James Cridland: 0:00

It's Friday, the 17th of January 2025.

Speaker 2: 0:04

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

Sam Sethi: 0:13

I'm James Cridland, the editor of Pod News, and I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO of True Fans.

Stuart Last: 0:18

The thing I'm most proud of is the fact that we've made more than $250 million for independent podcast creators over the last seven years.

James Cridland: 0:27

That's Stuart Last, the CEO of Audioboom. After their 2024 trading update, we'll hear from him and also in the chapters. Today, spotify for Creators launches its partner programme. Spotify has unskippable ads on Joe Rogan's show. Substack partners with Spotify and ads live streaming, and Sony release a crypto wallet and a web fan platform. Oh good, this podcast is sponsored by Buzzsprout, with the tools, support and community to ensure you keep podcasting.

Speaker 2: 0:58

Start podcasting, keep podcasting with buzzsproutcom From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly Review.

Sam Sethi: 1:06

James, let's kick it off. Welcome to 2025. We did say we'd have less Spotify this year, but I don't think I've achieved that so far. Look, they started off. We had Daniel Ek at the end of last year talking about what they were going to be doing with Spotify and video.

Stuart Last: 1:22

Spotify really exists to be the best platform for audiences and the best partner for artists, authors and creators.

Sam Sethi: 1:31

And then you reported at, I think, the first week of January, that they've launched their Spotify for Partner program. So come on, reveal all the details. As Tom Cruise says, show me the money. Where can I make money with Spotify for creators?

James Cridland: 1:46

Well, yes, so they've launched the Spotify Partner Program, which, if you don't know, it's a way to monetise your shows on the platform. This basically means that you are now earning money, although no one has yet seen a cheque, so nobody knows quite how much money people are going to make. The weird thing and I don't know if you saw this, but the weird thing is that more than 65%, the press release said, of eligible shows and networks have already enrolled, which I thought was pretty cool.

Sam Sethi: 2:14

Yeah, I saw that. And then my question straight away was 65% of eligible shows. How many shows are eligible? 10, 5, 1?.

James Cridland: 2:25

It's not going to be an awful lot because, my goodness, they are hard to hit those eligibility figures, 30-day targets of 10,000 streamed hours on Spotify and you need 2,000 unique Spotify users. Now, those numbers are Spotify-exclusive numbers. So if you want to become monetised through Spotify, one of the easiest ways for you to do that is to say we are now no longer going to be out on Apple and on all of the other platforms YouTube and everything else because we want to hit this particular number on Spotify, which is probably not what anybody wants, but that may well be what some people do, I suppose.

Sam Sethi: 3:08

But yeah, it's really really hard, much harder, for example, than YouTube Unintended consequences from what I would thought, but maybe intended consequences of what Spotify wants. Create yourself as an exclusive on Spotify in order to get through the bar, in order to qualify.

James Cridland: 3:24

Yeah, I mean that may well be what actually happens in the end of it. I mean it's interesting. We have learnt that creators get a 50% revenue share for the ads sold. You have to be hosted with Spotify, which is a fairly obvious thing, but that's something that just to bear in mind. So if you're hosted with Buzzsprout, our sponsor, or any of the other podcast hosts, then tough, because you won't get any of this. You also have to be based in the US, uk, canada or Australia.

James Cridland: 3:51

We're all right, but plenty of people who aren't Really weird that they've missed out Ireland there. If you met the Irish, not weird, not really. I mean it may be something to do with the fact that Ireland's in the EU, perhaps I I mean it may be something to do with the fact that Ireland's in the EU, perhaps I don't know. But if you're going to launch with English-speaking countries, which is what they've basically done, then I mean Ireland and New Zealand seem pretty obvious. So I'm not quite sure why they didn't end up doing that.

James Cridland: 4:22

But yes, so you earn from ads in your podcast, but you also earn from streams if you are streamed by a Spotify premium subscriber. It's quite similar to YouTube in that regard. It says here creators earn based on how much your content is streamed, but it doesn't really explain what that means. So, yeah, and as we'll hear from Audioboom later, if you have baked in host reads, you retain all revenue from those, and the same goes again for YouTube in terms of those. If there are a host read, then you retain all of the revenue for that. So, as I say, no one has yet seen a check and I would guess, even when people start seeing checks, I would guess that very few people will actually talk about how much that check is.

Sam Sethi: 5:05

So the thing that I was then going on in my head was okay. So let's say there is a video, it's ad free. Do I listen to 30 seconds? Is that a qualified play? Do I listen to five minutes? Is that the qualified play? If I listen to 98% of that video, do you get the money? Or do I have to listen to 100% because it says uninterrupted? That's the detail. Sorry, Spotify, just putting out that you can now get it in this country and crack on if you hit this target. Well, it still lacks depth of detail around how long do I listen? Is it all of it? And how much do I get? Do I get a percent completed? So, even if it's not all of it watched in this case video do I get some of the monies? And then, equally last big question obviously, is what's the money? I think the music is 0.0003, a play, which is nothing of nothing. So is video nothing of nothing as well?

James Cridland: 6:06

Well, yes, and those are all excellent questions. To be fair to Spotify can't believe I would say that, but nevertheless to be fair, no, I can't Edit. Edit.

James Cridland: 6:17

To be fair to Spotify. Youtube is also incredibly opaque in terms of how it pays as well. I mean, obviously we know a bit more about how YouTube pays out and what YouTube pays out because some YouTubers actually make videos on that but YouTube is still pretty opaque in terms of how they pay out. We know that they give creators YouTube this is 55% of ad revenue, so that's a little bit more from Spotify. But, having said that, YouTube might sell their ads for less. So actually, you know, it might end up being much the same sort of thing.

James Cridland: 6:53

We also know that their portion of YouTube premium revenue that they share is based on watch time. So if you are producing a five-minute show every day, like Pod News Daily is, then you're not going to earn an awful lot from that, but if you are making a four-hour show with Joe Rogan, then that might be a good revenue stream for you. So there are differences there. Youtube, by the way, also much easier to become eligible. We said 10,000 streamed hours on Spotify in 30 days. For YouTube, you need 4,000 streamed hours in the last year, so it's a significantly easier thing. So, yeah, obviously YouTube has the scale in terms of payments and it's got payments all sorted out across pretty well every single country that they can operate in. So you know there's an awful lot of catch up for Spotify to end up doing there.

Sam Sethi: 7:51

Yeah, look, I said before I think they'll set the bar high and bring it down, so that's probably sensible strategy, because they don't want to flood the gates.

James Cridland: 7:59

Is there anywhere else that you would put your content on instead of YouTube or Spotify and see if you can earn more cash out of that?

Sam Sethi: 8:08

Well, you know it's not as something I would have said on this podcast, but you know we saw a story about Pornhub and OnlyFans creators and I was like hang on a minute, I've not been having naughty web searches. This was on Mastodon web searches. This was on Mastodon Joseph Cox old name, and he basically said that he saw a creator who was a female mathematician and she was putting her content for machine learning instead of YouTube. She was putting on Pornhub. Basically, she could generate $300 on YouTube for getting a million views. The same content posted on Pornhub with 30,000 views only made her $1,000. So I'm not saying podcasters should abandon ship on YouTube and Spotify and go to Pornhub. These are creator platforms. Whether we like them or not OnlyFans and Pornhub. They are generating more content and more income for the creators. I think it's just a fascinating look at how content can flow between different platforms and audiences.

James Cridland: 9:15

That's all yes let's not use the word flow, but I think, certainly in terms of OnlyFans, is English. I didn't know this. It's from the UK, essex Boys. Yes, massively, massively popular. So, yes, there's a thing you know, there are plenty of other places, you know. Obviously, I think those are more analogous with things like, you know, substack, paid subscriptions and things like that, because you know that is a bit more of how they make their money. But, yes, I can well see that those probably earn a little bit more cash there.

Sam Sethi: 9:49

Now, not all users or creators are happy with what's going on with Spotify. I was talking with Ant from Wrestling with the Champ, who won a podcast award at the Independent Podcast Awards this year. He has his podcast on all platforms, spotify being one, and of course he heard about spotify for video and so he thought he would create an animated video of his podcast and it's very good. You can go and see it on youtube and other places. He uploaded it to spotify and spotify gave him a copyright violation. So he's like okay, I own the content, I own the content, I own the audio, the voices are mine, it's not third party, there's no AI, the music's all licensed. So he tried to get a hold of Spotify customer support. Brick wall brick wall, basically computer said no, they took down the episode of the video and the audio and now won't put it back up. So he's like how do I get this back up? And literally, brick wall, he said, is not getting anything back, but no copyright violations on YouTube, tiktok or any other platform he's posted.

James Cridland: 10:51

Yeah, that's a strange one. I, you know. Um, that's one of the problems with automated systems. Um, just ask Mark Zuckerberg. So I would if I could. That's potentially what he's ended up having a problem with. You've also highlighted here. I notice someone who has been caught out by Spotify that doesn't allow music in podcasts, even if you own the rights for that music or however it works. That's a pretty well known thing about Spotify. It's happened for the last four or five years and it's really to stop people from using podcasts to basically get music onto Spotify, because that gets Spotify into all kinds of trouble there. So they've basically turned around and said even if you have licensed music to play in your podcast, it's not welcome on Spotify and that's not how it's going to work. So it's a bit of a weird place. If you have music intensive shows, you basically can't be there on the Spotify platform.

Sam Sethi: 11:57

So if Adam Curry took Booster Ground Ball, would they just take that down? Would people who are distributing over Wavelake their music through RSS? Would they be taken down as well?

James Cridland: 12:11

Yes, they would. Yeah, both of those, because they don't want podcasting to be used as a method. I mean, it even says in their policy podcasts, including those submitted via Spotify for Creators, should not be used to distribute music tracks, dj mixes or similar musical content. Spotify reserves the right to remove podcasts or episodes that violate this policy, regardless of the licensing status of your music. And what they're basically saying is if you're a musician, you use Spotify for artists. That's what you end up using, and I can kind of understand from their point of view, why they would want to end up doing that. But yeah, it's very frustrating if you are a music podcaster and you want to make your stuff available on the Spotify platform and Spotify basically turn around and say, no, that's not how it works over here. But I think you know that's a relatively well-known thing, certainly over the last three years or so. It's just one of the weird ways that Spotify operates.

Sam Sethi: 13:10

They also make money, because when you sign up for Spotify for Artists, you have to pay to upload your content Anyway moving on. Well, yes, anyway, Sorry, everyone sticking with Spotify for a little bit longer. An eagle-eyed user of the Joe Rogan Show spotted that there was now non-skippable ads, even though they have paid a premium to avoid ads. James, did you see this story as well?

James Cridland: 13:36

Yes, I did, yeah, and we commented on it during the break. It is something that, yeah, I think Spotify. Well, firstly, Joe Rogan has always said in the past I'm not going to put ads in the middle of the conversation because that'll get really annoying. And you know, obviously Joe Rogan has gone back or not really, it's not really up to Joe Rogan, but the platform has gone back on that promise. But also, secondly, you can yeah, you know, Spotify seems to be doing non-skippable ads during some of the shows. It's one of the benefits, of course, of being on an open podcast app is that you can skip the ads, but in the Spotify case, of course, they have the capability of making you not being able to do that, so that's quite a thing. Obviously, Reddit has exploded, as you would expect, but yeah, that's clearly upset quite a few people.

Sam Sethi: 14:41

Okay so why have they put non-skippable ads in?

James Cridland: 14:45

Well, I would imagine that the amount I mean. You know Spotify probably know how many people well, they must know how many people are skipping ads. A it's a good thing for the advertisers if the ads aren't skippable, or probably it's this one. Actually, it's a good way to upsell to a paid Spotify service, because they don't really make an awful lot from the ad-supported service. So it's probably just basically turning around and saying it's a good way of upweighting somebody to the paid-for service, and it wouldn't surprise me if it's just purely that.

Sam Sethi: 15:37

Yeah, I think it may be that. I do think also, they've got first-party data. They do know how long you listen, when you listen, when you drop off, and I'm sure advertisers have asked for that as well, and they're saying oh, seeing, oh, hello, why am I paying for this? Again, remind me, um. But I also think it's interesting because, going back to what we were talking about, the Spotify creator program, um, if they're going to pay revenue to creators for no ads, then maybe they're thinking actually, no one's listening to the ads, we can pay them this way. Maybe we can keep creators happy by paying them that way from, uh, the revenue generated by subscriptions. So maybe it's as you said move them to a paid platform and then remove the ads and pay from that revenue. I don't know. I mean, we don't know what spotify is exactly doing, but I think this the unskippable lads are there to appease the advertisers who are saying no one's listening. Now they can show them first party data. You see, everyone listened 100%.

James Cridland: 16:34

Yeah, and I'm going to argue back on that and I'm going to say two things. Firstly, we know that most people don't skip ads. There's been no end of research showing that and I think also on the other side we also know that podcast advertising works and it works really well. And I think also on the other side we also know that podcast advertising works and it works really well, and part of the reason why people are advertising on podcasts is that the podcast advertising works. So, yes, there are people probably people like us that might skip some shows and stuff Much easier. If you have an Apple Watch, I'll tell you, because it's very easy just to go tap, tap, tap on the watch and away you go. But I think for the majority of people certainly I don't skip ads when I'm listening to podcasts in the car because I do not want to crash.

Speaker 2: 17:25

So that's probably one of the things there. The Pub News Weekly Review. With Buzzsprout Podcast hosting made easy.

Sam Sethi: 17:33

Substack, which I don't use, but it's a newsletter platform very similar to Medium. They've partnered with Spotify, james. What have they done?

James Cridland: 17:42

Yeah, so they announced this partnership actually in April of last year. Substack, if you don't know, paid for, but also free way that you can publish a newsletter and various other things. You know a blog or a newsletter, but you can also host a podcast there. And back in April of last year they announced a partnership with Spotify, but also with YouTube and with Apple Podcasts, where you can publish your shows to those platforms, but particularly with Spotify, they have joined the Spotify open access program. So if you are already paying for a Substack newsletter or whatever and you get access to the podcasts there, then you can log in through your Spotify app and Spotify will give you the access to that as well. That's what Spotify open access is. So that seems to work quite interestingly.

James Cridland: 18:37

I think the story here really is that Substack has a dashboard which you go into as a creator, which you go into as a creator, and the top thing on that dashboard for John, our reader who spotted this, was that yeah, they were there going sync your podcast to Spotify. Here's a great big logo showing you how to do that and a great big get started button. It's something that they haven't pushed as heavily as that in previous months. So interesting to see them ramping that up a little bit. But yeah, substack, get the money If you subscribe to a creator. It's very similar to OnlyFans in that way. Don't take your word for it. You can link through. So you've told me, sam, but you can link through to the Spotify app in there as well. No, no, that was.

Sam Sethi: 19:35

True Fans. James, that was True Fans oh.

James Cridland: 19:38

True Fans. Oh, there you go. It's easy to get confused.

Sam Sethi: 19:41

Yes, I know, I wish I had the same money.

James Cridland: 19:44

But yeah, so that's interesting, and obviously the benefit of you being able to do that in Spotify is that Spotify is DRM'd up to the hilt. It's very difficult to copy, you know, mp3 files out of Spotify and so yeah, and so there are obvious benefits there for the creator to make your content available in that way.

Sam Sethi: 20:08

How does the money flow? I mean, what's in it for Spotify? Yes, they're getting content into the platform. Are they getting a cut as well of the money from Substack and Supercast, Patreon, all these others of use the Spotify open access program?

James Cridland: 20:25

That's a good question. As far as I'm aware, there isn't a cost there. Really, what they're trying to make you do is they're trying to make you just access all of your media in the Spotify app. It uses OAuth, which is a standard way of logging into third party platforms, so Spotify doesn't share any passwords or usernames or any of that, and it just basically ensures that only that authorized user is able to stream a particular media item. So you know, from that point of view, I suspect, actually it's just really as simple. As you know, spotify want people using the app because the more that they use the app, the more that Spotify can sell them other things, and it was a quick and easy way for Spotify to compete with Apple Podcasts paid subscriptions as well.

Sam Sethi: 21:22

I would love to see a podcast open access program using OAuth instead of the podcast verify tag. It would be lovely if we went that way, but nobody seems to be excited about that idea yet. But maybe in 25, we will. Anyway, moving on Now, substack has just announced as well they're adding live video streaming. Tell me more, james.

James Cridland: 21:46

Yes, they have live video streaming. They tested it apparently in the fall, which I'm guessing means quarter three or quarter four, because of course, here I am in the summer, the Americans are very here.

Sam Sethi: 21:58

I am in the summer. Have you ever heard Michael McIntyre? The Americans are very specific. It's the sidewalk where you walk. It's the fall, when the leaves drop and it's the trash can where you put the rubbish.

James Cridland: 22:12

I have to tell you, the Australians, we like our bottle shops as well. The bottle shop mate is where we go to buy bottles of alcohol.

Sam Sethi: 22:20

Yeah, off-licence didn't tell you what was going on in there, so you had to be specific. It's a bottle shop, exactly.

James Cridland: 22:27

Exactly correct. I mean, the Americans call it a liquor store. But yes, but there we are Anyway. No, they call it a drug store even better.

Sam Sethi: 22:33

Anyway, I love that for the chemist.

James Cridland: 22:36

Focusing back on the subject in hand, yes, testing live video, which they did quarter three and quarter four of last year, they're making live stream available to all publishers. I think this is clever in a way that obviously they can, you would assume charge for live streaming. It doesn't necessarily say it in the press release, but obviously Substack have people's credit cards and everything else and maybe Substack is seeing themselves as being a platform for content access, whatever that content might be, but Substack very much. If you look at their app, it's very much focused on kind of a social media type of feel. So you just see lots of new posts from the creators who you follow. I actually got a Substack for the Pod News newsletter about six or so months ago and the entire Substack was we're not on Substack but we're over here if you want to subscribe, and that I think lasted about a month and a half before Substack banned me for spam.

Sam Sethi: 23:47

Oh right, Fair enough.

James Cridland: 23:50

But still. But there we are. But, yeah, so interesting seeing that. I mean, obviously, live streaming is something that podcasting has been doing in a limited way for a while. I suspect that we will see more of that in the future, particularly since Spotify has that built in as well. They'll be doing it in their own proprietary way, of course as well, so, I suspect doing it in their own proprietary way of course as well. So I suspect that we'll see a little bit more of that in the future in other apps too.

Sam Sethi: 24:14

Yeah, one of my predictions was live streaming will be big in 2025, thankfully, this isn't big yet.

James Cridland: 24:21

Hey, I'm going to take it early, I'm coming back to this show.

Sam Sethi: 24:26

Yes, look. No, I think if Spotify pushed that hard we talked about, they've got events and ticketing and the green room I think they will follow suit pretty quickly. Youtube has a massive live streaming. I mean, a lot of shows that I watch are live and Substack, and I think these are all the elements. I call them super apps. I mean, other people have called them as well it wasn't my original name for it, but these multi-function apps now, so it's no longer just a newsletter. Yeah, I bet you substack will start to add more functions to it as well. It's, it's an interesting platform. Now, talking about live streaming, um, radio and podcasting are blurring the lines. Now you're the futurologist on radio James, so I'm going to ask you the global announcement that was made over just before Christmas I think nice of them to do or just maybe after Christmas, that they're going to do something called Nation Strategy, which is dropping local and regional shows. What are your thoughts on it? And also, should those shows now move to a podcasting 2.0 live item tag type strategy.

James Cridland: 25:34

Well, yes, let's cover whether or not they should do that. Yeah, after just sort of going what's actually happened because it sounds very big that Global, which is a big radio company in the UK, amusingly called Global, only really active in the UK. I'm not quite sure how that works, but anyway, they own World Series. It's fine. They own Hart Capital and Smooth and LBC four very big radio brands in the UK. Now Hart Capital and Smooth had up until the end of last year, very limited local shows. So if you were listening to Heart in Yorkshire, for example, then you get a breakfast show from London, a morning show from London, an early afternoon show from London, a drive-time show from Yorkshire and then an evening show from London. And what they've done is they've got rid of the drive-time show from Yorkshire. It's not a large amount of shows which have gone there, for it's 20 shows across the country. And the reason why they had to do that is that that was part of media law, that they were allowed to own those radio stations as long as there was three hours of peak programming, and that was their idea of peak programming. The afternoon drive time show peak programming, and that was their idea of peak programming the afternoon drive time show and they've got rid of those.

James Cridland: 26:57

So obviously that means a number of job losses. I've got a number of good friends who will be losing their job at the end of next month and obviously that also means the closure of a lot of regional offices as well. But it's not quite as big as it sounds. You know, radio stations aren't being closed, anything else. It just means that if you listen in England, you'll get the same show. If you listen in Scotland, you'll get the same show for Scotland. If you listen in Wales, you get the same show for Wales. That's about as far as it goes.

James Cridland: 27:20

Now, if Global are clever and Global are clever and Global are pretty good at looking after their people what they could be doing is saying look, we've got this podcast service called Captivate, which is a very good podcast service. We've got our own player, the Global player. You could you know whoever it is who's just been fired from their job. You could continue doing a show for us if you wanted to as a podcast. We'll promote it in the Global Player app so that your fans will still find you and you get a great head start, which you wouldn't be able to do on any other platform, that's what they could do.

James Cridland: 28:09

I've seen no example of the fact that they will, but that's what they could do to actually get you know. If you're a fan of Dixie, who does the afternoon show in Hart in Yorkshire at the moment, if you're a fan of Dixie and you don't want him to leave your life, then actually allowing Dixie to continue doing a show of sorts on the global player seems to be quite a bright idea. So it'll be interesting to see whether or not they actually do that. Who knows, they might be planning on that, I don't know.

Sam Sethi: 28:39

Well, wonder if we knew anyone at Captivate like Mr Asquith.

James Cridland: 28:43

Yeah, wonder if we know anybody at Captivate who would tell us what global are planning, and the answer is no we don't.

Sam Sethi: 28:49

No, we don't know anyone who would tell us what's happening. They are.

James Cridland: 28:51

As a company, they are as tight as apple. They are incredible in terms of their PR, in terms of their plans for where the future is. They're an astonishing company. I mean, I've got a lot of respect for the way that they do things. I don't necessarily agree with it, but I've got a lot of respect for the way that they do things.

Sam Sethi: 29:11

I don't necessarily agree with it, but I've got a lot of respect. So, yeah, no, it's an impressive thing. It'd be lovely if Captivate suddenly announced they're going to do live podcasting. And then actually to your point yes, podcast to the global app, but actually podcast to the global app live. So if you wanted to still tune in, it goes back to what I think Adam Curry's doing with hyperlocal, Because what you've fundamentally said is we're killing local radio and we're going to give you London news in Yorkshire and Northern Ireland and Scotland and people locally are going to go. That has no interest to me, Zero interest.

James Cridland: 29:45

And again I'm going to be boring and I know this is in the weeds, but actually no, you still get local news, you still get local travel, you still get local weather, local advertising. It's just that the people who are talking between the songs that they play won't be from where you live, but that's almost never been the case anyway. So, yeah, so it is a difficult thing. I would argue that live is not important here. I would actually argue that it will benefit global more. If you were a heart listener, then you didn't stop being a heart listener. You carried on listening to that radio station and to the afternoon show, which is now from London, but that you also had the opportunity of still hearing your favourite voices in an on-demand piece of audio which they can sell separately. I think that would make more sense for them. But yeah, I mean it. It.

James Cridland: 30:49

You know it's interesting that there is this whole thing in America of live and local and how the future of radio must be live and local. And and you know, um, uh, as I say in the radio conferences that I speak at, neither of those things are as important as we think they are. Um, you know a bored man sitting in a local studio above the pizza shop back announcing another 10 songs in the world won't save a radio station just because he's live and local, it's the content that you put on that station. As you know from having run a radio station in the past, and I think that's the majority of people Let me qualify that If you live in Leeds and there is a radio station for you in Leeds, which is a big city in the north of England, then you are experiencing most of the same things that people are experiencing in Bristol, 200 miles away, or in Birmingham.

James Cridland: 31:53

You're experiencing most of those things when I think local comes into it is not talking about Leeds but talking about Headingley, a suburb of Leeds, for example Then you can go really truly properly local and dive into the weeds of you know why is there still a hole in that street? I'm almost arguing now that if you are a large town, or certainly a city, then actually you can't be local enough. Um, there, marlow, you know, a small, a small town, is a great place to be properly hyper local. Um, but if you're going to be hyper local to all of berkshire, that's not going to work, I don't think well we did when I had river radio.

Sam Sethi: 32:41

We did 40 shows now, um, there wasn't enough news in marlow on its own to give the shows enough content. So we were broader, we were Berkshire but we covered, you know, like the Queen in Windsor or you know, a Reading Festival. They were all local stories and I think that's what people were tuning in for. They weren't tuning in for us talking about I don't know something in the national news that was going on that day where they could get better content from the bbc or better content from heart or wherever we. We weren't going to be able to compete at a national news level with those radio stations and we shouldn't have tried. Um, so we covered wickham wondrous football club and marlo rugby club, not, um, you know, liverpool or manchester united, right. So I think there is a space for hyperlocal it may not have to be live.

Sam Sethi: 33:40

I agree, you can have recorded shows that you just put out in your schedule, but I I do think, in the world of where everything is becoming homogenized, you know everything feels like you know, I watched the BBC news last night.

Sam Sethi: 33:55

I thought I was watching American news. I think the first six reports were all about America. Right, it's totally globally homogenized and I wanted to know where would I go for local news. My newspaper is now closing. My radio stations have closed. I don't have that information. It's probably Facebook groups now that I get it from.

James Cridland: 34:16

Yeah, I do completely agree that there is a space. There's a friend of mine that runs a very hyper-local radio station in Shaftesbury in Dorset and that radio station is called Alfred. He actually started that radio station as a 30-minute news podcast every day and it's got a lot of volunteers who work on it and now he's got a community radio licence so he's got an FM frequency. But actually when you listen to that radio station you will probably hear that half hour show probably air about five times during the day because nobody's going to hear it all five times anyway, and that way you can actually get some good quality content out there, while also recognising that probably people are still going to listen to their favourite radio station but they're going to dip in for the local news and then dip out of it again. And I think there's a lot to be said for. You know hyperlocal.

James Cridland: 35:12

I ran a hyperlocal website just for my postcode area in North London when I lived in London and that was incredible fun to do because actually you learn all of the incredible data which is available from your local council about what's going on. You know new planning applications whether or not the pizza shop has, you know, has got into trouble for failing the food hygiene rules. You know all of this kind of information is just sitting there waiting for journalists to do stories on, as long as you know where the data feeds are, and so I ended up doing actually quite a lot of. The entire site was completely automated and it seemed to work quite well in that, you know, there was always data and information there about where you lived, but I think you know data and information about you know, if you share the same high street as everybody else that you are talking to, that is probably what local means. If, all of a sudden, you're trying to talk to three different towns and cities, then it gets much harder because you're talking about stuff. When I was on the air in West Yorkshire, no one from Bradford would go to Huddersfield, and no one from Huddersfield would go to Bradford for a very good reason because Halifax is in the way and nobody wants to drive through Halifax. And so, therefore, any time you talked about Bradford, no one in Huddersfield cared. And so, all of a sudden, yes, you're a local radio station, but how local are you really? So, yeah, I find the whole thing fascinating, and maybe we should do that on a radio podcast. Maybe I'm not in this, but I do think to haul this back to podcasts. I do think that A live streaming in your podcast app is an interesting thing, but I also think that hyper-local podcasting is super interesting and how you can get that to work is a fascinating thing.

James Cridland: 37:13

On the note of broadcast radio TuneIn, which also has a podcast directory in there as well, tunein apparently made another 25 layoffs this week, which is quite a thing. It's also made some errors earlier on in the month, funnily enough, about removing radio stations in the UK after a mix-up with music licensing. So you know again, bad news if you're in radio, frankly, but also bad news in terms of the folks at TuneIn. One of them I reported yesterday was the guy that essentially made all of the complicated integrations with their customers work, a guy called Steve Gazinski. Now he was the you know QA person. He was the person that would basically sit there and fix when you know the connection between TuneIn and Apple Music had fallen over all that kind of stuff. And you know for them to lose someone like that is quite scary, I think, for the future of what TuneIn is going to become.

Sam Sethi: 38:19

Yeah, I know there are other people talking about replacing TuneIn. We'll see if those come to fruition. Now, zipping around the world, james in the UK Crowd Network has seen revenues grow by 80% for the fourth consecutive year. That's amazing.

James Cridland: 38:38

Yes, Crowd Network seem to be doing really well. They've done a bunch of live shows as well. There's a big sort of article about that in the Pod News newsletter over the break which is worthwhile seeing. So, yeah, they seem to be doing really well, but they're not the only company doing really well.

Sam Sethi: 38:58

No, audioboom have come out with their numbers. You reported their numbers back in January. Well, back in January we're still in January, I'm losing track of time that they had a 13% growth in total revenue. They're profitable and, yeah, it looks like all things are going very well. They've got more than 60 billion minutes of podcast content that was downloaded and the company made 60 million for creators. I wonder if it would be worthwhile talking to their CEO to get a better handle on what they're doing.

James Cridland: 39:31

Well, I've done exactly that. So I started by asking Stuart last the age old question what is Audioboom?

Stuart Last: 39:40

Audioboom is a podcast platform that powers podcasting for creators, so we partner with independent podcast creators and our platform our technology platform distributes their content, markets their content, monetizes their content, does everything that they need uh from us so that they can focus on being creative and creating great content, and we can do the other pieces for them. And we do that kind of pretty massive scale over a hundred million downloads a month and 8,000 different podcasters use us. And the thing that I'm most proud of is the fact that we've made more than $250 million for independent podcast creators over the last seven years, and that's really the. You know, the mission of our business is to support podcasters, the companies that they are creating, the 8,000 plus individuals that we work with. We are able to deliver value for them, make this more than just a hobby, allow them to really focus on podcasting, and we do that very well.

James Cridland: 40:42

Now talking about numbers, you've published a trading update really fast off the block for the calendar year 2024. That was really fast. You must have some excellent accountants. What was in your trading update? Because it all looked pretty good news to me.

Stuart Last: 40:58

We do have excellent accountants just two of them.

Stuart Last: 41:01

We're a two-person fantasy. We're a very small team at Audioboom. We have around 37, 38 of us and it's a really great, great team and our finance team always close the books pretty quickly and so you'll always see from Audioboom, you know we're the first ones to be releasing data, I think the first ones to put out our results and now you know we do that pretty quickly at the end of the year. 2024 was a fantastic year for us. You know good revenue growth 13% revenue growth. We delivered $73.4 million of revenue and we were profitable again.

Stuart Last: 41:36

So during the ad market recession of 2022 into 23, we went backwards. We went back into loss making territory. As a businessman, I'm really pleased that we've come out of that. We're profitable again and just being profitable allows us to support more and more people in the podcasting space. So really good sign, I think, for us. But when we're putting these numbers out, I think what I'm really aware of is, hopefully, the trends that we are seeing the return in health, the podcast advertising market, us also pushing through the Apple iOS change that removed a lot of our inventory last year. Hopefully those same trends are being seen by other people and other networks and companies are seeing things trending upwards as well, because I think that we have very much of opinion here that we're in the early days of podcasting still, and the more that we can share in this success, the better it is for all of us.

James Cridland: 42:30

Yeah, indeed, Total revenue for the year up 13% to 73 million. When I was looking at Acast's accounts, they seem to suggest that the US was doing fantastically for them and that Europe was a bit more sluggish for them. Is that what you're seeing too, or are you seeing a different story?

Stuart Last: 42:49

I think you know the US led the way on the way down. So they were hit first by the you know global events and macroeconomics and macroeconomic headwinds. So the US was hit first and the UK was healthier for a while. The UK then followed into that, but the us has returned quicker than than than the uk. So I think there's just a probably a six to twelve month lag time, with uk podcasting falling behind uh us. So I'm hopeful um that you know, over the next 12 months our uk business um will will kind of trend uh in a positive direction as as well, and we're already seeing that. We're seeing a lot of brand interest in the UK and commitments from our advertising partners at a higher level than last year. So I think we're starting to see those shoots of the UK market improving too.

James Cridland: 43:43

You've been quite busy signing new content partnerships as well, I notice, and renewing existing ones. But I did notice in your trading update that you say that you have managed to reduce your minimum guarantee obligations quite considerably, and that seems to be an industry trend, I think is it?

Stuart Last: 44:00

Yeah, you know, I think that if we rewind again back to you know, those years coming out of COVID and podcasting booming, us, like six or seven other competitive networks are pitching to work with the biggest podcasters in the space, those with large audiences, those with podcasts that really kind of fit our networks well, and generally, in those negotiations through the Hollywood talent agents, you know, those opportunities to work with those big podcasters are coming through UTA, wme, caa and other talent agents. We're asked to, you know, put together a proposal for those large podcasters. One element of that proposal is usually a minimum guarantee. So you know that protects the talent and this is, you know, obviously a talent business and the value comes from the creator, from the talent. We will put together a minimum guarantee that, you know, we believe we can obviously deliver against in terms of advertising sales, but it allows the podcast creator to work with that reassurance that they will be paid for the work that they're doing. Now in that bubble, that positive period for paid for the work that they're doing Now in that bubble, that positive period for podcasting, those minimum guarantees moved up very quickly.

Stuart Last: 45:26

It was a very, very competitive time. Us, like other networks, chased into risky areas and put higher minimum guarantees in place than otherwise we would have been comfortable with. But at the time we were obviously seeing ad revenue growing all the time and we were seeing podcasting heading forward very, very quickly. Now, the moment you put down those you know higher risk minimum guarantees and the ad market turns as it did in 22. And in 23,. We then have a situation where the ad revenue that we are selling for those podcasts isn't enough to cover that minimum guarantee. So then we true up that minimum guarantee and we effectively are paying out of pocket to fund that podcast rather than it coming from the advertising revenue.

Stuart Last: 46:04

Now you know Audioboom I think I'm so proud of this we paid every single minimum guarantee to create us. We were, we honored all of our contract obligations through that time and that has helped us keep very good relationships with with our podcasters, with those talent agents. And now we're coming out of the other side and we are hitting those minimum guarantees regularly. You know that's not such a problem and obviously what we are looking to do, like many others, is still provide those minimum guarantees to talent and to podcasters, but in a more equitable way, something that's safer for us but still reassures that the talent, that they will get paid for their work and for what they're worth, but it means that it doesn't put you know our company under any undue risk. So I think we're all working to find that more balanced level than a few years ago and that has to be good for the medium term and long term of podcasting.

James Cridland: 46:59

Now I guess I have to mention Casefile, the biggest show here in Australia, which was an audio boom show and is now no longer. Is your strategy in terms of content partnerships to ensure that you've got a wide, you know catalogue full of depth, rather than having a few case files, or what's your strategy there?

Stuart Last: 47:22

No, I think that one strategy unless around the actual content and the verticals that this content sits with our strategy is very much about ensuring that we don't have one massive show within our group that hurts us if it does ever leave us right. Because, as I said, this is a kind of competitive space. Podcasts move around, they're offered better deals from other networks. Podcasts move around, they're offered better deals from other networks. We need to kind of ensure that nothing in there becomes too big and hurts us, if it was ever to move. So what we do have in our network is, if you look at our top shows, we have a bunch of shows that do a fantastic job at delivering somewhere between 100,000 downloads per episode and 2 million downloads per episode. So that's the kind of the core that we work in. Shows that are at that kind of level.

Stuart Last: 48:16

We're not talking and we're not really working with the you know the smartnesses and cool her daddies, those hundred million dollar plus shows. That's not our world, but what we do is very much operate in that midfield. I think for a while we were unsure as to whether podcasting, like other creator industries, would have a strong business within the midfield, but that's become clear that that does exist and that's where we operate. And you'll see that if you look at the Triton Podcast Ranker or the Edison Podcast Ranker, audio Boom is fourth, sometimes fifth, but usually fourth largest publisher. Edison podcast ranker Audioboom is, you know, fourth, sometimes fifth, but usually fourth, largest publisher. In those those rankers, you know there is um iHeart and SiriusXM and Wondery and Spotify above us but we're there firmly in fourth place as the leader in that next, uh, next, uh, size of, of, of podcast.

James Cridland: 49:06

Well, for more information on Audioboom, you can go to audioboomcom, which is the flashy, lovely website with lots of information on it, or, if you just want the numbers, audioboomplccom will dive you into the numbers, which is a slightly less exciting website, but doubtless much more exciting if you like numbers. Stuart, thank you so much for your time. It's wonderful to hear that Audioboom is doing so well. As you know, I was an advisor for your company back in 2009. No equity, sadly, but nevertheless it's nice to see your company doing incredibly well, so thank you for your time today.

Stuart Last: 49:44

Thanks for having me, James, and I appreciate the kind words. Thank you.

James Cridland: 49:48

Stuart Last, the CEO of Audioboom. Now we're doing a new thing this year. There is a full version of that interview and that will drop in this feed on Monday. So no more talking about another feed for you to go and have a listen to. A full version of that is available in this feed on Monday, and one of the things that it includes is actually how Audioboom is going to earn money out of video as well. We would welcome your feedback on that weekly at. Podnewsnet is where to drop us an email, but the full interview coming on Monday.

Sam Sethi: 50:27

And he sounds like a really nice chap as well and he's going to the uh hot pods thing as well. So, yeah, that'll be interesting to hear.

James Cridland: 50:34

Yes. So if, if he's invited, he's going to the on-air fest. I think he's going to the on-air fest bit certainly. And uh, yes, and we'll also be going uh to um the podcast movements, both of those Evolutions in Chicago in early April and, of course, podcast movement in Dallas, texas, in August.

Sam Sethi: 50:55

Now sticking with the UK for a little bit. Podbible, a printed magazine and website in the UK, is looking for acquisition offers.

James Cridland: 51:12

What's happened, james? Yes, podbible a really good little magazine and it is physically little. It featured podcasts to listen to, so it was very much aimed at podcast consumers, not podcast creators. If you bought the Sunday Times in certain areas of the UK then it fell out every quarter of the Sunday Times, which was a great way of, you know, getting into people's hands. And it had a website as well, and still does, by the way. But the two folks who are running it are now looking for acquisition offers. They feel that they have been really successful with it and they'd like somebody else to take it and go a little bit further with it. Somebody else to take it and go a little bit further with it. Not quite something that you know I would be interested in, but certainly interesting seeing what happens to that.

Sam Sethi: 51:59

And there was one, james. I mean, they're dropping like flies around you. What's going on? I mean, will anyone else come out and report on podcasting or will you be the only one left?

James Cridland: 52:18

Well, I'm hoping that there'll be more than just me. Here's a little scoop that in the next couple of weeks I'm trying to make them do it as soon as possible. They are dragging their heels a little bit, but in the next couple of weeks we will have a special offer in the pod news newsletter for you to subscribe to Ashley Carman's newsletter Soundbite which is now a paid for thing, but I have negotiated a deal with Bloomberg where they pay me nothing and I get to promote their paid for newsletter.

James Cridland: 52:44

I think that's a brilliant deal.

Sam Sethi: 52:45

Yeah, sales 101.

James Cridland: 52:48

I've done a good job there, um, but genuinely I feel that it is something worthwhile. Uh, making sure you know exists and, um, you know, and uh, ashley has the time and the experience, quite frankly, to do deep dives into things that, um, that I, you know, simply don't. So you know, so'm I'm keen that that doesn't go away as well. But, uh, yeah, it's difficult times for it's difficult times for the media in general anyway, actually, but it's difficult times, um, for the podcast media. The one thing I would say and I was having a sales call, uh, this this this morning. I've had all the calls this week, um, that I was having a sales call this morning.

James Cridland: 53:31

I've had all the calls this week I was having a sales call with our head of sales and she was saying that there was a real change in money as soon as the US election wound up, as soon as people understood where things were going in the US, then that released an awful lot of cash. And you've probably seen that. You know the Pod News newsletter. At the moment, everything that can be sponsored in there is you know, so that's great. So I suspect that we are seeing that in other parts of the industry as well, that, actually, as soon as we understand who the next president is going to be for the next four years, then that releases a bunch of money that people have just been holding back on for the last six months because they were just a little bit nervous. So I think that that's a useful thing.

Sam Sethi: 54:18

I think we all know where everyone was going is Mar-a-Lago, but anyway, now, hopefully on next week's show, there is a new podcasting newsletter called Euro Waves, which is run by Andrea Koskay, and hopefully I've reached out to her and she was keen to come on the show, so maybe we'll get her on next week's show to talk about what her plans are for reporting on the podcasting space across Europe.

James Cridland: 54:45

That would be fantastic if we can and talking about other places in the world, here in Australia, for the first time ever, the Australian podcast ranker has a clear, uncontested number one, which has never actually happened in the past. Arn's iHeart is now number one for podcasting, in podcast publishers and in sales representation. Sea has always had one of those. Now ARN is now running with both of those, so that's very good. It's probably helped by the BBC, which ARN is a representative of and that has joined the Australian podcast ranker for the first time. But anyway, congratulations to Corrie and all of the team at ARN's iHeart. Corrie says that he listens to some of the show until he gets bored and then he skips on to a different show. So he's probably not already listening, but still, there we are. But congratulations to him for being the uncontested number one.

Sam Sethi: 55:45

Yes, very nice. Now, talking of Australians, the very nice Sharon Taylor from Triton Digital said I think she was quoting Tom Cruise as well Give us your money. What was she?

James Cridland: 55:56

asking for yes, sharon Taylor, who's had a birthday this week. So happy birthday, sharon Taylor.

Sam Sethi: 56:01

Facebook told me exactly how old she was which I thought she said no, no, don't mention it.

James Cridland: 56:08

I thought that was a little bit cheeky. Yeah, it just basically said oh look, it's Sharon Taylor's birthday and I thought that's rude Facebook. But anyway, sharon Taylor has written a very good blog post, which I linked to during the break, about her very polite demands, or really goals, for the podcast industry in 2025. One of those totally agree with. Please, she says can Spotify, youtube and Apple release useful industry data? And I've been asking all three of those companies for useful industry data for years. I've suggested data points that we know that they have.

James Cridland: 56:48

You know how many people are listening to podcasts at various speeds? How many people are skipping ads? You know how many people are skipping ads? You know how many people are skipping ads? Please could you tell us All of that kind of stuff? And weirdly, they'll reply to every other part of the email but not that part. But I would completely agree. I mean, I would also like both Spotify, youtube and Apple all three of those to at least use the same language as the IAB podcast measurement guidelines do as well. I think that that would be really helpful too. But yeah, I completely agree with Sharon on that and many of the other things that she ended up saying.

Sam Sethi: 57:22

Yeah, look, I agree that I would love Spotify, youtube, to release first party data and all of that type of information. They're not going to do it. I mean, I call it a whiffing. What's in it for me, you know why would they? Why would they want to do that? They don't need to. They're not making money from it. Yes, they could be good citizens, but let's be honest, they're not good citizens. They're proprietary platforms and they don't care. So I, apple and I've long said if they would release the data to hosting companies. That supported delegated delivery. So hosting companies have helped Apple. So why wouldn't Apple give that data? Because they don't have ads, it doesn't matter to them, it's not important. So I could see Apple doing it, but I can never see Spotify and YouTube doing it. I wouldn't see any advantage for them doing it at all.

James Cridland: 58:15

Yeah, it depends whether Spotify and YouTube want to help creators, but obviously their way of helping creators is well, you should just use our stuff, so you know. Perhaps that's it, but yeah. I certainly get that. It would be helpful, though, if they were to at least align the measurement that they have with the industry standards, and you know, that would at least be useful, or at least call things the same thing. That would be useful too.

Sam Sethi: 58:43

Or have a play, meaning a play 30 seconds, one minute or 10. You pick your number. Yes, indeed, Now moving on, then, James, people and jobs. Who's moving? Who's grooving? Who's gone? Who's staying?

James Cridland: 58:55

Yes, well, nick Harnett has left Acast UK. As marketing and PR director, he was very good and dealt with all of my annoying emails, but I'm sure that he will pop up in the audio space before too long. Michael McDonald joins from iHeart to Lemonada Media. He's been hired as SVP of sales and business development. So good for him.

James Cridland: 59:19

And Arielle Nissenblatt, as I call her, the internet's Arielle Nissenblatt, because literally whenever I open anything that's connected to the internet, there she is talking about podcasts. She has joined podcast production company Orderly as director of community and content. I've never heard of Orderly, but I have a feeling that I will hear of Orderly time and time and time again, at least over the next six months. I have a feeling that that'll be part of a what's it called a portfolio career for Arielle. She works for Tink Media. She works for a bunch of other people. I'm sure that she'll work for more people in the future, but um uh, that was a good and uh clever hire from uh orderly. Whoever they are, they're a podcast production company. That much I can tell you yeah, they produce audiobooks as well.

Sam Sethi: 1:00:03

So, um, yes, we are talking to them about some stuff, but um, no, yeah, I tried to get ariel. We nearly got her. I think she might still do something with with True Fans, but I can't reveal what yet. Oh, but yes a very, very much in-demand young lady because obviously she's very good at what she does. The other thing I noticed was Apple James Happy Days are recruiting for a podcast PR person. Maybe Nick Harnett's going there, you never know.

James Cridland: 1:00:31

Yes, I mean this would be a brilliant gig for somebody that wants to reply to emails from me.

Sam Sethi: 1:00:39

You can find oh, I'll take that job, then I've done that.

James Cridland: 1:00:44

Or indeed do as the current person I mean, there isn't really a current person but do as the current person has done and set a rule to automatically delete any emails that I send. That's also absolutely fine as well. But yes, apple, if you go to podnewsnet slash jobs, you'll find a link to this. It's a link to Senior PR Manager of Services, which means that you would be the PR person that looks after Apple Podcasts, apple Books and Apple News and you have a support role for Apple services more broadly.

James Cridland: 1:01:18

I have passed on to a few people and, of course, it's in the Pod News Jobs board, which I managed to break for the last week. I've unbroken it, so, yes, so if you are in the PR game or you know somebody who is Nick Harnett, yes, so if you are in the PR game or you know somebody who is Nick Harnett, then please do forward that on, because that would be an excellent job and it's a tremendous company, obviously, to work for and a decent salary as well. I think it starts at something like $192,000 US. I mean, wow, it's a thing.

Sam Sethi: 1:01:52

Don't sniff at that one. I mean look. Zach can't be that busy with Vision Pro. I mean, no one's buying it, no one's looking at it, so maybe you could do two jobs. I think he still listens to this. Oh, does he? Hi Zach, did you get your free Vision Pro? They're going cheap now I didn't, I didn't, weirdly enough.

James Cridland: 1:02:12

Anyway, moving on then.

Sam Sethi: 1:02:14

James. Yes, let's not. Let's leave poor little Apple alone, let's not bite into them all.

James Cridland: 1:02:22

Podcast events on the Pod News Weekly Review. Yes, let's do that. Podfest Expo is on at the moment in Orlando, the Hall of Fame, of course, happening as well. Monday's Pod News newsletter will have a video of the entire Hall of Fame ceremony. If you want to see lots of Americans being given prizes by Americans, that is a great thing for you to watch, and the Podfest itself is a great event. So hi to you if you're going there. Sorry, I'm not going there. Orlando, this time Also going on On, air Fest has revealed its 2025 schedule.

James Cridland: 1:03:02

All kinds of things going on 80 performances, podcast tapings, panel conversations and workshops all happening in Brooklyn, in New York, between February the 19th and the 21st. I will be somewhere in the Middle East, so I can't go, but nevertheless, anderson Cooper from CNN is one of the people that I've heard of Frankly, one of the only people that I've heard. No, no, no, that's not fair, but Anderson Cooper from CNN will be there talking about his show. There is also, of course, the Podcast Business Summit with Bloomberg's Ashley Carman. Nothing to do with the Podcast Business Journal, but I don't mind if you think it is. So it's the event's eighth year and tickets are available on the website, which is onairfestcom.

James Cridland: 1:03:47

Other things going on the iHeart Podcast Awards has announced its nominations. Those awards will be held March the 10th at South by Southwest Evolutions, of course, happening at the end of March in Chicago. Into April, voting is going on for the People's Choice Award category at the UK's Political Podcast Awards and, if you're in the UK, the Radio Academy Arias are open for entry. And there is also an event going on in Birmingham in the UK Unipodfest 2025. On April the 4th, nina Robinson will be running that. You went last year, I think, didn't you?

Sam Sethi: 1:04:23

Yeah, I've been to all of them actually because my daughter's up in Birmingham Uni, so it's lovely for me to just go up, take her out for lunch and she comes with me and we go and listen about podcasting.

James Cridland: 1:04:30

Oh, dad, do I have to? Yes, you do.

Sam Sethi: 1:04:34

If you want free lunch, yes, you do.

James Cridland: 1:04:42

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. Sam, what have you got for us this time?

Sam Sethi: 1:04:49

We've got a couple of stories. One you reported on was a company called anycast, which is an ai powered yes, drink um. A podcast app, um, which will transcribe podcasts but also allows you to chat with the podcast. Um, what do you mean? Chat with the podcast, james?

James Cridland: 1:05:07

uh, so yeah, and jordan harbinger, for example, has done this. Um, you can go to jordanbinger's website. You can press the Ask Jordan button I think it's called and that takes you to an AI large language model which has been trained on Jordan's shows, and so you can say hey, jordan, how do I manage burnout? And it will give you some advice from Jordan himself. It will link you through to some shows that Jordan has talked about burnout on. So it's quite a neat trick, and I know that a number of other people have done that. Our favourite, dave Weiner, has trained a large language model on his blog, for example. So you can go and ask Dave anything and it'll just say no, but you know. So that's pretty cool. The reason why I thought that it was interesting is that it's open source. The entire source code for that is open for both iOS and Android. If you are making a native podcast app Sam Sethi true fans then it would seem to be a pretty good start to basically go oh look.

Sam Sethi: 1:06:23

I've got some great code.

James Cridland: 1:06:26

I've got some great code. No, I'm not necessarily saying that, but you know I've got some great code here for a podcast app. Somebody's basically done all of the hard work of writing that you know and jump in. It's probably not right for you, but it could well be right for other people, so certainly something to have a peek at there, okay.

Sam Sethi: 1:06:47

Our lovely sponsors, buzzsprout, are now publishing to Instagram via their iOS app. Have you seen this one yet?

James Cridland: 1:06:54

James. Yeah, so you can share your episodes to Instagram Stories. It'll let you post episode artwork or your podcast cover art. You can customise it with filters and stickers and backgrounds and all kinds of stuff if you really want to, and you can add a link so that listeners can access your episode instantly. It's very cool. It's in the Buzzsprout iOS app currently, because they hate everybody with Android. No, that's not true, but they've. You know, they just have their things to plan. But give that a go if you're using a toy phone and that will be oh, you've gone back. Have you.

Sam Sethi: 1:07:32

You've chucked yours in the bin gone back to Android?

James Cridland: 1:07:34

have you? I haven't. No, it's still an excellent phone, so I think, from that point of view, yeah, it's definitely worth a play. The Buzzsprout app is a super good app and I think what's been really interesting is just seeing how that app has grown over the last year or so, so definitely worth a peek.

Sam Sethi: 1:07:55

I wonder whether they'll integrate Blue Sky into it, which seems to be the hottie at the moment that everyone's going to.

James Cridland: 1:07:58

Yes, yes, and it's relatively easy to integrate, so you'd have thought that that's a plan.

Sam Sethi: 1:08:05

Talking of people coding, you've been busy. Clearly, the repeats of Only Fools and Horses weren't appealing to you. So what did you do? You started to update your calendar.

James Cridland: 1:08:15

That's a very niche reference. Yes, we don't get repeats of Only Fools and Horses. Weirdly, that doesn't work in Australia, don't?

Sam Sethi: 1:08:25

be a plonker all your life, rodney, I've done the deal. Now I can't think why that works. Okay, repeats of Neighbours. I mean, come on, imagine that. Neighbours, everybody needs good neighbours.

James Cridland: 1:08:40

Anyway, yes, I was busy for at least 10 minutes writing an export of the Pod News events diary to a webcal. So, basically, if you have an iPhone or a Google phone Google have made it a little bit harder but if you've got one of those phones that you use for your diary anyway, then you can import PodNews' calendar of podcasting events. It'll keep you up to date with all of the events which are going on, particularly useful if it's an online event and it's free because you can actually see in the calendar. This is an online event and it's free because you can actually see in the calendar this is an online event, it's free, you can actually take part now. So that's a pretty cool thing, and it's in your own time zone as well, which is, of course, a nice thing too. So if you want to add that calendar to your mobile phone or to your desktop calendar as well, podnewsnet slash events is where to go for that.

Sam Sethi: 1:09:36

Now steven b with lm beats uh posted that he's added support for the music l playlist, which is part of the podcasting 2.0 standard. So, if you've got a right, what is what is a music l playlist? So if you've got a playlist like uh, you've got various tracks that you like and you put it into a playlist. You might want to then export that or import that to another app, a bit like OPML, but it's using the podcasting 2.0 standards for doing it, which are around GUIDs and remote items let's not get too technical and the idea is that he's now added support. Now, we had support for that well, I think six months ago, but it's great to see somebody else now doing it. That's the second people now doing it, thankfully. What we will need to now do is import Stephen's list as well into TrueFans, because he's now publishing them.

Sam Sethi: 1:10:29

What was interesting? When I published our code for Stephen to look at, he was like oh, that's not standard, that's not the way that it's been done, and I said yes, because we actually give 1% of the value created for that playlist to the creator of the playlist. So, yes, 99% goes to the creators you know the people but 1% goes to the person who created the playlist, so we used a capability for wallet switching. Anyway, long story short, very nice to see that other people are now adding MusicHell, which is a way of sharing playlists between podcasting 2.0 apps.

James Cridland: 1:11:04

Very nice. Two other things Firstly, a new microphone from Shure. Oh, brilliant, the MV7i is. I just don't get the use case for this, but I'm sure that other people do. The MV7, right which I used to use, has an XLR output on the microphone as well as a USB output, so you can use it as a USB mic or you can use it as an XLR mic. The MV7i has changed the XLR port to be an input instead. So what you can do is you can plug in to your computer, you plug in the USB of this microphone and then you can plug in another microphone via XLR into that first microphone. And apparently you know people have been going mental about it and I'm going sorry. What's the use case for this?

Sam Sethi: 1:12:01

Well, I was going to say, is that sure mic acting, instead of having like a Rode Podcaster hardware?

James Cridland: 1:12:07

Yeah, correct, I think that's it. Or it's a replacement for a Focusrite or something, so that essentially you end up having two different microphones. You can plug in two different microphones and control those separately. So I suppose it's that really, but I'm, I'm, I'm, yeah, but I'm, I'm. I was kind of there going. It's a bit of a niche use case, but I mean good for sure for trying something brand new, because that's a really interesting idea, but yes, so if you are wanting to do a show with two different people, then maybe the MV7i is a good plan. Get an MV7i and then an MV7, plug them both together and you've got access to both of those through one USB microphone. Not going to try it, but well done to them. Yeah, I'm not going to try it, but well done to them as well. What have Sony been doing?

Sam Sethi: 1:13:01

They've been playing VC Bingo, which is basically name blockchain Web3.

James Cridland: 1:13:09

In a press release and see what happens next. Yes, that's basically what they've been doing. I didn't realise that they already had three blockchain-related companies working in Sony and they've launched a blockchain main net. They're selling NFTs crypto asset exchange services.

Sam Sethi: 1:13:28

Yeah, ignore all of this, James, because that's not the reason why I put it in there. Funny enough, they've called it Sonium as the platform.

James Cridland: 1:13:35

Oh yeah.

Sam Sethi: 1:13:36

I see what they've done there and yeah okay, it's a platform where you can launch other apps onto, which, again, I think is interesting. But the bits that I found, uh, really interesting. The company will work to support creators and expanding their creativity and enhancing their engagement with fans. So so they're looking at communities, fan engagement and creators. Okay, that's good news. Yes, they use the word Web3, but they do point out it's too complex for users who are unfamiliar with blockchain. We've been saying that all 2024 and it still lacks major killer apps. Okay, and then the next part is it's going to use activities to divide. They're going to use activities to diversify in the future. So what they're looking at is how you can get better points of contact between fans and creators. Again, all about community. Now, that's what I've been saying.

Sam Sethi: 1:14:28

Um, the bit that I thought was interesting is the number of accounts they had on the platform. In the test exceeded 40 million users and 47 million transactions. Now, that's pretty high. And again, this is using a form of crypto, because they do have in-app payments, they do have wallets and they do say that. You know, this is all about community again. And the last bit I'll leave you with is they are giving 3,000 yen to everyone who joins, but they're giving that in crypto, so micropayments, and the thing that stood out to me was, unlike many other Web3 platforms that require users to set up separate crypto wallets, the new service will provide an integrated web-based wallet with a social login. Again, don't make users have to go away and do kyc understand what a wallet is. Instead, just give them a wallet, put some money in it, make it social and build a platform for community, and that's why I found this interesting, because that's what they're doing. It may not be what we're doing in the podcasting world, but, but it has similarities.

James Cridland: 1:15:36

Yes, it does, and I wonder whether or not there is some form of payment into that or out of that for podcasting 2.0. 3,000 yen, by the way, in case you're wondering about $20. That's a sizable amount of money that Sony are giving away. Well, I say giving away. Sony have never given anything away, so I don't suppose they'll be really giving things away. But yes, you can certainly see that that's a useful thing. So, yeah, worth keeping an eye on. It is our favourite part of the week.

James Cridland: 1:16:12

Tons of comments because, of course, while we've been here for the last three weeks, we haven't really so. We've got a good amount of messages, fan mail. If you want to send us a fan mail, it's a link in the show notes if you're on your mobile phone. Dave Jackson says I can't believe how good this episode by Kyle and Sheila did on this 2.0 summary. I have no idea what he's talking about.

Sam Sethi: 1:16:37

Yeah, you do yes, you do yes, it's the pod engine. Joe Tanarello created a review of 2024 and then whacked it into Google Notebook LM, and then Kyle and Sheila I assume that's the names of the AI people. Yes, yes, yes, of course, and then you put it into Pod News Extra. So yes, I think you do know Of course yes, listeners, he's had one too many Sherries over Christmas. Just leave him alone, it's been three weeks.

James Cridland: 1:17:10

An email came in from Steve Goldstein from Amplify Media. He says my first New Year's resolution is totally blown. I didn't think Pod News Weekly Review could deliver in under 20 minutes Damn. This is our very short show last week, which is our predictions show. Steve is the man and he knows a thing or two, having run large US radio groups. He knows a thing or two about how to make great audio and he's always there saying it needs to be shorter, it needs to be tighter. And I'm there going. I completely agree. It's just Sam.

Sam Sethi: 1:17:44

It's what my wife says you need to be shorter and tighter. That's what she says to me as well.

James Cridland: 1:17:49

Yes, anyway, moving on Boosts, thank you. If you've got a modern podcast app, there's a boost button in there, except if you're using TrueFans, because it's not called Boost anymore, but anyway it's there. It's called Comments, potentially, and you can leave a message and send us a little bit of money in there. Lyceum, thank you for your four ducks in a row. Could you become dizzy if you wear the glasses? Ah, you're talking about Sam's silly glasses, aren't you? It'll be interesting to see how your predictions will come to play in the near future. You have the ducks in a row. We do have the ducks in a row 2,222 sats. Thank you, lyceum. Could you become dizzy if you wear your silly glasses, sam?

Sam Sethi: 1:18:30

Only if you spin round really fast. No glasses, only if you spin around really fast. No, um, no, I can. I just point out to everybody um, you were getting new glasses. I said maybe she could get some. What was your response to me online?

James Cridland: 1:18:44

I think I said so yes, yes, yes, ah, the bleeping machine's working, then is it.

Sam Sethi: 1:18:54

Did you put a pound in the old box? Then did you for that one, yes, no, I'm not wearing those. I bet he will 2025 prediction come the end of the year?

James Cridland: 1:19:06

No, I bet I won't. Another row of ducks. 2222sats from the Tone Wrecker. Happy New Year, he says. Appreciate the predictions. Well, thank you and I appreciate you. The Tone Wrecker, Thank you for your support, Much appreciated. And 2,000 sats in total from Russell Harrower from Pod 2. Boosting without any message using Breeze Wow Gosh, old school Boosting us on the Pod News Extra show. So thank you for doing that, Russell.

Sam Sethi: 1:19:37

Now we've got a few more below, so I'm going to let you read them in, because the font's about minus one, so go on.

James Cridland: 1:19:45

It's actually an email in from David Bodycomb, who is the producer of Lateral with Tom Scott, and he sent us an email to weekly at podnewsnet saying Hi, james and Sam, I've been enjoying the Pod News Weekly reviews, especially over the festive season when a lot of other news goes to sleep. Correct, in your highs and lows show. James asked what the point of video on a podcast was. Can I give you three concrete reasons why fans of Lateral with Tom Scott very good podcast have been asking for video ever since we started. You do get the feeling, as you're reading out an email, that it would be better if I had actually called him up and said David, why didn't you just record this as a piece of audio? But anyway, still, there we are. I will plough on.

James Cridland: 1:20:25

Number one our show always has a host and three guests. Some people, including those who are neurodiverse, find it harder to understand four different voices in one room. They value putting a face to each name. That's a good point. Number two being a panel game, there's a lot of subtext in the facial expressions of the guests as they play the game. Our fans get more enjoyment out of the show when they get to see these reactions. Number three we have a significant proportion of fans where English is not their first language. They find it beneficial to see and hear the words being spoken along with our professionally produced transcripts. We burn captions into all of our socials and are pushing platforms to support the transcript tag for RSS Good, yes, completely agree with all of those three things.

James Cridland: 1:21:04

David says that he comes from a TV background himself. He knows that making proper TV instead of cheap TV will cost 40 people instead of four, cost 20 times more, have a lead time of weeks rather than days, and he sees it not being low quality TV. He sees it being akin to having a webcam in a radio studio adds a bit of value, but doesn't, but isn't part of the core offering. And I think all of that is absolutely fine. I think what I've been saying, david, and what I've been saying in a number of podcast appearances since I said that and stick it up on Spotify and YouTube, then that's absolutely fine, but don't think that you're making a TV show because you're not making a TV show. Don't do something that gets in the way of the audio is the thing I'm saying, because that's what our unique opportunity is.

James Cridland: 1:22:11

But, very excitingly, it sounds as if Lateral, which is a great it's a quiz show as a podcast, it sounds as if that show is now going to be available as full video podcasts. So that is brilliant. It's available right now, and previous episodes are going to be made available in that way as well. It's worth a listen. If you don't already get that, it's on my list, so yeah. So thank you, david, for all of that. Next time, what I should do is reply and say this looks brilliant. Why don't you record yourself in your mobile phone saying these words.

Sam Sethi: 1:22:47

Hang on, he's got a professional studio. Don't do that in your studio, I know. Send a video.

James Cridland: 1:22:52

Yeah, no, don't do that too in your studio, I know, send a video, yeah, well, yes, oh, yeah, send a video. Brilliant, and thank you so much to our uh sensational 16 uh power supporters. Um, which is uh brilliant to see you all there. Uh. David john clark, the late bloomer actor, uh, james burke, john mcdermott, claire wake brown, ms eileen smith and neil velio, rocky thomas, jim james, david marzell, the late bloomer actor, james Burt, john McDermott, clare Wake Brown, ms Eileen Smith, neil Velio, rocky Thomas, jim James, david Marzal, si Jobling, rachel Corbett, dave Jackson, mike at the Rogue Media Network, matt Medeiros, marshall Brown and Cameron Moll for your very excellent support. Some of those people have been with us for almost two years, which is really kind. All the money that we get for this show just goes to Sam and I, to nobody else in the massive Pod News headquarters that we have there so much appreciated.

James Cridland: 1:23:46

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

Sam Sethi: 1:23:48

before I do, there's two quick things about the Power Sporters. First of all, thank you very much for those who sent in all of their predictions for the show. That they did, and an apology to David John Clark, the late Bloomer actor. He did send in his predictions but I think we didn't have them in the Dropbox. We had them in my email and we missed them.

Sam Sethi: 1:24:10

So I think, we might publish his predictions just independently next week in our show. So apologies to David, but I found out David's a member of the Australian SAS, or he just pretends he's not?

Sam Sethi: 1:24:20

Oh yeah, so you don't want to upset him, don't want to upset him, no. So he pretends he's an actor, but I think he really is, you know, a member of the SAS. He just doesn't like to say he went off base. He said for three weeks yeah, right, david. Yes, yes, actors don't go on military bases don't know what he was doing.

Sam Sethi: 1:24:39

Um, and neil velio posted something just again one of the one of the um power supporters. Um, when we talk about video I think you mentioned it back in the first week in pod news daily that women are going to find video much harder than men because of all of the extra work that they they will want to put in to to look good. I mean, I don't know, it's an unfair balance because women get judged very quickly that way. So, um, you know men, you know you can rock up in your hoodie, yeah, unshaven and still do it. Um, you know that wouldn't work. I mean it shouldn't matter what people look like. But again, if you add video to the mix, then, yeah, that will change the balance, I think.

James Cridland: 1:25:17

Yeah, no, indeed it's. I mean, video podcasting just makes it harder for women to get into podcasting, and that you know. Again, it's just a frustrating part of, you know of this drive to video which I wish would stop. Um, you know of this drive to video which I wish would stop. Um, but uh, but anyway, um, have you spotted anything? Uh, I well, firstly, are you planning to be on any big podcasts over the next um 24?

Sam Sethi: 1:25:45

hours, sam. No, I'm going to be on podcasting 2.0 though oh not anymore.

James Cridland: 1:25:51

You're not. No, I just got cancelled, didn't I? So that? That is uh later later today, if you're listening to us as as if we just come out uh, the podcasting 2.0 show with adam curry and dave jones. If you're using a new podcast app, you can listen to that going out live. I will be sitting next to my podcast app, just in case anybody has the smart idea of trying to turn it on yeah, now I'm very excited to be on with Adam and Dave.

Sam Sethi: 1:26:16

I don't know what I'm going to be talking about, because Dave said are you free? And I went yes, of course I am.

James Cridland: 1:26:21

You know, rent a gob here, and so yeah, I haven't been asked to be on for a while. Well, you know, you haven't been through an airport yet. It's only when you go through airports you get asked. Yes.

Sam Sethi: 1:26:33

The other things I've been doing PodCamp 2.0, which is the event I'm going to be hosting in May just before the London Podcast Show. I'm now in full planning mode. I've sort of left it on the back burner because it was just too early. I'm glad to say that ACAST is now going to be one of the new sponsors, along with Podcast Movement and Captivate. So thank you to the a cast team there. Um, I'm always surprised why it's all the same people. Um, I wish more people would step forward to to support and help. But you know, there you go. It's always captivate, always a cast.

James Cridland: 1:27:06

Um yeah, anyway. So who's who's actually going?

Sam Sethi: 1:27:09

so we've got a number of people I'm going to announce. I'm going to drip feed them over the next couple of shows, but the first ones I'm really excited to announce are Julie Costello, jim Costello and Ashley. They are coming over from the US, from Nashville. We're going to be doing three panels on V for V music. You've also got the UK people, so you've got Joe Martin the Trusted, got the UK people, so you've got Joe Martin the Trusted um. And they're also going to be doing a concert um during the London podcast show in one of the evenings. True Fans is going to be one of the sponsors of that um. So very, very exciting to see them coming over. It's a big cost to them because they're funding it themselves. Uh, there's 10 people from the Costello team coming over to put on that concert.

Sam Sethi: 1:27:56

Yeah, it's not just, you know, rock up with a mic and hope. You know they've got full production. So that'll be really exciting for that in the London podcast show. And yeah, so they're one of the first speakers I will be announcing more. You are a speaker. I know I hustled you into it, but you are. You have no idea what you're talking about yet, but we'll see. But yeah, no, look, you can pretty much guess who the other speakers are going to be All those people involved in podcasting 2.0.

James Cridland: 1:28:21

So very excited for that Very cool, very cool. What's True Fans working on?

Sam Sethi: 1:28:36

So before Christmas we announced Secure RSS, the encrypted way of putting your MP33 into an RSS feed, but then, once you've paid for it, it then unlocks. So again, that really works well with audiobook companies. We've talked to two audiobook companies now and three record companies. So watch this space it's. They're very excited because now they feel they can put their content in and not have it taken away for free.

Sam Sethi: 1:28:55

Over Christmas we launched charts for super fans, featured podcasts, and somebody gave me some feedback on grammar, so we changed the grammar as well. It's not in, it's on, I believe. So that was good, I know. Thank you for that, james, and user badges are coming shortly. I won't be calling them NFTs like Sony Sony do, but don't worry, um, we also and I think this is one of the big things we did do over Christmas and it's now live is we show your local currency instead of sats.

Sam Sethi: 1:29:28

So if you join true fans and you do want to pay somebody, you can now pay in Aussie dollars, euros, swiss kroner, dollars, pounds, et cetera, et cetera. You don't need to understand. You just say I want to pay a penny a minute, I want to pay 10p a minute. Whatever you want to do, we do all the under the hood complexity of doing split, still lightning payments and everything else. So yeah, but you can turn the SATs back on if you want in your user settings, if you're an advanced user. So yeah, that's what we did.

Sam Sethi: 1:30:03

And finally, I'm killing boosts and booster grams. Yes, I can hear the community going you traitor, but I fundamentally believe that we have to talk the language of users and not try and bring in too much new vocabulary. Um, we've gone back to likes comments and I'm going to call Boostergram super comments in true fans. Um, it mirrors very well with super chats, which is what YouTube use, and people understand it. Uh, I think it's very simple to understand for a user. You don't have to explain what it is, um, and that's got to be the way forward.

James Cridland: 1:30:38

I think Very nice, Very nice. It'll be interesting to see what happens there and, you know, interesting as well. You know you're clearly going on through all of this while you are, you know, still funding this yourself. So it'll be interesting to hear some interesting news there when it's time to actually make that interesting news too, have you got yourself anything exciting for Christmas? What did Santa bring you? Oh, yes, some wine.

Sam Sethi: 1:31:08

He brought me some wine Wine. Yes, no, I get toys. I love toys. I got the DJI Neo drone for Christmas. It's a launch from your palm drone. It's brilliant. It can fly up to 1.7 miles away from you, oh wow. By the the way, you can't see it when it's gone that far, it's the size of a uh little. Well, it's the size of your palm and you know you fly 1.7 miles away.

James Cridland: 1:31:32

You've lost it easily losable.

Sam Sethi: 1:31:34

Yes, yeah, god help us. No, it's great, um, and you know, I've been flying around, uh, the place where I live, over the river thames and around the hills, it's good pub yeah, yeah, very nice.

James Cridland: 1:31:45

I can hear David Beckham now saying oh that bloody Sam next door.

Sam Sethi: 1:31:49

They're flying your wife's already saying bloody Sam, I'll go, I'll go and talk to Chris Evans.

James Cridland: 1:31:53

Oh, chris, what do you think of this? Oh, I don't know, I'll go. I'll go and talk to Boris Johnson. Oh, boris, um, yes, everybody else who lives in your.

Sam Sethi: 1:32:01

Well, we won't be asking Michael Parkinson's, that's fine, it's okay. No there is always that. So what happened for you?

James Cridland: 1:32:10

James, what have you been doing? Well, I've been doing a few things. I suddenly realised my daughter going to high school. I suddenly realised that we actually need another car. Wow, you're giving your daughter a car for high school. That's pretty cool. I, you're giving your daughter a car for high school, that's pretty cool. Not giving my daughter a car for high school, no, but I am getting another car so that my wife can go to work she has to go to work more often these days and that I can still drive my daughter to school. So that's going to be interesting. I've bought myself a little electric car, which I'm quite excited by fully electric. Um, it's an mg, so it's a. It's an english brand, although it's owned by the chinese. Yeah, and it'll. Uh, I'm quite, I'm quite looking forward to it.

Sam Sethi: 1:32:56

Sorry, I've got to tell you something that you're gonna love. Oh, here we go. The next door neighbor is the marketing director for mg cars. But anyway, moving on.

James Cridland: 1:33:04

There you go, there you go. I could have got a free one.

Sam Sethi: 1:33:10

I'll ask Stuart, I'll pop in and say you know, my mate wants a free one.

James Cridland: 1:33:13

Yeah, yeah, yeah, as if that's going to happen, but no, so very much looking forward to taking delivery of that, which is in a couple of weeks' time. I've not even test-driven it, but it's got. Firstly, it's very cheap and secondly, it's got very good reviews, so I'm just sort of trusting that everything will work well and we'll see. It's got a DAB radio in it and it's got Apple CarPlay, so I'm all right. And what's its radius? 30 miles no, it's pretty decent. So the one that I've bought is an Essence, which is all very fancy, and that one is the range is up to 435 kilometres.

Sam Sethi: 1:33:57

Jesus H, I suppose in Australia that's 30 miles in England. Which is a pretty good range, you know you can go and get those skins over the top of cars that you can put on. Can you have Pod News Daily added to the side of the car and top and whatever?

James Cridland: 1:34:16

Yeah, no, no, we're not doing that. I did once used to drive a branded car for the radio station that I worked at. I drove a branded car and I always wanted to drive a branded, a branded car. Um, for the radio station that I worked at, I drove a branded car and I always wanted to drive a branded car because I thought this is going to be pretty cool. So drive along, everybody's going to notice that I work at the radio station. And blah, blah, blah, right, and it took about a month before I cut somebody up, um, in a queue, uh, and they made a complaint to the managing director, one of your drivers, and yes, so that was a mistake. Anyway, so I'm looking forward to that. So I'm looking forward to also to plugging it into the home automation system. Okay, so we'll see how all of that works, because I want it to charge during the day, when the electricity is free, because it's too sunny, and not charge at night, when the electricity is expensive and made from coal. So, yeah, it'll be fun doing that, so, anyway, so I've been doing that.

James Cridland: 1:35:22

I have learnt a new thing, a new open technology, which is called Powerline, which I was unaware of. It's been around for ages. Yes, now you say this. I was unaware that it was actually a technology. I knew that you could do this. So the idea is you can, if you need to get network access somewhere in your house which isn't covered by Wi-Fi. Very well, then you can plug in a thing, plug your internet into that, and then plug in another thing in your garage or something and and it's got internet coming out of it. That that I knew has been available for a while, but I didn't realize it was now standard. So that is very cool. So now I have and again this comes back to home automation now I have a proper, decent Wi-Fi in the garage because there's some security things there. But I've also got Wi-Fi next to the pool so that I can turn the pumps on and off using the power of the internet.

Sam Sethi: 1:36:23

So nothing's going to go wrong. There is it. It's so that he can put a timer at the one end and a timer at the other when he does his laps.

James Cridland: 1:36:31

Nothing when I do my laps. You know how small my pool is, so I think so, yeah, so that's been fun to learn all about that, but anyway, that's been technology. One other thing of technology that I should tell you about is I run a media directory which has lists of TV stations and radio stations and everything else, and I've run that for the last 20 years or so. Anyway, I was looking at my Amazon bill the other day and I was thinking why is my Amazon bill so high again? And had a look in at the hosting costs and it turns out that, pretty well, any illegal internet set-top box that you go out and buy these days have hardwired all of their logos to the logos which I have available on my website. So, literally, yeah, so it's just full of, you know, oh, this connection from this box, this connection from this, from this TV thing, and I mean literally. I've been doing gigabytes of data a day just doing crappy logos that aren't even, you know, aren't even optimised. So, yeah, so that was a little bit of playing around with Amazon's thing to stop it from serving all of those. I've worked out a pretty foolproof system now. So, yeah, but that was a real frustration. But, yeah, that was costing me. I mean, it was costing me over $200 just in those logos per month. Wow, yes, so anyway, so I've stamped that so that. So that'll be rather good.

James Cridland: 1:38:10

Um, yeah, and then, finally, I went up to see some turtles. Um, about, very cute, yes, about two. Well, about four hours north of here is a place called mon repos, which is a beach on the Pacific Ocean, and every year, for a period of about six weeks, all of the turtles hatch in eggs along that beach and then they all rush. And this is all at night, because during the day the birds will get them, so they only come out at night and they go down the beach and jump into the sea.

James Cridland: 1:38:47

These tiny little turtles most incredible thing you know about 200 turtles we saw coming out of this small little nest and jumping down into the beach. It was the most fantastic thing. So if you are, if you, dear listener, are ever in Queensland, make it in January and see if you can see those turtles, because it's something that doesn't happen pretty well anywhere else in the world. And the most amazing thing, sam, is that they do this right. They one in 10,000 survive and turn into a big turtle and everything else, and then they go and do their turtley things and then when it's time for them to lay eggs, then they come back to the same place and lay the eggs again. Same as salmon. Yeah, absolutely fascinating. So, yes, very, very much worthwhile.

Sam Sethi: 1:39:44

I should have gone back to the Ganges then to have my children.

James Cridland: 1:39:48

OK, well, why not?

Sam Sethi: 1:39:52

On the same principle of go back to where you're born. I should have gone back there, no, anyway.

James Cridland: 1:39:56

And on that bombshell, that's it for this week. All of our podcast stories taken from the PodNews daily newsletter. You can subscribe to the newsletter at podnewsnet and, just as a reminder, longer interviews from this very show will drop on Monday, so you've got even more stuff to have a listen to. You can always flick past them if you don't want them there, but we're giving you the choice this year. You'll find those, of course, wherever you get your podcasts.

Sam Sethi: 1:40:22

You can support this show by streaming stats. You can give feedback using Buzzsprout fan mail, which the link is in our show notes. You can send us a boostagram or super comments, as I'm going to call them, or become a power supporter with the sensational 16 at weeklypodnewsnet.

James Cridland: 1:40:38

Our music is from Studio Dragonfly. Our voiceover is Sheila D, who sent me a card this year. That was very kind of her. Thank you very much. We use Clean Feed for our audio. We edit using Hindenburg and we're hosted and sponsored by Buzzsprout. Start podcasting, keep podcasting, get updated every day. Subscribe to our newsletter at podnewsnet.

Sam Sethi: 1:40:59

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