having this sort of film club has worked out great for us and it would also be great to venture into live shows if we can . So , yeah , starting with events but moving into that eventually now guests .

Sam Sethi 1:09:04

Have you had guests on the show before ?

Chinny Ukata 1:09:06

yes , absolutely so . We were lucky enough to have kahinde andrews on our show whilst we're still ready to be young , so maybe about two years ago . So he's a really lovely guy . We had him on the show just because his books really spoke to us in terms of what we do , and we have had various guests . For example , there was a film called no U-Turn and again it was a documentary that covered the journey from Nigeria to Morocco , where you kind of then just wait in situ for that trip across the Mediterranean . So we've had the director on as well , where we discuss those topics . We've also had journalists that have covered the migrant crisis as well . So , yeah , anybody that kind of is doing something that we'd like to highlight or is similar to what we cover . We like to have guests on from time to time . Who would be your ?

Sam Sethi 1:09:56

ultimate guest .

Chinny Ukata 1:09:59

Ooh , this is an interesting one . You know somebody like David Oneshoga and he's quite you know he's always having demystifying histories , particularly that we have around the very pertinent topic around empire . He's brilliant is , yeah , having um him on on the show to really like go into detail some of his thoughts and opinions , and that would be great I have one guest for you . Yeah .

Sam Sethi 1:10:30

David Lammy . He's got to be your guest . Come on , I mean first black foreign secretary for Great Britain . I think you would have him on the floor because I think he will be so torn between what he actually really believes , what he's going to say as a government . I mean , I've heard him speak when he wasn't the foreign secretary and I know what he would say when he's now the foreign secretary , so I'd love you to have him on the show . I think that would be the ultimate guest personally . Now one last thing how do you make money from your podcast ? Are you sponsored ? Are you taking advertising ? What's the way that you keep the show going ?

Chinny Ukata 1:11:13

Yeah , we do have a great podcast network and yeah , it's a supportive network . We're able to decide what we would feel comfortable with advertising . Just because of the sensitive nature of our topic , it would feel quite hypocritical to turn around and advertise something that kind of goes against what we speak about . So , yeah , we do have some advertising . Again , we have our events that we put on , that we're growing , so that could potentially be something else . And of course , we do have our book community as well . So , yeah , it's been good opportunities so far .

Sam Sethi 1:11:48

And if there's one thing you could change , what would it be ? I mean , if you had the magic wand and you could do one thing , what would you change ?

Chinny Ukata 1:11:56

I think we'd probably just want to do this full time three kids , three words because when we first thought about the show and we'd have loved to do it every week and all the time , with the breaks of course , but it's just quite challenging being in the podcast and with the frequency so thankfully we had been able to record a multitude of episodes and if we are unavailable , like as we're traveling to Peru right now and planning and everything , we're able to reward our consistency with some pertinent reruns . But it would be great to be able to just do this all the time that would be lovely .

Sam Sethi 1:12:35

You know it was just a . It's a mad left field thought for you , but I think , given how big africa is as a continent , most people don't understand that the the map of the world that we currently see is a false map of the world . Africa is four or five times bigger than it is currently on the map . It's just , the europeans didn't want to have an inferiority complex , so they made Africa small and Europe big , oh dear . But that aside , drilling down into individual countries in a more depth nature , maybe you could start a network of podcasts . So it's a continent . It's Nigeria , it's Ethiopia , it's whatever you know like . The rest is politics and the rest is entertainment . I just wonder whether you thought about bringing other voices into your podcast .

Chinny Ukata 1:13:27

Yeah , that's a really interesting point as well , actually , and it reminds me we had Hazel Naginda , who is based in Uganda . She raises awareness about climate change within her country and the wider continent , so that's something that we feel is not really highlighted , because we talk about climate change . Unfortunately , those within the continent are bearing the consequences for what they didn't do , as they are the lowest-emitting countries . So being able to have the opportunity to highlight her work has been great . So , again , that's something that you know . If we had the opportunity to highlight the work that people are doing within their countries and the wider effects on the continent , it would be great .

Sam Sethi 1:14:06

Now last question . Then you must have taken your parents to go and see the Spotify billboard in Leicester Square . What was that like ? I mean , what was it like for you just to see both of you up there ?

Chinny Ukata 1:14:19

It was really , really , really surreal , to be honest . We were geared there and ready to take the photo as soon as it came on the screen . But it's a wonderful moment for us , just because we think , you know , we've been doing this for four years . We've been , you know , working hard at it , initially with no funding whatsoever , we didn't know anybody in the industry , and to sort of get that validation from the wider community has just been so lovely . It's given us signals that you know what , keep going . It's been really encouraging for us . I finished a script last week because I was so , like fueled by it . I was like , yes , I'm gonna write up this episode , you know , and you just , it just gives you the fuel needed for us to to keep going . So we'll . Especially when we're in peru , we're buoyed by what's happened , so we're so excited and then , following that event , we'll just be all guns blazing and ready to go for the next part , the next recordings that we have no , now I can imagine it .

Sam Sethi 1:15:20

It gives you that feel . And and I keep saying the last question , but this will be what is your one bit of advice to somebody now you know if you could go back to the younger self four years ago ? Or to a friend who maybe says you know , chini , I want to start a podcast . What's the one bit of advice you'd give them ?

Chinny Ukata 1:15:42

it's really about the passion and the consistency we would say , because it's very easy to you know , three episodes in four episodes . It will not have a regular cadence of recording or episodes that it's very easy to then sort of fall off . Particularly as we know , in 2020 was an interesting year for many reasons and a lot of people did start podcasts right because it was something to do , but then it actually got quite difficult to to maintain and that's really where the the challenge is and you start to then see those podcasts . That holds because if you are thinking , oh gosh , you know I've got to do this again , but if you do have that passion behind that eagerness and wanting to get the message out , that would definitely help with the consistency aspects of things , chinny and astrid over in peru .

Sam Sethi 1:16:28

Congratulations one more time . Enjoy the podcast award , the independent podcast award . I mean mean , I'm expecting that you're going to be entering a few other awards as well , maybe .

Chinny Ukata 1:16:41

Hopefully . Let's see I'm excited to be next year , for sure .

Sam Sethi 1:16:44

Wonderful . Take care , speak to you soon .

Speaker 2 1:16:46

Thank you so much From your daily newsletter , the Pod News Weekly Review .

James Cridland 1:16:52

Other awards are going on , of course . The winners of the Signal Awards were announced this week as well . The Canadian Podcast Awards are now open for entry . If you're in Canada A and you would like to enter that , you can find out more about it on the Canadian Podcast Awards website . German and Canadian , you are fluent , you are , I'm making friends . The Political Podcast Awards is open for entry now .

James Cridland 1:17:16

This is in the UK , which I think is interesting . The rest is politics , of course , doing incredibly well . The news agent's doing incredibly well as well , so somebody has spotted an opportunity . This takes place on January the 29th . Weirdly , it's sponsored by Google . This takes place on January the 29th . Weirdly , it's sponsored by Google . Who knows what Google is doing ? But given that Google don't even have a podcast app , I don't really understand why Google is sponsoring it . But anyway , if you know , then that would be nice to know . They had some budget left over , that's all , yes , or just that nobody at Google knows what they're doing ? Apparently , a third of all code written at Google is now written by AI , which explains a lot . In Australia , there is also a new industry award , which I think is thellan AI Corey Layton , friend of the show , recognising the ad agency which has spent the most money in podcasting ads .

Sam Sethi 1:18:21

Surely this is an April Fool . That isn't an award .

James Cridland 1:18:25

That isn't an award , it's a thanks very much for spending some money with us . Nonsense , so anyway had to buy an award .

James Cridland 1:18:35

So , anyway , all of that is going on . There's also a very good post by Bandrew Scott , who has written about what he calls the problem with podcast conferences , and I actually completely agree with a lot of what he says . Don't make them too expensive , but , apart from anything else , don't host them or don't hold them on a weekday , because quite a lot of people who you want to attract actually have day jobs and they can't take a day off . So at least have some of it over a weekend . I completely agree , andrew Scott . So , yes , up for that and talk to us about PodCamp 2.0 . Yeah .

Sam Sethi 1:19:14

I mean , it's coming along nicely . So the website's now live at PodCamp 2.live Tickets are free . We are seeing ticket sales happening rapidly . We are limited in space , so if you are going to grab a ticket , please make sure you are going to come to the event . Don't just grab one because it's free , and we will be announcing more sponsors and more speakers in the next couple of weeks . But yeah , it's all good . Now PodCamp really is what Bandrew Scott was talking about was . You know , we don't want to make it expensive . Free is the best way of doing that and we are going to be talking about all the stuff we generally talk about on this show . You know the podcasting 2.0 stuff , but it is going to be a show and tell . It's not going to be a , you know , hypothetical . We are going to demo a lot of the stuff . So , and finally , one of the things , if you can't make the event , we will broadcast it live across all the podcasting 2.0 apps as well .

James Cridland 1:20:07

Well , good luck with that and thank you I believe to Captivate and also to Podcast Movement for supporting PodCamp .

Sam Sethi 1:20:16

Indeed .

James Cridland 1:20:17

It's on the 20th of May 2025 , in case you're wondering and it's in London . That there , london town , and if you happen to be there for that , then of course you can go to the podcast show as well , which is happening the next day or the next couple of days . So there's a good

The Tech Stuff

James Cridland 1:20:35

thing , too . The . Tech Stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review . Yes , it's time for the stuff you'll find every Monday in the Pod News newsletter . Here's where Sam talks technology . There's a bunch of new things . What's up first , Sam ?

Sam Sethi 1:20:50

Captivate friends of the show have relaxed . It feels like they've relaxed limits . I don't know what that means , but they've relaxed limits . It sounds good . It's private podcasts . Now , what are private podcasts , james ?

James Cridland 1:21:02

Private podcasts are things are podcasts that you might want to pay for . There you go Ties it into that conversation that we were having earlier on . Or indeed , perhaps if you are an employee for I don't know British Gas and British Gas has made a podcast for its employees you might want to end up using it for that sort of thing . Essentially , you could have , I think , something like five private podcasts and you could have I don't know 500 subscribers or something . They've got rid of all of those limits now , so now you can have up to 100 private podcasts , up to 50,000 private subscribers , so it's basically no limits there at all anymore . It's a really useful tool if you are , you know , powering a large company .

James Cridland 1:21:51

I think Uber had a private podcast here in Australia for a while , which made a ton of sense because , of course , you were getting people driving from one job to another and they could catch up with a podcast and hear , you know what the big shows were going to be that week and where to go to get the most amount of money . So I think it's a good plan . How do you issue ?

Sam Sethi 1:22:10

a private podcast . Is it no RSS feed that's basically distributed other than privately , as in ? You get the URL , that's it .

James Cridland 1:22:18

So it's an RSS feed which has typically the way that these things work is it has a username and a password , or it has a particular address that is unguessable and you give that to each subscriber that wants to have a listen to that particular show . So essentially , they are private RSS feeds which are tied to an individual , and that's where you can hide content that you want to end up paying for . So this is the way that Supercast works and the way that Supporting Cast works and other things . Rsscom has been awarded a patent , which is very cool . It's for AI-driven , scalable ads . What it will do is it will take your voice or my voice . It'll replicate that , it'll replicate the style and it then allows people to write commercials and you know , essentially get me or you or anybody else to read those commercials automatically as part of a show . So it's a nice way of earning additional money , which is nice .

Sam Sethi 1:23:31

So how does this patent work ? Does it mean no one else can now replicate that service ? They've called it the market . Yes , that's how patents work . No , no , I'm just trying to clarify . I'm playing dumb idiot here .

James Cridland 1:23:45

Yes , no , that is how patents work . So , yes , so in this particular case , what it means is that , yeah , they have this patent for this particular AI-driven scalable ad . The patent is quite nicely written , actually , and it's worth a peek . What they've done with it is that they actually have a website that you can go and have a look at . It's not host-read ads , it's something slightly different , so they've called it ghost . G-o-s-t dot A-I , and ghostai is their website where you can go and find a little bit more . But essentially , it means a lot of time and cost savings for people like us reading all of those paid for promotions that we do , and also a lot of time and cost savings for brands as well , and that's maybe the important part of that as well .

Sam Sethi 1:24:42

So it's a separate service for RSS because it's not directly related to rsscom , then is it ?

James Cridland 1:24:47

No , so it's a service that any podcast hosting company could use , in fact , or indeed , you know , any podcast sales company could use if they wanted to . So it's a smart tool but also , you know , very nicely put together . So , yeah , so in terms of how that works , I know . How you know , I'm not , to be totally open , I'm not a big fan of patents , particularly patents in software , but I do know how much time and effort it takes to actually get a patent , and I know that Alberto and Ben have been working on this for years and years and years . So it's very good that they've finally got this patent through . And ghostai G-O-S-Tai is certainly worthwhile taking a peek at . If you're in podcasting and you want to work out how to offer this , I mean , it's a ready-made service that you can start using now .

Sam Sethi 1:25:47

Congratulations , chaps . Talking of rsscom , they've made improvements to its chapter creation and editing experience . It's also made improvements to its chapter creation and editing experience . It's also made changes to its podcast pages , uh , by adding filters , uh , for its analytic tools as well .

James Cridland 1:26:01

so , um yeah , very busy over at rsscom yes , pocket casts is now um accepting html transcripts . If you can't be bothered to do some proper transcripts , then um , html transcripts will now show up in a web view . And if you put an HTML transcript into your podcast but don't put an SRT or a VTT in there , then you get a slap leg from me because that's not the way that you do things . But if you have to do that , then Pocket Cast will now support that . They've also added a listening history feature , which is quite nice , which is currently on device only , but it will be available across all of your platforms shortly . You can find that in your profile as well .

James Cridland 1:26:42

And finally , google's Notebook LM . We mentioned that earlier . Unless I've edited it out , in which case we haven't mentioned that earlier , it has a competition now , a competitive solution from Facebook , from Meta's Notebook Llama . So Notebook LM now has Notebook Llama . It doesn't work quite as well , according to TechCrunch , but it is entirely open source . So my suspicion is that we will see a bunch of podcast hosting companies adding Notebook Llama to their service and allowing people to end up using that . But if you want to get to people to summarise a bunch of documents for you , then Notebook Llama is possibly the thing for you .

Sam Sethi 1:27:27

Yeah , and the reason it's not quite as good is the text-to-speech part is the poor part of what they've done . So the actual LLM part is actually on a par or even better than the one from Google . But the actual speech from the text is a very poor implementation and that's where it falls down . But that will be improved , I'm sure .

James Cridland 1:27:47

Yeah , I think Google has done a great job , whatever we might think of it . Google has done a great job with the speech in the Notebook , lm stuff . I mean , even to the point of people , you know , stopping and starting and lots of ums and pauses and things . It's a very clever system so , but you know , the fact that it's open source means that you can play around with it and maybe make that better . Maybe you can do a better job than meta software developers , who knows

Boostagram Corner

James Cridland 1:28:16

? Boostergram Corner on the Pod News Weekly Review .

James Cridland 1:28:22

Yes , it's our favourite time of the week . It's Boostergram Corner . We have had , though , some boosts as well haven't we .

Sam Sethi 1:28:29

We have Cy Jobling . He is the first person , by the way , to get his tickets to PodCamp 2 Live . Literally , I published it and I think 30 seconds later he bought two tickets . He was mad . He put great episode , diving behind the scenes of Diary of a CEO , understanding the thought process and learnings from its success . So thank you , Si , for that .

James Cridland 1:28:51

Yes , thank you , and it was a good episode last week . It's well worth going back for an extended interview with Jack Sylvester . 100 sats from George Darm . Now I feel vindicated for going through three kinds of chairs before settling on one for our studio . That's another comment about Jack Sylvester from last week . You can find that in the feed if you've not already had a listen . Thank you , george . 1,701 sats from Bdenzi Love the idea of the Nosta integration . This is from the interview that we did a couple of weeks ago with Oscar Merry from Fountain . He says I kind of prefer ActivityPub but I like what this functionality can bring us . And you know I listened to that whole interview actually on a plane . After I'd edited it and , you know , published it and everything else Five days later I thought I should probably have listened to that interview and it was a fascinating interview , actually really interesting . The full version is in the Pod News Extra feed , which I would recommend . But yeah , oscar is quite persuasive about the benefits of Nostra within , certainly his app .

Sam Sethi 1:30:05

Yeah , no , I don't disagree with anything Oscar said . I think Oscar has got a very clear vision of what he wants to do , and I think the micropayment element of Nostra is very powerful , as in you can publish something out to Nostra and then , without having to have an account on Fountain , you can actually make a payment back in . I get it . It's a closed loop of payments , right ? My concern right now is what's your MPub number , is how you have to onboard , and it is just too confusing . So I think it has lots of potential , but I personally think it's only good so far for geeks who understand it .

James Cridland 1:30:45

And talking about that , 3,333 sats from Chad F Brilliant boost , chad . Who says brilliant boost . Chad , who says nice update about what Nostacolon NPUB1V5UFYH4LKESLGXXCCLG is doing from Nostacolon NPUB1UNFMT himself . I mean , yes , exactly . It's not really the world's most easy to understand feature , is it ? But I think , yes , chad F , thank you , good point Well made .

James Cridland 1:31:23

Cole McCormick won 777 sats , which is an angel boost . He is boosting us all the way back from Sandy Wilhelm . Have we read this out ? I'm Wilhelm . Have we read this out ? I'm not sure we have read this out .

James Cridland 1:31:37

He says the most interesting thing Sandy from YouTube said all the way back then was in regards to YouTube music and main YouTube . People start , stop and pick up in different places . She said Makes me think as a producer of podcasts , it's smart to have video as 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 content , then it only helps , not hinders . Yes , cole , I agree onto the YouTube platform so that you can consume it as people do in their twos and threes on that platform . So yes , completely agree , cole .

James Cridland 1:32:21

Thank you for that , and RW Nash 1,225 sats . How about now , sir ? I think he was testing whether or not I'd managed to fix my umbrella . It seems that I have , so that's good news . So all excellent . Thank you for that , sam , and I share all of the revenue from this podcast , all of the value that you give us . So thank you very much . If it's valuable to you , then hit that boost button or , even better , become a power supporter and give us a monthly amount of money . Like these fine people . We call them the Magnificent Eleven , and we will continue to call them the Magnificent Eleven until we get another one Neil Velio from Podnose . Very good to meet Neil for the first time last week , so that was excellent . Also Rocky Thomas , jim James , david Marzell , cy Jobling , rachel Corbett , dave Jackson , mike from the Rogue Media Network it was good to speak to the network earlier on this week as well . Also Matt Medeiros , marshall Brown and Cameron Mull Much appreciated . Maybe change to the magnificent 12 , then weeklypodnewsnet is the website address for you to go to . That's weeklypodnewsnet .

Sam Sethi 1:33:36

Yeah , we won't call it the dirty dozen .

James Cridland 1:33:38

Oh well , you know , I mean , yeah , the magnificent dozen , the baker's dozen .

Sam Sethi 1:33:42

Oh , the baker's dozen when it's 13 . No , the baker's dozen is 13 . Yes , yes that'll be .

Sam and James's Week

James Cridland 1:33:48

Anyway , what happened for you this week , sam ? Well , for you this week , sam ? Well , you and I were in copenhagen . We didn't meet up , but no , we didn't . That was weird , wasn't it ? Yes , well , you were busy and I was on the family thing . You sent me a , a whatsapp with your actual location on it . Yes , and I sent you a whatsapp with my actual location on it . Uh , so we could have met up very easily , but , um , yeah , we were super busy , so at least I was . So , uh , yes , yeah , well , I was .

Sam Sethi 1:34:14

I was super busy , basically eating and drinking . So , yeah , and I went cold water swimming . God help me . Yes , it was very , very , very cold . It seems that the danes like to have little pools along various locations where you just strip off and then go and dive into very , very cold water . Yes , they're going water yes , they're all . And then go in a sauna straight after .

James Cridland 1:34:34

They're all mad , aren't they , the Danes ? But still .

Sam Sethi 1:34:38

What else ? Oh I , yeah , no , I Basically I'm retiring . Steve Bartlett called me the goat in response to Jack Sylvester's interview .

James Cridland 1:34:46

So that's it . I'll take it you and Steve Bartlett sitting in a tree , sitting in a tree . Yeah , yes , yes .

Sam Sethi 1:34:52

Who knows what's going on there , hey , and other things we did . You and I were talking about the location tag we were messaging each other and your update to the location tag suggestion where you've got rel equals creator and rel equals subject so that you can put whether it was recorded somewhere or the subject was the podcast subject . We've implemented that now and you've done that in the Pod News Daily . So if you're going to have a look at the Pod News Daily , you'll be able to see that James has recorded the shows in places like London Heathrow or cafes in Stockholm or wherever he's recorded .

James Cridland 1:35:32

Yes , it was quite fun to add that to the RSS feed , so that is all available and all available right now for anyone . That's a very cool thing , so , yes , it's worthwhile taking a peek at that . I would love more feedback on the expanded location tag . I know it's something that a lot of people are very excited by and it will be very interesting if there's a chance of getting a little bit more feedback from that . Rob Greenlee had Matt Cundall on the new media show .

Sam Sethi 1:36:05

And they were talking about the location tag and Matt , being from radio , was talking about he'd love to see a map of something called live and local podcasts , and I said last week , I think , on the show that one of the goals for true fans is to map the locations onto a google map or a map and then have filters by category and by keyword but also show live podcasts , and so we are trying to get to this point . But if you want to hear what Matt had to say , I do recommend listening to him and Rob Greenlee last week .

James Cridland 1:36:46

Should be perfectly possible with the location tag and the live tag .

Sam Sethi 1:36:50

You must have seen it . There's an app called Radio Garden which does this for radio stations . If you want to see radio stations , around the world . So I wonder if we can get a podcast version of that same function .

James Cridland 1:37:03

Yes , it'd be dead easy to do with the stuff which is already in those feeds . So yeah , be , that would be a nice thing .

Sam Sethi 1:37:12

The other thing that we uh pushed out live this week was an ai filter . So we were talking earlier about google's notebook lm and we talked about last week or the week before listen notes , basically detecting uh , ai , uh podcasts . So we've created an ai filter capability . So so if we detect host equals AI , you can go to your user settings and disable those if you want A bit like the explicit filter .

Sam Sethi 1:37:41

I know that people say , well , no one's going to actually register themselves as AI . Well , okay , that's fine . But for those people that do , we will allow you to have that feature and we are building a detector as well to try and work out if the host is AI driven . Yeah , very good . Two last things very quickly . Then . We opened our doors to TrueFan , so now you don't need to log into an account or create an account to listen to a podcast or a clip . That was based on feedback , and we've enabled offline listening now as well , so you can now download to your heart's content all the podcasts you want to listen to . But one difference to what we've done with our player is you can still stream or boost while you're offline , and we do online syncing as well excellent .

James Cridland 1:38:27

Well , that makes a bunch of sense . So I'm pleased that you've um , I'm pleased that you've added that , because the amount of listening offline is pretty high . So what's happened for you , james ? Well , I've been going around the world . If you would like to see what I have been doing and some photographs from my travels around the Nordic countries , then you are more than welcome .

James Cridland 1:38:47

Jamescridlandnet slash blog is where you can go and see a little bit of that is where you can go and see a little bit of that . You will also see in there a review of the Scandic Hotel in Copenhagen , which I wasn't a particular fan of , but wasn't a particular fan for a couple of reasons , and possibly the main reason for people who listen to this show is that I think the entire hotel so the hotel had 652 rooms in it , I think and the entire hotel , I think was running IP lights . So when you pressed the light switch in your room , I think it was calling a Commodore Amiga in the basement or something that would then very slowly look and worked out which light you meant to turn on and then would eventually turn that particular light on . So , as a result , it took a couple of seconds to turn any light on or off in your room , and do you know how ? You turn the light off again , you press the button again . So , of course , what happens is you go to the button , you press the button , the light doesn't turn on . You press the button again and what the controller has now been told is to turn the light off , so the light never turns on in the first place and so you can't get the lights to work . And it was the most bewildering hotel I've ever been in , for the lights and for various other things as well .

James Cridland 1:40:08

I will leave the excitement to you if you go to jamescridlandnet slash blog to take a peek at . It was also very good to catch up on Thursday night last week with Nick from Hindenburg and Preben from Hindenburg Preben I'm going to call him the lead coder of the platform and Nick is more the business brains but super good to catch up with those two to know a little bit about where the future of Hindenburg is going and , yeah , and just basically to catch up and have a large amount of hideously expensive Danish beer with them . They've got a pub directly opposite their office , so that's always a good thing . Nice , nice . And that's it for this week . All of the stories covered in this podcast were taken from the Pod News Daily newsletter , which you can subscribe to at podnewsnet . It's free , and there are longer interviews in the Pod News Extra podcast as well . You'll find that , wherever you get your podcasts , you can support this show by streaming search .

Sam Sethi 1:41:14

You can give us feedback using Buzzsprout fan mail , which you'll find a link in our show notes , and you can send us a boostagram or become a power supporter , like the Magnificent Eleven at weeklypodnewsnet .

James Cridland 1:41:27

Our music is from Studio Dragonfly , our voiceover is Sheila Dee , and we're hosted and sponsored by Buzzsprout . Start podcasting , keep podcasting . Get updated every day . Subscribe to our newsletter at podnewsnet .

Chinny Ukata 1:41:41

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