James Cridland: 0:00

It's Friday, the 20th of December 2024.

Announcer: 0:04

The last word in podcasting news. This is the Pod News Weekly Review with James Cridland and Sam Sethi.

James Cridland: 0:13

I'm James Cridland, the editor of Pod News, and happy Christmas from me.

Sam Sethi: 0:17

And I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO of TreeFans. And a happy new year from me too, in the chapters.

James Cridland: 0:21

Today, apple Podcasts has some new features. You can now launch your promotional campaigns on Spotify for video, tune ins, tune out, podscribe, one ranker to rule them all and a company from Italy trying to take $7,000 from podcast directories for just listing six shows Plus.

Jessica Cordova Kramer: 0:41

Hi, it's Jess Cordova-Kramer, ceo and co-founder of Lemonada Media, and I'm coming on later to talk about our big year, everything that's happened in 24 and everything that might happen in 25.

Claire Waite Brown: 0:52

I'm Claire Waite-Brown and I'll be talking later about my new podcast called Podcasting 2.0 in Practice.

Russell Harrower: 1:00

I am Russell Harrow, the CEO of Pod2, and I'll be on later to talk all things Secure RSS, podfund and what is the future for radio.

James Cridland: 1:09

They will, and we'll also hear from Jeremy Mani from Podcastthon about his event next March. Now, next week we have some special shows, don't we, sam? We've got a prediction show, haven't we next week?

Sam Sethi: 1:24

Yes, we have worked with our power supporters to ask them to send us in five minutes or so of audio, and they made their predictions. Some of them are really really good as well, so look forward to putting that out on the 27th of.

James Cridland: 1:37

December. And all of these podcasts, as ever 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: 1:54

James, let's kick off the show. Earlier this year, lemonada signed up Meghan Markle and David Duchovny and it caught my eye. It was back in February and I thought, hmm, we should get them on the show. And even last week they did something quite interesting as well, james, didn't they?

James Cridland: 2:09

Yeah, they did. They have been signing more and more people, so Gretchen Rubin Media last week, which is a big writer in the US, and yesterday they also announced another signing as well. Talk Easy with Sam Fargozzo, who is switching from Pushkin to Lemonada Media as well. Talk Easy with Sam Fargozzo, who is switching from Pushkin to Lemonada Media as well. So they seem to be having a time of it, don't they?

Sam Sethi: 2:30

They do so it's taken a while to get to Jessica Cordova-Kramer, who's the CEO and co-founder, and I started off by asking her why they signed Meghan Markle and what was in their thinking there.

Jessica Cordova Kramer: 2:42

It's been a wild year, sam. We've been working with Megan on bringing her show Archetypes to the masses and it had a phenomenal launch. It feels like 16 years ago now. We brought that show out to Apple listeners and out beyond Spotify listeners and the reception has been warm and wonderful and we had a great time working with Megan on that and her team, and Spotify was a dream come true as well. So it was really a lovely experience across the board, and our creative team, our marketing team, is deep in the weeds with the Duchess now and we'll share more in the new year about how that's going, but it's been a really wonderful experience. She's brilliant and hardworking and the first person to be on every single call. She's really just fabulous. And yeah, we've been rocking and rolling all year long. Similar timeline we brought Podcrush to the network and Penn and Nava and Sophie have been phenomenal to work with. The show has been rising, rising and just getting such incredible talent on it, and it's a darling of brands and agencies as well.

Jessica Cordova Kramer: 3:45

Of course, david Duchovny's series came out in May and we had planned only 20 episodes with David. He just texted me yesterday and was like we just did 31 because it's just been going incredibly well. Alec Baldwin just came on. They had a fabulous show. It's been reported everywhere, and David is an intellectual and a brilliant interviewer and has been really growing into his own, and the show is a fantastic place to talk with remarkable people about the times in their lives where things haven't gone as planned and how that shaped them.

Jessica Cordova Kramer: 4:19

Announced that Happier would be coming to Lemonada, so Gretchen and her team, plus two other shows Happier in Hollywood and Side Hustle School are all joining the network in the new year, and we've just announced that Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso will be coming over as well, so that's thrilling. I can't wait for people to hear about that. But we're working with Melissa McCarthy, lupita Nyong'o, lena Waithe, ellie Kemper. All of this happened this year and we just are grateful for folks who trust us with their brand and their message and their desire to use podcasting to make life suck less.

Sam Sethi: 4:57

Now, often with such a large slate, you must look at it and go that's going to be one of our stars. Was there one in there that you went? Oh, that's really surprised me. I thought that would be mid table in our slate, but one that you thought, well, that'll do well, but that won't be a superstar hit. And then it suddenly went. Is there anything that surprised you out of it all?

Jessica Cordova Kramer: 5:16

Yeah, let me cheat and give you three. One is an original, which is David series, which of course we knew it was going to be great. We got the pitch it was called Failure University, with David Duchovny. We had already filled up our entire slate for 2024, got the pitch from CAA and I remember getting a thing and being like God damn it Because I was like we're going to have to do this show. Then we met with David and it was such a cosmic meeting.

Jessica Cordova Kramer: 5:42

We had the same sort of creative force and when Lemonada is picking shows and when talent is picking Lemonada, there's a synergy there. When it works, we work with talent who have a real message. They have a real why behind their podcast. So if you look across our slate you'll see wildly different types of shows and people and tremendous amount of diversity and all of it. But everyone's got a real central why and it fits within the Make Life Suck less brand. And David's show just was a home run and he had never interviewed before, so we also weren't exactly sure how he was going to want to be prepped and how he'd want to work with us. But it has been a dream come true and what's great about that show is. It's created this beautiful safe space for incredible people to talk about their lives with him. He's built a tremendous amount of trust with his audience. We had Gillian Anderson on a few weeks ago and shortly after the election, when I think everyone was, regardless of their politics, just looking for escape. Then we basically broke the internet with that episode and then we just had Alec Baldwin on yesterday. So I think that show has been a dream come true from behind the scenes all the way to storming People Magazine and just being a topic of conversation for folks and being a beautiful podcast. It's won awards already. It's been thrilling.

Jessica Cordova Kramer: 6:58

The other two I'll quickly mention. We brought on a show called Pack One Bag that we did not make and it's an ad sales and distribution deal for us and it's a beautiful series about one family's escape from fascism in Italy right before the breakout of World War II. It's been taking every award that it has been entered for and my guess is it'll be a TV show at some point. It's phenomenal. David Modigliani made that show and we were just so lucky to get to work with them and then we haven't done a lot of fiction in the past, but we got this pitch. It was another God damn it moment. Got this pitch from Melissa McCarthy and her husband Ben Falcone for Hildy the bar back and we were like we're not going to do fiction. But then we were like, oh, but we're going to do this fiction and that show was Podchaser top 25. I think it's breaking the mold on what fiction can be and we love to be a part of it. So those are the three I'd mention.

Sam Sethi: 7:51

Now look this. American Life put out a note saying that they're going to struggle with ad revenue. They're seeing a massive drop off in the amount of ad revenue they're getting. Where is it with you?

Jessica Cordova Kramer: 8:04

A couple of things for us that differentiate us from more traditional media. One is we have to be nimble. We have to assume the worst every week. We have to plan for an environment that is ever changing. Stephanie and I launched this company in September 2019, months before a pandemic. We bootstrapped, we put our own money in and that's how we got the company off the ground. We got a small advance from our sales support network. At the time, westwood won and hired a tiny team, and then COVID hit. And then it was wild election after wild election in the middle of a pandemic and global wars, strife, protests, you name it.

Jessica Cordova Kramer: 8:49

We have been running this company in the wildest of times and there has not been a precedented day since we started it, and let alone like the industry stuff, from iOS 17 to media consolidation to the impact of the world news on the advertising industry, which we know are hand in hand. So we're actually the staff meeting leaders talking about this with our team. We constantly have to be in a conservative environment as business leaders and as the people who are responsible for our staff and our talent, and so I think we go into 2025 with the same level of careful planning as we went into 24, 23, 22, 21, and probably 19 as well. It's hard to remember. We brought sales in-house in 2021. So we've had our own sales team which enables us to monetize our Lemonada originals without sharing revenue with a sales partner and it enables us to bring sales and distribution partnerships onto the network. And we have wildly different results than the industry as a whole and we have had them consistently, even as we've grown upwards of 50 to 200% audience year over year. Our CPMs are in the high thirties and low forties. Our fill rate is around 80% consistently year over year. And we are able to do that because we are working really closely with talent and producers to make those ads great and work really hand in hand and in a white glove way with agencies, with brands and, even when things are going wrong which they inevitably do approaching the work with a high level of customer service which we're able to scale over time.

Jessica Cordova Kramer: 10:21

So that is all to say. It's just dramatically different than, I think, what traditional media, and particularly public media, is able to do on the sales and partnership side. And we're hopeful about 2025, but we're planning for a more conservative year, just in case some of the feelings are true, our subscription business is growing. We've had a wonderful partnership with Apple Premium just launching, supporting cast now, so we're excited about that and our revenue has grown around 40 to 70% year over year since we've started and we're assuming a similar level of growth next year. But we're still not a big company. We don't have a ton of cash like a big, huge media company that's publicly traded might have, and this year we'll be turning a profit and that's exciting and helping kind of get to be even more independent and all of those things. We did a raise. It was like three years ago now and we've been operating on our own steam for these past few years.

Sam Sethi: 11:22

Now one last thing. You talked about working with Apple on subscription plus, and I'm sure that there'll be other ones. You talked about as well, supporting cast. Would you ever move into like Wondery have with Wondery plus, creating your own community network?

Jessica Cordova Kramer: 11:37

We think about community all the time, Creating content and community is a big part of the next phase of our work. We got through our five-year plan. We've built an extremely large audience. I think we're 12th biggest network on Triton's table and about the 18th or 19th, depending on the month, on PodTrack and that was a big part of our drive for the first five years. And now we have that big audience. They're everywhere and we want to convene them in different ways. So, for sure, thinking about I don't know if it's necessarily an app, but thinking about everything from live events to technological solutions for gathering our folks in a variety of ways so they can interact with each other around the issues and the shows that they care about, interact with talent, interact with staff that is definitely part of the dream.

Sam Sethi: 12:26

Jess, I'm going to leave it there, because it's been an amazing conversation.

Jessica Cordova Kramer: 12:29

Thank you so much. Thank you so much and thanks for being patient with us through the year I know it was well worth it.

Sam Sethi: 12:34

Hey, everything good comes to its time, so thank you very much. Thanks, jess.

Jessica Cordova Kramer: 12:38

Thanks, Sam.

James Cridland: 12:40

Jessica Cordova-Kramer. And of course, as ever, there is a longer version of that interview in the Pod News Extra feed. You can find that wherever you found this show.

Sam Sethi: 12:52

Now TuneIn Radio. It's been an app that I've sort of looked at occasionally, not really used much, but it seems, james, they've tuned out. What's happened to TuneIn Radio?

James Cridland: 13:02

Yes, I should possibly say that they are tuning away, because you never quite know what the lawyers are going to say. But yes, this is a very strange old company. They've been going for a long, long time. I remember going to their offices in December 2009 and the company was called Radio Time. All the way back then changed its name to TuneIn.

James Cridland: 13:25

But basically, if you listen to radio online through any form of device, you are probably tuning in through TuneIn. If you use Apple Music to listen to radio stations, if you use your smart speakers whether it's an Amazon one or a Google one or even a Microsoft one as if anybody uses a Microsoft one, or even a Microsoft one, as if anybody uses a Microsoft one but if you're using Bose speakers or Sonos speakers, or even if you're driving your Tesla, there is a built-in tune-in in those devices, and so it's the way that you listen to both radio stations, but also to podcasts. So I thought, okay, well, that's interesting, given that for the last 10 months, you haven't been able to add a new podcast into TuneIn. What's going on? And the more I dug, the more that I found.

James Cridland: 14:13

Basically, tunein seems to have never made any money. Their investors seem to have given up their patience for the company making some money, and there's been an awful lot of job cuts over the last two years to the point where I don't think that the company can actually operate as a company anymore. It seems to be not accepting new podcasts in. I've heard countless stories from radio companies as well, saying that it's really difficult to get their streams changed in the app or their streams added in the app and all of that, lots of people leaving, and it just, you know it was something that clearly hadn't been reported on, so there was a big story that came out earlier on in the week about that.

Sam Sethi: 15:01

I had this problem four years ago when I had River Radio. I could not for love or money get them to list our podcast. It was always just waiting for a new version don't worry, it's coming soon and we just gave up on them. So, um, I don't ever use the app. I mean it's on my phone. I've seen it occasionally. I probably should delete it because there's no reason. In fact, most radio stations now have got their own apps. I think they've even bypassed TuneIn. If you look at Global or TalkSport here in the UK, you just don't need them anymore, I think.

James Cridland: 15:34

No, well, some of them don't. But then some of the devices out there have TuneIn put inside them. Basically, so if you're using Apple Music, which is actually a really good way to listen to radio stations oddly you can go into Apple Music, you can search for the radio station of your choice. It will come up, it will play for you, but that's actually using TuneIn under the hood. You'd never know. And so their data seems to power all kinds of people, but their data seems now to be going more and more out of date and it's just a bad look for the company.

James Cridland: 16:11

I contacted the CEO and I said you know, I'm that's basically saying oh yes, we'll have that form up and up and working, you know, in the next three weeks, or something you know. Could you give us some information about it? And he just forwarded it to the customer support team, who sent me back the same boilerplate that they've been sending all year, which I thought was bloody rude, and the more that I looked into it, you know, and I've contacted a bunch of other people at the company no response whatsoever. And that's a real red flag, isn't it, when you have that. So, yes, I would heartily recommend, of course, wouldn't I the main article which you can find on the Pod News website. But I think that does go to show the real benefit of not leaving gatekeepers like tune in in charge of an industry, in charge of a directory, in charge of anything else, because bad things happen when you do that moving on, james.

Sam Sethi: 17:18

Then um pod scribes released a new podcast ranker. It says it's the first ever real-time cross-platform podcast ranker. So what's this one about?

James Cridland: 17:28

Yes, and I'm not sure of either of those two things, but it is a very good ranker. I've had a look at it and it's pretty clever. It looks at audiences in both YouTube and RSS, and the way that it works essentially is it looks at anybody that has the Podscribe redirect in their podcast code, but also any advertiser that is using Podscribe to measure their ad. So essentially, it's capturing an awful lot of individual shows and it can come back to you and say ah, this particular show, for example the number one show in the US for nurses. If you want to focus on nurses, the number one show for those is Crime Junkie. Weirdly enough, that's the number one set of people who are tuned in to that particular show.

James Cridland: 18:23

So you know it's got some really good data in there. It is continually updating, although they are going to be releasing an email every single month as well. So brilliant. I'll have three US rankers to report on. Won't that be a thrill? But some of the data is actually really interesting. So, yeah, it was nice to have a look and you know, more data is always a good thing.

Sam Sethi: 18:48

So what do they mean by real time? Then why do they call it real time?

James Cridland: 18:58

I think they're calling it real time because they can pull out the data every single hour from their systems, so it's real time, you know. In terms of that, I'm not sure whether it's the first ever real time ranker, because I'm sure that other sales companies have some of these things as well, but certainly it thing I think the more interesting thing is the fact that it also includes YouTube in there, the fact that it can see into I'm not quite sure how it does it, but the fact that it can see into YouTube's audience as well, you know, is useful and helpful, and you know, and the fact that actually, you know, you can begin to dive in if you want to, you can begin to dive into, okay, how many people are consuming this show on Apple, on Spotify, on Rumble, on all kinds of weird and wonderful apps as well. So, yeah, I just thought the amount of data that it's got in it is pretty good. You'll only have access to that, though, if you are a Podscribe customer, of course.

Announcer: 20:04

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James Cridland: 20:11

Now, earlier this year, power supporter Claire Waite-Brown came up to you and she was talking about a podcast covering Podcasting 2.0. I gather, gather.

Sam Sethi: 20:23

Yeah, claire had approached me about talking about her doing a new podcasting 2.0 show. She'd been listening to this show. She'd been listening to several other ones, so Buzzsprout or Buzzcast. She'd been listening to Mark Asquith and she thought, you know, I'm a podcaster, but I don't understand all of the terminology that you guys keep talking about in Podcasting 2.0. So we had a chat at the London Podcast Show. We then went for a coffee a little while after and she's put together a really clever how Podcasting 2.0 works, tag by tag, and it's a really interesting way. Now you and I have been interviewed, and it's a really interesting way. Now you and I have been interviewed. There have been many other people in the industry Ariel Nissenblatt, lauren Purcell, jordan Blair so again, she's putting this out. So I thought it would be interesting to reach out to Claire first of all and ask her so what's this brand new podcast you're launching?

Claire Waite Brown: 21:21

It's a podcast about podcasting Woohoo, I love listening to podcasts about podcasting. Woohoo, I love listening to podcasts about podcasting. And now I've decided to make my own. But it's very specifically looking at the human, the friendly, the useful side of the podcasting 2.0 features. So people will have heard you guys talking about these things on here and we hear a lot about the tech side of it. But for this show I'm breaking it down and explaining why these features are good for a human podcaster and a human listener. And actually it's called In Practice. So it's podcasting 2.0 In Practice, because I'm actually going to tell you how to do the thing as well as a listener and as a podcaster.

Sam Sethi: 22:07

Now I believe that the trailer is currently available, so that's good, but who have you asked to come and help you on this podcast?

Claire Waite Brown: 22:17

Yeah, you're right, the trailer is available and I've had a lovely busy few months talking to lots of people, because I'm not the expert in this and my whole outlook is that I'm an independent podcaster. I have lots of indie podcaster chums who I speak with and we say, oh, I don't really understand what it is, oh, this is a bit scary, or perhaps I should know about it, but where do I go? So that's the approach I'm coming at. I'm not the expert, but I've asked some other people to come and tell me they're the experts. So, for example, I've spoken to you.

Claire Waite Brown: 22:51

Obviously, sam James Quidland is a guest, ellie Rubenstein from Pocket Cast, jordan Blair from Buzzsprout, oscar Merry, daniel Day-Lewis. I've also asked some of my podcasting pals, david and Leela Meadis and Sarah Ferris. So there's a good mix of guests that come in and talk to me about the thing they like best. Usually they've said to me I want to talk about this thing, claire, and I'm yes, please do so. Those are some of the guests I've had who will talk about. They'll give us kind of a lecture that sounds a bit depressing. It's not bad, it's a happy lecture, it's a fun lesson in what the thing is, and they tend to get very enthusiastic about it as well, which is lovely.

Sam Sethi: 23:31

So, from what I understand, though, this isn't a passive podcast, as in, let me listen to it and let me just ingratiate myself with whatever's being heard. This is a active podcast, so explain to me what that means ever is being heard.

Claire Waite Brown: 23:45

This is a active podcast, so explain to me what that means. Yeah, Homework, I give you homework, guys. The thing is, I can hear lots of people talking about how wonderful a certain feature is and then go okay, but how do I do it? How do I find this? So that is exactly what I've done in here.

Claire Waite Brown: 23:58

You know this, Sam, but for my day job, I edit illustrated nonfiction books, and it's something I've been doing for very many years. So I've actually planned this whole course as I would plan one of my books. So I've even got a flat plan where I'm looking at the chapters, as in book chapters, how they should be ordered, so that the idea is is you follow the episodes in the correct order. You start at number one, because what I say at number one relates to number two, and they all kind of relate as we go along and as you learn a bit more and get to grips with it, then we get onto some of the features that might seem a bit more challenging. Actually, they're not when you come and listen to them.

Claire Waite Brown: 24:38

So the homework once you've had a lesson from our expert, I pop on again and say, right, let's do this, let's go and find some apps that support these features and then I help you. I give you links a bit further down the line Once I get into chapters. I do actually use photography on the chapters to physically show you how you can do some of the things on some of the apps or with some of the hosting companies, so you learn what the lovely feature is. Then you go and find it and as podcasts I will also tell you how you can set it up with some of the hosts the hosts that support things. And then there's a I've called it extra credit. You can give yourself some imaginary extra credit if you listen to some of the extra episodes, which some might be a bit about the history, some might be a bit about the future and what to expect going forward. So, yeah, there is interactivity and I don't expect me to be doing all the work. I expect you to be doing the work as well.

Sam Sethi: 25:36

Excellent, yes. And now, why did you start this? I mean, let's go back to the beginning. Why bother? There's enough of us out there talking about podcasting 2.0 to bore everyone to death for hours, so why would you start another one that says podcasting 2.0, let's teach you how to use it.

Claire Waite Brown: 25:53

Well, exactly for that reason I think, as an independent podcaster, I am one of those people who does like listening to podcasts about podcasting. So over the last year and a half or so, maybe two years, I've been slowly having this information infiltrated. So then I'm understanding. Sometimes you might listen to a show and one person will come on and talk about all these wonderful features that you can try and you can do this and you can do that and in the future you're going to be able to do that. I don't understand. So that's exactly what I wanted to do Slow it down. I have to say that I had started to pick up what is podcasting 2.0 when I was listening to shows like Pod News Weekly Review, also Buzzcast, and then I spoke to Oscar Merry when I was at Pod News Live in London. So over time I've been picking this up and thinking, actually this isn't as scary as it sometimes comes across, this is doable.

Claire Waite Brown: 26:47

And I was at an event in March, a Women in Web 3 event run by Lauren Ingram, and one lady there just explained very clearly what was meant by Web 3. And I was like that would be good for Podcasting 2.0 to explain it that clearly that I can understand. So then I had a chat with you about it, like, how could I do this? And the obvious thing to do to teach podcasters about podcasting technology is to make a podcast. And I was then just excited because I've got so much knowledge of all the books I've worked in, that this could work that way.

Claire Waite Brown: 27:27

And you and I have spoken about the human side of it, how it helps the podcaster, not the tech side. Not, we don't care about the tags, I don't care how they get in there. That's what clever people like you and hosting companies do. I don't need to know that. What I need to know is how is this going to help me? How is this going to help my show get found? How is this going to help me communicate with my listeners and, hopefully, at some point, is this going to help me get a little bit of money as well? So that's how we're doing it, breaking it all the way down very, very much, step by step. That's why I decided to do it.

Sam Sethi: 28:00

And I'm so glad you have because, realistically, I think you know some of us who are leading the charge on Podcasting 2.0 probably have left behind too many people who are going oh my God, what are they talking about over there? And we need to go back to basics, back to 101. So, of the tags that you've been having, you know courses on what's your favourite tag out there?

Claire Waite Brown: 28:25

Oh, it's Podroll. I think Podroll is so sweet and cute and lovely and it's just a way for podcasters to support other podcasters. Podroll is where you put on your show other shows that you like and that you recommend, and you are the trusted host. If somebody likes your show, they like you, so they trust you to put in that pod role shows that they will like. So I just think it's a beautiful way for independent podcasters to support each other to put those shows in, so that's why it's my favorite one and jordan blair. I asked jordan to come and speak about this feature and she loves it as well, and we got all very excited about all the different ways you can use it as well.

Sam Sethi: 29:10

Remind everyone when will the first episode drop?

Claire Waite Brown: 29:13

So the first episode is coming out on the 1st of January and then I will be releasing episodes weekly. The very first episode is the introduction. It tells you why I'm doing this and how it works. And then throughout the next few weeks until the end of March, I'll be releasing little groups of episodes, so like chapters in a book. So when we're talking about transcripts, for example, on that week I will release all three episodes relevant to transcripts. You get your lesson, you get your homework and in the case of transcripts there is an extra credit.

Claire Waite Brown: 29:50

So episodes releasing weekly. Sometimes it will be two episodes a week, sometimes it will be three episodes a week and then, depending on technologies, maybe the odd extra little one as well. So you're as up to date as you can be, but the plan is there. Starting in January, the season finishes with. These are the tags that I've chosen for this particular season, the ones that are easiest to understand, I think, the ones that are most useful, the ones that are friendliest and the most fun, and we'll finish at the end of March with the first series.

Sam Sethi: 30:20

Excellent. Remind everyone, Claire, where and what the name of the podcast is called.

Claire Waite Brown: 30:25

Yeah, so this show is called Podcasting 2.0 in Practice and my name is Claire Waite-Brown. You'll also find Creativity Found, which is my podcast that started me on this whole journey. And over on Instagram, I do have a Podcasting 2.0 in practice Instagram account. I will be creating a web page to go with this show that features a bit more information about our guests, information about where you can go, like hosting companies, apps, ais that can help you with your transcript, that kind of thing. So that will be at creativityfoundcouk slash podcasting. So the two of those are together. Yeah, but Instagram wise, there is a podcasting 2.0 in practice as well.

Sam Sethi: 31:12

Excellent, claire, congratulations. Thank you for doing this.

Claire Waite Brown: 31:15

Thank you so much. Thank you for asking me on to tell you all about it.

James Cridland: 31:19

You're very welcome, claire Waite-Brown, and there's more of that in the Pod News Extra feed. From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly Review. Now shall we go around the world?

Sam Sethi: 31:30

Sam, yes, we should. Now we should start in Italy, James, because I think you've got a really interesting story that you've been sort of, I guess, being a journalist. Right, You're doing proper journalistic work and you've spotted a company. Yeah, for once. Right, You're doing proper journalistic work and you've spotted a company. Yeah, for once. I didn't want to say anything more. Now you've spotted a company.

James Cridland: 31:50

That has been, let's say, doing something a little bit shady. What are they doing? Yeah, so this is a very strange old thing. There are lots and lots and lots of collection agencies popping up in Italy because of recent changes to European law, so much as I can understand, and this particular company is trying to sell itself. As we will keep your podcast safe, no one will be able to copy your podcast, no one will be able to make money from your podcast, and so that, on the face of it, sounds like a pretty good idea, and so quite a lot of people have gone. Oh, yes, please. Thanks very much. And they have signed up with this particular company. This company now has a number, although not very many, podcasts signed up with them. Invoices basically saying Italian law lets us charge, lets us license these podcasts out. These podcasters have signed with us and we, under perjury of you, know Italian law. We would like 7,000 euro, please, because you are listing these shows in your podcast directory.

James Cridland: 33:07

And I thought, well, this isn't really how podcasting works, is it? It's not really the thing. And I went digging into. They never contacted the Pod News website, but they did contact a couple of other people and I went digging into what the company was saying and digging into some of the claims that they were making, and, basically, you know, I'm sure that they believe that they are running this all legally and above board, but it's not how podcasting works, and if you want to earn money out of your podcast, then the way that you do that is you put that behind a paywall. You use Apple's premium subscriptions, you use, you know, whatever new and exciting thing True Fans is working on this week. However, you end up doing it, but what you don't do is you don't do this weird and random idea of using a collection agency to go chasing companies for payment and payment for what. This is what I couldn't quite work out. Even if you don't make any money from advertising, you don't make any money from user signups and things like that, they will still happily charge you an amount of money, so it's just very bizarre.

James Cridland: 34:25

The thing, though, that I found most interesting is they've got three partners on their website, and they are big companies in Italy. One of them is a company called Podstar, which makes shows. They are listed as a partner, and I thought OK, well, that's interesting. Turns out that the lady, esther Mameo, who runs that particular company, esther, basically said I had no idea how this lot was working. They have sponsored me to make them a podcast, and that's as far as the relationship goes.

James Cridland: 35:04

And another set of people Assipod, who are the Association of Italian Podcasting. I contacted them and they came back and they said we have no partnership. They're using our logo without our authorization. We have already contacted them to remove that logo and it's still there, and so you know. So what can we do? So a fascinating, fascinating company.

James Cridland: 35:30

You know I don't want to go all Italian, and you know that this is what they're like in Italy, aren't they? But the two people that seemingly run the company, license Inc. One called Rochelle, who's a girl, one called Carmina, who's a girl, one called Carmina, who's a boy, who, I believe a man and wife. They also make a podcast about true crime, focusing on the mafia, and I, you know you almost couldn't, couldn't have written that, could you? But yeah, it's a proper racket, you know, essentially, and so hopefully, by covering it and by getting a quote from a lawyer for podcasting, hopefully that will help other people that get these spurious invoices and they will know to at least take a look at it and go. I don't think you deserve any money at all.

Sam Sethi: 36:23

Now talking about investigative journalism. The BBC World Service has been investigating Diary of a CEO with Stephen Bartlett, and it's accused them of spreading fringe theories and harmful health information. What have they been doing, james?

James Cridland: 36:40

Well. So the way, I don't know if you've seen the Stephen Bartlett stuff recently, but he seems to have all of a sudden moved away from business leaders and all of that sort of thing and seems to have focused a bit more on health and, you know, looking at cancer and looking at, you know, polycystic ovarian syndrome and autism and all kinds of things, and presumably that does really well with the YouTube numbers and all of that. The only concern with all of that is that actually, at the end of the day, what he is doing is he's getting some people on who they have slightly fringe views, shall we put it that way? Mostly the BBC says spreading misleading claims. And you know, and you know I mean some of the stuff. I mean, curing cancer by your diet is not a thing, it's just not a thing is not a thing, it's just not a thing.

James Cridland: 37:50

And so they did a big hit piece. Now I would say they've done a big hit piece on a piece of audio which is clearly getting an awful lot of people tuning into it. That the BBC does not do so. Therefore, of course, they would do a hit piece on a competing piece of audio, wouldn't they? But even so, I think it is worthwhile watching the video that the World Service made, or read the BBC News story about it and actually just think well you know, does it make perfect sense here?

Sam Sethi: 38:19

Yeah, I mean Flight Studio have said it's merely freedom of expression. Now, this is where I thought we would have a broader conversation, because the IAB published their creative best practices in podcasting recently with a set of examples of post-reads, pre-rolls, brand segments and others. And I noticed that on YouTube, on Goalhanger with Rest is Football, they've got labeling now that says this includes paid promotion. And we've talked in the past about should posk, should podcasting, now have labeling around it, you know, and there's a proposal from daniel j lewis in the podcasting 2.0 to do that, but again, nothing's really come of it and I think the worry we have and this is where I'm not quite sure what to do next.

Sam Sethi: 39:10

But you and I have come from a radio world where Ofcom very clearly has regulations. What you can and cannot do on radio TV has very much the same thing. The US media has the same thing and I noted, obviously, and everyone else in the world noted, that you know, the last election in the US was maybe not swung by Joe Rogan, but Roganomics seems to be something that seems to be talked about now as this thing that you know, trump won because he went on and Harris didn't. But if the podcasting community is now becoming the mainstream media. Does it require regulation? Does the big shows like Diary of a CEO, call Her Daddy, joe Rogan, etc. Do they need to be, I know, regulated? And you know I can hear Adam Curry now literally rolling on the floor having a heart attack because that is, you know, the antipathy of everything that he believes in. But is the fact that they're putting out information that may be slightly spurious, or at least certainly not a mainstream belief from experts? Then what should we do? How can we control this?

James Cridland: 40:27

Well, and also is it harmful? And at the end of the day, some of this stuff is harmful. I mean at the basic side of it. If you are trying to cure cancer by ignoring your doctor and instead making sure that you don't eat any gluten, I mean you will get iller and iller. That's what the evidence says, so you know. So that begins to be the concern that you're not just spreading a point of view which not very many people hold. You are actually being directly harmful to the people that are listening to you and I think that that crosses a line. I mean, it's one thing. It's one thing spreading ideas and freedom of expression and everything else. It's another idea actually actively trying to kill your audience off, because that's not a good plan. Idea actually actively trying to kill your audience off, because that's not a good plan.

James Cridland: 41:30

So, but I think you know, I suppose on one side of this, quite a lot of the regulation is actually there on podcasting. It's just not done by a media regulator, it's done by a trade regulator. So the FTC has views on how you promote sponsors and things like that in the US and whether or not those promotions are truthful. And there are similar bodies here in Australia, in the UK and so on and so forth, it doesn't have to be a media regulator.

James Cridland: 41:56

But the other side of it is, if the podcasting world does end up doing this sort of thing, where you are promoting all kinds of weird and wonderful stuff and some of it is harmful, then regulation will come. I mean, you know, we will get regulated if we, you know, if we're not squeaky clean and above board, we will be regulated, because that's what governments do and so partially we need to regulate ourselves, I guess, and to make sure that actually we're not doing that sort of thing. And that is where, if you look at, for example, the commercial radio industry here in Australia, that is self-regulated. It's regulated in terms of the individual commercial radio companies have all signed up to a code of practice that they will adhere to and that should get them out of any trouble with the regulator and that should make sure that the quality of the broadcasting is decent enough. And self-regulation is a pretty good first start, because if we're not doing self-regulation, then the government will come along and want to regulate us anyway. So that's where I think our first step should be.

Sam Sethi: 43:17

UK papers have a self-regulation body and I'm afraid it's got. You know, it's the tiger with no teeth. And you look at some of the headlines that come out of UK press and they still, you know they got done for phone tapping, oh well, you know, a little rap on the knuckles. They then were, you know, paparazzing, which led to, you know, possibly Lady Diana's death, and and still, little raps on the knuckles. Nothing has really been done to curtail the way that the UK press behaves and I suspect that this will happen in podcasting, because you know, how will a UK I don't know regulator go to Joe Rogan if it's broadcast in the?

James Cridland: 44:00

UK.

Sam Sethi: 44:01

It's just not going to work. I can't see how it's going to happen.

James Cridland: 44:05

Yeah, and of course, that is. The other problem with the podcasting world is that we are global and you know who regulates this show. This show is published out of Florida. It's produced by somebody who lives in the UK and I'm on it, somebody from Australia and it's got my brand on it. So you know who's going to be regulating that.

James Cridland: 44:28

Is it going to be the UK, is it going to be Australia? Is it going to be the US? All three maybe? Who knows? So, yeah, I think there's lots of questions that we need to ask ourselves here, but I do know that what we have to do is we have to make sure that we get our house in as much order as it possibly can be, because otherwise, um, somebody, um, from some big uh government is going to come along and say, right, well, we will do all of that for you, uh, and that's probably not what we want. And also, of course, not forgetting that there are advertisers in these um shows as well, and the advertisers, of course, not forgetting that there are advertisers in these shows as well, and the advertisers probably don't want their brands associated with some of the things that have apparently been said.

Sam Sethi: 45:15

We've got fake news. Let's hope 2025 is not going to be the new world of double think. That's all I will say on that well, agreed agreed now on a more positive note. Um, we talked sadly about some uh competing news letters in the podcasting space going away in 2024, but we had some good news in 2024 as well. There is a new european podcasting online newsletter. It's called Eurowaves. Again, their first issue was launched. Did you have a look at it at all, james?

James Cridland: 45:50

Yeah, it was a good interview. It spoke to somebody who I can't pronounce, andrea Knezovic. Perhaps I think I pronounced that completely differently when I said that the other day on the Pod News Daily. Anyway, she is communications manager for WePod, but Andrea Koskaj is the editor and she will be on this very show in the new year. So a good booking. And if there's one thing that I've tried to be doing over the last seven years or so, it's to point out in a polite sort of way that podcasting is a thing in other countries apart from the United States of America. One day the Podcast Hall of Fame will learn that too, but certainly you know that's a good thing. So you can sign up to Eurowave and we look forward to hearing from Andrea in the new year.

Sam Sethi: 46:47

And Podcaston.

James Cridland: 46:48

James, tell me more about it. Yeah, podcaston is a really interesting idea. It's a nice Frenchman called Jeremy Mani who has been doing this for the last couple of years, has been doing this for the last couple of years. It's a super easy and simple idea of all of podcasting getting together to help charities and it's up to you what charity you want to support.

James Cridland: 47:13

I thought we would speak with Jeremy Money and then I discovered that Doug Downs has spoken to Jeremy Money and I thought that his interview was just as good as you or I speaking to him, and so, instead of you and I talking to him, I thought Doug could talk to him. It's very interesting. Actually. They ended up both being at Reagan Airport. I think they were on their way to podcast movement earlier on in the year and Doug and Jeremy are there waiting for a cab. They realise that they are both going to the same hotel. Jeremy says to Doug you know what do you do for a living? And Doug says I'm a podcast producer. And then, all of a sudden, jeremy dives into what Podcastthon is all about.

Jeremie Mani: 48:01

Basically, the idea there is to convince as many podcasters as we can to dedicate one episode of their show to a charity of their choice in a coordinated effort, all together, simultaneously, to create a mass effect, to create a ripple effect of positive and inspiring audio content. So you need to imagine that next March, probably around 1,500 podcasters worldwide will release one episode featuring a charity of their choice, so highlighting a cause that they care about, and they do that all together, so that will create this effect. That's what this podcast is on just to raise awareness. There is no money at stake, no financial engagement. We just ask podcasters to offer the mic to their audience.

Doug Downs: 48:49

That was my first question in the cab was what's in it for you? And you were saying, look, I've just gotten to a point where I can do this Briefly. Tell me about the first podcast on you mentioned. It was in France, the first iteration, and how it went.

Jeremie Mani: 49:05

Yeah, I'm a French citizen living in Montreal in Canada, and that was easier for me to start with my French network. So we had this idea in mind. We were not sure it was a good idea, so we started to talk about that with a few French podcasters and then somehow we fine-tuned the formula with them. The first edition took place in March 2023 with 300 podcasters at the time, which was quite a nice surprise, because we were expecting maybe 100 maximum for our first edition, and there was a wave, a sheer wave of enthusiasm. It was great energy with this first edition. So we decided to keep on and have a second one to open it to French-speaking countries, including Belgium, switzerland, quebec and Canada, and now we are starting to extend it to English-speaking podcasters, so in the US, in the UK, in Australia and the rest of Canada, for sure, and many, many other countries.

Doug Downs: 50:02

And you have a website, podcastthonorg, so you can start to see some of the interest that you're generating within the podcast industry. How's it going so?

Jeremie Mani: 50:14

far so good. It's a great surprise. I can give you the figures. We have exceeded the milestone of 1,000 podcasters. It's 1,100-something, coming from more than 40 countries so far. Well, most of them are just with one or two podcasters, but the bulk of it is coming from the US. The US is the first provider of podcasters. Now it's over 300-something, then France and the UK. So it's a great surprise to see that and a relief too, because we were not sure about the success of this initiative elsewhere than in French-speaking countries. So, yeah, a lot of enthusiasm from fellow podcasters in the US, in the UK, in Australia, in South Africa, in many countries. We have podcasters from New Zealand, from everywhere in the world. So that's really amazing. Every day many more are coming, on average 15 per day new registrants. So that's great. Probably we will exceed 1,500 podcasters in March.

Doug Downs: 51:14

Fantastic, and that's what podcasters can do right now is go to that website and register, and that's simply indicating I'm going to do this Third week of March right, 2025. Exactly, that's a very straightforward process.

Jeremie Mani: 51:27

It takes probably 90 seconds. Just have, as podcasters, to fill the form giving us information about the name of your podcast, your cover. You just have to upload your cover, a few details about the URLs of your podcast and also, for example, your social networks. A short description, the one you can have on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. You don't have to figure out something different, and from there we will display your cover and your details on our website, so anyone now can go on wwwpodcastanorg and see it's at the public list or register to podcasters. They are all there, either in french or in english, you can choose, and you have the full list and and we would be pleased to have yours if you are listeners we could have yours in in a few minutes if you, if you can take those 90 seconds perfect and I mean, we've seen this on social media, right?

Doug Downs: 52:18

you and I are both in canada and, for example, there's bell let's talk, which is a mental health awareness day, and everyone gets on X or gets on Instagram and they use the same hashtag and different countries have different variations of that. With podcasts, it's a little bit different. I like to think of social media as wide, but not very deep, right, because you spend a few seconds at most engaging Podcasts. Maybe not quite as wide, but awfully deep, because people are having 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 minute conversations. Why does it work for podcasts, do you think?

Jeremie Mani: 52:56

Yeah, I mean we figured out that podcasting is probably the best medium to convey emotion, to tell stories. I mean, you guys, podcasters are great storytellers, and that's on the one hand. And on the other hand, all those charities wherever in the world they are, whatever the causes they are supporting could be very large NGO to very local charity they all need to connect with a larger audience, they all need to enlarge their circle of supporters. And when I'm saying supporters, I mean potential future donators, potential future volunteers or whatever else. And when you're asking for a donation, it's really rare that anyone is saying okay, yes, I will do it right now, especially if you don't know the charity.

Jeremie Mani: 53:42

It takes time to check if it's a serious charity or to connect emotionally with this charity. So through a podcast episode and as you said, it could be one hour, I mean you have one hour of nuanced speech of you can go into details, you can introduce your challenges, you can introduce your whatever you're doing on the ground. And at the end of the day, at the end of the episode, if you are listeners, something will remain, you know, a memory, an emotion, and the next time you will hear about this charity or maybe because you would have subscribed on their social networks or on their newsletter, you will be much more connected and maybe keen to either donate or share the content or, why not, becoming a volunteer. So that's what I'm saying enlarging the circle of supporters, and they need that.

Doug Downs: 54:34

Third week of March. Any podcaster, any charity of your choice, any format. A lot would be interview format, but it doesn't have to be. It could be solo stories. For example, I've lost both my best friend and my mom to cancer. My charity of choice is going to be cancer. We'll do an interview, but it could be a solo episode telling those stories.

Jeremie Mani: 54:59

So that would be the 15th of March, mid-march. From the 15th of March to the 21st, a span of seven days during which any podcaster can relive their episodes. Could be Monday or Tuesday, whatever the day you pick up. And, yeah, the format is completely up to the podcasters. Most of the time it's an interview with a representative of a charity, but we are open to any kind of format. You mentioned a solo item. I could be also an audio report. We had that a few times in in within during the first edition, meaning you take your mic and you go directly on the ground with the charity and then you interview people there and you and you, you know mixing just like you would do on the radio, for example. So any, as you understood, the concept is to raise awareness on charity and you can unleash your creativity. You can do whatever your talent is, do whatever you think is best for you as a podcaster and for the charity you want to promote.

Doug Downs: 55:55

Thanks for your time, Jeremy. I'm glad we shared that cab.

Jeremie Mani: 55:59

It was my pleasure.

James Cridland: 56:00

Doug Downs and Jeremy Mani from Podcast Thon, and you can find more information, obviously, at the website and we are a media supporter Moving on then James awards and events.

Sam Sethi: 56:12

What's going on around the world? Where are we going to have to book our tickets to next?

James Cridland: 56:16

Well, I'll tell you where I am going next. I'm not going to Podfest Expo, which is in Orlando along with the United States Hall of Fame from the 16th to the 19th of January. I won't be going to that one. Nothing against it, it's just that I try not to travel in January. There is a free virtual event on January the 14th and 15th. It's Lowest Eats Brand Podcast Summit, which you should sign up for. It's free if you're interested in anything to do with branded podcasts.

James Cridland: 56:49

There There'll be some new research from Signal Hill Insights, there'll be people from the New York Times and Morgan Stanley and all kinds of people, which is worth a thing. There's On Air Fest, which is in Brooklyn in mid-February with all kinds of very big speakers. That's a very creative type of event going on there in Brooklyn, and Evolutions is, of course, happening from Podcast Movement towards the end of March, beginning of April, and that is in Chicago, in the US, or just south of the main downtown area of Chicago. I've been there seeing if I can find a night hotel other than the one that we're staying at, and I don't think I can, but I've just booked the flights, so that should be fun. The tech stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 57:42

Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday in the Pod News newsletter. Here's where Sam talks technology. There's all kinds of stuff going on, isn't there, Sam?

Sam Sethi: 57:50

Well, let's start off with some of the interesting stuff that we can get through quickly, because there's a little bit more that we have to delve into. The Apple podcast yes, they have unveiled new features. Wow, christmas, ios 18.2 is out and it's got new categories in your library that will give you personalised recommendations. Have you tried it, james?

James Cridland: 58:14

I haven't tried it, to be honest. No, because I'm not that interested in what an app tells me as a personalised recommendation. I always find that the curated recommendations in there are pretty good anyway. But yes, the one thing that Apple podcasts do say is that make sure that your primary category is accurate, because that will really help the algorithm. You know essentially you will be you will appear next to shows that you should be appearing next to, rather than shows that you shouldn't be appearing next to. So there's a thing just worthwhile keeping an eye on.

James Cridland: 58:46

Spotify for video is also. They've made some changes to their self-serve advertising platform, which is called Spotify Ads Manager, and now you can advertise on it in video as well as in audio. There used to be this product called Spotify Podcast Streams, which was a method of basically advertising your audio podcast to people who are using Spotify. Now that's just called Spotify Streams. They've taken the podcast word away there as well, and it deals with video. Interestingly, podcasters using it have apparently seen increases in audience of 13%, the company says, which is nice. Have you seen the new TV ad? Or the new social media ad, I should say, for GoHanger?

Sam Sethi: 59:34

No, I hadn't, until you published it. I mean, I don't know where I was supposed to see it otherwise, but I did see it and it's very good. I mean, obviously they've taken all the hosts and integrated them into the ad, so yeah, it's very smart.

James Cridland: 59:49

Yeah, it's a really nice thing. You should go and have a look at it, if you haven't already done so. You'll find it if you just do a search in PodNews for GoalHanger. By the way, that page did incredibly well. I have a new dashboard that I look at every single day. I wrote myself a dashboard. There's a thrill and an excitement and and, yeah, I've never seen page views like it. But yes, it's a really smart thing and worth a peek at. Interestingly, it is being, I think, part paid by Spotify. They use the phrase in partnership with Spotify and it's very much a listen to these shows on the Spotify platform and it shows lots of people using Spotify to listen, so I'm imagining that it is part paid for by the Spotify platform. But yeah, they're very, very good ads, so it's worth a peek Did you just say, video drove higher engagement.

James Cridland: 1:00:49

Did I Well, maybe. Well, yes, but I mean a story all about a new video ad, and I did link to it by saying is this the best ad for a podcast company ever? Um, which I right, I have to say I I think it is yeah, no, it was very good yeah, apart from the fact that it doesn't use the word podcast doesn't it?

Sam Sethi: 1:01:14

I'll have to go back and look, oh no well, maybe that's because spotify doesn't want them to use the word podcast.

James Cridland: 1:01:21

Maybe, maybe you might think that I couldn't possibly comment no, so who knows, who knows? But no, it's a really good ad, so hurrah for them.

Sam Sethi: 1:01:30

Now Castbox. It's another podcast app. It's, in fact, one of the most popular apps in the world. It now has a new monthly podcast recommendation from Tink Media. Seems everyone's bringing out recommendations.

James Cridland: 1:01:48

James, yes, recommendations are a good thing and obviously Tink Media know a thing or two about good shows and things. I think the question that I would have is is it going to be clear which of those podcasts are Tink Media clients and which of those podcasts are just shows that people from Tink Media like, because I know that they do promote both. But I hope it's going to be very clear if a client has got a slot in here. But I think any clever podcast app will be doing those sorts of integrations with editorial folk that understand what a good show is to keep people using that app and to bring them, you know, in. So yeah, I thought that was a very clever move.

Sam Sethi: 1:02:28

Now moving around the world to Australia again. Hosting service Pod2 has announced a partnership with Rakuten Kobo. It's enabling Pod2's audio books to be published directly to Kobo Books, which is quite cool. Russell Harraway is the CEO of Pod2, and he's been working on a new technology as well, called Secure RSS. Now, what is Secure RSS? It's a way of protecting the content owner's feed their RSS feed, james and it uses a technology called L402, which we don't need to get into here directly. But what is the problem I guess Secure RSS is trying to fix? Now I'm going to pose this to you, james. If I gave you an RSS feed with an MP3 file in the enclosure, could I just simply copy and paste that mp3 file to anywhere I like?

James Cridland: 1:03:24

Yes, so the RSS feed is just a menu and it points to the audio. And yes, with an RSS feed you can just download that audio and post that wherever you like or do whatever you want with it, right?

Sam Sethi: 1:03:40

So that's what we call Open RSS, and the problem is audio book providers, certain music artists and maybe film producers do not want people to be able to take an RSS feed and have full access to the content by being able to copy and paste it anywhere else they might like. So the idea of secure RSS is very simple. You put down what's called a pre-image, and a macaroon is basically a token.

James Cridland: 1:04:09

A, what A pre-image. And a macaroon You've lost me already. Yeah, what does small French cookies have to do with any of this?

Sam Sethi: 1:04:20

Exactly exactly, but basically it's a token. So what happens? Is you then?

James Cridland: 1:04:27

So if I buy something, then I can access the audio file or whatever it happens to be inside the RSS feed, but if I don't buy it, then I can't actually access the audio.

Sam Sethi: 1:04:39

Yes, that's correct, and I should have said it from the beginning. But the big thing is that if you then copied that MP3 in a secure RSS feed and try to use it elsewhere, it would not work. And that's the key point, right? Because you have to fundamentally unlock that macaroon, and that's a token, and you can only do that once you have paid and you have a confirmation that you can unlock it. So it's, it's a way.

Sam Sethi: 1:05:07

When I spoke to, uh, greta cohen at pushkin industries earlier in the year for this podcast and I said, hey, you've got audio books, why don't you put them into podcasting 2.0 and send them out? And did it, and she simply said said well, no, because people just copy it and it's just it's. And the answer was we want to charge so much for an audio book, we don't want it to be pay what you want and we want to make sure that our content is protected, and so this, hopefully, is one way that we can now get people like Pushkin Industries and other audio book providers to use RSS but also to make sure that their content is secure and safe.

James Cridland: 1:05:46

So Russell from Pod2 has been doing a little bit of this and I gather that you ended up speaking with Russell. Did he mention small French cookies as well?

Sam Sethi: 1:05:58

He might have done. I've tried to keep him away from that as well, but he did happen to also mention little things like Bolt 11, lnurlp and the Albi Hub. So if you're into understanding what this technology is all about and want to know more, then listen to this interview with Russell and I talking about secure.

Russell Harrower: 1:06:19

RSS. But there's a fundamental problem with that technology and that is if I'm a podcaster that wants to do a bonus episode and charge for that bonus episode. We've made it a little bit too easy to access that MP3 file. So what secure RSS does is we put a layer of like a payment method in between accessing that MP3 file. So we use a technology called L402. You can get information about that at L402.org and it basically, in a nutshell, is a macaroon and an invoice that goes to the podcast player. You pay that through the podcast player, they get the unlock key and then they send that unlock key back to us and, voila, you have access to that MP3 file. Apart from that macaroon.

Sam Sethi: 1:07:10

It sounds very simple. So it's standard RSS that's delivered to a podcast player from a host and I can then click on the buy button, I guess, or some sort of button that then sends a token back to you that there's a confirmed payment and you then unlock that file for me to play and listen to. Now is that going to work? For what type of content? Audiobooks, I guess is one, but is that the only type of content?

Russell Harrower: 1:07:38

No, absolutely not, Sam. It's not just audiobooks. We're looking at doing TV shows, movies, music, and also you've got podcasters who want to do that bonus episode. So that's one of the beautiful things about Pod 2 is, once we develop a product and technology, we will roll it out to all of our clients.

Sam Sethi: 1:07:57

But we already have a model called Value for value that's been introduced to podcasting and that's the idea of the user paying what they want for the content that they receive, the value they receive. Now, can't we just continue with the V for V model with audio books and films? Isn't that just the easiest way, without having to put all this extra technical, secure RSS on top of it all?

Russell Harrower: 1:08:21

As much as I would love to say yes to that question, v4v has its place. I'm not saying it doesn't. However, a TV show costs a little bit more than 50 cents to make, and an audio book as well. When I pitched the idea to some publishers, they're like as long as I get to charge what I want to charge and I still make my money, then I'm fine. So there is the want out there from the community of creators who want to be paid fairly for their work, and I think that's the difference.

Russell Harrower: 1:08:55

Value for value is a gift, a donation. For us, it's about paying for art, and that is what we all do. At the end of the day, we create art, and one of the biggest things that we've noticed at Pod2 is there's a lot of AI bots scraping our data and scraping our creators' data, so we will be really advocating to our creators to go secure and use secure RSS technology. It may also mean that they don't charge for it. We've got F402, which is a method that we use with a select number of players that they can unlock content and there's really actually no real-time currency coming to us, but they can unlock the key that way. So there is technology still being developed and worked out, but F402 was designed for fiat transactions where, let's say, truefans, for example, someone pays for an audio book for, let's say, it's 20 bucks, they would pay in their fiat and then 30 days later True Fans would pay us our commission part of that, so it's delayed payment. Unfortunately, we can't get fiat to be real time, which we could but we can't Cool.

Sam Sethi: 1:10:14

When's this going to come out? When can we start to see some of this stuff then?

Russell Harrower: 1:10:17

Sure, well, we've got our very first audio book that will be released in January. We were in the studio last Sunday and this Sunday recording it. So it's up to me to edit this great book by Scott Patrick. Michael is called Clean. It's by our very first publisher that signed with us, called Upswell Publishing. They're based here in Perth and it was such a pleasure to work with them. They came into the studio, they recorded it and pretty much one take. So hopefully some slight small editing and we should get it out in the second half of january just to remind everyone.

Sam Sethi: 1:10:55

so that will be available from pod 2. It'll be in an rss format. Podcasting apps that support secure RSS will then be able to add a buy button to the page on their app. The user will click the buy button, It'll tell them the price in both SaaS and fiat and then the user chooses. Once they've chosen, that then sends a confirmed payment token back to pod two, who then unlock the audio file for you to use. Now I think you're also extending it with an option for buy or rent. Explain that to me or maybe seven days.

Russell Harrower: 1:11:43

So we do have the option. It is up to the creator of the audio book or whatever it is it could be a TV show, for example. They will have that available in their dashboard on pod two to say whether they want a buy option or a rent option. The advantage of going through a podcast player is that the creator gets to keep 100% of their recommended retail price. That is really important because Terri-Ann, the owner of Upswell Publishing, she literally said to me on Sunday there's too many people taking money from the middle and if I can get around that, I will. So that's one of the really good things with Pod 2 and True fans is everyone wins. Clearly, true fans get to keep back. The creator gets to keep a hundred percent of their earnings, and that's what it's about. If we as a community can solve a huge problem where publishers don't feel like they're getting ripped off, then what a great community to be part of.

Sam Sethi: 1:12:39

Russell, we could talk for ages. We better cut it short there. Russell, remind everyone if they want to find out more about Secure RSS, where would they?

Russell Harrower: 1:12:47

go Sure, so you can head over to pod2, that's P-O-D-T-O-O dot com. You can jump onto LinkedIn, search me, russell Harawa, or search pod2, send us a message and look, jump onto Mastodon, I'm on there as well.

Sam Sethi: 1:13:02

Lovely Russell, thank you so much. Look forward to seeing Secure RSS out in the wild. Thanks, Sam.

James Cridland: 1:13:12

There's the excellent Russell Harrawer from Perth, western Australia. There are different people over there, and if you want to hear more of that, then the Pod News Extra is your friend. That's our additional podcast, where you can go and find the longer version of that particular show as well.

Sam Sethi: 1:13:26

James. Now, one of the things that we've wanted to do within podcasting is make it more interactive, and comments is one way that that happens. There is a tag called the podcast social interact tag that was brought out, but it's not really been used much. Now you've had a look at this again. What have you come up with as an idea to make comments much more useful?

James Cridland: 1:13:47

So I took a look at the social interact tag, and one of the problems with the social interact tag is that it's desperately trying to be everything to everybody, and the way that you would read any comments in your podcast app would be to have a look in the social interact tag and you'd find, for example, you'd find an activity pub link so Mastodon or whatever it is and so your app would be expected to understand how activity pub worked and go and look at the comments and try and do quite a lot of hard work. It turns out in terms of grabbing all of the specific comments from a particular URL for ActivityPub. And then, of course, you might also be using Twitter, and so your app would need to understand how Twitter worked in order to find the comments and show those in the app, and you'd have to. If you're an app developer, you'd have to get a Twitter API key. You'd have to even buy. You're an app developer, you'd have to get a Twitter API key. You'd have to even buy one, because Elon isn't giving those away free anymore. And then you've got all manner of other complicated things as well, and it's just. You know, whenever I've looked at even implementing it as a developer, I've gone. This is just so complicated and so difficult.

James Cridland: 1:15:04

So I figure that we keep the social interact tag. Keep it exactly as it is, don't change any of it, because it works absolutely fine for posting messages, for posting comments. If you want to build in posting comments into your app, then you can use the social interact tag and that's all absolutely cool. But to read the comments, I think that we just use what is built into RSS at the moment, because, guess what? Rss has a tag which is called comments. Who knew RSS 2.0. Somebody must have thought about that. There is a tag which is called comments. Now that tag at the moment doesn't specify anything about that other than there's a URL for where to find some comments.

James Cridland: 1:15:52

So my suggestion here is that the comments are in a very simple piece of technology called an RSS feed and we link to that RSS feed of the comments as if it was a blog, using the comments tag in RSS 2.0. So I'm not coming up with anything that is new. Any new namespace requires it is simply using the comments feed in your existing RSS feed for your podcast and that links through to what looks like a blog feed which contains all of the comments in there. So simple and straightforward. That would also mean, by the way, that you could follow the comments in there. So simple and straightforward. That would also mean, by the way, that you could follow the comments for your favourite podcast in your RSS reader if you wanted to. It means that you could do all manner of exciting things.

James Cridland: 1:16:51

Now Russell, who we've just heard from he, came to me and he said well, that's all right, but I want to at least mention the app where someone has left that comment from. And I said, well, that's cool, we can do that because RSS 2.0 also has the source tag, and the source tag allows you to do exactly that and say this is the source of this particular comment. So even that bit works. And it's amazing what you find once you actually delve into the RSS 2.0 spec and you go oh, we can do all of this anyway without having to reinvent any wheels. So that's my theory is that the social interact tag is used if you want to interact with that podcast, but if all you want to do is just show the comments, then the podcaster, however they do, it produces an RSS feed that contains comments, and it might be comments from the Fediverse. It might be comments from YouTube, it might be comments from all over the place. That's all fine, that's all absolutely fine. But we leave that up to the podcaster to produce their comments, which are available as an RSS feed, and your podcast app pulls those in and shows them. Hey presto, we've got a really easy, straightforward method of passing a comments feed from whoever, and the podcaster themselves gets to be able to moderate those if they want to.

James Cridland: 1:18:18

If it was me, I would probably pull in comments that are about the main show, not necessarily about any particular episode, so I get full control over which comments I want to put in there. Everything all works, basically. For podcast hosting companies, it's dead easy. We all understand how RSS works. And for listeners, they get to see comments for the first time in whatever podcast app that they want or their own RSS feed reader. So I think it's a brilliant idea. I've put it onto GitHub, sam.

James Cridland: 1:18:47

I know it's had two replies, three replies One from you saying I think this is a good idea. One from Russell saying, yes, this is really good and he's already coded it, of course, because hasn't he? Russell saying, yes, this is really good and he's already coded it, of course, because hasn't he? And one more as well from Stephen Bell, who has said I've always thought this is how comments should be handled. But apart from that, nothing else. And I think if I was asking for anything, I would say hello Dave, hello Adam, you've always wanted cross-act comments. Please could you have a look at this? What are we supposed to do to move this forward? But yes, that was my sort of thought. I don't know whether you've had any other thoughts since I posted I because I posted the original and I was using jason and I suddenly realized what's the point of using jason when you can actually just get away with just using an rss feed.

Sam Sethi: 1:19:49

So yeah, I'll be honest and say, um no, I haven't had any further thoughts, just because I've been doing secure rss something else yeah yeah, so that's taken up all our time, but I like what you put forward.

Sam Sethi: 1:20:04

I mean, you went through two iterations before you got to the final. Actually, we can just do it through the original. I'm still struggling in my head but that's just because I haven't spent any time as to how you aggregate those comments from different points of view into a single point. So in my little brain I'm thinking this is very similar to the way that you might have a tag that then points to another file. So we do pod rolls and publisher feeds and that okay, that uses remote items. It's not the same format, but it is a pointer to another file.

James Cridland: 1:20:37

Yeah, so it's a pointer to another file which you can then have different caching rules on. You can then do different things with, and I think, yeah to your point, how you make that RSS feed of comments is up to you as a podcaster or up to you as a podcast host. Only wish to support a comments form on your website? Well, that's cool. You can do that Support a comments form on your website and pull those into an RSS feed. You might want to write something, or use John Spurlock's magic library that does all of the activity pub for you, and that's cool too.

James Cridland: 1:21:19

You can combine all of them if you want to, or you can just use one way of getting comments in. So all of that is really up to the podcaster or up to any enterprising third party that wants to make that comments feed for them. But I think you know all of that is there and ready and waiting. So I'm you know, I'm thinking it's hopefully, it hopefully takes all of the complication away, particularly if you are a podcast app developer and all you want to do is just show comments. Well, what could be easier than just passing an RSS feed? So, hopefully, that should hopefully do the trick. One would hope.

Sam Sethi: 1:22:04

I mean Russell's coded up something called Boostagram Live Server, which is basically allowing you, like TrueFans and Fountain, as an example, to publish a comment to a central point and then, using the episode GUID, we could then look at what comment was published from one or the other apps and then bring it back into the other app. So aggregating cross-app comments that way, this again. Um, I need to. I will do, but I need to look at this more. How could we get the comments that are currently in true fans to a format that would allow it to be aggregated? That's, that's the fundamental goal. Is that aggregation part? I think using the existing tag is smart, because we're not reinventing the wheel, and by the way there'll be.

James Cridland: 1:22:57

there'll be no reason why somebody couldn't use that existing comments tag, point it to true fans and just say if you want to leave us a comment, leave it on True Fans. I mean, you don't have to aggregate more than that if you don't want to, so yeah, so I think there's definitely something there. I mean, I'm almost thinking this is using pure RSS 2.0.

James Cridland: 1:23:21

I'm almost thinking do I wake dave weiner up and say dave dave, I've come up with this brilliant idea, but he'll probably ignore me. Um, but, um, but yeah, but I I think that there's definitely something there, but I would love more eyeballs on it. So, uh, it would be good if there were more eyeballs out there, I guess.

Announcer: 1:23:44

Boostergrams. Boostergrams and fan mail On the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 1:23:51

Yes, it's our favourite time of the week. It's Boostergram Corner and also where our power supporters live as well. And just as a reminder that Sam and I share anything that we get from this particular show, it doesn't go to the other 427 people who work on the Pod News newsletter. I wish that was the case. And so what have we got? We've got some boosts.

James Cridland: 1:24:13

First of all, if you don't know what a boost is, if you are using a new podcast app, there is a big button there which is marked boost, where you can send us a small amount of money and a little message, and one of the people who has done that is Silex on Linux, who has sent us 100 sats and says I don't even think switching between audio and video is an uncommon use case. I do it constantly with YouTube on my phone. I will admit that's a fine reason to ignore the MP3 enclosure, though, especially considering that they don't know what dynamic insertion stuff you do on the audio file. Still, I would prefer it if they also supported alternate enclosure, but now I get it. Yes, indeed, I think Sam was exactly of the same thought last week. So, yes, it's a technological problem that somehow we need to solve, I guess.

Sam Sethi: 1:25:05

Now we had a thousand sats from the pod sage himself, Dave Jones. He says I don't understand Marco taking the funding feature out of Overcast prematurely. It was already built. If Apple rejected a future release on those grounds, just take the feature out, then why do it ahead of time? To date, Apple have never rejected a podcast app for including this.

James Cridland: 1:25:28

Yes, I agree, and I think that you know, Marco was taking it out because he was worried that Apple might give it as a reason to decline his app in the future. And I think that that was the point that Marco was trying to make there, that actually people are doing things not because Apple has told them to do, but because they think that Apple might tell them to do that, which is a very strange old thing, isn't it? So, yes, I completely agree. I mean, it's sad that not very many people used it, but on the other hand, I would guess that there wouldn't be too many shows that actually had the links in that particular format. So you know, so there is always that sort of side of it as well. But yeah, it was a great shame that Marco pulled that out. So I agree, Dave.

Sam Sethi: 1:26:20

Now Cy Jobling has sent that and said interesting to hear Ross from ACAST talk about their focus on live video content in 2025. As I've got some ideas and thoughts on how this could help put some podcasting 2.0 tags in the spotlight for mainstream users. Well, hopefully, cy, you've told us because you're a power supporter in your predictions.

James Cridland: 1:26:42

That would be good, wouldn't it yes, so that predictions show coming up, which I'm looking forward to, and um we you may have noticed that we have been talking about the sensational 16 already. It was the fabulous 15, obviously last week, but we do have a new power supporter. Who is our new power supporter?

Sam Sethi: 1:26:58

Sam uh he's, uh, david John Clark. He's a fellow Aussie like you, and he's also much more known as the late bloomer actor. So thank you very much.

James Cridland: 1:27:08

Yes, the late bloomer actor who's sent us an awful lot of boosts and stuff. Thank you so much for your support. I much appreciate it. Weeklypodnewsnet is where to join David and the rest of the sensational 16, if you so wish, and you can go there armed with your credit card and work out what might be a sensible amount to give us, if you get value from the show, to send us value back. Next week's Pod News Weekly Review will be a prediction show featuring all of those folk, or featuring as many of those folk as we can fit in, so do have a listen to that. So what happens on the 3rd of January then?

Sam Sethi: 1:27:48

So you and I are going to do a review of our last year's predictions and see how we did, and we're also going to give our highlights and lowlights of 2024. So that'll be the show we do on the 3rd of January and on the 10th of January, james, you and I will do our predictions for 2025.

James Cridland: 1:28:08

Excellent. Well, I look forward to editing all of those, and that will be a good thing. Yes, the secret of a podcast is consistency and always having something out there. Adam curry and dave jones, you lazy holidays.

Sam Sethi: 1:28:26

They're away for two weeks. Can you believe it? I know yes what am I? Going to do? What am I going to do on my friday nights while drinking red?

James Cridland: 1:28:33

wine. I know exactly what are you going to do. You'll just have to work on some more features. So thank you to all of the sensational 16 david, john clark, as you've just heard, james Burt, john McDermott, claire Waite-Brown, miss Eileen Smith, neil Velio, rocky Thomas, jim James, david Marzell, si Jobling, rachel Corbett, dave Jackson, mike at the Rogue Media Network See, that was a clever plan, wasn't it? Putting the name of your company in as your name? Mike at the Rogue Media Network, matt Medeiros, marshall Brown and Cameron Malt from Buzzsprout. And what's happened for you this week, sam? Anything more for true fans?

Sam Sethi: 1:29:10

Adam Currie has been talking about creator portals or podcast portals, and it's what we were heading towards anyway.

James Cridland: 1:29:17

Of course it was, so we've just. You say, just in case the lawyers are listening. Oh, we were going to do that anyway, that wasn't Adam Curry's idea, but, funnily enough, so you've done Adam Curry's idea, have you?

Sam Sethi: 1:29:31

We were on the same path let's put it that way.

Sam Sethi: 1:29:37

So we have had the ability to have podcast episodes, but also pod roles, events ticketing and we're bringing out merch shortly and all of that aggregated together becomes a landing page for your podcast. And so Rebrandly is a service that I use here for Pod News Weekly. When I put out an interview, I say, you know, instead of the long D script URL, which is not very friendly, I say go to our own shortened link that I was about to give it out, and then I thought, no, actually everyone just click it.

James Cridland: 1:30:11

Yes, we don't want that.

Sam Sethi: 1:30:14

No, I don't want that. So yes, I means that users on TrueFans now will be able to go and buy their own shortened domain and then remove the TrueFans link and then have whatever you want. So if you wanted to have I don't know James Cridland or whatever it would be for pod news, you could have that as your domain and then that would be the landing page. So yes, we've done that deal with rebranding.

James Cridland: 1:30:41

Very nice and if you listen to any decent podcasts this week.

Sam Sethi: 1:30:45

One that I recommend listening to and I've done it four times now because I thought it was that good is the Vergecast podcast recently that they interviewed their publisher, helen Havlake. Now we talked recently about Bloomberg going behind a subscription paywall, for Ashley Carman and the Verge cast have added subscriptions, and this is a challenge that I think all media companies are facing. Now I know you know yourself, james, at Pod News. You've decided that you're not going to go behind a paywall subscription, that you have supporters and that's the way you're going to fund the business supporters and that's the way you're going to fund the business. But what Helen was talking about was the challenge that they face between advertising revenues not being as high as they were and, at the same time, wanting to sustain the business. So they've moved it into a subscription model, but they then also wanted premium advertising with inside of that subscription, so it's not ad free and all the challenges.

Sam Sethi: 1:31:44

And I thought it was really interesting to hear from somebody who's got a large media company of all the challenges they're facing between do we go, how much do we put behind the paywall, what do we do, how do we do, what do we price it at? Even they go into how they priced it, and I think it's really interesting if you are a podcaster and try to understand the challenges of media companies and what they're doing. I mean we again, when we spoke to Jess Cordova-Kramer and she talks about, you know, the balance between moving their shows into Apple subscriptions or having them free and open elsewhere. So I think everyone's going to have this problem in 2025, and I highly recommend listening to this one from the Verge cast.

James Cridland: 1:32:27

Yeah, no, indeed, it's worth a listen. What's happened for me this week? Well, I was going to ask you, but you can ask yourself, if you want. What's happened for me this week, james. Well, I'm glad you asked for me this week, james. Well, I'm glad you asked.

James Cridland: 1:32:46

So there's a ton of websites which are publishing their expert podcast predictions for 2025. One of them is a co-host which you will have seen me linking to at some point this week, so I enjoyed doing that. I also enjoyed going up to record one on video for the podcast show which you'll see in early January, and I had to dodge the rain showers because it's been raining like anything here over the last couple of weeks, so that was fun going out to end up doing that. My daughter was my camera operative, but one of the things I did realise is so I use a little lapel mic to record, and one of the things that I realised is all of the mobile phones that I used to just record the audio into all of those no longer have headphone jacks, do they? So I had to record it using my daughter's phone.

James Cridland: 1:33:44

But, yeah, but it sounded all right and, in terms of podcasting, I would recommend the Bugle, which is a very good satirical comedy show. It looks at the events of the news this week. It's been done by Andy Zaltzman for a long, long time. It used to be done by Andy Zaltzman and John Oliver way back when it launched in 2007. And then John Oliver became a big TV star in the US and stopped doing this particular show, but for one week, and one week only actually for two weeks he's back doing this particular show, which is great fun.

James Cridland: 1:34:23

So I'm looking forward to having listened to that, and I gather that between Christmas and New Year which producer Chris calls Betwixtmas, which I rather like so in Betwixtmas there will be a Q&A with Andy Zaltzman and John Oliver on the Bugle, which is worth a listen and that has always been, by the way, a podcast which has been a value for value podcast. It's always asked its audience for support and everything else, and seems to be still existing because of that, so it's a good show to have a listen to. You'll find that wherever you get your podcasts, and that's it for this week. All of our podcast stories were taken from the PodNews daily newsletter. You can subscribe to that at podnewsnet. Longer interviews, of course, in the PodNews Extra podcast as well, and you'll find those wherever you get your podcasts.

Sam Sethi: 1:35:12

You can support this show by streaming. So actually you can give us feedback using the Buzzsprout fan mail link in our show notes and you can send us a boostergram or become a power supporter by the sensational 16 at weeklypodnewsnet.

James Cridland: 1:35:27

Our music is from Studio Dragonfly, our voiceover is Sheila Dee, we use Clean Feed for our audio, we edit with Hindenburg and we're hosted and sponsored by Buzzsprout. Start podcasting, keep podcasting. Have a great Christmas. We'll see you just after Christmas with the first of our prediction shows. Get updated every day. Subscribe to our newsletter at podnewsnet.

Sam Sethi: 1:35:49

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