James Cridland: 0:00

It's Friday, the 6th of December 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, and I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO of True Fans In the chapters. Today, daniel Eck talks about the difference between YouTube and Spotify. But do the numbers add up Also, video podcasting and Open? But do the numbers add up Also, video podcasting and OpenRSS? Can they work together? And Acast opens its new London studio. 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.

Sam Sethi: 0:44

Pod news weekly review now, james, let's kick the show off. Um friend of the show, michael katz. He put up a linkedin post recently talking about an interview daniel eck did with um colin rosenblum and samir chowdhury. Uh, I'd never come across these two guys before they they have a very interesting podcast. It's very much like Acquired that similar sort of feel to it. They talk to industry leaders and this week they had Daniel Ekholm talking about the difference between Spotify and YouTube. Did you have a listen to that at all?

James Cridland: 1:19

Yeah, I've had a listen to a little bit of it. Samir does all the talking, Colin does none of it. I've had a listen to a little bit of it. Samir does all the talking, Colin does none of it. I noticed it's basically the Samir Show with a little bit of Colin. They clearly recorded it at the Spotify studios in LA a couple of weeks ago because I recognised where the studio was there. You go, Listen to me. And it was recorded on the day of the big announcement about Spotify video and, yeah, they seem to get a few things out of him. Obviously, they asked how will the money really work and what are the figures? And Daniel says something like oh, I can't share any of that with you right now, and then goes off and waffles for a bit. What can we expect from a revenue perspective?

Daniel Ek: 2:08

there. I can't really get into specifics, unfortunately today, but there were a few interesting things I mean.

James Cridland: 2:14

one of them was that Spotify's aim, we learn, is to grow loyal audiences who pay.

Daniel Ek: 2:21

If you think about all platforms on this continuum between discovery and dependability, like we're definitely on the dependability side. We're definitely improving our discovery ability, but perhaps more so than many other platforms, we're really on the dependability side.

James Cridland: 2:38

And secondly, Daniel Ek, in the middle of this, says that the advertising model again talks very negatively about advertising, saying that the advertising model puts the consumer and creator at odds with each other.

Daniel Ek: 2:50

On the advertising side, as a creator, in this very difficult situation where you may actually have a terrible experience for the consumer, you're shurning them out in order to meet the numbers. But if that keeps going up, if people are shurning out and you do worse, then you have to fill out even more ads in order to get the numbers. But if that keeps going up, if people are shurning out and you do worse, then you have to fill out even more ads in order to get the experience to work, and then eventually, you know that's not a great way to manage a business, and so what I feel with this is we're giving creators another avenue. It's by far not the only way, by the way. What did you get out of it?

Sam Sethi: 3:22

Very similar to that I by the way, what did you get out of it? Very similar to that, I mean. The other thing he kept talking about was dependability. He was talking about dependability of revenue to podcasters, because advertising was up and down, and he talked about dependability of their recommendation engine, and he talked about the dependability to Spotify of consistent revenues from loyal audiences, and it seemed to be his word of the day.

Daniel Ek: 3:46

Why did we start the company? We want to solve these two things. We want to solve how to create an amazing user experience but at the same time making sure that you can have a livelihood as a creator, and that then implies dependability at the very core, where some other platforms may put the user a lot more in the center.

Sam Sethi: 4:06

The other one, I think he was right to point out they are on a similar par now in subscribers to Netflix, which is quite mad to say. We're one of the world's largest subscription services.

Daniel Ek: 4:16

We're almost the size of Netflix.

Sam Sethi: 4:18

I'd just like to point out to Daniel I still own Spotflix. If you want the domain anytime soon, when the merger happens, come to me. I own spotflixcom, got it Keeping it. It's getting more expensive, nice. Other than that, I think, yeah, one of the things that Daniel did not mention as you just said, james is about the numbers, and I think we'll talk about that in a second. I think that's going to be the big reveal in 25. And I think that's when people are going to. I'm not sure, so the other thing I did like, though although I have a sceptical hat too was him talking about multiple different ways that creators can make money, and he did talk about not podcasters, but creators, and there was a big lean into what is a creator and why is it not a podcaster.

James Cridland: 5:09

I thought it was quite telling that Samir was there talking about all of the ways that podcasters could earn money and forgot to mention sponsorship.

Samir: 5:16

And Daniel actually prompts him and says and sponsorship too, that is the majority of how most creators make money is through brand deals, advertising and in podcasting it's through DAI and baked-in ads. Obviously, the baked-in ads will remain the same, but the mechanics of yeah, sponsorship too and sponsorship yeah.

James Cridland: 5:33

Either Daniel has been incredibly well-briefed or Daniel is actually quite knowledgeable in terms of all of this space.

Sam Sethi: 5:43

Now not everyone's drinking the Spotify video Kool-Aid. Jim Salveson from the Sports Network put an interesting post out. He was talking about for many creators, the math does not math and I think you know when you listen to Daniel not giving out the data and not giving out the detail, you go hang on a minute. Something doesn't feel right. You know if the numbers were going to look good, they'll be shouting about them. So Jim was talking about on average they receive. You know he was talking about music artists they receive somewhere between 0.002 pence and 0.004 pence, so you know, not even a penny per stream and he's thinking that that would be the same. If you look at podcasting, per thousand downloads, about £2, £40 or £4. He said you're not going to retire anytime soon and I think that's being generous in terms of the amount that they will pay. I think the number will be even lower than that.

James Cridland: 6:43

Personally, I think the number will be even lower than that personally. Yeah, no, I mean, we still don't really know what those numbers are for podcasting. That, by the way, comes in somewhere between three and five US dollars per thousand. There's quite a lot of this that we don't yet know and my suspicion is we'll find out in very early January and it'll open up the floodgates again. But, as you say, quite a lot of people aren't yet convinced. Jim Salverson, not convinced. There are a number of other people who we've been quoting over the last week in the newsletter and, of course, one other person that isn't convinced is Spotify's head of podcast monetisation.

James Cridland: 7:26

Now, I'm sorry, but if your head of podcast monetisation isn't actually posting videos on Spotify, but is posting videos on YouTube. There must be a question, mustn't there? That, of course, is Bill Simmons, who is posting a lot of stuff on YouTube, posting nothing on Spotify himself. Now he's apparently out of contract in early 2025. He has refuted any idea that he might be interested in leaving Spotify, but what is very clear is he is not building a video platform for himself on the Spotify platform, so what's he doing there? If Spotify's head of podcast monetisation isn't using Spotify's monetisation for his podcast, which is essentially what's going on here, then there's something a little bit awry, and I would love to find out the reasons for that.

Sam Sethi: 8:36

Now our prediction show isn't yet until 2025. Maybe one of our predictions is that Bill Simmons leaves Spotify. I don't know. God knows Right, I'm sure. Now, moving on just related news, you know people say less Spotify, please, less Spotify, sorry. Everyone Do they? Well, lots of people are asking us to do less Spotify and more about podcasting 2.0. But we will get exhausted by them soon. They've added a new dynamic loudness control for podcast games. I don't know if you've seen that in your version of Spotify yet.

James Cridland: 9:10

Yes, that's not on my version of Spotify on the desktop. I'm literally just looking at it now, but you seem to be showing something which is entitled Playback, and in the playback section there are a couple of new things, one of them saying dynamic normaliser, so it will actively adjust the volume by levelling out the difference between quiet and loud parts of the audio. Do you mean a compressor? Spotify? And also dynamic loudness control for podcasts Actively maintain optimal podcast volume level for a clear and balanced sound experience, which is interesting. I don't yet see that on my version, but maybe it's waiting for me in an update, who knows? Yeah, isn't that your favourite overcast features? Yes, pretty well. So dynamic normaliser, by which they mean a compressor yes, absolutely, that's most definitely that. And in terms of loudness control, which will be something like clear voice, you know, making sure that you can actually hear the voices correctly yes, those two things that I love in Overcast when I was using that. So, and something that if Apple Podcasts had half a brain, they would buy. So we'll see what happens.

Sam Sethi: 10:32

The other thing that they've done is you can now set the language for Spotify's AI DJ, choosing between English and Spanish.

James Cridland: 10:40

Yes, I met the English one and the Spanish one when I was there.

Daniel Ek: 10:43

The DJ yeah, they're actually humans, and I met both of them yes it was very good my new mate why were they bothered with really?

James Cridland: 10:54

anyway, moving on, I don't know the other things that I noticed from the spotify uh, wrapped stuff. So, um, they have spotify wrapped for creators, which takes a look at your podcast, works out how it's performed, how it's done, and you may have noticed that in yesterday's pod news we linked to how this show does, because you can actually link to every Wrapped for Creators thing. So, yes, that was nice to end up seeing. Another thing that they did is they released a set of top 10 podcasts for each country. So far I've got the ones for the world, the ones for the US, uk and Ireland. So the UK ones are interesting in that. See if you can spot what's going on here and who is really succeeding. I mean obviously, number one, joe Rogan. Number two, diary of a CEO with Stephen Bartlett, but number three, the rest is football. Number four the rest is politics. Number five the rest is history. Number eight the rest is entertainment. Goldhanger really really doing well, aren't they? It's astonishing.

Sam Sethi: 11:57

They are, and I pinged Gary Lineker. Actually he might be coming on the show, james, that's all I'll tell you now. Really, yes, does he live in your village? Then? No, he doesn't. But I've interviewed him before for a previous podcast I used to do, and I have his details. So they are doing amazingly well and, of course, they've got a brand-new podcast out as well. So, yeah, it seems to be that they've found their I suppose their mojo. Really, you know what works.

James Cridland: 12:27

You may also see something in the Spotify app on your phone called Wrapped AI Podcast, and that is a podcast with your friends from Google Notebook LM. You know that annoying woman.

Sam Sethi: 12:40

Are they not?

Daniel Ek: 12:40

real yeah, that annoying woman and that annoying man.

James Cridland: 12:44

And yes, so it's the Google Notebook, lm folk. And yes, and it's a podcast talking about your music choice. Now my Spotify raps for 2024 was interesting because I only listened to 79 minutes worth of music in 2024 on Spotify, so therefore it was next to useless. But interestingly, they did notice there was one day when I must have gone through the Beatles, a bit of Pink Floyd, a bit of who else. Was I listening to ELO and Wings and they noted-.

Sam Sethi: 13:19

Nice to see you're up to date with music then.

James Cridland: 13:21

Well, they noted the similarity between all four of those artists.

Samir: 13:24

It's like you created your own rock history lesson that day.

Rachel Corbett: 13:27

The way you move between those artists is really cool, though. From the Beatles melodic genius to Wings is more a beat sound to Pink Floyd psychedelic vibes. You like it all.

James Cridland: 13:38

And I thought, okay, well, that's fairly impressive.

Sam Sethi: 13:41

I actually thought it was the best use of Google Notebook LM I've seen so far. I thought it was very clever the way they did it, considering they've rolled this out at scale because everyone's got one, so I think that's quite impressive really.

James Cridland: 13:53

Yeah, yeah, exactly, everybody's got one. And also you can link to everybody's as well. There's pointless linking to mine, because it's for 79 minutes of music. And, yes, I think I listened to 61 minutes of music. Um and uh, yes, and I think I listened to 61 minutes of music on that one day and they said, oh gee, you know, were you going on a road trip or something?

Sam Sethi: 14:11

I was just listening when I was working for a bit anyway now, uh, the other thing that spotify within the rap did they've added personalization to the AI playlist generator. Again, I think they're leaning heavily into AI, so you can now give it prompts like give me a playlist for new-to-me artists based on my rapped top genres. Or you can say, give me a playlist of all my rap songs grouped by genre. Or give me my top rap songs for journaling. I mean, again, it's using AI to take in a personalisation prompt and I think, again, that's quite interesting. I'm sure, from what Daniel said in the interview, that they're going to be extending that to podcasting as well, but he didn't call it podcasting, he called it talk. Kept calling it talk. Oh, that's interesting.

James Cridland: 15:03

That's interesting. There you go. Well, there's another thing to go, um uh hunting, for. You can also enjoy x, your very own ai dj, playing some of your biggest tunes and talking about them as well, if you uh so wish. One more thing in that spotify press release, which was, um, they mentioned a new number for video podcasts on Spotify. There are now over 300,000. That's grown from June, which was 250,000. So there are now an extra 50,000 video podcasts on the platform. Whatever a video podcast is, I was interested to find out how many video podcasts there were in OpenRSS. Have you any idea how many open video podcasts there are? Sam, I'm going to go with 20,000. 20,000. You're going to go with 125,000. Yes, I was close, quite a lot.

James Cridland: 15:57

Quite a lot more than I was expecting. Certainly, and just to put that into context and the 300,000 into context, 14 billion videos are on YouTube right now 3Speak TV or PeerTube.

Sam Sethi: 16:09

They're not within the embedded in any way in a normal podcast. We're not talking about Todd Cochran's podcast or Mark Asquith's podcast. No, it's not those. It's skewed heavily to PeerTube and 3Speak TV.

James Cridland: 16:37

Well, there you go. You heard it here first.

Sam Sethi: 16:40

Now, james, somebody wrote a post I think that's you actually about video podcasts via OpenRSS. What were you talking about? I mean, having just talked about video for the last 20 minutes.

James Cridland: 16:53

So I wrote this on my own personal blog. I try and keep pod news free of my own opinions because you know you get enough of that. So any long form opinions that I have, I try and keep away from that. But this is really about podcasting and about video podcasting. And you know one of the things whenever you start talking about video podcasting, you get some of the old guards saying we've had video podcasts forever. You know, apple Podcasts supports video podcasting and it does kind of, and so I was basically giving some of the problems that video podcasts have.

James Cridland: 17:28

Now, if you listen to this show a lot, you will have heard me rehearsing some of those arguments, you know, basically going through some of the issues, one issue being two feeds. So this Week in Tech is available in both video and in audio, which is a bit clunky and essentially means that both of them lose because both of them don't do as well in the charts as they really should. The second issue is you're giving one file, one very large file. If you look at this Week in Tech, it's full HD, it's 1080p. Every episode is 2.8 gigabytes of data, which is 17 times the size of the audio files. That's a lot. That's a lot to shove in your mobile phone. That's a lot to yeah, that's a lot to shove in your mobile phone. So, yeah, you've got that, even if quite a lot of devices won't even play that, because you know it's such a large file and you know.

James Cridland: 18:38

Obviously you can compare that to YouTube. Youtube creates I discovered 22 different videos for their service, at least 22 different videos for their service, at least 22 different videos in different formats, in different streams. And all of that because it just works. When you're using YouTube, you press the button and it plays and you don't have to worry about what's going on behind. And then you've got, of course, the cost to podcast hosts as well, because 17 times the amount of traffic doesn't come cheap.

James Cridland: 19:07

So, really, you know, I argued in that blog post that Apple Podcasts does support video, but it's not a very good experience and that's probably why, knowing a little about how Apple works, they don't want to promote it, they don't want to talk about it because it's not a good experience from anybody's point of view. It fills up people's phones, it costs an arm and a leg to download on mobile or it would look bad on Apple TV if you're going to make smaller files and, yeah, you know, it just really doesn't work. So that's why I think that open RSS videos are not really something that anybody wants to get behind, even companies like Apple that actually support it.

Sam Sethi: 19:56

So one of the things I have been doing is looking into this space as well, and one thing I found out which I'm not an expert at, but I'm learning is there is something called pre-transit, which means that you get to a certain size where the fixed costs that you basically are purchasing for audio or video streaming is set by the company you. You go to the hosting companies, um, and so hosting companies who buy basically wholesale bandwidth can then beyond that pre-transit fixed level. They don't pay any more. So I'm suspecting that the YouTubes, the Spotifys of the world so I'm not saying it's going to be a low number, it may be a super high number and most hosts can't get to it but there is a point at which you do get to a fixed cost where everything beyond that is is basically free to them, and so that's probably one issue that they have to look at. The second one is I wonder whether spotify will do the 17 or 18 different formats like youtube. Maybe that's youtube's secret sauce is that they do that.

James Cridland: 21:02

Well, I mean I'm sure that Spotify do, because Spotify are producing different versions of the songs that you listen to. I mean you can choose them in the app. You can choose from low, medium and high quality and presumably Spotify Hi-Fi coming on at some point in the future, you know, if you wait long enough. So I think that that transcoding is going on. I think, by the way, you're talking about peering there, and when I was working for a radio station we were a very successful online radio station Our bandwidth bills were very high, and one of the ways that we cut our bandwidth bills to almost nothing is we did some peering arrangements with some of the large ISPs, which essentially meant that if, for example, you were using BT, you know open world or whatever open zone, whatever the thing's called open world.

Sam Sethi: 21:56

Anyway BT's.

James Cridland: 21:58

ISP. We had a peer ISP. We had a peer ie a private wire between our server in Telehouse in London and theirs, and that wire was free. So therefore we weren't paying for any of our bandwidth to and fro. And my understanding is, youtube and Netflix have actually gone one better, and what YouTube and Netflix have done is not just the wire but they've actually put servers into the likes of, you know, bt and AT&T and you know Telstra and whoever else it might be, and those servers download one copy of the video and then all of the people watching that video are watching it essentially for free in terms of the bandwidth costs, because it's not even leaving Telstra's building. So I think that that's perfectly possible.

James Cridland: 22:56

But that doesn't fix many of the other issues. You know that's the problem. I mean it still means that it's a 2.8 gigabyte file which fills up your phone, you know, incredibly quickly and is way too big for your phone. You know it still means that you end up having you fixing the two feeds because you use alternate enclosure. There are ways of fixing the one massive file thing by linking to a streaming bitrate instead.

James Cridland: 23:32

You can still download those, but you can stream it and you can stream it in different qualities and there are ways of fixing, you know, you know fixing all of the other issues with it, but a lot of it is, you know, it just adds complication and it also means that we all have to support that and currently very, very few people are. So it's yeah, it's just not going to be easy. Particularly so I thought it was just worthwhile having a little sort of, a little sort of peek at why video through open RSS isn't necessarily going to be a thing that we can do anytime soon well, not everyone thinks that video as well.

Sam Sethi: 24:13

You know we talked about Jim Salverson, but Colin Gray at Alito also had a post that said, you know he was agreeing with you from last week. Actually, james, he was was saying if you take Joe Rogan out of the numbers, is YouTube really doing that well with podcast video? And again, if you look at that, compared to Spotify, the number of subscribers who are on YouTube is very low. So are we conflating the numbers and will most people who do podcasts not even bother with video? So why are we pushing, you know, pushing this number? Because it's only going to be the top one or 2% who have enough team people around them. You know, diary of a CEO, 50 people to actually produce the video of any quality that will actually then turn into listeners or viewers.

James Cridland: 24:59

Yes, no, I completely agree with that. I think it's worthwhile. You know, keeping an eye on those numbers, I'm still finding it very difficult to believe that YouTube is the number one place for a podcast. I'm sorry, but I'm still finding that very hard. So, yeah, who knows?

Sam Sethi: 25:18

Now last week I was kind enough to be invited by the team at ACAST, the opening of their London studio, and I think I sent you some photos from there as well.

James Cridland: 25:30

Yes, you did. Yes, it all looked very smart, didn't it Looked very fancy, it is.

Sam Sethi: 25:35

Yeah, up in Shoreditch, and you know there was a lovely crowd up there. There was Susie from Apple, Susie Warhurst, there was Megan Bradshaw from Amazon.

James Cridland: 25:45

How jet-lagged did Susie look? No, she looked great I wouldn't?

Sam Sethi: 25:49

Oh well, there you go. She's in the UK, I think, isn't she?

James Cridland: 25:52

So I'm not sure, because she was here in Australia only a couple of weeks ago.

Sam Sethi: 25:57

She did mention she was at the yeah, she did mention that it was a great crowd, great event and well done. The thing that Ross Adams did confirm, and basically Sam Shatabi, who runs the place, also confirmed in a press release, was Acast is now moving into supporting video podcasts, and that's, I think, what the studio is all about.

James Cridland: 26:19

Yeah, yeah, no, indeed, indeed, there's a lot of video stuff in that studio, isn't there?

Sam Sethi: 26:24

Now, finally, dave Weiner, who I have a love-hate relationship with. Basically, who woke Obi-Wan is what I'd say. Podcasting it is I do. He was like we're losing the word podcast very quickly. He may be right, but where have you been for the last two years, dave? Who woke you up?

James Cridland: 26:43

Yes, well, yes, exactly. I am really surprised at Dave Weiner who, you know he's very prickly towards journalists and I can completely understand why, but I'm really surprised that he has been so absent from the podcast world over the last five to 10 years. It's a real shame. I think it's a real shame that he has only just woken up to some of the new features which are going into podcasting. He's only waking up now to, I mean frankly, how podcasting works, because all of a sudden he's producing a new show and I think it's just a shame that he's not.

James Cridland: 27:28

Yeah, that he's not been more present over the last five or 10 years. Adam Curry hasn't gone away, but the other person who invented podcasting has gone away or had gone away, so I do think that that's a bit of a shame. But he's absolutely correct. He says we're losing the word podcast. People are beginning to just assume that it's just video interviews or talk in Daniel X phrase. And, yeah, and he's there talking about, you know, taking advantage of the open platforms and you know, I mean welcome to the party, dave, but you are about five years late.

Sam Sethi: 28:08

Yeah, I mean, the one thing he says correctly is it's time to start collaborating with competitors. And, yes, you know, the cross app comments, the fabled cross app comments, as being an example, we will get there, but, you know, will we get there quick enough? That's another question. That's the problem. Tom Rossi actually replied. Tom Rossi from Buzzsprout replied to Dave Weiner you should promote the work of the Podcast Index and Podcast Standards. They're working to extend RSS. And I thought, yeah, again, dave Weiner's not been present, why, I don't know. I also and I'm going to say this and I'm probably, you know, going to incur the wrath of Adam as well, but I think Adam is the figurehead for the podcasting Tudor community, but Adam doesn't like attending events or shows and I think it's a missed opportunity because, as much as many of us would want to be on stage talking about podcasting 2.0, we aren't the inventors of podcasting. He is and he has gravitas and he has kudos with it, therefore, and I think event organizers would give him the platform, but he doesn't want to do it.

James Cridland: 29:17

Yeah, no, I do agree. I think what you really need with one of these, you know, if you're working on new technology, you do need a figurehead need with one of these. You know, if you're working on new technology, you do need a figurehead. And if you know, and it's just important that that- figurehead is actually there and does all of that stuff.

Sam Sethi: 29:36

Yeah, Moving on talking about people waking up, looks like Uncle Leo Laporte's woken up as well. I mean, what's going on? Has something happened that I've missed? Have they all had a coffee that I should have had?

James Cridland: 29:48

Well, I was delighted because I was writing that piece about video and I know that this Week in Tech has a video version and an audio version. I was really pleased to see that Leo, or that Twit is now supporting a bunch of Podcasting 2.0 tags, including the people tag, so hosts and guests and that sort of thing, including the podcast funding tag. So there's a big green button on the PodNews website saying become a Club Twit member. There are transcripts, albeit only HTML transcripts, so they're not very good, but nevertheless there are transcripts, albeit only HTML transcripts. They're not very good, but nevertheless there are transcripts in there. So really good to see Leo or whoever it is who's doing that for him jumping in and actually properly getting involved, appear to be using something that is from Blueberry I'm guessing it's the WordPress plugin that Blueberry make, because I can see lots of raw voice stuff in there as well in his podcast feed, but it's really good to end up seeing that he's supporting that. So you know, I'm really pleased to end up seeing that.

Sam Sethi: 31:04

I hope it's not too little, too late, but yes, I'm equally happy seeing that they're doing it. But I did talk to Lisa Laporte over a year ago directly and it led to nothing, just led to nothing.

James Cridland: 31:18

Yeah, yeah, and you know, and he's not. Obviously he's not going to get involved in the whole crypto stuff because he doesn't believe in that and he's deeply suspicious about people, and that's all fine too. But I think just sort of seeing that it's just nice to end up seeing the fact that he's supporting a bunch of these tags, probably just because the PowerPress plugin supports them. But great to end up seeing that, so that's good.

Sam Sethi: 31:51

One of the people who was at the a cast launch was jamie east, who we had on the show recently, who you interviewed. James, yes, um, he put out a post as well. Um, being able to bookmark an episode directly from a social clip to your chosen pod player would be a game changer. I think you responded with there is something called episodesfm. But what I was more interested in with somebody like Jamie, who you know, obviously with the Daily Mail group, he is aware of micropayments and I'm pleased that you know the message has resonated outside of the 2.0 bubble to other people. So maybe you know there is hope still.

James Cridland: 32:22

No, I think so. I think there's definitely hope. I think there's a bunch of people really understanding now what technology can actually do for them. But it just takes time. It takes time of going on and on and on about it and then eventually people begin to get the right kind of idea and you know, and so that's a good thing to see. Podnewsnet is a short newsletter every weekday with everything you need to know about podcasting and, on demand, you can subscribe free at podnewsnet for new podcast launches, company changes, stats and no waffle. In fact, podnewsnet is so waffle free, it's really short, just like this promo.

James Cridland: 33:02

In the UK, listen has been nominated for a UK Television Award. It's a production company. It makes podcasts. It makes these things called visualised podcasts, which is they've made a thing called the Traitors Uncloaked, which is a visualised podcast that you can't actually get on an RSS feed. So therefore it's not a podcast, it's broadcast on BBC television, so it's basically some cheap TV. Anyway, they've ended up being nominated for an award, which is very exciting. So well done to listen. What else is going?

Sam Sethi: 33:34

on. Shouldn't they be called Watch then, instead of Listen?

James Cridland: 33:37

I know exactly Well, you know audio first. That was a very positive view of that story, wasn't it? Let's have another positive view. Germany podcasts are an overview of standards, technology and guidelines for podcast advertising, as well as tips for media planning and campaign booking. It's all in German, obvs, but worth a read. If you sprechen die Deutsch, sprechen Sie Deutsch.

Sam Sethi: 34:20

There you go.

James Cridland: 34:21

Yes.

Sam Sethi: 34:22

O-level. There you go, you nearly got there mate.

James Cridland: 34:26

Yes, I didn't, I didn't, I took Italian. So there you go.

Daniel Ek: 34:31

Oh look at you.

James Cridland: 34:33

And people are having to pay up for stuff, aren't they, Sam?

Sam Sethi: 34:37

They are Now. Ashley Carman, a friend of the show, who does a wonderful newsletter called Soundbite on Bloomberg, came out and said that it's now being put behind a paywall. The newsletter will become exclusively available for paying subscribers. Ariel Nissenblatt asked will you subscribe? And many people said they might subscribe to Ashley's newsletter, but they don't want all the tech newsletters and the inflated price that goes with it. My question to you is A what do you think of it? And B would you ever put Pod News behind a paywall?

James Cridland: 35:14

I mean it's £11.99 a month If you want to subscribe to Soundbite. You get a bunch of other tech newsletters as well. I think that's quite high, to be honest, but Ashley Carman's stuff is really good, so I'm not quite sure how to do it. I'm not quite sure whether or not I subscribe and then cover what she is covering so that more people subscribe to that, or not. I really don't know. So I'm not quite sure how to really deal with that.

James Cridland: 35:43

It was complicated enough when Ashley moved to Bloomberg, because some of their stories are behind the paywall but they are then republished by people like Yahoo in Canada or something, so you can actually find the story. You just have to link to a weird place in order to actually read it. It's going to be even harder with Soundbite going away. So that worries me, and I think what worries me as well is we've seen PodPod go away over the last year or so, which was a UK podcast news thing. We've seen HotPod go away, which of course, was kind of paid for, kind of not, and the Verge ended up doing a dreadful job in suspending that and trying to find a buyer after they'd completely ruined any value of that service, which was a real shame. So there's been a lot of these news outlets going away or going behind paywalls inside, podcasting, of course, being another one, and there have been a number of other ones as well. And to one side, it's brilliant because it means you know, great PodNews ends up being the only freely available service.

James Cridland: 36:58

I'm really clear. I've been really clear over the last couple of months. When you become a supporter for the PodNews newsletter, you don't get anything extra. You don't get anything extra other than the name credit. You don't get a secret Slack group, you don't get special meetups, you don't get any of that stuff. You are paying for everyone else and thank you for doing it, which is a very strange way of running a business, I know, but that seems to be working, and I'm just worried that we are now at a position where you know I don't want it to be just me and Sounds Profitable as the two companies who are, you know, writing stories about podcasting, because we can't necessarily all keep the podcast industry honest which I think is one of my jobs if there's only one or two of us. So, yeah, it's a bit of a concern, I think, from my point of view.

Sam Sethi: 37:57

I mean Sounds Profitable did put a nice piece about you, James. They said Sounds Profitable wouldn't exist without the support of, and free access to, Pod News. We encourage you to subscribe and consider supporting Pod News, as we all have, and again, you know. That, I guess, was why I asked you the question would you ever put it behind a paywall? I think the answer is a very clear no.

James Cridland: 38:18

Yeah, the answer is absolutely a very clear no. We've had a number of new supporters this week. Thank you to the $100 MBA, who has joined us as well, as it says here as our latest gold supporter as I speak. But, as you've just heard, sounds Profitable has also joined as a gold supporter as well, and a number of the Sounds Profitable crew have also joined as personal supporters too, which is very kind of them. So crew have also joined as personal supporters too, which is very kind of them. So, yeah, I mean, those people are funding the Pod News newsletter for everybody. That's the way that it goes, and I think you can probably argue that I've been running the Pod News newsletter on a value for value basis ever since I started in 2017. I just didn't know it was called that.

Sam Sethi: 39:05

There you go, pioneering again.

James Cridland: 39:07

I will be buying Ashley Carman's Sandbite newsletter. I've also reached out to her and I've said, however, we can help promote that newsletter, I would love to end up doing that. So if there's a way that we can actually do that, then that would be cool.

Sam Sethi: 39:20

So we will see what the good folks at Bloomberg say Now friend of the show, stephen Goldstein from Amplify Media, also had a post about this the ups and downs of audio in 2024. But one section of that post stood out for me about this move to subscriptions. He says our subscription to the future of podcast. He said New York Times is doing it, npr, pushkin, wondery and many more, and he also referenced the Ira Glass, this American Life, lamenting the one third drop in revenue. So again I go. Do you, James, think 2025 is seeing more and more? We've just talked about Ashley Carman. Do you think this is the way forward for many other media journalists?

James Cridland: 40:07

Well, I think we'll see an awful lot more diversification of monetization. There you go. There's some big words. I think that we'll see less companies that are just reliant on advertising, or less companies that are just reliant on membership, or less companies that are just reliant on you know. Whatever it might end up being, I think we're going to see companies that try and increase the amount of money, the amount of different ways that they earn their money, and I think one of the things you know, when I set up the Pod News newsletter, what has essentially happened is that a third of the revenue coming in to the Pod News newsletter is from supporters, A third is from the classified ads and a third is from the big display ads that you see, and I think having that diversification is really important. So I suspect that we will see more memberships, more live shows as well as advertising in there, and that's probably how podcasting and, to be honest, many other creative endeavours are going to be paid for in the future.

Sam Sethi: 41:19

Well, you go back to what Daniel Ecklund said. You know, dependability, right, Dependable revenue, not up and down revenue. He was talking about advertising dipping in January, February, and you know, again, going away from advertising as your main source, not saying you need to get rid of it or anything, but being more dependable on steady streams of income.

Speaker 2: 41:40

So again, he might be pressing it. Podcast events on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 41:47

Yes, it's time for events and stuff like that and a big event coming up in London, the podcast show 2025, of course, happening May the 21st to the 22nd. I will be there, you'll be there, sam Indeed. So the contract. Oh right, so there we are.

Sam Sethi: 42:02

When did I sign that?

James Cridland: 42:06

I signed it for you, excellent. And day passes are now available to the podcast show 2025. A few new things which are of interest, after we've been talking about video a lot hey-ho, who'd have thought it. The content creator stage will be focusing on multi-format content creation. There you go stage. We'll be focusing on multi-format content creation there you go. Also, the open forum stage, which looks to be the stage where everybody argues, which I'm all up for. It's dedicated to open debate and discussions around the hottest topics in podcasting.

James Cridland: 42:38

That's video again, then, is it? Yes, I'm sure that video will be talked about there, as well as the Independent Podcasters Hub, which is a new area of the event connecting independent podcast creators with a range of talks and networking moments. They keep on doing some very good things with that. I'm on the advisory board. I was born in London as well, so I think I'm allowed to be, and PodNews is a media partner, so therefore, you can save money on tickets If you use the code PodNews10,. That's PodNews10,. You can save on your tickets if you go and buy them now, which is thepodcastshowlondoncom, and the day before, just to plug my own little event, we were doing a PodCamp.

Sam Sethi: 43:26

So again looking at all the technology around Podcasting 2.0 in a much more show-and-tell format.

James Cridland: 43:32

Yeah, which will be really good to go to. So if you are thinking about going to the podcast show, go there a day early, get to London a day early and go to PodCamp 2.0. And more details on the website for that, Sam, which is what.

Sam Sethi: 43:49

Which is podcampalivelive, so you can go there and you can get. So is that podcamplive?

James Cridland: 43:57

I believe that is the URL. Let me check. Podcamplive is where you want to go for that. The tech stuff on the pod news weekly review. Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday in the pod news newsletter. Here's where Sam talks technology. What have you got, Sam?

Sam Sethi: 44:14

Well, not a lot in the technology section here. Excellent, let's move on. No, oh, hold your horses, young James. There are some stories here that I think are going to be interesting, as in Chartable. We've talked about this for a few weeks now. On December the 12th, so another week away you have got to remove your prefix, but you came up with a wonderful stat about how many podcasts might break as well.

James Cridland: 44:42

Yes, 31,749 podcasts are currently using Chartable prefixes. That's according to the latest data from the podcast index, which is quite a big number, isn't it? It's a big number. I have spoken to a bunch of people in most of the big podcast hosting companies and, for example, if you're with Buzzsprout, our sponsor, you would have got an email from them in October saying that Chartable is going away. And these are all of the companies that they would recommend instead of using Chartable. And then what Buzzsprout is going to be working on is actually taking out the Chartable prefix for you so that your podcast will continue to work. So Buzzsprout are doing it in an excellent way. Many other podcast hosting companies are doing it in an excellent way. Many other podcast hosting companies are doing it in a very similar way. Some podcast hosting companies don't care, and so we'll find out how those work in the next couple of weeks. But yes, it's a big deal. If you don't take that Chartable prefix out, then at some point after December 12th, your podcast will not be playable at all.

Sam Sethi: 45:47

What's the alternative to Chartable James? Has anyone produced something?

James Cridland: 45:50

There are 400 million things that Chartable does, so there isn't really an alternative. But if you were using Chartable mainly because of the charts and ranking services, then Podgagement is one of those. They monitor 34 000 charts across the world. So they say that's from daniel j lewis, friend of the show and um, so that's worth a peek. But there's a bunch of different things that are available out there. It really depends what you're using chartable for, um. You'll find all of the details podnewsnet, articles, um and you'll see in there a piece all about chartable and what you can use.

Sam Sethi: 46:26

Now somebody else called Scott Wyden Kivowitz has launched something called a podcast rank report.

James Cridland: 46:32

What's that? Yes, that runs a test for your podcast SEO, which is quite nice. So if you are wondering, you know how does my podcast rank for the word chicken? Then you can type the word chicken in. You can pay a dollar and it comes back and it shows you where your podcast is in an Apple podcast search in the US and a Spotify search in the US for the word chicken. You could also use it for something more useful, but, yeah, quite a nice little plan Interesting to charge a dollar. A go, using Stripe, I would guess. But yeah, it's worthwhile taking a peek at that. Just do a search for podcast rank report in the Pod News newsletter and I'm sure that you'll find it.

Sam Sethi: 47:18

Now Wavelake put out a post which said they've now got 1,000 active music artists. That's a good number. To start with, I mean, obviously don't compare that to Spotify and then it isn't a good number. But it is a good number when you say that these are independent music artists who are putting their music up onto Wavelake and using RSS as a output mechanism to distribute their music.

James Cridland: 47:42

Yes, doing all kinds of promote your music by rewarding listeners when they play your songs. It's almost as if they've taken a look at True Fans.

Sam Sethi: 47:50

I did look at that and I went oh Isn't that what you're doing. Yes, I was like oh, that's very nice of you. Well good, well done. That's two of us. Now, no, and look, I have no issue at all. I don't claim any prior art on any of the ideas I have.

James Cridland: 48:04

So if they are good, use them, and if they're not, don't bother, but yeah, well, there we are, and the reason why you may be sounding a little bit different this week you've got the, you've got the Adam Curry noise gate on you at the moment that's because you have upgraded your RodecasterDECaster Pro to a new piece of software and that new piece of software has made a couple of changes and things, but also has allowed it's doing things with what virtual devices? What are they?

Sam Sethi: 48:37

You and me both. I did the update thinking I'll sit here and I'll work it all out and I'll watch the videos. Basically, I think you can attach third-party devices like software and you can control the like StreamYard or whatever through here, or maybe Squadcast or Riverside. Again, why I want to do that, I don't know. But there you go and I stupidly upgraded just before the show. So my bad, my bad.

James Cridland: 49:05

Well, that's all all right. Uh, you've just got the. You've just got the adam curry noise gate sound, um.

Sam Sethi: 49:11

So uh, yes, but to say it's annoying me would be an understatement right now booster grams and fan mail on the pod news weekly review yes, it's, uh, our favorite time of the week.

James Cridland: 49:24

It it's Boostergram Corner. We've got some boosts and we've got some fan mail Boosts from. We've got a boost from Silas on Linux here. Sam, yes, he says.

Sam Sethi: 49:35

OK, I see now. So you're really saying OpenRSS based and not OpenRSS based as a contrast to closed proprietary apps. Okay, yes okay. I see why that makes sense, then I may annoyingly start saying it too Welcome to the club, silas.

James Cridland: 49:52

Welcome to the OpenRSS club, Silas. It'll annoy Adam Curry. Do you remember when Adam used to send us boosts?

Sam Sethi: 50:01

He says it's down to his app, nothing to do with him, not sending them. Yes, and after my comment earlier, he's never sending one anyway, so don't worry about it.

James Cridland: 50:11

Can you edit that out? No, you won't, so so thank you to Silas, if you've any idea what, what what I'm talking about. If you've no idea, then I've edited it out, and if I, anyway, and B Densey, thank you. 970 sats Now. We hit 12 power supporters last week and we were really pleased about that and I was a little bit. I didn't really know what I should be calling them, because 12, you know, we were calling them the Magnificent 11, and the Magnificent 12 doesn't really work. So B Densey says how about the delightful dozen or the dazzling dozen? And the good news is it doesn't matter, because we don't have 12 anymore, do we?

Sam Sethi: 50:54

No, we have the baker's dozen instead. Now Welcome Claire Waite-Brown. Thank you so much for joining the Power Supporters Group.

James Cridland: 51:03

Yes, that's really kind of you. So, yes, so 13 folk, now the tremendous 13. Gosh.

Sam Sethi: 51:10

Claire is about to launch her podcasting 2.0 course that she's been working on so I know you've been a guest on it, I have, I know Rob Greenlee and I know Daniel J Lewis and Dave Jackson and many others, so Claire's about to launch that. She's just put the trailer up so we will have her on the show in a couple of weeks time to talk about that as well.

James Cridland: 51:33

Thank you, claire. Also Miss Eileen, who I gave a shout out to on Twitter. I went back onto Twitter just for that. Get off Twitter, miss Eileen. Also Neil Velio, Rocky Thomas, jim James, david Marzell, cy Jobling, dave Jackson, mike at the Road Media Network, matt Medeiros, marshall Brown, cameron Mull and Rachel Corbett, who has just launched a brand new podcast called Me and my Tiny Human. Hello there.

Rachel Corbett: 52:01

My name is Rachel Corbett and I am a single mum by choice. I know what you're thinking. Was it really a choice or did you have no other option? You sad, pathetic single woman who got left on the shelf.

Rachel Corbett: 52:12

It's okay, even if polite society says you can't say that to my face, you are more than welcome to think it, because I get it. We're all supposed to want that perfect two-partner family, and anything short of that is really just a consolation prize. But I never really thought that way and I've noticed that when I tell people that I'm a solo mom, I usually get a few responses from people who genuinely think they couldn't do it solo. And if you have ever thought that but you really want kids and you haven't found a partner who would make your life infinitely better and you're wondering, could I do this by myself, like, is that an option for me? Then this show is for you. So come and join me for me and my tiny human coming to your ears real soon.

Sam Sethi: 52:51

What's happened for you this week, Sam Well, I bought a domain called Truecasts. Now I stuck that up onto LinkedIn with I wonder what I'm going to do with that then. And very interesting answers to those questions. Um, I will say we've added support for amazon web services cloud front and we've spun up an hls server. So you work out what it's going to do in your own time, but I think you know you'll be keeping you, keeping your trousers on, won't you?

Sam Sethi: 53:24

I hope so nobody needs to see that, nobody needs to see that um uh, but yes, so that that's one thing I've done.

Sam Sethi: 53:33

Um, I thought, uh also, it was quite interesting. Um tom webster put out a post called wall gardens and rented land and he again said if we want open rss to survive in some iteration, there have to be more compelling audience reasons to use RSS driven podcast clients. Rss needs the benefit the consumer in a painfully obvious way, and I couldn't agree more. I think I keep talking about in the podcast and 2.0 community. We understand the, what we do, how we do it. I still think the why question is missing.

James Cridland: 54:06

Yes, and I think the conversation that we quite often hear of not building your business on walled gardens or rented land that's fine, but I think it needs to be a little bit more nuanced. Don't build your business only using walled gardens and rented land. Using walled gardens and rented land, as Tom says, is absolutely fine, is a fine thing. Just don't just rely on those. Also have your own open platform as well. But there's no reason why you shouldn't be using these walled gardens and rented land because it's cheap and it might go somewhere, but just make sure that you're also doing your own thing as well. And I think it's a good piece, so worth a read, of what else have you got down?

Sam Sethi: 54:57

here.

Sam Sethi: 54:58

Well, I've worked with an Australian radio company called Pod2, down in Perth, on medium equals radio and live item tag.

Sam Sethi: 55:07

So what they've done is they've put the live item tag into all of their podcast shows and they've put medium equals radio and they've also put in a publisher feed and so, in true fans, what we can do is create a dynamic publisher feed of all their shows and, using the live item tag, we can then extract the start and end times and create a schedule of that radio station. So again, it's not, you know, it's not setting the world alight, we're not going to make a massive change, but it's a really interesting way of using some of the technology that's been developed before for radio, where, fundamentally, it really is a podcast being broadcast and what they then do is take that live show, put it out as a podcast, but we can use that to create a dynamic page for them. So, yeah, so we've done that, and if you follow that radio station, anytime they put up a new show or take a show off, you get a notification Again just something different, very nice.

James Cridland: 56:12

Yes, it's good to see that. I've been trying to get radio stations interested in the live item tag for a long time. Nobody seems to be interested in it, so I wonder whether or not you just need a radio station to properly jump in, and that will really help, I think.

Sam Sethi: 56:25

I put up a post about the 10 ways podcasts and fans can get paid using true fans, um, which excluded host reads and dai or sponsorships. I think, again, looking at what daniel's talking about, I think there is a movement towards people now understanding that advertising isn't the only mechanism for payment. So that's quite interesting. And John McDermott bless him. Thank you so much put up a very kind post. I think the post, though, is more poignant. He put up a post saying I'm kind of done with streaming stats. I love the idea, but someone has to make the whole darn thing easy. I think that's on the back of what we were talking about last week. Yeah, I know exactly, and he kindly put and that someone will be sam setty. I hope it is me, but I'm not going to guarantee that one.

James Cridland: 57:11

But thank you for the kind thought there we are um, maybe you need a. Maybe you need a big um, a big sugar daddy to give you tons of money, so you can dive into this a little bit more um.

Sam Sethi: 57:22

what I would love to hear, though, is what is Podverse, podcast, guru and Castromatic doing? Right, I know what Fountain's doing, I know what we're doing at True Fans, but I am sort of not hearing a thing. Now you might have James, but I've not heard a thing from those three, and it worries me quite a bit.

James Cridland: 57:41

No, I'm not hearing anything from that and it. You know what? I'm not hearing anything from that and it. You know I what I'm expecting to happen is that quite a lot of these companies will go. You know what? It's too complicated at the moment. We're just going to stop supporting it for now, and I think that'll be a big shame, but I think that's probably the way that these things will work. You know, there's just a lot of change, um, you know there's just a lot of change to be made in in under a month now, um, and yeah, and I'm not sure that that's really going to work particularly quickly.

Sam Sethi: 58:15

So, no, well, we, we're adding ln address this week, uh, support. So we will have backward compatibility with keysend. And we're also adding an option if you want to move your sats out of your Albi wallet into a TrueFans wallet, there will be a mechanism for you to do that. So again, but being fair and neutral, because you know I am here with my PodNews hat on, not my TrueFans hat on you can move those sats today into Fountain, if you want as well. Yeah, yeah, which makes sense.

Sam Sethi: 58:43

The last bit, again, certainly from the podcasting 2.0 show. They were talking about a company called LightSpark and something called Universal Money Address. There's a very good keynote I recommend people go and look at on the LightSpark. That may be something that might be the direction or arrow of direction I think that the group might take in the future. So again, if you want to have a learning curve, certainly you highly recommend looking at that.

Sam Sethi: 59:12

And on the back of that I found an article on x I shouldn't be there, but I was um from a guy called david marcus who works at lightspark, and he wrote an article about how Libra was killed.

Sam Sethi: 59:25

Now Libra was from Meta and it was a micropayment system and he said I've never shared this publicly before, but since Marc Andreessen opened the floodgates on Joe Rogan, I feel it's appropriate to shed more light on this. And he goes on to say as a reminder, libra was an advanced, high-performance payment-centric blockchain paired with a stable coin. We built it. It would have solved global payments at scale, but it was killed for political reasons, and that, again, I think, is one of the other issues. You look at what Albee's had done to it. It wasn't Albee who made the decisions to stop wallets. It was the political decision to put controls and finance licenses in place that basically priced them out of the market, and I don't know what the answer is, but it looks like governments do not want this without their hand of control all over it, and so I don't know whether it will actually be able to be done anyway.

James Cridland: 1:00:23

Yeah, well, who knows what America is going to do in terms of Bitcoin and all of that? So it does seem as if there's a new world happening over there. So who knows? But I think it'll be very interesting to keep an eye on.

Sam Sethi: 1:00:37

Anyway, James, what's happened for you?

James Cridland: 1:00:40

I've been doing a few things. Firstly, some selected podcasts in the PodNews website now have links to YouTube. If you are a video podcast, then there's now a big Watch this on YouTube link. Not very many of them In and Around Podcasting is one of those, but I think what I'm going to be doing next week is to allow people to submit where their show is on YouTube, because there still isn't really a very easy way of finding that out, and certainly finding out if it's a proper video feed, because I don't want to link people to a, you know, to a fake video. So that is there, which is fun.

James Cridland: 1:01:19

One thing I would say to anybody that is doing a website of their own is to use Google's PageSpeed tool, which is brilliant, so so good. I was using that the other week for the podcast Business Journal. In fact, we carried a big long interview with Stephen Bartlett at the end of last week, who's a very bright man, and I did some work on that website and I was just idly looking through Google PageSpeed and there were a few things that could both speed that website up but also, secondly, save me some money. It's well worth doing and, by the way, making it more accessible as well. So well worth doing that on any website that you're doing. Don't just do it on the front page, do it on an editorial page as well, because that's worth a peek. So I've been doing those two things. My daughter graduated from primary school this week, which is very exciting.

James Cridland: 1:02:16

Congratulations, yes imagine a ton of 12-year-olds jumping up and down, shouting to Frozen songs from Frozen at the top of their voice in the pub. That was what was going on last night. So that was nice. And yes, and I'm also trying to I'm grappling with some new glasses. These are sort of multifocal glasses and I'm feeling very old.

Sam Sethi: 1:02:41

Oh, you've got your Ray-Bans in no Well done.

James Cridland: 1:02:44

No, yes, I'm feeling very old and has been in these glasses, but I'm getting used to them slowly but surely. So that's what's been going on for me.

Sam Sethi: 1:02:52

Ah, young man, young man.

James Cridland: 1:02:56

And that's it for this week. All of our podcast stories were taken from the Pod News daily newsletter. It's free and you can subscribe to that at podnewsnet. You can also find more interviews and stuff like that in the Pod News Extra podcast. That may or may not be going away next year. I'm still trying to work out what we do with that.

Sam Sethi: 1:03:16

You can support this show by streaming sites. You can give us feedback using the Buzzsprout fan mail link in our show notes and you can send us a boostgram or become a power supporter, like the bakers at a dozen weeklypodnewsnet.

James Cridland: 1:03:31

That's where you go and do that, armed with your credit card. Our music is from studio dragonfly, our voiceover is sheila d, we use clean feed for our audio, we use hindenburg to edit it, and we're hosted and sponsored by Buzzsprout. Start podcasting, keep podcasting. Get updated every day. Subscribe to our newsletter at podnewsnet.

Daniel Ek: 1:03:54

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