James Cridland: 0:00

It's Friday, the 15th 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: 0:14

I'm James Cridland, the editor of Pod News in West Hollywood, darling.

Sam Sethi: 0:18

Oh, look at you and I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO of True Fans. Yeah, still back here, still in cold, wet, rainy England, yeah, thanks.

James Cridland: 0:26

You can see who gets the budget In the village, where everybody knows everybody else In the chapters today. Oh, it's episode 200 of Pod News Weekly. How exciting of the Pod News Weekly review. That's very exciting. Happy 200th, sam Indeed, well done. Yes, I think this is episode 200, but this podcast used to be called something else and so we did a whole year of that as well. So, yeah, there's a thing Also Spotify for Podcasters is no more. Welcome to Spotify for Creators, which is why I'm here. A new Podcasters Hall of Fame Board of Governors have been announced plus.

Matt Campion: 1:05

I'm Matt Campion. I'm the co-founder and creative director of Spirit Studios and I'll be on later in the pod to talk about our new IP360 system.

James Cridland: 1:15

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

Sam Sethi: 1:29

So, Judith, come on. You've hinted that you're in West LA. Why are you in?

James Cridland: 1:33

West LA. Yeah, so West Hollywood, if we're going to be strictly accurate. You know, in the hills, overlooking the. It's very strange. I'm in a, uh, I'm in a hotel, um which is English themed, and, um, there isn't an elevator in here, there's a lift, which is really confusing with my head. Um, yes, I'm here for the? Um, the big Spotify announcement. Um, that was earlier on this week, um, Gustav Söderström and Daniel Eck announcing a bunch of new features for creators in an event that they called Now Playing and perhaps getting rid of the podcast word forever, because Spotify for Podcasters is no more. It's now called Spotify for Creators. Sam.

Sam Sethi: 2:19

There was a section in there that I wanted to ask you about. It says this new partner programme that they're launching, which again probably need to explain better, but it says you can earn money from podcast audio ads, both on and off the platform. I didn't understand the off the platform part.

James Cridland: 2:35

So when you host with Spotify for podcast sorry, spotify for creators then obviously your podcast is available everywhere and they will drop programmatic ads in your show if you want them to. And, of course, those work when you're listening on Spotify, but also those work when you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Overcast or Pocket Casts or whatever it is that you want to True fans, obviously, and indeed other podcast apps are available. Indeed, other podcast apps are available. But, yes, so that's the standard way that you can earn money out of podcasts and that is something that Spotify are offering in their new Spotify partner programme for audio ads. But then they've got an additional thing around video as well.

Sam Sethi: 3:20

So it says here James, early next year, revenue based on video podcasts that you stream, you'll be able to earn that without any ads in the actual podcast. How are they going to do that?

James Cridland: 3:31

Yeah, so it's the amount of money that premium users are paying Spotify. They are sharing some of that with creators. They were really touting it. It was weird. It was a bit of Adam Curry that they were saying. Basically, they were saying that you can make the sort of content that you want to make, not what your advertisers want to make, which I thought. You've been listening to the Podcasting 2.0 show, so that was interesting.

James Cridland: 4:00

The way that creators will earn money on the Spotify video platform is just how much of your video podcast is streamed by the premium users of Spotify, and there are hundreds and hundreds of millions of those. You get a little bit of money for how much your podcast is streamed, so that's a good thing, and what it also therefore means is that the videos will appear uninterrupted and ad-free for those users. If I'm reading between the lines correctly, then the videos will have ads if you're on the Spotify free tier, although there are a vanishingly small amount of those. But that is very clearly a shot against YouTube. That's very clearly saying we are going to be the host of video from here on in. We're going to be the host of video shows, and that is why I think they had a bunch of different creators here, not very much press here not very much press, but a load of creators that were here.

Sam Sethi: 5:13

So, James, this video sharing of revenue, then this appears to be using listen time and not download. Does YouTube offer an ad-free program like this?

James Cridland: 5:17

Yeah, so YouTube does, and I think this is interesting because there are parallels with YouTube and there are also differences with YouTube. Obviously, youtube has no audio monetization tools. Everything that YouTube does is video, and they made great play of the fact that you can listen with your screen off on Spotify, and that's a good thing, which, of course, you can't do on YouTube unless you're paying for YouTube. Of course, you can't do on YouTube unless you're paying for YouTube. You can't actually listen to any videos with your screen off on YouTube, because that's apparently a premium service, so you've got that kind of side of it as well. But YouTube does offer money if your video is getting consumed by people who have paid for YouTube premium. So it's much the same sort of thing. I think the difference is, if I've understood this correctly, is that your video might have ads in it, for, you know, non-paying users. You're not going to get any ad revenue from that, but you are going to get nice payments from the premium users who are streaming your video. That's a good thing, and that obviously means that your videos won't be peppered full of ads that Spotify have sold. You can still put your own ads in there, of course, which is a nice thing.

James Cridland: 6:51

The difference, I suppose, is when you're eligible, because YouTube has an eligibility of 1,000 all-time subscribers. Now, 1,000 subscribers is quite difficult, but you've got to hit 1,000 all-time subscribers. You also have to hit 4,000 streamed hours in the last year, which sounds a fair amount, but actually that's relatively doable if you've got a long show. If you've got a short show, like the Pod News Daily, no chance. But if you've got a longest show, then that's doable. Spotify have different eligibility rules. Spotify, firstly, it's 2,000 unique Spotify users in the last month, so it's not around subscribers, it's around total users and that's quite a big number. And secondly, instead of 4,000 streamed hours in the last year, Spotify wants 10,000 streamed hours in the last month. So it's going to be, I think, quite hard for many people to qualify. So I think it's going to be very much the top of the range in terms of video creators actually being able to earn money out of this.

Sam Sethi: 7:59

I mean, if I was Spotify, I'd start high and come low. You don't want to go in too low and then find that you have to cut the programme.

James Cridland: 8:07

Yeah, no, absolutely. And you know, and obviously the other part of the eligibility is you have to be hosted on Spotify for creators. You can't do this if you're hosted with Buzzsprout or with you know anybody else. You could possibly get away with just uploading the video to Spotify for creators and still audio podcasting with someone else, but obviously you won't earn any money from the audio side of it.

Sam Sethi: 8:36

What sort of money can you earn, though? I mean? What isn't clear to me is how much you might be able to earn from this. Is it 50p in a Mars bar bar or is it $10,000?

James Cridland: 8:46

Well, they showed, of course, very fictitious, made-up screenshots of their platform because you obviously get lots of reporting as well which they showed off, and they showed off monthly revenue of around $17,000. But there again, we've got no idea how big that show was and it was very clear that it was just a fictitious thing. I mean, you know, if the going rate at the moment is somewhere in the region of 20 or 30 US dollars per thousand, then you can imagine how much money you're going to make off that. What we don't see is we don't see much of the detail in terms of what Spotify's take is going to be. We don't quite know how the Rev share is going to work, how much money you will get per premium user stream. We don't actually have any of that data yet, and the main guts of this won't be up and running until early next year. So it's a good announcement, but I don't think we've got all of the detail quite yet that we want to.

James Cridland: 9:59

And, of course, when you do upload video onto the Spotify platform, it gets rid of the audio, so you only have that video file and if you're listening in audio, you're just listening to the audio track of the video. If you see what I mean. So you can't actually have two slightly different edits in there or anything. So there's lots of questions. I think that creators are looking to get answered. But I mean, it was certainly a very impressive, you know, event and they certainly want to woo as many creators as they possibly can into being part of this now I can see why they're doing it aka youtube and I can see they're making it as attractive as possible.

Sam Sethi: 10:48

What I don't understand is we talked about last week or the week before, you know, and a play based on the iab. In apple it could be 60 seconds, in spotify 30 seconds or vice versa. And if this is based on streaming itself, which again I think you mentioned, you know you could have three streams, or you know and be it would actually say that's three plays. So a lot of ambiguity in my mind about the, the qualification bar, you know, if it's, do I, do I start bar? Do I start a podcast and I'm listening to it and then that qualifies it to be a rev share? Or how long do I have to listen for the rev share to be actually allocated to that creator? I just can't see where the detail is.

James Cridland: 11:37

Yeah, we've not really got too much of that detail quite yet. I mean to be fair, there isn't very much detail in terms of how YouTube works. Now. We don't even know what a play is on YouTube. They've not actually ever published that. So I suspect that it's going to be much the same for the Spotify platform. You know as well on that. But I think certainly, you know, it'll be a little bit of wait and see until we get a little bit more information in, maybe January, early February, and then obviously we'll then have to wait for some of the larger creators, you know, to end up actually using it and reporting back.

James Cridland: 12:21

But there was certainly no shortage of creators here yesterday. I mean, you know Jack Davenport was here from Goldhanger, your mate Stephen Bartlett, you know he was there, your biggest fan. So you know and it's surprisingly, I think, really leaning into the fact that it's available in the US, the UK, australia and Canada, really leaning into that they had a lot of UK folk, so it was very strange hearing lots of. I think most YouTube creators are very plummy and posh An awful lot of those accents. Here he says with his plummy and posh accent so yeah, so they very clearly want to woo all of those creators and make sure that all of those creators you know feel, you know, as happy and as comfortable moving on to Spotify as possible.

Sam Sethi: 13:21

I thought they did one other thing that was quite cool. Actually, They've said they will now allow you to also upload video clips and video thumbnails.

James Cridland: 13:30

Yes, I think that that is a very smart thing. Headliner, who do the video for this show, have also been working with Spotify, apparently, and have you know some interesting tools to actually show in terms of how that might work for you? But yes, I think the idea is there that as you're skimming through, particularly on a smart TV or something like that, then you get nice fancy clips for every episode if you want to. I mean again, it would be fantastic if that was a format within the alternate enclosure tag in OpenRSS. That's probably not going to happen. Well, that's definitely not going to happen. Not going to happen from Spotify.

Sam Sethi: 14:11

It doesn't happen from most podcasting 2.0 hosts.

James Cridland: 14:15

I mean, I have to say I had a sit down with a senior person at Spotify yesterday. I was telling them about the pod roll tag and telling them about how many people are using that and how useful that is for discovery and things, and he genuinely leant forward in his chair and was interested and wanted to find out more information about that. And the pod roll tag as it currently stands will work perfectly for Spotify. So I wouldn't give up hope and he could certainly see the benefit of an algorithm-free recommendation tool. You know as well. But yes, I think these video clips.

James Cridland: 14:56

You know video is a. You know, as we've said in this show before, video is a complicated thing because actually uploading massive, great files is not necessarily a good plan. Podcast hosts don't really want it because it's very expensive, but actually from a user point of view, you don't really want your phone filled with massive, great, big video files, so you really want to start streaming them and then you wade into all kinds of complication around supporting codecs and supporting variable bit rates and all of that. So it's it's not a simple um, uh thing, but, um, you know great to see Spotify. You know diving into a few more tools and making their um their experience as good as possible.

Sam Sethi: 15:44

I mean we've enabled and I say we, true Fans enabled video uploads last week so you can now do that directly to True Fans. And yeah, you're right, we are experimenting with the size of files. We're experimenting with the different codecs as well. I mean Todd and Rob's show the new media show is 1.1 gig is what they use as a standard file for the one show. So, and I think you know, if you then stream that to, I don't know how many people might listen. That's a lot of content you're pushing out.

James Cridland: 16:20

I mean, if you're streaming that to just 1,000 people, then already you're in the terabyte range just for a relatively small show.

James Cridland: 16:30

If it was only a thousand people, which I'm sure it's not, I'm sure it's more the right plan in terms of a video. You know a video podcast, because you also end up having problems of you might wish to support AV1 as your video codec. Well, that's great, but AV1 won't play back on Apple phones, so therefore that's no good. So you might then want to turn over onto H.265, while H.265 has other problems on other devices. And so you know, that's why I think YouTube takes a video in all kinds of formats and makes, I think you know, 12 different versions of it, so that it works in different speeds on different devices and different works in different speeds on different devices, um and um, different um, you know, and on different surfaces as well. So I think it's it's just a very complicated thing, and either every single podcast app does all of that reformatting um or it's done in a different way. But I think, yes, it's um all all of a sudden adds a bunch of complication, you know, to it.

Sam Sethi: 17:46

Friend of the show, john McDermott from Calaroga Shark Media, did actually ask a couple of questions here. He said so what did Spotify for creators just tell us old timers, you know, who use audio podcasts? The good news, he says, is that the podcast and video are two different tabs now in spotify. And he said, uh, although he's still digesting the announcement, um, he's asking people, he's called them the podcast hall of famers. So, you know, I'll assume that he's asking some people. Uh, not us, not us. So okay, let's ignore that. No, not us us. If you post video to Spotify, is it still a podcast if it has no RSS?

James Cridland: 18:30

The old question yeah, the old question. Well, I think, and they funnily enough, they had some sessions and things that you could go and watch, and one of those sessions was called what Even Is a Podcast, and that got a few sniggers from the people around me, which I thought was funny. I didn't bother going because, of course, I already know what a podcast is. It's whatever the audience thinks it is. But I think, from this point of view, I think Spotify are trying to be YouTube.

James Cridland: 18:56

I think Spotify wants to have podcasts in their platform and podcasts have an audio association and that's all fine and good and uses RSS and all of that, and they also want to have shows in that platform as well. They want to have Mr Beast, they want to have Mr Balan, they want to have all of this sort of fun video content as well, and those I don't think you know. I mean the fact that they have just ignored the word podcast. They've it's not called Spotify for podcasters anymore, it's Spotify for creators. I think probably tells you that Spotify are more concerned with just getting as much content in as possible.

Sam Sethi: 19:41

Are they trying to deprecate the word totally? I mean, I looked at their marketing, and show is now the word that they use consistently and it looks like you know they want audio and video to be under the umbrella of the word show. Is this deliberate, do you think?

James Cridland: 19:59

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think I'm sure nothing is deliberate in terms of Spotify. It was an incredibly planned event and so if they're using the word show a lot, well, that is a more inclusive word because it does include, you know, things like Mr Beast, or you know things that don't necessarily I wouldn't necessarily call a podcast. You know there are a few people talking about. You know a podcast is just two people. You know having an interview in front of a camera, isn't it? And all that kind of stuff. I mean, you know it's going to be that existential question that we always get about what a podcast is. But I think, you know, on Spotify's part, they're just keen to get as much content as they possibly can and I think by just calling it podcasts, I think they're, you know, making it harder for themselves to get the range of content that they really want.

Sam Sethi: 20:58

I mean, you know again, just with my true fans, hat on. We called it creators very early on, in fact right from the beginning, not podcasters, um, because we knew that we would have music and we knew we would have audio books and other forms of content, so I went for the generic word creators and I know that some people didn't like that when we did it, but fundamentally, um, it's, it is an umbrella term that allows you to capture both podcasting and music in the same word.

James Cridland: 21:28

Well, yes, and I suspect you know I mean everybody copies from everybody else you are using the phrase creators, which Spotify appears to have helped itself to. Obviously, spotify has a follow button, not a subscribe button, which perhaps they've helped themselves to from Apple, but I mean Spotify seem to love you, sam, because right at the end of the video that is posted on their site, there is this Show up for your true fans with Spotify for creators. There they are talking about true fans, I know.

Sam Sethi: 22:06

Well done, mate yes.

James Cridland: 22:08

When are they buying you?

Sam Sethi: 22:09

I can't say, but you will be the first to know.

James Cridland: 22:15

After you presumably yeah Two chances.

Sam Sethi: 22:17

let me say Fat chance and no chance. Yeah, that's the chance. I've got.

James Cridland: 22:22

But, you know, fascinating. That was a weird sort of crowbar of the word true fans, you know, in there, which I thought was really funny, also really quite sort of, you know, impressive. I was there sitting just before Daniel Ek walks out on stage. They play this fancy video of, you know, spotify saying aren't we clever, we've done this and we've done that and we've done the other. And there was a little sort of blink and you miss it. Load of clips from the press, right in the centre of the screen. The biggest one of all was a clip from the Pod News newsletter with a logo.

James Cridland: 23:02

Yes, so that was quite weird me sitting there in my branded Pod News shirt, paid a whole $5 on Fiverr for that. So yeah, that was weird. So yeah, I mean, you know Spotify, I think, doing what all good people do and that's grabbing the ideas that they like and running with those.

Sam Sethi: 23:23

Just one question. I mean spotify want to still call themselves open. We know that's in a very much inverted commas. They talk about distributing everywhere. If you upload your video to spotify for creators and then they distribute your podcast for you, will they distribute the video as well within that?

James Cridland: 23:44

feed? No, no, I didn't think so either, but I just wanted to ask.

James Cridland: 23:54

No, it's going to be audio only. I think that's a technical choice. I don't think that's a choice of anything else. I think, as we were talking about the video there, it's just complicated, is video, so I think it's a technical choice. There was a really interesting bit.

James Cridland: 24:06

There was a session all around monetisation, and I went to sit in the audience.

James Cridland: 24:11

I was sitting next to Prithi from Spotify in Sydney and we watched the team from Spotify in LA, and Geoff Chow, the head of podcast studios at the Ringer, was asked what his favourite thing about podcasting was, and he firstly said that his favourite thing about podcasting was Bill Simmons because Bill Simmons happened to be in the audience and I think he was sucking up to his boss but then said that his favourite thing about podcasting was that podcasts are open, and I thought that was a really interesting thing to end up saying in this sort of event, because that video stuff, as you say, is most certainly not open. The podcasting side of it, though, still remains to be open. They are pulling feeds from other people, and if you host on Spotify for creators, then obviously you can be on all of these other platforms as well. So, yeah, I thought it was just very interesting that he would plump for open when he could have said anything else. You know intimate or you know all of the other normal tropes that you get.

Sam Sethi: 25:22

Now, of course, Spotify announced their financials. James, how did they do?

James Cridland: 25:27

Yes, they did Lots of financials. It was a good profitable quarter Not their first, but they've had others in the past but they are certainly going well. Record income, record gross margin of 31.1%, which is nice to see Revenue up by 21% year on year. It made $32 million profit in the quarter and it's on course to post a yearly profit for the first time. The number that I thought was most interesting actually was looking at their ad-supported revenue rather than just looking at their total revenue, which is up 21%. But that's people like you and me paying for the Spotify subscription.

James Cridland: 26:18

Their ad-supported revenue, which includes advertising and podcasts, grew 6% year on year. So that's rather a lot smaller. And their yield appears to be a problem because they have said that podcast advertising was driven by growth in impressions sold, so they've sold more ads. But they also use the phrase partially offset by softness in pricing, so they can't get as much money for the podcast ads that they're used to. So that's a yield issue which I think the industry has right now. So just a little bit of an amber warning light there. But, yeah, 640 million active users every month using it and, of course, the stock, the stock market loved it, um and so, yes, uh, all good numbers. I think yeah.

Sam Sethi: 27:08

Rocketed up. It went to $467. I mean, uh, an all time high was 473. Um, and yeah, it's market cap is just under. Um, well, it's 93 billion, which is pretty impressive, and you know, we at the beginning of the year, I think it was $192. I reckon it will hit over the 500 very quickly. Yeah, this is you know. They are now full steam ahead. By comparison, I looked at Meta's daily active users and YouTube's as well 3.29 billion sorry, that's also their monthly active users and 2.49 billion for YouTube. So you know, when you look at 640 million active every month from Spotify, they've got a way to go still so.

James Cridland: 27:58

Yeah, but also on the other side, YouTube Premium, the paid for services. Youtube really don't want to share that number and there's a good reason for that in that the last time they shared it it was just 80 million, and you compare that with the numbers from Spotify, which, from memory, I mean, you know, 400 million plus are paying for Spotify Premium every single single month um, they still have a long way to go to catch spotify up in terms of paid for users now, one of spotify's core strengths is their spotify everywhere model.

Sam Sethi: 28:35

I mean, daniel said it on stage as well and they've extended that. Uh, they've extended it to now allowing to share share podcasts, to TikTok, as well as music and audiobooks, and I think you can also go to Instagram and add from Instagram back into Spotify. This is one of their core strengths that they have multi-platform, multiple device capabilities.

James Cridland: 28:59

Yeah, indeed, in a way that YouTube also has, of course. But the fact that you have Spotify available on as many possible platforms as you do is very good news, I think, for creators. You know the fact that there is an Android TV or an Apple TV app. There's other apps available for other you know services. It works great. In the car, it works great, you know. I mean, I was on an Emirates plane the other week and it had bits of Spotify on the in-flight entertainment. But there's also Spotify on the in-flight entertainment on Delta Airlines and you know American Airlines and so on and so forth. They do an awful lot of these deals. So I think you know.

James Cridland: 29:41

One of the questions being asked yesterday was well, how much money are we? Well, how much are Spotify going to promote our stuff? What does this mean for promotion? Are Spotify going to promote our stuff more if we have signed up to this new deal with them? With them, and so I think you know again, valid questions there. But yes, spotify does an incredible job in making sure that its content is available all over the place.

Sam Sethi: 30:11

Now, moving on a little bit, looking at Edison Research. They released the top 50 podcasts in the US.

James Cridland: 30:19

No change, really, but anything else interesting in there yeah, no change, particularly, um, uh, interestingly how I built this, with guy raz making its debut at number 35. There's a reason for that debut in that it was promoted by wondery very seriously. It also got a feature in forbes. I think this is the first time that we've really seen a big change in the top 50 podcasts that Edison puts together because of, you know, something going on, apart from, of course, new Heights with Jason and Travis Kelsey, which is now at number 11, which is, I think, the highest it's ever been. So there's some, you know, some nice figures from there. You'll see the full list on the Pod News website. I should point out that most of the chart you know, over 20 of those shows are being hosted by Spotify's megaphone. So Spotify clearly having quite a stranglehold on that part of the industry as well, on that part of the industry as well.

James Cridland: 31:26

So Edison Research releasing its data, some new data from Analytics IQ which, after I dug a little bit, it turns out to be relatively old data. It's data from quarter one of this year. But they say that YouTube is the most popular place for podcast listening 59% of podcast listeners saying that they had listened to a podcast on it in the last three months. So you know, read into that what you will. 13% of people in this data said that they used Google Podcasts the most, and of course, we know that that closed in March in the US. So that's why I went back and checked and said are you sure about all of this?

James Cridland: 32:08

Also a ranker from PodTrack, new US rankers for October. And, as ever, those top publishers rankers also include YouTube podcast consumption as well. Interestingly, are consumed on YouTube 43% of their downloads and views, which I thought was really interesting. So Libsyn obviously working with a bunch of people, not just hosted on the Libsyn platform, but you know very clearly they are, you know, working alongside them on that platform as well. So, yes, I thought that that was interesting too, sam.

Sam Sethi: 32:57

Now again, one more report that I was reading on Pod News Daily was about the Podcast Marketing Academy, james.

James Cridland: 33:04

Yes, this is Jeremy N's thing, and they released their Podcast Marketing Trends Report for 2024. There's some really good data in here. It's just lots of data that you can use to compare your show with other shows and you can see. You know how many downloads you should be getting for the first week of your show and you know all of those sorts of numbers and things. It is, of course, the latest report to make note of the disruption caused this year by the Apple iOS 17 changes, which really only started taking effect November, december at the end of last year, and so therefore, this year there's been quite a knock on effect. But, yeah, some really interesting numbers. If you just want to benchmark your show against others, some really interesting numbers there. You'll also find a bunch of numbers as well on the podcast business journal, podcastbusinessjournalcom. Slash data.

Sam Sethi: 34:04

I'm going to start lobbying for make podcasting great again and the return of Apple's false downloads, because everyone's moaning about the Apple change, so let's just revert back to the good old days, when downloads were being falsely used to increase your advertising. Make podcasting great again.

James Cridland: 34:22

I don't believe that people are moaning about Apple's changes. I think that people are moaning about the fact that Apple just changed without telling anybody. I think that is the thing that people are moaning about.

James Cridland: 34:33

Anyway let's go with that. Other financials we've mentioned Spotify's Other financials have come out. This week iHeart released its quarter three 24 financials. Podcast revenue was up 11% year on year. It now accounts for 11.3% of the company's total, which I think is actually down. Accounts for 11.3% of the company's total, which I think is actually down. But the company is paying more in podcast revenue sharing, however, and iHeartMedia also laying off up to 500 people. There's a lot of people affected in the old business of radio which have been documented by Radio Insight. Amusingly, inside Radio radio's most trusted news source mentions nothing about any of these layoffs at all, but there again, they also mention nothing about the fact that they are owned by iHeartMedia.

Sam Sethi: 35:26

Ah, ok, that explains, it.

James Cridland: 35:29

That would explain that one. I do understand that there's been some cuts in some of the company's podcast businesses as well. By the way, talking about some of those podcast businesses, blog Talk Radio, which is one of iHeart's many podcast hosts that is going to close on January the 31st. It's currently owned by Triton, which is owned by iHeart. 3,200 people are on that platform. It's one of the oldest podcast hosts. It's one of the very first that did live streaming and it had a I think it had a patent for taking phone calls live on a podcast or something. So yeah, very interesting little company, launched in, as I say, january of 2006 and really neglected over the last 10 years or so. It finally dies at the end of January. A couple of other financials as well Sam.

Sam Sethi: 36:30

Yeah, Audio released their Q3 financialss. A company which makes an ad skipping radio and podcast app has thankfully said it's losing 1.9 a million dollars. Did I? Say thankfully sorry I shouldn't have said that, should I? Um and uh it's it says its company's in debt to 87 a million dollars. Clearly the uh idea isn't catching on um, and I suspect that it won't make q125 unless it raises another $10 million, which I can't see them doing pretty much.

James Cridland: 36:58

Yeah, I think you know Audia. I mean, you know there's then been a flurry of incomprehensible SEC notes where they're splitting shares or issuing new shares and all of this other magical ways of making money that doesn't really exist. You know, yes, never mind. And the New York Times has released its quarter three 24 financials One of the things you know. We mentioned that Spotify has definitely reversing out of the word podcasting. The New York Times, which is one of the biggest podcasters in the US, has only mentioned the word podcasting twice in the prepared remarks that they actually had. The one thing that they do say is that they began to experiment to make audio a more direct driver of subscriptions, with new paid offerings available through Spotify and Apple ie. They pulled all of their shows and put them behind the paywall. So you know, in terms of how the New York Times is doing overall as a company, it's always done pretty well, but I think podcasting does not appear to be one of the things that they are currently shouting about, which is a bit of a shame.

Sam Sethi: 38:11

Now talking of Spotify video, I noticed a couple of little tidbits about video related to other platforms. Video uploads on LinkedIn are growing at double digits as the platform makes a big play for creators. Again, here's another one making a video play. Any thoughts there?

James Cridland: 38:29

James. No, I mean, you know, interesting to see LinkedIn doing things on video. I'm sure it's still quite small, but we are hearing that LinkedIn and some other platforms are going with what I discover are called MGs minimum guarantees large, large, large MGs, which, of course, is the way that podcasting used to be two or three years ago, is not the way that podcasting is now. But LinkedIn and some of these other platforms appear to be now promising creators the earth to get their content onto their platforms. But you know yeah, I don't know about that YouTube also doing a lot of election stuff over the last week. Let's not mention the American election. In the UK, 967,000 people every week listen to podcasts but don't listen to any radio. I thought that was quite an interesting figure.

Sam Sethi: 39:30

That's probably me. That's what I mean.

James Cridland: 39:33

There are about 60 odd million people, obviously. In the UK, 12.6 million people listen to podcasts each week. Um but um. About a million of those don't listen to any radio, so that was interesting. Um and um, yes, but you know tons of uh, video and tons of um. I think they're called multi-screen shows, aren't they? Where they're available on lots of different platforms, as well as audio as well as video as well.

Sam Sethi: 40:04

One of the things that I was really surprised about with this now playing Spotify announcement was that they didn't replicate what Apple or Google or the other tech companies do, which was to broadcast it live on their own platform. I'm surprised that they didn't think oh, you know what, if you tune in to Spotify on the app, you can listen to the earnings call or you can listen to the new features or whatever it may be. Am I missing it or was it there?

James Cridland: 40:30

I don't think that Spotify can do live video. I don't think that they can do that. You might remember that the Rest Is Politics. Did a video, live video feed from the Spotify studios in New York City that was not available on Spotify, only Catch Up was. So I have a feeling that they can't do live video yet. Um, wouldn't that be interesting when they can, because doing if, if I was Mr Spotify, daniel Eck, I would be um building in uh paid for music gigs that you could watch. Watch a live music gig within Spotify. Why would you not do that? Um, of course, you might then be able to even lean into things like sport and you know big, you know comedy shows and all that kind of stuff in terms of live as well. But, yes, I'm not sure that they can do that.

Speaker 2: 41:25

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

James Cridland: 41:32

Talking about multi-screen shows, audio and video, which we have been all the way through this so far. You caught up with somebody who is kind of doing that as well, and they're calling it an IP360 strategy. What's that?

Sam Sethi: 41:46

Yeah, well, that's what I wanted to find out more about. So I caught up with Matt Campion, the co-founder and creative director at Spirit Studios. Up with Matt Campion, the co-founder and creative director at Spirit Studios, they've produced a load of award-winning podcasts and they have a, let's say, a track record of producing TV as well. So they now want to again go back to the word show, not podcast. They want to create shows that are multi-platform, multi-screen, multiple ways of adding revenue as well and monetization. So I caught up with Matt and I said so. First of all, let's start off, what is Spirit Studios?

Matt Campion: 42:22

Spirit Studios. We've been around for quite some time now over a decade. It was founded by myself and Peter Cowley, who's our chief exec. We used to work for Endemol back in the day, making reality shows and exploiting TV propositions through digital, and Spirit is Channel 4 backed these days. So we're three years in invested in by Channel 4. And we've always called ourselves a modern day producer. We run a number of studios, we make television, always called ourselves a modern day producer. We run a number of studios, we make television, we make podcasts, we make branded content and we also own and operate some of our own social media channels. You know, I suppose in a sense Spirit is a business that comes up with great ideas and then tries to exploit it and serve it to as many audiences in the places that they are.

Sam Sethi: 43:12

You've got a very extensive slate. How do you go about choosing the type of genre that you've gone for?

Matt Campion: 43:19

Three years ago, when Channel 4 came on board, the investment was to build out our podcast studio. So we now have a fully functional multi-camera studio in London that produces our owned and operated podcast but also produces lots for others as well. It's a service business that produces, works with other producers, works with brands, works with broadcasters. We also invested in a head of scripted. So we've moved into drama because we've seen the way that content is shifting. The sort of hero content in the world seems to be reality. Drama, documentary, hero content in the world seems to be reality. Drama, documentary comedy is a lot more difficult to sell these days. So whilst we are still making comedy, we make the stand-up sketch show for itv. We're taking trigger happy um on tour for its 25th anniversary next year. In fact, stand-up sketch show is becoming a west end show next year.

Matt Campion: 44:10

We're still working in that space and we have developments with the broadcasters in that space. But actually documentary and drama seem to be sort of areas that sort of take on our skill sets and seem to be where the audience demand is leading us. So we moved into factual two years ago and then in the drama side of things, we are in development with a couple of dramas based on true stories, funny enough. So I suppose what we do is we follow trend and I think right now true crime is a big trend in television and in distribution and true drama is becoming a really big thing. So producing content in that space that helps you sort of create the IP to then extend it is really important. So us building up more of that in our stable of content and our catalogue gives us more revenues whilst we sleep. The podcasts you produce?

Sam Sethi: 45:01

are they companion podcasts to the TV or are they actually replications of, fundamentally, the script that's used on TV but made into an audio?

Matt Campion: 45:13

A bit of both. So in the true crime space, what we're trying to do there is work with a sort of a narrative voiceover to be able to help tell the story to an audio audience, because it is different, because you don't have the visuals to lead you in that space. But ambitions are to build brands in the TV sector that then have companion pods for sure. But I think that might come more in the form of if we manage to sell a reality show or a drama that has a really big audience around it, because then it's about fandom, and I think that's why people come, because people want to discuss the different things around those things, whether it's anything from a conspiracy through to a production process, I suppose.

Sam Sethi: 45:52

So you've come up with a strategy now called IP360. Tell me more about it.

Matt Campion: 45:58

Like I said, channel 4 had invested in us and we'd invested in these different parts of our business and we were doing really well. Last year we got to a point by the summer of last year we had a big Saturday night entertainment show that we piloted with two really big UK talent. We had a three part series for a streamer. We had two dramas and a lot of these projects we'd been working on for like two and a bit years. You know the streamer project we've been working on for 12 months. We're about to start filming one of the dramas we'd been working on for two and a half years and you put a lot of effort and energy into those things, thinking you know it's high risk but it could be very highly rewarding. And all four projects got cancelled in the same 24 hours and that was the moment that the industry went. We're on its knees.

Matt Campion: 46:49

Channel 4 shut up shop In terms of commissioning. Everybody else started pulling back. You know it was the beginning of that, saying we're going to survive till 25. And I remember being at home and saying to my wife I can't actually believe what's happening. You know we were absolutely flying and she was the one that said it to me. She said you've been doing this now for 14 years. Said it to me. She said you've been doing this now for 14 years and this is your time. This is why you set up. You were just too early and, like she said, I can't believe that you're stressed and worried about it rather than being excited and going. I'm going to lead on this and actually it was that mindset change for me that I just thought you know what? She's absolutely right. I've been shouting about this for all these years and it's funny how sometimes you just get sort of blindsided by other things that happen.

Matt Campion: 47:38

So commissioning is down. Commissioning is really really hard to get a TV commission. We're very lucky that we've got a returning series in the standup sketch. That's been going on for quite a number of years now, but to get a returning series is not an easy thing to do. So what I do know is that if you get a hit podcast you know private parts or in sickness, in health, or any of those shows that have done well for us then you can build a brand and own your own audience and you're in control of that. And it was the sort of outsmarting thing that made me really think about how do we actually make this our core business? And so Spirit IP360 is essentially us putting our flag in the sand and saying this is our model. Now, we'll always talk to commissioners and we will still do all the normal things that we've always done, but really, what we're looking to do for the future is to create partnerships, is to launch some of our own brands, but also to create partnerships with broadcasters, network streamers, brands, whoever wants to get into this space, because, as to your point, there's all these niches. Now, like the rest is politics.

Matt Campion: 48:53

I was watching that live when trump was going on. It had 70 000 people watching it live. In fact, I can't remember who it was, but I saw a clip online about someone that had three million people watching their podcast live, where cnn got something like 900 000. That, yeah, shows you exactly where things are going, and if you really think that tv is going to bounce back, then you're on a sinking ship where actually there's a whole lot of exciting things happening over here whilst everyone's firefighting over there.

Matt Campion: 49:25

And so, for us, ip360 is about creating digital-first projects, either ourselves or with partners, finding what that niche is, super serving that audience, making money in digital revenue through podcasting, through short form social clips for the marketing purposes, and then through mid and even long form on youtube, because we're starting to see four hour videos on youtube, because, as to your point, people are watching it like radio and the ads are being served and so the money's being so, and then, off the back of that in the ecosystem, being able to then use the revenues from either the digital revenues or by getting some distribution money to do the post-production and the additional filming, to turn these things into data led TV series.

Matt Campion: 50:14

We're not just making it up. What we'll be doing is looking at the numbers online and what's really resonating with audiences and then doubling down on that on television and then looking at the markets around the world of where the audiences are coming from and looking to what sells it from a distribution perspective that way. So the 360 approach is to sort of be the biggest exploiters of IP.

Sam Sethi: 50:36

One of the things you talked about was evergreen creations of your IP and internationalization. So two questions really. One is where are you selling into English language only? Are you going foreign language? And if you are going foreign language, are you human replacing the audio and video, or are you going to use ai, like companies like wondercraft, to actually take the audio and just turn it into an ai voice?

Matt Campion: 51:02

that's a good question. Currently we do distribute to different multi-language countries and it's all done through subtitles. That's the choice of the buyer. But I definitely think, why wouldn't you? Someone was telling me at ITV that when Kevin does his sort of international speech to all the different parts of the business around the world, they film it and then they use AI to just literally just change his lip sync. It's his voice, but it's in Japanese or it's in German or whatever, and for me there's nothing wrong if that makes the viewing experience better Over the years.

Matt Campion: 51:33

You watch a good European film. There's nothing wrong if that makes the viewing experience better Over the years. You watch a good European film. There's something about watching subtitles that makes it a different experience, and I think subtitles have become like a real fabric of our content consumption now, haven't they? If you don't put subs on your social videos and your social trailers, then I think that idea of doubling down on seeing it and reading it and hearing it that helps it go in, and I think that is probably why it happens. But yeah, I don't know if you could just watch it in the normal language, I suppose, why wouldn't you?

Sam Sethi: 52:02

last question, matt, which channel is your most sticky channel? As in, this is the one where we put content out that we grab the audience from, who then go left or right with our content. So they'll go. Yeah, I love this. On youtube, I saw the uh short sort of documentary. Now I'm going left to the podcast or no, I'm going right to a tv show. Which one works best for you?

Matt Campion: 52:28

instagram and tiktok. So your social reels and building your audience where the community is, then, if you can migrate them to youtube, youtube becomes part of that ecosystem, but it's basically the comments based um platforms that have video to them as well are other places where you can get real engagement. We've just launched a new food podcast, a funny food podcast called stuffeded and Stuffed stars. George Egg, the snack hacker, who was Fortnum Mason's Food Content Creator of the Year, and it's got a guy called Martin O'Dell who is La Gom Chef, who's like the food waste disruptor. They're both really funny and they've both got really unique ways of doing what they do on social media and the pod's great.

Matt Campion: 53:12

It's really funny, it's got a lovely format and we've started building the social channels and the engagement levels are incredible. Now our job is to then convert that engagement into listens and views so that we can start selling ads around it and getting other people interested in exploiting that. But yeah, those are the channels for me. I mean, I think most people would know that's their user behavior. People do scroll all the time and like when you're second screening, you're just less so. Facebook these days, maybe slightly for the older audience, but really it's Instagram, it's Instagram and then TikTok.

Sam Sethi: 53:47

Look, Matt, I could talk to you for hours. This is really interesting. Thank you so much for reaching out, Matt. If anyone wants to find more about Spirit Studio, where would they go?

Matt Campion: 53:55

Spirit-studioscom, or we're on all the socials if you want to follow us at Spirit Studios UK. Yeah, and LinkedIn as well. If you want to get in touch about anything we've talked about today and have a chat, we're always up for a tea or a coffee Perfect.

Sam Sethi: 54:10

Matt, thank you so much, mate.

James Cridland: 54:11

Thanks, matt Campion from Spirit Studios. There's a long version of that interview, as there is with all of the interviews that we do in the Pod News Extra feed, if you want to grab a little bit more of that. There's also the interviews that we did last week with Michael Parkinson's son, mike Parkinson, and Jamie Anderson as well, and you can catch up with those. They're both excellent interviews, over 30 minutes long each, and Jamie Anderson as well, and you can catch up with those. They're both excellent interviews, over 30 minutes long each, and is definitely worthwhile a listen. One other piece of news this week sandwiched the Podcasters Hall of Fame or the Podcast Hall of Fame, to give it its correct title which has announced a new board of governors, which is interesting, some names falling off the list of the Board of Governors and actually there are some people on that board now who are not in the Podcast Hall of Fame themselves, which is interesting. Your friend at Hubhopper is on that Board of Governors, I notice.

Sam Sethi: 55:14

Yeah, gautam Rajanand, congratulations for getting elected on that board of governors. I notice, yeah, gotham Raj and Anne, congratulations for getting elected to that board. I think you know it's great that this still exists. I think, listening to Todd and Rob talk about it on their own show Rob was talking about, you know, rebranding it, getting new sponsors I think sort of bringing it back to life. I think it had a little bit of a dip Again. Yeah, look, it's great if people are recognised for their work in the podcast industry. Hint hint James. When are you getting yours? When are you getting yours?

James Cridland: 55:47

Well, I mean they say it's very much been around the history of the medium. It's very much been around podcasting behind the microphone. There've been a few people who have been a bit more to do with you know the other parts of the podcast industry, but mostly it's people behind a mic. You know Adam Carolla, todd himself, rob themselves and so on and so forth. So, yeah, so you know it's not going to be me. I mean it'd be fun if it was, but that would mean I'd have to go to Florida in January and nobody wants that. So we'll see.

James Cridland: 56:30

The eligibility guidelines are quite interesting. They've been published on the new website, which is called podcasthallcom. I'm sure that they had another domain last year or the year before, but yes, podcasthallcom is where you'll find all of that information. But the eligibility guidelines is a lot of stuff around. You know who is actually, you know, eligible, and I think that there is a bit more language around people that are involved in podcasting but aren't actually talent behind a microphone. Not that we're allowed to use the word talent anymore, but yes, that should be really interesting to end up seeing. People News on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 57:20

Yes, people News and think of the people at Samsung. Samsung Podcasts is closing. You may have forgotten that Samsung themselves have a podcast app, but they do At the moment. You've probably found it if you have a Samsung phone, on the Listen tab of Samsung Free or Samsung O, or maybe it's Samsung Zero, I have no idea. Anyway, it turns out that I don't need to have any idea because it's all going away. It's closing on December the 1st. It only launched in March 2021. It was supposed to be the next big thing in terms of podcasting. Libsyn, in particular, got very excited by it, did a special deal to get their shows into there, and it's done absolutely nothing. So goodbye, samsung Podcasts. We hardly knew you and Chris Wallace. This is interesting.

James Cridland: 58:13

Chris Wallace, who is a CNN host, former Fox News host I think he's one of the only people, the only nice one and CNN. Anyway, he is to leave CNN. He was actually only hired, I think, for that CNN Plus, the streaming network that they almost launched and then didn't, but anyway, he says that he isn't interested in working for a big network anymore. He says that he wants to work for a streaming platform or for podcasting that he described as where the action seems to be. He's about 77, I believe, but yes, so I thought that that was interesting seeing somebody with that kind of gravitas. He's done a presidential debate and things like that in the past, has he's done a presidential debate and things like that in the past and he's basically gone. I'm not interested in TV anymore. I think streaming or podcasting is where it's going to be.

Sam Sethi: 59:29

I think after the Rogan interview with Trump. I think Megyn Kelly certainly got her podcast. You've seen other Fox presenters do well outside of the constraints of TV media. It's not surprising. Awards and events, james, what's going on?

James Cridland: 59:39

Yes. So there's the Webby Awards. The final entry deadline for those is December the 20th. And there's an interesting event that we had the exclusive on earlier on in the week, a show called Kill List, which is an investigation into a murder for hire website which apparently targeted hundreds of innocent people. Anyway, they are having a live show, and so how can you possibly have a live show of a documentary? Well, they're doing it. They've got the host, carl Miller, and the two producers and they are sharing stories of how the show was made. They've got outtakes there, they've got Q&A, they've got clips, they've got all kinds of stuff. If you want to go and see that, that's a live show in London on December the 3rd. Worthwhile just sort of mentioning, because you know, obviously live shows are a big thing, a big different way of earning revenue from podcasting and, you know, just interesting seeing all of that. The Tech Stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 1:00:46

Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday in the Pod News newsletter. Here's where Sam talks technology. There's quite a lot to get through here, Sam. What have we got first? Technology there's quite a lot to get through here, Sam. What have we got first? Osha doing integrations with Zapier, which is a very clever thing. Podpage adding a listener survey tool for anybody using its podcast website service. What did you think of?

Sam Sethi: 1:01:06

this. Yeah, I mean, it's based on Tom Webster's books. The audience is listening. Again, you know it's good to ask your listeners what they want and what type of content they'd like, so good on them. You know it's good to ask your listeners what they want and what type of content they'd like, so good on them. You know another way to reach out and create interactivity.

James Cridland: 1:01:21

Yeah, and I think the nice thing about this is that, because they're using a set of standard questions and then you can add your own, but that set of standard questions could perhaps, in the future, be a benchmarking tool in the future, be a benchmarking tool that of all of the shows on Podpage, this is where you know all of the shows are and this is where your show is, you know, in terms of some of the answers. So I think that that's quite an interesting thing. So congratulations on that. Rode has launched its smallest wireless microphone yet, the Wireless Micro, which is very fancy. It's built interestingly for your mobile phone, so there's a receiver that plugs into your phone and then you've got those two little clip-on mics that you can wear, which I thought was quite interesting.

James Cridland: 1:02:09

Very much focusing again on video and on shows, pocket Cast is going to change the words in its app. They're no longer going to use the word subscribe, they're going to use the word follow. According to the change notes that we spotted, the word follow is used by Apple and Spotify. What does True Fans use?

Sam Sethi: 1:02:33

I had a real issue when this first came out. I fundamentally believe follow is to people and I thought subscribe would have been ideal to keep for podcasts. But I understand why Apple did it. Because they had their paid subscription, so they had to subscribe to that. So they then used follow, but they didn't have any social media element within the Apple podcast app. So they changed the whole verbiage of the industry in order to suit their subscription channels, which is fine. That's what they can do.

Sam Sethi: 1:03:02

Um, and spotify followed we, we use become a fan. Um, you know, it still has that element of subscribing to a podcast and we also have a social media element. So we still say follow people, uh, or follow music artists, and then we don't have subscribe. In that same way, we have support and I think there's a big difference from my perspective.

Sam Sethi: 1:03:25

At True Fans, subscribe is where you pay, like Patreon or any other subscription service on a monthly basis, irrelevant of any new content being delivered. Service on a monthly basis, irrelevant of any new content being delivered. We created the words support because, um, you can say I want to pay so much per month, but only when you deliver new content. So again, it's look, the whole industry is going to follow the big behemoths, and and follow will be the standard word. I'm afraid you know as much as little old true fans might not want it, you know, even if we do get name checked by Spotify. But the reality is, look, you know, whether it's follow, subscribe or whatever you're going to use, people will understand it within your own app anyway.

James Cridland: 1:04:12

Yeah, no, indeed, indeed no. I think that's very interesting. What else is going on? We've got McAfee, which has a tool. I think this tool runs on your computer and I think it monitors the audio that you're listening to and flags AI-generated audio within seconds. It says it's called the McAfee Deepfake Detector, which is weird because obviously deepfake is not AI generated. You're not always producing a deepfake if you're using AI tools, I guess. But yeah, so a strange thing going on with McAfee there. There's another tool that summarises podcasts called Podsift. That now has 250 podcasts in their service. They're very pleased about it. And Courtney Kosak, friend of the show and indeed a previous host of this show, she is now celebrating her third year of running the podcast Bestie Newsletter and Podcast. It's got over 5,000 subscribers. It's a paid for thing. It's well worth taking a look at. So congratulations to Courtney for that.

Sam Sethi: 1:05:25

Now, one thing you did, james, was you did a bit of tech as well. While you were, you know, flying around all around the world, you looked at the RSS compression used by all the hosts out there. What did you find?

James Cridland: 1:05:38

Yes. So if you're a podcast host, it turns out that you are probably feeding your RSS feed 42,000 times a day to different people. It's a big thing, rss, which is why, actually, you have a number of podcast hosting companies who are trying to avoid putting loads of additional stuff in the RSS feed, because it does actually cost them money, you know, at the end of the day. So I assumed, of course, that RSS feeds from podcast hosting companies were being correctly served with compression on them, which saves a tremendous amount of bandwidth. For an XML feed like an RSS feed is. That will probably save you about 80% of your bandwidth bill. Surprising to learn that there are a lot of people that don't do that, that don't compress their feeds An awful lot of people as well that don't also mark their feed was with when it was last updated, which they kind of should be doing. So they're actually paying far, far more for their RSS feed hosting than they really should be. So I thought that that was interesting.

James Cridland: 1:06:51

You'll find a list in Monday's Pod News newsletter and, just you know, I just ran a bot and saw what I got back, so yeah, so I just thought that that was interesting, and Apple Podcasts seems to be doing something a little bit strange with the Pod News Daily and I was curious as to whether it's happening with anybody else. Um, it appears to have stopped ingesting our own transcripts. Um, it um is now just using its own um transcript tool, uh, which is nice, but it's not spent spelling co-host correctly, um and um, and it's spelling a few other things in parkinson yes't Parkinson, yes, well, yes, short Parky, which is why there was no transcript for this show last week. Parky turns into something that is quite different and I just didn't want the risk of having something that was a little bit close to Parky.

Sam Sethi: 1:07:54

That did make me laugh.

James Cridland: 1:07:55

Yes, gosh, that was a little bit close to parking. That did make me laugh. Yes, gosh, that was a thing. But yeah, I'm just sort of curious. If you're seeing Apple Podcasts reject your own transcripts, is this a thing that is happening to other people? Is it just a thing that they're doing to the Pod News Daily? Don't know, but just sort of curious to take a peek at that.

Sam Sethi: 1:08:15

Is it because I call them IE7? Maybe that's what it is.

James Cridland: 1:08:19

I think that's probably it. Boostergram Corner on the Pod News Weekly Review. Yes, it's our favourite time of the week. It's Boostergram Corner. All of the money and support that you very kindly send us gets shared with Sam and I directly. None of the rest of the Pod News team get it. It'd be nice if there was some more of the Pod News team. I'm going poo-poo.

Matt Campion: 1:08:45

But, anyway.

James Cridland: 1:08:45

Yes, I know exactly no boosts this week, but you're more than welcome to hit that boost button and send us a small amount of stats or whatever. No fan mail this week, but there is a link in our show notes where you can click a button on your phone and send us a message. But the Magnificent Eleven are always there, as they always should be. So thank you to those folk who are Neil Velio, rocky Thomas, jim James, david Marzell, cy Jobling, rachel Corbett, dave Jackson, mike from the Road Media Network, matt Medeiros, marshall Brown and Cameron Mole. All very, very much appreciated our magnificent 11. If you would like to join them, then grab your credit card in hand and go to weeklypodnewsnet and click on the Support Us button. So what's been happening for you this week?

Sam Sethi: 1:09:36

well, a couple of interesting things. One I saw there was an interview by omalic with dennis crowley. Dennis crowley was the co-founder of foursquare, if you, if you remember that app. He's just launched a new one called hopscotch, and I thought you might find this interesting, james, because hopscotch basically uses the gps on this interesting, james, because hopscotch basically uses the gps on your phone with airpods to give you information about your location. So they are very much like what ian forrester talked about on this show a couple of years ago, even it feels like now, where the bbc r&d were using a technology called smile. I don don't think Hopscotch uses Smile, but it's a very interesting way of again goes back to what you originally did the location tag, for which is the subject rather than the recording location, and I wonder whether Hopscotch is going to use any of this at all or not. But it's an interesting app.

James Cridland: 1:10:32

Yes, well, it'll be interesting to take a look at that. There was a previous app called Hopscotch, which was creative coding for kids, so you'll have to wade through all of that. That was on Shark Tank over here, so you'll have to wade through all of that in order to find this new app. But, yeah, interesting, but, yeah, interesting. I know that also, our friends at Spooler are very much focusing on location-based media as well, and at some point they will shout about what they are currently working on. So I think location-based stuff is good. Based you are um doing a thames walk at the moment. You're walking the uh 190 miles, or whatever it is um down the thames. How's that? How's that going for you?

Sam Sethi: 1:11:21

yeah, 290. Uh, yeah, good started. Um, I had my meta ray bounds with the uh meta ai with me, which was totally useless because it can understand what is in front of it visually, so so it'd say there was a statue.

James Cridland: 1:11:37

I can see a river. Yes, basically. There is a river in front of us.

Sam Sethi: 1:11:40

Yes, it couldn't tell me what river, couldn't tell me what statue, couldn't tell me what building, so the location stuff from Hopscotch would have been much more useful. Yeah, but what I do see is a new paradigm of where AI in glasses, without getting your phone out all the time, with real data behind it, could be really, really interesting, certainly for people doing stupid things like me.

James Cridland: 1:12:05

Walking from the well, it's basically the mouth of the river tends to its source, so, yeah, yeah, no, I think there's a lot of fascinating stuff that you can end up doing with that. So yeah, you mentioned earlier on in this epic show that you have done video uploads. There's also a new search engine on truefanssocial as well, apparently.

Sam Sethi: 1:12:29

Yeah, one of the things we worked out is that people like want to follow, let's say, pod News Daily or Pod News Weekly. They can see a link within the app, but it's not obvious how you then follow that in your activity pub client. So we've built a new search engine on truefanssocial that's going to go live on Friday and you'll be able to then look up anyone or any podcast and then you'll just click a button which will then allow you to follow it within your own choice of clients, so Mastodon or Plex or wherever. So, yeah, it's basically before. It was a little bit sort of oh yeah, okay, now what do I do with? Now I know that there's a activity pub stream. Where do I put it? How do I use it?

James Cridland: 1:13:13

And now we're just trying to finish that bit of polish onto that feature very nice, and you have, um, and you have jumped in with uh, the rest of them, uh, to well, close your twitter account, or at least suspend your uh twitter account.

Sam Sethi: 1:13:27

Um, well, and, and you're moving to blue sky as well, weirdly well, I look, I've decided that you know I'm going to give it a four-year hiatus and see what happens in four years' time. But in between, yeah, there's a big push towards Blue Sky. I posted that. You know I'm going to try using Blue Sky as well as a bit of Threads, a bit of Masters on, and see where all of those kind of go. I did say Threads does worry me. They've had a long enough time now to properly federate, but they won't do it. There's one way federation and that is a Zuckerberg to a T, suck data in, don't give data out, and so I don't trust threads right now. So that's why I'm looking at blue sky, but again, you know, just looking at different options yeah, but you know I mean blue sky.

James Cridland: 1:14:11

Yes, it uses a decentralized protocol, but that protocol is pretty well impossible to decentralize. In reality. You need terabytes of data to enable you to actually do that properly. So I kind of look at Blue Sky and I think it's just another Twitter. That's what it will become, and they've just received a ton of funding, but those investors will be wanting their money back at some stage, so it's all a bit.

James Cridland: 1:14:42

Yeah, I'm not that interested in blue sky. Clearly, that's where the people are going, though, because it's easier to explain than the Fediverse, and so what I think I'm going to do is I'm going to build something that automatically mirrors the posts that I make on the Mastodon platform that I'm using, that automatically mirrors those root posts onto the Blue Sky platform, because then, at least, I'll be pushing some content in there and we'll see what happens. I'm on Blue Sky platform because then, at least, I'll be pushing some content in there. Yeah, and we'll see what happens. I'm on Blue Sky. You can find me at jamescridlandnet, I think, or maybe I'm at jamescridland. I'm probably on jamescridland thinking about it, but anyway, however that works, I'm on one of those too. You can always search for me. You've not done your domain name, so you are samsethiblueskysocial I literally just did it yesterday.

Sam Sethi: 1:15:45

So no, and I'm following one person it's not even….

James Cridland: 1:15:48

Yeah, C names are a good plan.

James Cridland: 1:15:50

Yeah, I'm kind of. Yeah, I'm looking at some people moving away from X. Austrian Airlines posted something very amusing saying we found out where the exit is. Very good, austrian Airlines, well done.

James Cridland: 1:16:06

The Guardian has pulled off X, but the Guardian has basically said we think our resources could be served better elsewhere. From the Pod News point of view, I'm not spending any resources automatically posting onto the X platform. It's automatically posting stuff. I wrote the code three years ago. I've changed the profile on the X platform to basically say that this is an unmoderated what was the phrase I used? Unmonitored automated feed. So I'm not going in and checking it. I'm not, you know, doing anything else.

James Cridland: 1:16:49

But I personally see no reason of pulling off X because, kind of, what's the point? I may as well fill X with a bit of content so that I get a bit of clicks out of it. I'm not necessarily sure that I should be quite being, as you know, as excited as the Guardian is, and you know they've got their own reasons why they're coming off. So but but in terms of my personal uh feed, I've I've basically said yeah, I'm not, I'm not using that anymore, I'm still going to hold onto it. I'm not going to to come off that platform, but I'm still, you know. Yeah, it's um, it's a weird and wonderful thing really.

Sam Sethi: 1:17:26

Yeah, I won't. I won't close the account, as in delete it because I don't want anyone to hijack the name, but that's the reason. That's it, yeah, and that's where we are now, um, when are you flying back to the sunny shores of australia?

James Cridland: 1:17:40

I am flying back to australia, um, for this is my last international flight this year and until february of next year. I'm flying back later on today, um, so that will be, uh, very nice. I'm quite looking forward to going home. The jet lag in LA I've forgotten how bad the jet lag is, and essentially you wake up at three o'clock in the morning and that's it, you know, so it's not a particularly fantastic thing, but, yes, so that is going to be good. And looking forward to being home for a prolonged period of time.

James Cridland: 1:18:14

Lots and lots of storms and things going on in Australia at the moment because it's you know, tropical weather is all of a sudden kicking in and so everything is very wet and very humid. But, yes, I'm looking forward to being home a little bit later. Goodies for my daughter from the Spotify event, because, my goodness, the goodie industry, the personalised gifts industry they did very well out of this event as well, let me tell you. So, yes, so that's very good, you know all kinds of things. My daughter is going to be delighted with some of the tat that I've got her.

Sam Sethi: 1:18:57

But there we go. It's like the Oscars, you know, with the little handbag they give you at the end with all the stuff in it. Yes, yes, exactly.

James Cridland: 1:19:04

And that is it for this week. All of our stories were taken from the Pod News Daily newsletter. You can subscribe to that at podnewsnet, and longer interviews of course as well in the pod news extra podcast and other stuff. You'll find that wherever you found this podcast.

Sam Sethi: 1:19:21

You can support the show by streaming sats. You can give us feedback using a buzzsprout fan mail link in our show notes and you can send us a boot scram or become a power supporter like the magnificent 11 at weeklypodnewsnet.

James Cridland: 1:19:34

Our music is from Studio Dragonfly, our voiceover is Sheila T, and we're hosted and sponsored by Buzzsprout. Start podcasting, keep podcasting. Get updated every day. Subscribe to our newsletter at podnewsnet.

Matt Campion: 1:19:49

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