James Cridland: 0:00

It's Friday, the 7th of February 2025.

Jingle: 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 in Switzerland, and I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO of True Fans in cold, very cold Marlow.

David Bodycombe: 0:21

When Tom started he said we'll just completely edit the shows in such a way that audio and video are going to be in lockstep. Now that we're on Spotify, that's actually been a very good decision for us.

Kendall Breitman: 0:33

David Boddickham will be on later with more about why you should be doing video and We've created a place where you can not only record your content, like you always have been able to on Riverside, but you can also stream it and really get it in front of as many people as possible.

James Cridland: 0:48

Kendall Brightman from Riverside on the company's new features. Plus in the chapters. Today are Spotify now profitable, the podcasts charging their guests but not telling you about it, and the White House Briefing Room learns about podcasts. This podcast is sponsored by Buzzsprout, with the tools, support and community to ensure you keep podcasting. Start podcasting, keep podcasting with buzzsproutcom.

Jingle: 1:12

From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly Review.

Sam Sethi: 1:16

So, James, let's kick this show off. Are you going to kick?

James Cridland: 1:20

this show off with Spotify Sam.

Sam Sethi: 1:26

Well, we have had a leave Spotify to the the end. But you know what, we support chapters and if your podcast app supports chapters, you can skip this bit if you don't like it. But you know, and better still, if your podcast app doesn't support chapters, upgrade.

James Cridland: 1:37

Yes, stay in the dark, get a get a better one, although apple podcasts is is absolutely fine for that sort of thing, why are we going to mention Sam?

Sam Sethi: 1:45

Well, it's their first full year of profitability. Finally, they are profitable. So they've just released their Q4 figures for 2024 and it looks like they've gone into the black. Tell me more about it, James.

James Cridland: 1:59

Yes, they have. They're doing very well. Actually, it's their first ever year of profitability. Last year they posted net profit of $1.18 billion. Posted it in euro, of course, because they would do that sort of thing, but revenue also grew 16% year on year to $4.3 billion, so they're doing pretty well. They made a loss of half a billion euro, which is about half a billion US dollars in 2023. So all of a sudden really lurching into profitability, which is quite a good thing, I think, yeah, their share price hit an all-time high of $630.

Sam Sethi: 2:40

Their market cap's $125 billion. Their market cap's $125 billion, and the stock has demonstrated this year alone or in 2024, a remarkable 178% return on the past year. I mean, they are just knocking it out of the park. And what's more interesting, though, is when you look at the analysts. They're saying you know, if you say the stock price is currently 630, they're predicting 720 or higher. So they're seeing the strategy is working and they're liking it a lot Great figures for Spotify, my goodness.

James Cridland: 3:13

They've had a long run of trying to make profit, so it's nice to see them finally doing that. But yeah, I mean, you know, I've been using Spotify for the last couple of months and it's a very good product.

Sam Sethi: 3:29

They're very clearly still talking up the benefits of video, but yes, you know, from a point of view of a really successful company, that is definitely one of the things I noticed in the analyst report was they highlighted the video podcast and the growing audiobook consumption as the reasons why they think they're bullish on Spotify. But they also noted that they think that in 2025, the rate of growth will slow compared to 2024. Don't know why, but they think they will slow the rate of growth. Now, Chris Peterson, you pointed out an article that he had posted on LinkedIn about it. What did he have to say?

James Cridland: 4:08

Yeah, I mean, he said lots of very positive things. So Chris, if you don't know, is an investor in this space, used to work for iHeart and is now flashing his cash investing in the future of audio. He says so, he took a peek and he basically says look, spotify strategy is is obvious. Spotify isn't competing in audio anymore. They're going after YouTube, they're going after TikTok. Now, um, gustav Söderström uh, ended up saying that, um, I think podcasts are becoming video. This is very important to us, and you know. And Chris Peterson just says look, this is what people are doing. Spotify has already won the audio platform war and now it's a video thing. And they couldn't. What he said is they couldn't even discuss podcasts without bringing up video. He's not a particular fan of that, but you can understand why Spotify ends up doing that.

James Cridland: 5:07

He did have a wonderful quote, though, sam, did he? Yes, this is a wonderful quote right at the bottom. I'll read the quote first and then I'll tell you who it was, because it's more fun that way. The quote says consumers spend roughly the same amount of time on video as they do on audio, but video is about a trillion dollar budget and the music and radio industry is only worth about a hundred billion dollars. I always come back to the same question Are our eyes really worth 10 times more than our ears? What a brilliant quote. Do you know who said that?

Sam Sethi: 5:41

If this was a university challenge, I'd be buzzing in now going yes, Daniel Ek.

James Cridland: 5:46

Daniel Ek, you're exactly right In 2019, he's changed his tune, hasn't he?

Sam Sethi: 5:52

So, yes, it's a wonderful, what a billionaire. Changing their tune. When do?

James Cridland: 5:56

they ever do that. A wonderful spot from Chris Peterson there.

Sam Sethi: 6:00

I'm going to rain on the parade now a little bit. I think there's a big issue going to come and hit them in 2025, which is why I think the analysts are saying there's going to be a slowdown in growth because price elasticity is going to kick in very shortly. You cannot continue to increase the subscription price infinitum and expect to increase growth. You may get more growth from the existing user base. There may be an audience you know, of our generation, let's say James who can afford to pay £20, maybe £30. I don't know. £40, what would you do? £50, what would you do? Where is your break point? I guess?

James Cridland: 6:38

Yes, you're absolutely right. There will be a point where people say, no, I'm not going to pay that money. But having said that, Spotify it's a massive old company now and the amount of people who are using Spotify continues to grow 35 million new monthly active users, 11 million new paid subscribers. So, to an extent, actually, the benefit there is in the scale. They can keep their prices down because the scale is there to help them move forward.

Sam Sethi: 7:13

Now, YouTube being the other player in the market. Now, how are they?

James Cridland: 7:16

doing. Yeah. So YouTube? Actually much the same sort of story. Their ad revenue has risen 13.8% in quarter four to $10.5 billion. We don't actually know. I don't think. The ad revenue has risen 13.8% in quarter four to $10.5 billion. We don't actually know. I don't think. The ad revenue for Spotify that's a little bit more hidden in their figures. But yeah, the interesting thing just to note in YouTube's results which of course, were Google's results as well is that they actually mentioned podcasts for the first time in their release. So they've never mentioned podcasts before. But I guess if you are going to be, you know, if all of this research keeps on telling you that you're number one, you might as well end up using that.

Sam Sethi: 8:02

Edison pointed out that YouTube is now bigger for podcasts than Spotify and Apple, and they're specifically saying podcasts. They're not saying digital broadcast video media. They're saying podcasts.

James Cridland: 8:16

Yes, and again, the stat is, if I can quote it, 31% of weekly podcast listeners choose YouTube as the service they use most to listen to podcasts. So that's not based on data, that's based on a survey of asking people what apps you use, and it's not based on downloads. It's based on you know we use this service most. But even so, that is higher than Spotify, which got 27% in that number, and significantly higher than Apple Podcasts, which is now just 15% in that number. So, yeah, I mean you know YouTube, clearly, as a way of getting people consuming stuff, is doing really well as a way of people consuming, uh, that particular podcast every single week. I I'm I'm still not entirely convinced. Um, but, um, you know, but we'll see.

Sam Sethi: 9:13

Now, as I said, I'm I'm I'm trying to prick the bubble of Spotify's happiness a little bit. Um, and one of the things that's going to do that is a lawsuit. It's from the National Music Publishers publishers association, which are not happy with the fact that spotify is allowing music uh, that they have copyright over in podcasts. Now, I know that spotify's policy is not to allow you to upload music into podcasts, but why are the nmpa so worked up with Spotify and why are they asking, as of this week, february the 4th, for them to remove thousands of unlicensed uses of music in podcasts?

James Cridland: 9:54

Well, it's 2,500, so it's not that many thousands. It's as little thousands as you can get away with with having an S on the end of the word thousand. They have been the National Music Publishers Association have been banging on the end of the word thousand. They have been the National Music Publishers Association have been banging on the door of Spotify for a number of years. They're one of these companies that will take any opportunity to say that Spotify is a bad, bad thing. Spotify have said that the NMPA haven't actually given them any information about these particular shows, which apparently have unlicensed songs in them, so we don't actually know anything about that.

James Cridland: 10:31

I look at this and I think well, I mean, you know, it's a nice shot across the bows, but it's just the NMPA doing what the NMPA will always do. They ended up having legal action last year, for example, around whether or not Spotify was allowed to call itself a bundling service anymore, because it offers audio books as well as music and so therefore it can lower the royalties paid out to music rights holders. They lost that one. Spotify have succeeded in being able to convince people that they are a bundle now. So you know, I think it's just the NMPA going oh, they just published Profit. We should jump on the bandwagon and see if we get some money out of them from my point of view, lovely impersonation.

Sam Sethi: 11:14

I remember him well.

James Cridland: 11:15

Yes, but if you're a music artist, you'll doubtless feel different. The one big change in terms of podcasting on Spotify in comparison to everywhere else is I can get a licence. It's very expensive to do and very complicated, but I can get a licence for music and I can run that on this show everywhere other than Spotify. Spotify do not care even if I have a valid license for a music track. If I go away and license ACDC, spotify will still take me off, because Spotify say very, very clearly that they do not accept any music tracks in podcasts. You know, licensed or not, and so that's just a bit of a difference and I can totally understand why they end up doing that, I think the issue, though, is, as you said right at the beginning, the bundling issue.

Sam Sethi: 12:13

So, as you said, the NMPA are throwing their toys out the pram, saying, okay, if we've lost that, we're going to get you to do some removal of our content, but realistically, they wouldn't have cared before. It's the fact they're lowering the royalties paid out which raises the question again, james, when will we ever find out about the royalty payments for video, because it's coming out of that same pot? Now, if Spotify can say they're a bundling platform, then actually they can lower the music right holders payments again if they have to, because they're going to take payments for video podcasters.

James Cridland: 12:47

Yeah, yeah, I mean, and I I don't know how the intricacies of the spotify payment system works. I know that it's a percentage of of incoming revenue, but that's about as much as I know. Um, so yeah, so I don't know about that bit. I'm imagining that Spotify is right now beginning to write the checks for the first month of the Spotify Partner Programme, so it'll be interesting watching to see whether anybody actually has anything that they are allowed to say about their earnings. Youtube, you know, you can always say how much money you earned, but Spotify, I don't know whether there's an NDA in that earning thing. I don't really know how that works, so it'll be. You know, it should be helpful just to watch some of the creators and whether or not they are open about the amount of money that they're earning out of Spotify.

Sam Sethi: 13:47

Well, they'll be small to begin with, so they probably won't say anything until they've got a few months under their belt, I guess. But the NMPA basically is an unlicensing issue, and Tom Webster basically said podcasting would have a massive music discussion if labels and podcasting can set aside differences and sit down at a table and figure out licensing. That's never going to happen, though, is it, James?

James Cridland: 14:09

Well, I mean, I think labels can and should talk about licensing. The difficulty is that music licensing is spread across a number of different companies and spread across geographical locations as well. So I can get a music licence quite easily in Australia, for example, but that music licence only covers me in Australia for a start, so that's no good. Secondly, it only covers me for the writer's work, so I can perform a Coldplay song, but I can't play the recording of Coldplay because that's a different license. And so you end up with all of this complication because it is just hugely difficult to work out how that would work.

James Cridland: 14:56

But there's no reason why the record companies couldn't come together and work out some form of licensing. And certainly you know, wouldn't it be amazing? I think Tom's point, which is an absolutely correct point, is wouldn't it be amazing if we could have more music shows as podcasts, where you can actually play a full track and you can actually talk about it and do all of that? At the moment we're not allowed to under the terms of the large record companies. It's only if you own all of your own uh, copyright um, that you're actually able to get your songs played on a podcast now.

Sam Sethi: 15:36

Uh, one of my predictions in our show was for an increased use of live, and now I think 2025 and live is going to be substantial. Actually, we'll see at the end of the year how wrong I was, but given that I still believe that it's the beginning of the year, we're seeing things coming out from the US that radio numbers are basically going more digital, and now we've got the live item tag in Podcasting 2.0 and we're having this whole discussion about should it be an Icecast Shoutcast server, basically going more digital, and now we've got the live item tag in podcasting 2.0 and we're having this whole discussion about it. Should it be an Icecast Shoutcast server? Is it HLS? We're not seeing again.

Sam Sethi: 16:11

Sadly, I'm not host bashing, but it feels like I am, but we're not seeing them implement any sort of hosting capability for users to time slice live podcasting. It's I don't know nothing's going on there, but I did notice that Riverside had made a concerted effort. As I said last week, I think they it feels like they've sucked up StreamYard because it looks exactly the same. The UI is very slick. You just say where your end points are and you simply then go live and you can even schedule it. I wanted to find out more about what Riverside's doing with live and what's their focus. So I reached out to Kendall Brightman, the community manager, and said tell me more about what Riverside's doing with live.

Kendall Breitman: 16:53

Yeah, we've been really leaning into live and making a lot of improvements and putting a lot of new features out there when it comes to live streaming. So there's a lot to go through. But basically an overview of it is that Riverside now has multi-streaming. So you can go live on YouTube, linkedin, instagram through custom RTMP, you can go through Twitch and also you can schedule your live streams. So the other day I scheduled my YouTube live stream. We did a live stream marathon for five and a half hours. It was a lot of streaming, no breaks. So we have that multi-streaming.

Kendall Breitman: 17:31

You can also use an audience link so you can go right into the Riverside studio and have an audience there. But we also introduced Omnichat so from all of those streaming destinations, you can see all of your chats in one place. You could even kind of bring them onto screen a feature I call sticky comments and be able to bring those chats on screen and display them. You can also go live in 1080p so your live streams can look amazing and you're able to also put lower thirds on the bottom of them so you can make them really engaging. We just added layouts so you can have people be full screen, switch over to picture in picture, all kind of operated through shortcuts.

Kendall Breitman: 18:16

The list keeps going on. I don't want to just spew all of the improvements that they were making, but just to give you an idea of all the things that we've introduced. We've basically created a place where you can not only record your content, like you always have been able to on Riverside, but you can also stream it and really get it in front of as many people as possible and interact directly with as many people as possible, with what's important to us as an engaging stream. So those switching layouts, those comments on screen, the lower thirds being able to bring people on stage and backstage, just basically whatever we can to make it so that the work you're doing and the live streams that you're making are seen by as many people and look as great as possible.

Sam Sethi: 19:01

Looking forward to 2025, what else have you been working on? What's coming down the track? What's new with Riverside?

Kendall Breitman: 19:09

So we've introduced a few things lately that our goal is always to make it as easy as possible for you to create pro-level content. So that's baseline, always what it's been and always what it's going to continue to be, and how we're seeing that recently has been to create ways that it works as easily as it can into your workflow. And so what do I mean by that? For example, two of the things that we've introduced lately one it's called workflows. Basically, we have those magic clips, those AI clips AI generated based on the most engaging parts of your conversation. But maybe I want all of my magic clips to be nine by 16, and maybe I want them all to be 60 seconds, and so before we didn't really have that kind of control over that. Maybe I want all my clips to include an intro or an outro slide. Now you're able to really set those with this new workflow feature, that you're able to really set those with this new workflow feature, that you're able to really set those, so that every time that you generate those magic clips, it's exactly as you want them. You can like set those parameters.

Kendall Breitman: 20:15

And another example of that is we introduced this brand kit, and so maybe every time and I, for most people who are creating podcasts. Every time that I create a clip, I want it to be in my brand colors, I want it to have a certain font, I want it to have my logo in the same place. So we've made it so that you can set all of that stuff beforehand. You could set a different setting for 16 by 9, because I don't really maybe want animated captions on my YouTube video. I want it on my YouTube long form, but I do want it on my clips. You can set it per format and then every time you just go into your studio, you click your brand kit, you pick, apply and it's all in there for you.

Kendall Breitman: 21:01

So you're going to continue to see more of those solutions that are built to make it as fast as possible, because what I think is cool about the AI that we're doing at Riverside is that, at the end of the day, this is your creation. We're all doing this because we're trying to have some sort of creative flow. We want AI to make it easier for you, but I don't want it to be set in stone. I want to be able to go in and still make it exactly what we want AI to make it easier for you. But I don't want it to be set in stone Like. I want to be able to go in and still make it exactly what I want it to be and make it my creation. So I can still kind of set those parameters I can change. Maybe if they deleted a pause, if the AI did, I can go and put that back in. So still giving you that freedom while cutting out some of the tedious parts of the workflow.

Sam Sethi: 21:45

I call AI assisted intelligence and therefore it sits very nicely. If you call it that, it makes sense. It's there to help, not to hinder.

Kendall Breitman: 22:01

Exactly. I saw a post online that was like I want AI to do my dishes. I don't want AI to speed up my creative workflow so that I have time to do the dishes. I want AI to do the dishes so that I have more time to do the things I love, like my creative work, and I just like I really connect to that. Yeah.

Sam Sethi: 22:11

Yeah. What else is coming down the track then from Riverside? What else can we look forward to this year?

Kendall Breitman: 22:18

We added multi-track editing and I think they're going to continue to see the improvements that we have with multi-track editing. So, for example, multi-track editing you're able to, when you hear that you're like, okay, you're able to go into each audio track and isolate those tracks, maybe mute some background noise or some crosstalk, and we do have that. It kind of building on itself is something like SmartScene that we introduced recently, so you can click a button and it basically creates like hundreds of cuts in your video. So sometimes we'll be side by side. Sometimes I'll be full screen. I'm not just saying this because I work at Riverside, but like whenever I'm editing video, I'm like, wow, that was really on point. Like, even if there's a point where I'm smiling and nodding but the other person was full screen, it'll cut back to that grid and have it side by side so you could see my reaction. So it's pretty impressive in that way. But that's part of multitrack editing for us, that's being able to take your two different video feeds and be able to cut to different scenes and create something that's more engaging and keeps people watching for longer. And a little hack that I love about it is that, like you can do the transcript editing. I can delete a big chunk of my text, but when you're actually watching the video back, there's that jump cut and it doesn't look. It doesn't look so good to have that, and I think we're more forgiving on that right now with social media. But as a former television producer, I'm just not a jump cut gal. So now, with the smart scenes and just creating individual, you can create them yourself too. You don't have to use the AI. If I cut out a big chunk, I'll just, in the next part, go full screen and so you don't see that jump as often. So it helps you really just like smooth out your edits, and that's really where we're going.

Kendall Breitman: 24:13

Another place is mobile mobile editing. Yes, really beefing up that mobile editor, trying to put as many capabilities that we have right now on the browser on mobile, and that's like creating on the go. But I think that what relates to me and possibly a lot of other podcasters, is that I'm creating content for mobile, like I'm creating something for Instagram. So being able to create it on my phone, save it to my phone, put it onto Instagram. So being able to create it on my phone, save it to my phone, put it onto Instagram see it all from my phone is an experience that is great and kind of flows in that way. We were talking about workflows before, so really leaning into what can you do on mobile is something to be looking out for.

Sam Sethi: 25:01

Nice. Now are we going to see you at Podcast Movement in Chicago. Are we going to see you at the London Podcast Show? Where can we find Riverside next?

Kendall Breitman: 25:11

Yes, we will be at Podcast Movement. We will be at the Podcast Show, I believe. So you're going to see us there and I will say that if you do go to any of these, like, really stop by the booth. I go to podcast show. I've been going to podcast show every year and it's been really incredible to actually get to meet people. But also I will like I'll speak for Riverside, like we always. We always bring some some fun ones out to out to these conferences. So it's just fun to have conversations with you all, but it's great for you to also make a connection with us and I get to see what Riverside's all about. So if you're coming, come to the booth.

Sam Sethi: 25:49

Indeed, and if they want to come to your website, where would they go?

Kendall Breitman: 25:54

Go to riversidefm and we also have community groups. So if you are a podcaster, if'll say to somebody like I love your mic, and they'll be like, oh my gosh, I'll send you a link. Like hell I'll. I'll send it to you myself, I'll send you mine. So if you want to, I love your mind, oh yeah. Yeah, you'll see in the mailbox soon. Lovely talk with my people. Let me check. No, but it Like how how much of like a knowledge exchange this whole community is. But we have a Facebook community called conversation creators by Riverside. Definitely join. You'll see a lot of me there and also a discord community as well, and that is the podcast and video creator community by Riverside.

Sam Sethi: 26:55

And we'll be able to see another live show from Riverside anytime soon.

Kendall Breitman: 27:00

Oh well, we actually have a live demo today, so maybe that's a bit too soon, but we have a webinar coming up with Jade Beeson. She's a YouTuber and she has a really well-known channel, but I'm excited for this one because we're going to be going live with her and talking about how to create a video-first social media strategy and so basically as different algorithms, as every algorithm is kind of pushing video beyond, just creating clips like how can you create videos that stand out on social, that get in front of your audiences and we're going to be talking to her about all of that. So not just for podcasters, for marketers, for people who are trying to build their business or their brand. It'll be a really cool session with a ton of really practical takeaways.

Sam Sethi: 27:46

Cool, Kendall. Thank you so much. Congratulations on the progress of Riverside. It's really exciting. I look forward to seeing you in London or maybe Chicago. See you at both.

James Cridland: 27:55

Yeah, thank you so much Kendall Brightman from Riverside. That company is currently sponsoring the PodNews newsletter, which you should be getting, of course, podnewsnet and talking about that, actually, other live tools which are available Well, I mean, it's kind of a live tool, but Clean Feed, which is the tool that we use to record this particular show, clean Feed. They've made their website look all swish and fancy and modern and everything else. They are changing just to make life simpler. They've got their free product, clean Feed Lite. They're putting some features into Clean Feed Pro, and Clean Feed Pro, from what I can understand, is going up in pricing shortly, so it won't affect you if you buy now, apparently. So I don't know who knows, but anyway, we use a press account to record this particular show, so we're grateful to them. But it's a very cool thing. If all you want to do is record audio with low latency, it's a pretty good thing. So there we go.

Jingle: 29:02

The Pod News Weekly Review with Buzzsprout. Start podcasting, keep podcasting.

Sam Sethi: 29:16

Moving on, james. Now, this is a rolling story. I thought they'd be finished by now. Cast Media's bankruptcy, I mean, I think the company has been more bankrupt than it's been actually active, hasn't it?

James Cridland: 29:23

I think you're right. So about a year and a half ago we covered Cast Media, which apparently had all of a sudden stopped paying its creators. And then we discover all kinds of weird and wonderful things about that particular company, which then bits of it were bought by Podcast One and so on and so forth. Anyway, it's been going through the bankruptcy procedure for the last year or so. Virtually everybody is happy with the plan to reorganise that particular company, apart from one company which is a company called Arcadian Vanguard, and some ex-employers as well, but that's a little bit different. Arcadian Vanguard used to make the Jim Cornette show in fact still does, but doesn't make it with Cast Media anymore.

James Cridland: 30:10

But the story is that they have sent a new lawsuit to Colin Thompson, who's the CEO of Cast Media, and to his family members, his wife and his dad, and the company is also suing Live One and Podcast One with this new complaint as well.

James Cridland: 30:31

And what the complaint says is that $6.9 million worth of cash has gone missing, which is quite a thing. Family members received two cars I think there was a nice Mercedes in there and I think a nice Tesla, from memory Also a $7,600 Cartier watch paid for by the company and apparently, not only was this going on, but Podcast One was also quite cool with the fact that this was going on. They just wanted to make the announcement prior to Podcast One going onto the stock market. I'm sure that Cast Media would deny all of that, as would Live One and Podcast One, but my goodness, it certainly ups the ante. If you want to, you can read the entire complaint, which was sent to us by one of those anonymous email addresses, and yeah, it's really quite the read. So if there's anybody who is considering making you know a television documentary about this sort of thing, then yeah, it's certainly worthwhile taking a look at $10,000 per night suite at the Wynn Las Vegas Wow, Apparently.

Sam Sethi: 31:51

Anyone say Sam Bankman-Fried? No, I don't think so. But I tell you what, talking of Sam's, I mean you know the OpenAI guy. He's got a £6 million car and I loved how somebody pointed out DeepSeek spent less than the £6 million car that he owns?

Sam Sethi: 32:09

Yes, yeah, exactly £340 billion he wants to value that company at, and what for God knows. Anyway, well done, wow. Moving on Chris Voss company and what for god knows. Anyway, well done, well. Moving on um chris voss. Now it's not a show I've heard of james. Tell me more about chris voss no, there are two chris vosses.

James Cridland: 32:26

this is the one that has a podcast called the chris voss show which claims he's the top one percent most popular show, don't we all um and um? He? He seems a busy, busy chap. He's very good when you read the transcripts of his shows. He's really, really good at bigging up his guests selling whatever it is that his guests are selling, whether it's books, whether it's courses, anything else.

James Cridland: 32:52

But what you wouldn't, just by listening to his show or by looking at the show's transcript on the show notes, what you wouldn't know, is that those guests are paying to be there, and paying quite handsomely. Apparently he's denied that. It's a grand to get onto his show, but certainly interesting. He tells us that he accepts advertising. He won't tell us how much he charges and he says most podcast sellouts. We are no different. We are a non-story. Except it is the law that you are told that guests have paid to appear says, and that is not what the Chris Voss show appears to be doing. He has told us that he has a disclaimer which is at the bottom of his website, but that disclaimer is talking about reviewing products and it has nothing to do with this. And he's also told us that he was planning to buy advertising with us, which is very kind. I'm not quite sure why he would tell us that, which was very kind. I'm not quite sure why he would tell us that, but nevertheless.

Sam Sethi: 33:58

Story go away, go away. Story.

James Cridland: 34:02

That was a nice addition and, depending on whether or not I have published it today, Friday, another podcaster, this time a podcaster with quite a well-known podcast network who is charging $10,000 if you want to be on that particular show and again doesn't appear to be open and honest that they are charging for it. So there's a thing Seems to be quite a lot of this going on.

Sam Sethi: 34:37

Well, james, look, I feel I need to come clean that. Uh, the amount we charge for guests coming on this show is zero. Just to be clear, we don't charge.

James Cridland: 34:50

yes, it it is zero, no, um, and if we did charge, we would say uh, and you will notice, every time that we mention our sponsor Buzzsprout, we always say our sponsor Buzzsprout because dem's the rules. So, yes, but there we are. Other entertaining things going on in America includes the new media seat, which Todd Cochran is very excited by because, of course, he runs the new media show, so maybe Todd will be sitting there at the at the front of the white house briefing please tell me you've got a jingle for that, please wouldn't that be brilliant.

James Cridland: 35:25

Todd cochran sitting there going yeah, can you. Can you ask the president whether whether a podcast has to have an rss feed in it or not? Get your own lecterncom.

Sam Sethi: 35:35

Yes.

James Cridland: 35:35

Wouldn't that be excellent. Anyway, John Ashbrook was one of the first from Conservative Talk Show. Ruth was from a Conservative Talk Show. He got the first question, although he did tell Fox News that he was basically looked down at by all of the other journalists who were there, Journalists who have spent, you know, many years in journalism school and you know, doing the hard graft of being a journalist. And then some podcast guy comes in and gets to ask the first question.

Sam Sethi: 36:07

Wait, wait, wait. All these journalists are becoming podcasters and leaving their media networks. We're now seeing a lot of this happening. You know and let's you know. They can be snooty as much as they like, but reality is that the audiences are going to the new media shows.

James Cridland: 36:25

They're not going to mainstream media, although not the new media show. No, that's right, todd. So but but you know, I mean, yeah, as an example, nbc's Chuck Todd is to leave the network. He's been with the network, I think, for something like 20 years or so, but interestingly the Chuck Todd cast is going with him. It's currently an NBC to be running a thing called the Chuck Todd cast. That Chuck Todd doesn't work for the network anymore. So obviously it's actually relatively pointless for them. But one would assume that NBC have done a deal in terms of allowing Chuck to keep the audience which he's grown on that particular show. That would make quite a lot of sense. So anyway, it's interesting to end up seeing that.

Sam Sethi: 37:24

One of my favourite quotes is from Mahatma Gandhi. In fact I've got his framed quote in front of me. First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. I think the mainstream media is fast laughing, but I don't think they will win.

James Cridland: 37:40

One last story that we have today is, you might remember, a couple of weeks ago you might have heard me doing a slightly ham-fisted long read of an email that we got in. I've been talking about video and podcasting and saying that it's such a shame that we have focused on video a bit more and such a shame that we're not focusing on what podcasting is great at, which is audio for your ears while your eyes are busy. Excellent producer. He produces the Lateral Podcast with Tom Scott, who's a YouTuber, and he sent this wonderful email with lots of reasons why you should be doing video.

David Bodycombe: 38:29

I thought it would be interesting to find out more about why he thought that.

David Bodycombe: 38:31

Yes, well, we come from a slightly different background because our host, tom Scott, is a famous YouTuber, so, of course, when we launch a podcast featuring him, everybody's going. That means that's going to be in full video, right, and um, we said, well, we'll see how it goes, and we actually found that shorter youtube clips work better for us, but the the in terms of the benefits of what the video brings. It's a case of we are a panel game and so watching people's reactions is a good thing. If you have four people's voices, we try and introduce them slowly at the start so people get to know who is who, but some people do find it difficult, perhaps if they're neurodivergent or whatever, to keep track of the conversation. Sometimes, um, and also, just, we have a lot of people who, uh, english isn't their first language, and so being able to see and hear words spoken in context with the, the you know, knowing who's saying what and to whom, and with the facial expressions, it all adds up to helping understand what's going on.

James Cridland: 39:44

Yeah, and that's an interesting point that you just made about right at the beginning you're quite slow to introduce. You actually hear a good amount of words from one person before you move on to the second and to the third guest, which is something that, as a listener, I've spotted, but I didn't realise the thinking behind that. That's really interesting.

David Bodycombe: 40:07

Yeah, it's a technique that I borrowed. Slash stole from Radio 4 panel games. I actually used to appear a long time ago on a BBC panel game called Puzzle Panel and we would bring a puzzle to ask the others, and Lateral's got quite a lot in common with that and being able to introduce everybody slowly, without the immediacy of having to crash into in YouTube terms, straight. The content is is fairly important for us so that we know who's who.

James Cridland: 40:40

yeah, so you come from a tv background, um, and I think one of the things that I was saying, uh, in in my typical sort of over over simplistic way, is cheap television was the words that stuck in my mind and normally I say, normally I say shit television, but I decided I wouldn't say that on the podcast.

James Cridland: 41:02

I would say cheap television. Um, what? What's your sort of view on that if you were to do this? And you know, and obviously tom has done a lot of different puzzle games and panel things on his youtube channel and some of those are very fancy and have all of the CGI added to them and everything else. Why not just make David? If I can be so rude, why not make it properly?

David Bodycombe: 41:31

Well, if I was to make a TV show properly, it would involve 10 times more people, probably 20 times the budget, and it the lead time is just massively longer. Uh and uh. The thing that's great about having access to either youtube or podcasts or spotify, whatever you a creator-led commissioning process where we can just say, look, we think this is good, we're going to put it out there. We don't need any commissioners to tell us, oh, that needs to be a little bit more orange. I've literally had that happen to me sometimes. We can just say, look, we think this is great, and we'll listen to feedback from people who consume the show by whatever means, but we will take our viewers to what we think is good. So it's just everything's just so more efficient.

David Bodycombe: 42:25

Um, I think the problem with um formats that are regularly repeating I think they work really really well as podcasts because people expect them as like a weekly friend. Yeah, on youtube, I don't think they work so well. I don't think I think people have tried quiz type formats, uh, panel game formats on youtube and what happens is people watch the first one or two and then they sort of go what's new? And they they've. They don't really have any brand loyalty that's interesting.

James Cridland: 42:57

I mean, I use youtube, um, I pay for youtube so I don't see any ads on there, but that also means that I can download everything, and so I will typically use youtube on the not insubstantial amount of traveling that I end up doing, um, and quite a lot of the shows on there, um, that I've found are actually panels and panel games and things like that, mostly stolen from the television. I should say, but yeah, but that's interesting. So you're saying that the habitualness, if you like, of a podcast means that formats work much easier than perhaps on YouTube, where you're finding new audiences all the time, which, of course, interestingly, is one of the reasons why podcasters love the idea of going on there in the first place, because you're finding new audiences all the time.

David Bodycombe: 43:55

Yeah, I mean what addictive to me, um, as a producer, is. I have access to all the statistics and I can see, you know, like, all the numbers going up, some faster than others, but it's like very addictive to go like the hard work that we're putting in is is showing uh results. Here and on the tv show I sort of go like I turn up, I write questions or devise games or whatever help with the format and it might be successful. It might not be so successful, but I don't really have any part of the IP and so I work for hire on those sorts of things. So, yeah, what's great about podcasting is that you know if you want to have a break or do it as regularly as possible.

David Bodycombe: 44:42

We choose to stick to a very regular weekly format schedule because it just helps with the. Really, we don't have to explain oh, we're going away and now we're coming back. It's just runs like clockwork. And also, with us we can because we're not a uh topical show we can batch record. So we actually do a very intensive for podcasts 16 shows over four days, wow, um. So we do two in the morning, two in the afternoon for four days in a run and that means that that Tom is then free to spend his next three months travelling to Europe to look at dams and escalators and whatever else he does While I get on with editing the show. Well, I send off to get edited and coordinate everything and get the next set of shows ready.

James Cridland: 45:38

Does it make it harder to edit if you know that there is video there as well?

David Bodycombe: 45:45

So I got this wrong. When Tom started he said oh well, what we'll do is we'll just completely edit the shows in such a way that audio and video are going to be in lockstep shows in such a way that audio and video are going to be in lockstep, and that way, what we've got? The whole audio, we've got the whole video and the show can exist in whatever form in the future. It doesn't matter which version you listen to. And now that we're on spotify and you have to flick between the video and the audio, uh, then that's actually been a very good decision for us.

David Bodycombe: 46:19

So, yes, I mean that is definitely a editorial downside, in that you either have to say, um, the audio is going to have some pregnant pauses in it, which for us as a sort of a stinky panel show isn't too bad, or your video is going to have jump cuts in it. So if you've watched something like the rest is entertainment, uh, in video you sort of go, oh wow, they've, they've really got a lot of jump cuts in here when they've cut out a lot of the the fluff in the chat. So, uh, we've got brilliant editor called julie has it in dublin who, uh, she sort of takes a view between the two. Yes, there'll be like any major dead ends will get chopped out, but not for really very much. But there might be like one or two moments where there's like a pregnant pause that ideally you'd want to take out, but we can't do it because it would ruin the continuity of the video. But it works 95% better than I thought it would do.

James Cridland: 47:17

Well, it's an excellent podcast. It's called Lateral, you can find it in all of your favourite podcast players and you've filmed all of them in video. Does that mean that at some point in the future, particularly on Spotify, which will be supporting video in full? Does that mean that, slowly and surely, we'll begin to see some of the videos of the older episodes?

David Bodycombe: 47:45

So we had the foresight to edit as we went, because we needed them for clips anyway. So we just asked for the whole show to be done. So I'm pleased to say that all whatever it is 120 plus episodes are already now in full, full-length video on spotify. So, uh, knock yourself out that's very cool.

James Cridland: 48:08

Uh well, david, thank you so much. I I appreciate it.

Jingle: 48:11

Thank you much the pod news weekly review. With buzz, with buzzsprout, start podcast, keep podcasting.

James Cridland: 48:20

David Boddickham, the lateral cast. Obviously you can get as well, and there's a longer version of that interview coming out in this feed on Monday. Should we go around the world, Sam?

Sam Sethi: 48:31

Yes, let's. And I have to give you a round of applause, first of all because you spelt Turkay, which was the correct spelling of it, not Turkey, in Pod News Daily. So a round of applause to you, sir.

James Cridland: 48:44

Well, yes, thank you, it's not me, it was Rifat who very kindly wrote the article. It's a long article all about podcasting in Turkey, which grew faster than anywhere else on earth in 2020. It's a $31 million audio ad market there. If you want to learn more about the Turkish podcasting ecosystem, then knock yourself out. There's a big, long article in the Pod News newsletter last week with that. By the way, wednesday Pod News actually came from over Turkey. As I was flying over over Turkey, there was an AI version of me there because I didn't want to sit on the plane and read pod news out because that's slightly embarrassing. But yes, so hurrah, for Emirates is in-flight Wi-Fi is what I can say.

James Cridland: 49:35

Podcast one switching hosting to Amazon's Art19, which is interesting. It used to be using a company called Knox Solutions. I was always curious why they used Knox Solutions. They appear to have just 1,200 shows according to the podcast index, and about 1,000 of those are Podcast Ones. So I'm not quite sure what that means for the future of Knox Solutions. I'm not actually sure who owns it. Maybe Podcast One actually owns that anyway, but that I thought was interesting. They're moving to a new host which, of course, they get benefits from with Art19. So hurrah for them.

Sam Sethi: 50:16

The BBC Studios is going on its world tour. Still, it's now. It was in Australia, it was in New Zealand and now it looks like it's over to the US. James, what's it up to?

James Cridland: 50:26

Yes, so ads being sold on BBC podcasts outside of the UK, of course, are now being sold by iHeart Media in the US, which is a canny move for them. Bbc doing some really nice things at the moment in terms of their shows. Would you like to have a prediction on what might happen in the next six months? Did I get?

Sam Sethi: 50:50

a choice.

James Cridland: 50:51

But, yes, I'd love to. My prediction is that BBC Sounds will go away for those of us outside of the UK, which is their music podcasts app music radio and podcasts app. That I think will go away, and I also think that those of us outside the UK will lose access to the BBC's domestic radio channels. I don't think it's anything that I want, but I think that that will happen, and I think that's probably good news for the want, but I think that that will happen and I think that's probably good news for the future of that corporation. So there you go, but anyway, they seem to be doing some good stuff. I know that they will be at Evolutions in Chicago in March as well.

Sam Sethi: 51:30

Now, a couple of network stories here. Back in the UK, James, a new podcast network called Mercury's launched. Who are they?

James Cridland: 51:39

Yes, they're run by a guy called Liam Heffernan. What's interesting is it is very much focused at the independent podcaster. I'm not quite sure how scalable that is, but nevertheless the network's got half a million impressions already. It's got a number of independent shows signed with them and you know it's always interesting seeing new companies getting into this. And I guess the question is how scalable it'll be in terms of looking after these individual shows but also making sure that you can be large enough to actually get the eyes and ears of advertisers as well. But that was interesting. Also, shagged Marriage Noid. This is a big loss for Acast and actually another big loss for Acast. Acast seem to be losing quite a lot of people in the UK at the moment. Shagged Marriage Noid has just signed with Adelicious. Shagged Married Annoyed has just signed with Adelicious. They're a podcast which the talent is with Avalon and Avalon shows already on the Adelicious network. But yeah, acast in the UK does seem to be losing quite a number of large shows. I'm not quite sure what's going on there.

Sam Sethi: 52:55

Maybe we'll ask them, maybe we won't, who knows? Right, james, back over to Australia then.

James Cridland: 53:09

What's going on in your backyard. Well, so there was a new Australian podcast report that came out in Australia this week and lots of really good numbers in there. But the Australian podcast report is a bit weird. It's produced by Triton, it's produced using the Triton podcast ranker and it's a little bit difficult reading through it, working out what data is talking about all of Australian podcasting and what data is just talking about the podcast ranker and what data is talking about who is measured by Triton overall, which is a bigger number than the podcast ranker, and so on and so forth.

James Cridland: 53:42

So there was one claim in there which made me feel as if my podcast was rubbish. One claim that 63% of podcasts are achieving more than 100,000 average monthly downloads 63%, so two-thirds of podcasts are bigger than 100,000 average monthly downloads, which is obviously rubbish, obviously rubbish, but nevertheless was apparently in that press release as being quoted by Commercial Radio Australia's CEO sorry, commercial Radio and Audio, I believe they're called their CEO, lizzie Young and I wrote back and I said really. And they wrote back and they said yeah, yeah, yeah, although this is actually just for the ranker. And I wrote back and I said yeah, but really. And they said, oh, actually it's not got nothing to do with the ranker at all. It's completely different. It's got something to do with somebody else. Yeah, it's just like really weird.

James Cridland: 54:35

I had to ask twice to basically say are you sure that this is actually correct? So you know, absolutely fine, if CRA wants to release this, two thirds of podcasts aren't getting 100,000 downloads a month. So yeah, I think it did just prove that. Podcasters, you know that you have to have some knowledge of the industry that you are talking about, and I'm not sure that CRA has that. So quite sad to end up seeing a bit of a messy retraction and then a sort of well, this is what we really meant from them. But yeah, it's a messy old thing. But if you're going to release data, make sure that the data is correct and make sure that the data isn't misleading, which both of those things weren't First time I can actually say fake news and mean it Right?

James Cridland: 55:46

Yes, absolutely yes.

Sam Sethi: 55:47

Now moving on people and jobs. James, what's going on? Odyssey is now officially no longer going bankrupt.

James Cridland: 55:54

Hooray, hooray for Odyssey. Yes, it's not a bankrupt company anymore. It's closed its Chapter 11 bankruptcy process in court. Along with that, they've lost their CEO, arguably the man that made them bankrupt in the first place. That's slightly unfair, but it has an element of truth CEO David Field. He's welcomed the dawn of a new era, but he's also stepped down from being CEO. A little bit of a wrinkle in there. The incoming government in the US isn't happy about the Chapter 11 bankruptcy process and might want to overrule the deal that they got from court, so that's going to be interesting.

James Cridland: 56:35

In case you don't know, of course, who Odyssey are, they own, yes, lots of radio stations, but also a number of podcast companies, including Pineapple Street Studios and all of that Other human beings that we should be talking about. Dane Cardiel or Dane Cardiel, I always get his name wrong. I think it's Cardiel. Anyway, he's concluded his tenure tenure. Concluded his tenure that's an interesting phrase. At the HeadGum-owned advertising platform, gumball. He's going to be the founder of Good Tape full-time, which is a printed magazine about podcasting, but it's actually an agency that helps with artwork, that helps with marketing and all of that stuff. He's in search of strategic partners. He's a good bloke and we wish him well there.

James Cridland: 57:22

Also, jay Shaler is going to be the new boss of NPR's Up First, which is nice, joining from CBS Evening News a big show in the US and a managing director of the UK's podcast production company, persephonica brand new managing director. They've never had one of those before. They've had, obviously, dino Sofos, who's the founder of it, but they've now got a proper managing director, fiona Hanlon, who'd worked for the BBC for 17 years. She is their first managing director. So good for them as they continue to grow. I wonder if that means that she will be living and working in sunny Sheffield. I would imagine that she will be, so hurrah for them.

Sam Sethi: 58:01

Dino's got a boss at last, finally, well done Dino.

James Cridland: 58:06

I'm not sure that it works that way.

Sam Sethi: 58:08

Oh no, no, it does. Now I was listening to the Verge, you know, and they were talking about how the MD basically runs the show, so I guess that allows Dino to go off and do his creative stuff, which is probably what he wants to do anyway.

James Cridland: 58:21

Two events to tell you about. Well, three events to tell you about. Firstly, the New Zealand Podcast Summit is returning for 2025. It's in Auckland. It is in May. I think Tickets are available now. Anyway, you'll find more details on the Pod News website, podnewsnet slash events Coming up.

James Cridland: 58:38

Of course, evolutions in Chicago at the end of March, beginning of April. Evolutions is where I will be spilling the beans on the Pod News report card. Now, normally the Pod News report card will already be out there and will already be asking questions and things, and it's not yet because I've kind of forgotten to put it up. But we've got a little bit more time this time because Evolutions is slightly later than it normally is. So, phew, thank heavens for that. But it sounds as if I will be standing on a big stage with the suit on talking through some of the results of that at one of the days at Evolution. So looking forward to ending up doing that. Of course, coming up in London in May is the podcast show London, but before that, podcamp 2.0, which is on the 2.0th of May. Sam, what's the latest with that? Have you got any other exciting?

Sam Sethi: 59:38

news. Yeah, riverside, I said I've become a sponsor of the show and we'll be doing a live broadcast. I have a meeting with Jason from the London Podcast Show today, so watch this space.

James Cridland: 59:49

Excellent. Well, there you go, and if you want to learn more about that, it's podcampcom Dot live, dot live. Yes, he's trying to remember it. Yes, the Tech Stuff.

Jingle: 1:00:00

Tech Stuff On the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 1:00:04

Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday in the Pod News newsletter. Here's where Sam talks technology. I feel lots of talking about micropayments coming on.

Sam Sethi: 1:00:12

Well, somebody has to, nobody else seems to. Yes, a couple of stories, really. I mean, they don't really have a conclusion to them, but they're just interesting. I think that joins some dots up. Stripe, which is the online payment company, has just closed a $1.1 billion purchase of a stablecoin platform called Bridge. Now, why would I ever talk about that? Why would I ever talk about that?

Sam Sethi: 1:00:39

Well, with my TrueFans hat on, we use Stripe as the mechanism for getting money into the platform, and then we convert that into micropayments, bitcoin sats, and what it allows us, through our partnership with Stripe, is now to look at other stable coins, and I think it just means that for me, as a CEO of TrueFans. We can use things like Swish, we can use UPI, we can start to look at USDT. Again, I'm not saying we're going to do that now, because I think it's too confusing, but I love the fact that Stripe is going to do all the hard work and the heavy lifting of payments, and platforms like mine can then just simply use the API and choose different mechanisms. So we added Canadian dollars, new Zealand dollars and Japanese yen last week. So if we wanted to add stable coins in the future, then guess what, thanks to Stripe buying this company, we would have the option to do that, which I think is quite cool.

James Cridland: 1:01:31

So can I ask a stupid question? Yes, what is a stable coin and why would I care?

Sam Sethi: 1:01:37

A stable coin is a government-backed digital coin and therefore it's pegged to a currency and therefore it's not as volatile as something like Bitcoin, and that's why people use it.

James Cridland: 1:01:50

So there's a US dollar stablecoin, yes, usdt. Why would I just not use a credit card or a bank account?

Sam Sethi: 1:02:00

For the very same reasons that we have digital currencies. You can do micro payments with them, whereas you can't split up a dollar or a cent in that way.

James Cridland: 1:02:09

Right, so the payments are, you know are very cheap in comparison to the payments, and so I mean, ideally, hidden behind the scenes, you would just turn um five dollars of cash that somebody has paid you into five dollars of usdt, of a stable coin, and you know it doesn't actually make any difference under the hood because you're still paying dollars and cents, right?

Sam Sethi: 1:02:36

yes, exactly, but it allows us to be able to do all the digital splits and the clever stuff that we want to do, because that's the way that micropayments allow us to do that, um, but without having all of the fee-based structure of dealing with fiat currency. Yeah, so yeah very cool.

Sam Sethi: 1:02:52

Uh elon is doing something, I believe, with uh micropayments, um yes, now not happy on this because obviously it's x, but I think I said to you, probably a year ago, the there will be an event in the future that will bring micropayments, wallets and digital currencies to the mass market. Um, I, when I was at netscape, I said that it was actually microsoft that made the the web. Um, mass market wasn't Netscape as much as we like to think they. You know we did it was by including it and bundling it in windows.

Sam Sethi: 1:03:28

Now, in the same way, um, you know, a lot of people have left X. I have. I know you use it as a a, just a point out medium, but there are people still on it and if all of them end up getting a wallet and all of them learn how to do micropayments and all of them therefore can do transactions, that's possibly a good way of getting it into more people's hands and understanding how this whole mechanism works. So, again, it looks like they're bringing it out and it won't be long. But he wants to create the WeChat of the west. Um, you know his super app and x was his original company for money, micro payments, and I guess that's what he's going to do, but he's going back to his roots on that one excellent.

James Cridland: 1:04:09

He should launch his own stable coin. Call it the heil um. Also, albie has done something weird with friends and family plugins and things. I'm not sure I fully understand any of the. Albie has done something weird with friends and family plugins and things.

Sam Sethi: 1:04:20

I'm not sure I fully understand any of the albie hub stuff anymore yeah, and and that's why I mentioned it here because, um, we at true fans use an albie hub. Um, after the uh wallet apocalypse, when there was an uh, an unclarity about whether albie would be able to get licenses to give custodial licenses in the US, they pulled the rug and that caused a great rift in the podcasting 2.0 market. So we created our own wallet Fountain, have got their own wallets, and then there's other players coming in the market, like Strike. Let's not get into all of that. I then started talking to one of our power supporters, mike at the rogue media network, about his own network and getting them to use more podcasting 2.0 features. Um, and they're with megaphone and they were what can we do? How can we get things like transcripts and chapters and how can we do all the other things that we've been talking about? And I said look, one company maybe you want to talk to is rsscom. They support the Albi wallet mechanism. Then I had a look and actually, because of the change in the way that Albi issues wallets or doesn't issue wallets, the whole thing with Captivate and with rsscom issuing wallets is broken fundamentally. So I then went on to the Albi Hub and they've got a plugin called Friends and Family, which I have told Boomi is badly named, but it is a brilliant mechanism for podcast networks.

Sam Sethi: 1:05:47

So how does a podcaster get all of the lightning address within their wallet, within the value tag? And what you can do as a podcast network is set up an Albi Hub. Then you create sub wallets, which are this friends and family wallets or uncle Jim wallets, whatever they call them in the US, and they will issue a lightning address for that individual wallet. So imagine your rogue media network. You've got 50 podcasts. You create the Albi hub, that is the Uber hub that controls it all. You create the Orbi hub that is the Uber hub that controls it all, and then you control sub wallets and issue the value tag elements for the lightning address into each individual RSS feed. So then when you publish that, people can then pay that individual podcast. Thank you very much, I've got your lightning address. And then it aggregates it all into the Albi hub, so the network has control.

James Cridland: 1:06:45

So the podcast network turns into the bank essentially, and in exactly the same way as the podcast network would be dealing with the money from the advertisers. The podcast network deals with the money from the, with the cryptocurrency money as well, and everybody's happy. Yeah, and it works, and it's really good with the cryptocurrency money as well, and everybody's happy.

Sam Sethi: 1:07:02

Yeah, and it works and it's really good and I don't know why people aren't talking about it and I guess when you look at it first off, friends and family doesn't sound right. Friends and family sounds like you setting up one for your wife and your daughter.

James Cridland: 1:07:15

Yeah, and that's not what it's there. It sounds like an enterprise account, doesn't it? For a ton of different wallets and things?

Sam Sethi: 1:07:21

yeah, Exactly, and that's what it does, and it's really good at doing it and it issues all the correct key, send addresses and custom IDs that you can plug into your Captivate RSS feed dashboard or your RSScom dashboard, and then suddenly those two services work again.

James Cridland: 1:07:42

Well, there you go. Um worthwhile taking a peek at if you are uh involved in development of that sort of thing. Also, by the way, worthwhile taking a peek at um the pod news um dailies rss feed. If you would like to do any testing around sending a um a bit of money to a L&D account, I think L&D is that right. I've basically put my Strike email address in there, so hopefully I've followed the spec correctly. And if you are writing an app that pays people by boosts or super chats or whatever it is that you want to call them um, then feel free um to give that a go and uh see if you can break.

Sam Sethi: 1:08:27

Um, if you can break, I will be doing it straight off the show because we support it already we did. We did that because oscar fountain issued fountain radio and he put an ln address address in there which linked to an LNURLP God help us all with these acronyms which is a strike account. Basically, we did the payment, it worked and Oscar confirmed the payments. So I'm going to do the same to you after the show and you can let me know whether it worked or not.

James Cridland: 1:08:57

Well, there you go. That all works nicely. Anyway, it's time for the last time you'll ever hear this jingle.

Jingle: 1:09:03

Boostergrams, boostergrams, boostergrams and fan mail. Fan mail On the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 1:09:09

Yes, it's time for our favourite time of the week. It's Boostergram Corner. It's the last time. I'll say that as well. It's got a new name coming next week Sam. Oh okay, yes, I mean partially. This is your fault. Oh good, because you ended up changing the name of what you call boosts on your own service, didn't you?

Sam Sethi: 1:09:29

I did. I mean look, just to reiterate do you understand what a boost is, or do you understand what a like is? Do you understand what a comment is, or a boostagram? Right, yes, exactly I just don't get me on this, please yes yes, anyway.

James Cridland: 1:09:46

Uh, from this time next week. Uh, it's got a brand new name, if I can mix the jingle in time. Uh, sheila d has just done the jingles for us, so that's all lovely, good, anyway. Um, we got some um boosts, which was kind, or super comments, or super zaps, or whatever the heck we call them. Um, 1186 sats from neil velio. Thank you, neil. Using true fans. Can sam make an lg tv app please? I don't know, can you?

Sam Sethi: 1:10:15

I don't know. I don't know, I'll have to think about that. Um, we are making a fire tv app and an apple tv app, so I suppose we'll just start it to list, neil. But um, I need to go and read the spec yeah, I think how hard I think lg tv is.

James Cridland: 1:10:29

Is it's web os, isn't it? And I think it's just, um, yeah, it's just using the web. So, um, I think that that was should be relatively simple. But anyway, there you go, neil. I don't own an LG TV. I own a Philips TV, which I thought I was buying from the venerable large Dutch electronics company. But it turns out that Philips is a bit like Grundig and other companies they basically license their brand out. Grundig, when did you drag that name out.

Sam Sethi: 1:10:57

You remember Grundig.

James Cridland: 1:10:59

They used to be amazing I do, but it's now 900 years old Amazing German radios.

James Cridland: 1:11:04

And then they sold the brand to Argos, which is a very cheap company in the UK. No, alba, I think it was A very cheap company in the UK. Anyway, yes, and so Philips is exactly the same. If you buy a Philips TV, you're not buying it from that large Dutch company, you're buying it from, in my case, a bad Chinese TV maker. So I've got one of those. I'm actually thinking about getting a new TV at some point, but it all depends what else have we got Before we go on?

Sam Sethi: 1:11:37

can I just point out one thing it all depends. What else have we got Before we go on? Can I just point out one thing the amount that Neil spent 1,186, isn't a special SATS number, I realise now, because he's basically paid in fiat currency, so in pounds, and we've converted that into SATS.

James Cridland: 1:11:54

Oh, has he. Well, there you go. Well, that's very clever. So I wonder how much you paid us in pounds? 10p, 10p, using Fountain Silas on Linux, 5,000 sats. Thank you, silas, you are the biggest booster of the week. Here's some money to balance out the swastika demonetisation. Yes, we're using a cheap, jokey phrase that isn't particularly jokey. Well, sitting in Switzerland at the moment, did you see Tesla sales in France and Germany this week? They're down and down and down, aren't they? 60% down, not just down, gosh, 40% down in Australia. And there was this wonderful piece in one of the trade papers saying it's unclear of the reasons why it's not unclear of the reasons why. We all know the reasons why. Yes, he's got a stiff right arm. Yes, exactly, good Lord. Anyway, I mean, it's not just the stiff right arm. I think you're right in the first way.

Sam Sethi: 1:12:59

The stiff right arm, yes, or just the stiff right arm, it's also I think you're right in the first way the stiff white arm yes.

James Cridland: 1:13:02

Or indeed the stiff white arm. It's also, you know, the fact that he's supporting the literal Nazis in Germany. Anyway, and 100 sacks from Social Web Cafe to the Pod News Daily. Thank you, social Web Cafe. Thank you, pod News for the announcement of Studio Fusion, very appreciated. Also love your show From Deborah. Thank you so much for that. That's very kind, using True Fans. So hurrah. And we should thank our sensational 16 who support us every single month with their old-fashioned MasterCard and Visa card. You can do that too, weeklypodnewsnet. Sam and I share the results of that. David John Clark, james Burt, john McDermott, clare Waight-Brown, ms Eileen Smith, neil Velio, rocky Thomas, jim James he says I can't read anymore. Now I can. Rocky Thomas, jim James, david Marzell, cy Jobling, rachel Corbett, dave Jackson, mike Hamilton, matt Medeiros, marshall Brown and Cameron Mole Much appreciated. So what's happened for you this week, sam One?

Sam Sethi: 1:14:12

of the things that we added was another example of secure RSS L402. You can now. Last week we had it so that, as a creator, if your host didn't support transcript, you could buy a transcript. We've now added that for users. So, again, if you go to your episode and you go to the transcript tag and there isn't a transcript there, you'll see a button that says buy transcript, and then you can click a button and you can buy it. Now the value is based on the length of the show, so it's variable, but you can also increase the amount you pay if you choose, and the additional amount you choose beyond the minimum, which is to cover the cost of the transcript, goes directly to the creator as well. So not only are you buying a transcript for the creator, but you also can donate an extra amount, if you want, by increasing the value of the transcript.

Sam Sethi: 1:15:07

Very nice, and then, what else did we do? The other thing that we did while we were just playing around, but I think it's quite a nice thing you can now add a playlist to your homepage. So if you've got a playlist whether it's your queue or one you've created and you just want to add it to your homepage so that when you just open up your app, it's there in front of you. You can now pin a playlist to your homepage.

James Cridland: 1:15:32

Cool, yes, and you're working with categories as well.

Sam Sethi: 1:15:37

We have been doing categories for a while. Dave Jones posted on Mastodon this week is it time for us to sort out categories? And I went, dave, I think we've done a lot of the work already. So when you've got the Apple categories, that's the default. So again it goes back to the use of the medium equals tag. So in TrueFans when we see medium equals podcast, we give the creator the option or of the Apple category, so we read it from your.

Sam Sethi: 1:16:07

RSS feed and then. But if you then claim your podcast you can go in and change it, but you'll only see the Apple categories because you're a podcast. But when we talked to Sam at Wavelake about six months ago or maybe even longer, the only category in Apple to categorize music was music. It was really dull. I mean, what about soul, rock, funk, jazz, whatever? None of those categories existed. So sam uh from wavelake gave us their extensive category list.

Sam Sethi: 1:16:36

So when we see a RSS feed with medium equals music, say for a track, we then switch the Apple categories list out and we bring in the Apple the Wavelength categories list and Wavelength obviously to give that to their customers. So you see that in the way Wavelength customers already self tagged as jazz, funk, whatever, and then we can then display that also in TrueFan. So that's how we did it with music. And then with Pod 2, when we did the audio books, they gave us an extensive list of audio book categories and so when we see medium equals audio book, we switched that as well, and that's the way I think categories should work. But we switched that as well and that's the way I think categories should work. They should be simple enough for you to then have a agreed list, like the apple categories list, and then they should be hosted somewhere.

Sam Sethi: 1:17:27

Podcast index and the apps themselves, based on the medium, will switch the category list and the hosts should have that same list so they can allow users. But again we go back to what I said earlier hosts aren't using anything more than medium equals podcast, so it's never going to take off until that changes.

James Cridland: 1:17:46

Well, yes, indeed, but certainly it makes a bunch of sense to have different categories for different types of content. So that, yeah, so that'll be good to watch.

Sam Sethi: 1:17:56

Yeah, it's live. I mean, James, you can see it in the show notes. There's the code for it podcast. Category text equals pop, and then you can basically have that in your RSS feed and you just read it. It's so simple yeah, yeah, james, come on. What's happened for you this week?

James Cridland: 1:18:13

Well, I was on the SoundOff podcast again with Matt Cundall Very good.

James Cridland: 1:18:22

Enjoyed. I enjoyed that one. Yes, it's always good to go on that show because Matt is very good at asking questions that make you think, so it's worthwhile looking at. The SoundOff podcast is also in OP3, so you can go diving into the download data, which is always interesting. If you were to take a look at the PodNews Daily's RSS feed, I've been doing some work on that to. Essentially I'm doing a little bit of work with OSHA using their PSO product, their podcast search optimization product, and we realized a couple of glaring errors in the way that we were doing the RSS feed.

Sam Sethi: 1:18:59

So one of the For example, like what I mean, that's interesting.

James Cridland: 1:19:02

Yeah, because the way that I was producing the RSS feed is it was essentially the complete text of the newsletter, um, in the RSS feed, which then got cut off by a lot of different podcast um uh, hosts or podcast apps anyway, um, so it wasn't particularly helpful for that. It also made the RSS feed massive. So what I would then do is only show the full text for the last five episodes, so for the last week, you know, essentially. And then it just went, and then it automatically went to a much smaller thing which, of course, took all of the benefit of the search keywords appearing and all of that because they all went.

James Cridland: 1:19:48

So it was all a little bit of a mess, and so what I've sort of moved to is something which shows the top three stories, has a big link, you know, for you to click through and see more stories, and that way we can get the supporters into Apple Podcasts, where they weren't going, and various other places. So hopefully that's sort of fixing that, but it's yeah, it's just been interesting doing that balance of a full text feed, which I kind of really want because that's what RSS is best at, but also appreciating that you can't actually fit the full text in quite a lot of podcast apps and so you know the issues that you have there. So it's been a lot of sort of playing around with things. But, um, you know, hopefully it's a little bit of a of a better experience, um, but uh, yeah, it's, it's. You know, I I think if I was building the pod news website all over again, I would have separated the um, the text of the newsletter, from the um, from the podcast audio feed. Uh, but it's too late for that now.

Sam Sethi: 1:21:03

So there we are. Question though, I mean, if you're doing this for SEO optimization, right?

Kendall Breitman: 1:21:07

is one of the reasons.

Sam Sethi: 1:21:10

You talked about, I think last week also, rsscom pointed out that the iPhone Island has a capability with it. Have you done any work around that as well?

James Cridland: 1:21:20

No, I've not yet had a look into how to support that, but that's playing audio on a webpage and that is, um, you know, and that is not a high usage of how the PodNews website works.

James Cridland: 1:21:33

Um, but um, yeah, I mean, you know there are lots. I think one of the things that I you know after, after playing around on the web for you know there are lots, I think one of the things that I you know after playing around on the web, for you know, 30 years, I think one of the things that you notice pretty quickly is, you know, getting the open graph stuff right, getting the structured data right, laying it out, you know, in a proper way, adding all of the correct RSS feeds and the auto discovery and all of this kind of stuff. I mean that is months and months and months of work just for a standard. You know web page with an article on it, and I think you know we kind of overlook the amount of work that is actually required to do the job properly. So it's, yeah, so it's, it's just been interesting, you know playing, playing with that sort of stuff.

Sam Sethi: 1:22:33

I think the bigger one's going to be AI optimisation. I only say that because I don't know what your behavior is like, but now when I go to Google, for example, I look at the answer question right at the top of the AI answer. I very rarely scroll down anymore and if you use ChatGPT or DeepSeq, you only get one answer. Really.

James Cridland: 1:22:54

Yeah, well, I mean, I don't. I deliberately use a search engine that doesn't have any AI answers in it, the paid for one, carghi, which is excellent, by the way, and highly recommended. What that also offers you as a premium subscriber is an access to all of the open LLMs out there, so you can play around with OpenAI. You can play around with Gemini is an access to all of the open LLMs out there so you can play around with OpenAI. You can play around with Gemini, you can play around with DeepSeek, all of the different ones, and that's been quite interesting playing around with While I was reporting on a story.

James Cridland: 1:23:33

Earlier on in the week, I had a PDF which was a list of total downloads for particular podcasts, and so I asked the AI please could you turn this into a CSV file? And it did that in a very good way. So you know sort of playing around with that sort of thing. But yeah, you know, I mean the optimisation for both the AI but also for those quick answers that used to appear. There is a very important thing to podcasters as well Just essentially making sure that they still give enough reason to click through. That's also an important thing too Not that I particularly care about that because I don't earn any money out of any page impressions.

James Cridland: 1:24:17

But yeah it's an interesting one.

Sam Sethi: 1:24:20

And you've got car here. James, what's gone on with your car? Is it breaking down already?

James Cridland: 1:24:25

No, no, it is, I'm very enjoying. So I bought a brand new electric car last week. It's an mg um, mg4 essence, um, which, um, the car part is really good. Uh, it's made, it's, you know, chinese. It's made by a company called saic um, and the car part is excellent, um, and it's a fun car to drive.

James Cridland: 1:24:52

Um, all of the you know, it's got good acceleration because it's electric and all of that kind of stuff and all of that is the software in it is an abomination. I mean, you know, it's a good job that it supports CarPlay, because if it didn't support CarPlay and Android Auto, then it would be undriveable from the point of view of, you know, audio and navigation and everything else. But yeah, it is an absolutely fascinating thing to go into. There are, I think I've counted, six different places where there are settings for you to set, and there was one point where I was getting into the car and this officious sounding woman was telling me what, the, what, the, what the date was and what the weather was, and telling me to uh, drive carefully. Every time I got into the car, um and uh, I I must have gone through every single setting four times to try and work out how to turn that woman off. So it is it's. It's a really interesting thing.

Sam Sethi: 1:25:58

Um just don't find the setting for chinese mode, you'll never get out of it. Well, yes, exactly, exactly. Um, no, it's a really interesting thing. Just don't find the setting for Chinese mode, you'll never get out of it.

James Cridland: 1:26:01

Well, yes, exactly, exactly no, but it's been really interesting actually how the hardware is great hardware, but the software it's running Android, very clearly running Android and running a bad, you know old version of Android on a low-powered processor and everything else. I mean, it's got a DAB radio in the car and even that hasn't been coded with any intelligence of how the radio actually works, to the point where sometimes, when you get into the car, the radio starts, sometimes, when you get in the car, the radio doesn't. It doesn't understand that there is a method built into DAB of saying tell me what the name of this radio station is, but only in eight characters. That's built in. That's broadcast on DAB, but the manufacturers of the software, of the crappy Android software for this DAB radio in this car, don't know about it and so, therefore, every single station name kind of scrolls across the screen. It's just the worst experience.

James Cridland: 1:27:08

But it's a great car, okay. So, yes, but Room for improvement All comes down to the software. There we are, and on that, slightly irrelevant, irrelevant, uh, uh, bombshell, uh. That's it for this week. Um, all of the podcast stories this week were taken from the pod news daily newsletter, which, of course, you can get at podnewsnet you can support this show by streaming stats.

Sam Sethi: 1:27:34

You still can, and you can give us feedback using buzzsprout's fan mail. The link is in our show notes and you can send us a super comment or boostergram or become a power supporter, like this sensational 16 at weeklypodnewsnet.

James Cridland: 1:27:49

Yes, our music is from Studio Dragonfly. Our voiceover is Sheila D. Thank you, sheila, for doing some more this week. We use Clean Feed for our audio and we're hosted and sponsored by Buzzsprout. Start podcasting. Start podcasting. Keep podcasting.

Jingle: 1:28:02

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Sam Sethi: 1:28:08

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Jingle: 1:28:12

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