James Cridland: 0:00

It's Friday, the 14th of February 2025.

Speaker 2: 0:04

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

James Cridland: 0:13

Yes, I'm James Cridland, the editor of Pod.

Sam Sethi: 0:14

News, and I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO of True Fans. Happy Valentine's Day, james.

James Cridland: 0:19

Oh, I thought you'd never mention it. We successfully have delivered on our profitability target for positive EBITDA in 2024. Acast posts their year-end financials Also in the chapters. Today, murdoch buys a podcasting company, is Netflix. Next Transistor integrates with Blue Sky and Spotify hands out the money. This podcast is sponsored by Buzzsprout with the tools, support and community to ensure you keep podcasting. Start podcasting, keep podcasting with buzzsproutcom.

Speaker 2: 0:51

From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly.

Sam Sethi: 0:54

Review James, we have to start off with Spotify this week. Oh my God, we were trying to keep. Wait there, sam.

Speaker 2: 1:01

We're sorry, but now it's time for more news about Spotify on the Pod News Weekly Review oh, good.

Sam Sethi: 1:10

Thank you very much. Yes, apologies to everyone who doesn't like having Spotify news early Remember we have chapters. But the good news, I suppose, is Spotify is now sending out checks. I mean, I don't believe they. Clearly they're sending out the money. What are they doing't believe they? Clearly they're sending out the money. What are they doing, james?

James Cridland: 1:27

Correct. Yes, they are sending out the money. Yes, so it's one month and a bit since the Spotify Partner Programme started, and yesterday afternoon they published some of the numbers, which is brilliant. We've actually been saying that there's no chance that Spotify will ever publish the earning numbers for some of the shows, but surprise, surprise, they actually have been, and there are some really nice numbers. Hundreds of podcast creators surpassed $10,000 in monthly revenue, they say, with the top earners crossing well into six figures in the first month alone. That's pretty impressive, isn't it? We've even got some numbers for individual shows as well. Shall we dive into those? Go on then, give me some detail, right? Well, so firstly, there's a podcast called Modern Wisdom, a top video podcast, apparently hosted by Chris Williamson, but all it says here is a substantial first payout from the Spotify partner programme, so that's not particularly helpful. Is?

Sam Sethi: 2:33

it. What's substantial? Again, detail, detail. That's what we're looking for.

James Cridland: 2:37

Well, ok. Well, here's some detail, detail. There's a mental health podcast called we're All Insane and that says that the show earned more than $17,000 during the first month of the Spotify Partner Program. Now, $17,000 is not to be sniffed at. That's quite nice.

James Cridland: 2:59

I thought what would be interesting with these announcements is to actually go and find out what sort of numbers they're doing. So I've used one of the popular advertising planning systems that give you an estimate per month for particular shows and the numbers that I have these aren't estimates, these are actual numbers from what I can see because of the tool that I've used. So we're all insane. $17,000. That does 579,000 downloads per month. So we can kind of work out there a rough guess of how many downloads they're doing in comparison to how much money that they're making. So $17,000 for 579,000 downloads per month is an interesting number.

James Cridland: 3:56

We've also got a couple of others here the Kinda Funny Gamecast never heard of it that added video to Spotify in the last two months and they have earned over $10,000 in Spotify revenue. They are doing apparently 124,000 downloads, which is quite small 124,000 downloads but still $10,000 in Spotify revenue. So yeah, so interesting to see that number and also interesting to see your Mum's House with Christina P and Tom Segura, and Two Bears, one Cave with Tom Segura and Bert Kreischner. They're both podcasts from YMH Studios, so in total those are doing what's 2.7 plus 3.8. That is, 6.5 million downloads per month, is a nice figure. In terms of spotify revenue, they're earning 105 000, which is um quite impressive, isn't it? Um not bad for a month it is personally.

Sam Sethi: 4:57

I'm just still flabbergasted that two bears, one cave gets 3.8 million downloads, but I'm still in shock for that one.

James Cridland: 5:04

I I can't tell you any of these shows because I've never heard of any of them. But I mean, you know, there's two things, I think. Firstly, they're there saying they've seen an average increase in consumption hours on Spotify. Well, that has nothing to do, I don't think, with the Spotify premium partners programme. It's probably these companies pushing people towards Spotify rather than anything else because they know that they will make some money out of that. But then, secondly, actually seeing some of these numbers, I mean that's much higher than I was expecting Spotify to be. But I don't know. What did you think?

Sam Sethi: 5:43

The thing that gets me is I still can't work out what the two metrics that I'm most interested in is. What's the amount that you get paid out on a video ad and how long do you have to watch the ad? Those two bits of detail are missing. That's why I want detail.

James Cridland: 5:59

Yeah, and of course it's a mix between the ads and the share of the premium users as well, because the premium user money also goes into this as well. Have you watched any of these shows on Spotify themselves?

Sam Sethi: 6:15

Yeah, well, I thought I'd quickly look at the. We're All Insane. I thought, you know, before the show I'd have a quick nose and what was weird. I am a premium user on Spotify and yet I still saw three ads that I couldn't skip before the video played, so I was locked in to before the show could start. Now I thought what it says here is while giving premium listeners a better viewing experience, uninterrupted by dynamic ads in select markets. Well, either the UK is not a select market or they're serving ads before the video which, as a premium user, I can't get past.

James Cridland: 6:51

Ah, uninterrupted by. That's clever. That's the phrase that they've used uninterrupted by. So there's no mid-rolls, you won't all of a sudden stop the show halfway through and play some ads. That's clever. So uninterrupted by ads means you'll still get pre-rolls, you'll still get post-rolls, because those aren't interrupting the show. Ah, that's a piece of wording that I had missed.

Sam Sethi: 7:20

As they say. That sentence is leaning heavily on the word uninterrupted.

James Cridland: 7:23

Yes, isn't it just Wowzers, wowzers. But yeah, so yes, interesting numbers. And you know, I mean I'm slightly nervous that this means that people will pull their shows off OpenRSS and shove them into Spotify as de facto exclusives, because they can clearly see the money coming from Spotify. So maybe that's going to happen, I don't know. But you know, I mean that's some nice earnings from them.

Sam Sethi: 7:54

As CEO of True Fans, modern Wisdom did ping us to say can we remove our show from True Fans?

James Cridland: 8:00

Oh did they.

Sam Sethi: 8:00

I won't say in what tone I was asked, which wasn't very positive, Um, but yeah, it was like uh, we pointed out to them that they had a mistake in their RSS feed and I just got a uh, an abusive email back. Basically, I never asked for this. Get my show off your platform. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Wow. Yes, Wowzers. Okay, You're welcome, Chris Gone.

James Cridland: 8:25

Gosh, so I don't know whether he's doing that to others and so therefore it is a de facto exclusive to Spotify or not. But maybe that's part of the plan. But still interesting seeing numbers anyway. So good on Spotify for sharing them.

Sam Sethi: 8:40

But in the in the round, when I read all of it it's like here's a few shows, here's some few big numbers that were thrown out. No real detail, but it's all looking positive. So keep it going, guys. And I'm like it's a little bit of a fake it until you make it for me. I need to see more of this over a longer period of time before I think that there is a real move. I think big shows we all said big shows will go to video. That's because I've got the revenue to do it and to pay for a team of people to implement it. But we know that in the long tail that's never going to work. A in the long tail, you're never going to qualify. And B you won't have the time or money or energy to keep it going anyway.

James Cridland: 9:28

Well, there we go. Sam has spoken. I know that John McDermott has said that most people who are trying video now will stop by July, which is an interesting thing, so let's see if that's true as well.

Sam Sethi: 9:42

But yeah, so let's see if that's true as well, but yeah, right, moving on ACAST, are they profitable? Yet, james, not EBITDA profitable, but proper, proper, proper, proper, proper profitable.

James Cridland: 9:54

I can't even say it this morning, it's posted its first year in profit. According to the company's financial year end report 90% net sales growth for 2024, which is nice and an EBITDA profit of 2.2 million. Now, of course, what does that mean in total profit? Don't know, but certainly an EBITDA profit is nice to end up seeing, even though some of the numbers are not going the right way for them, are they?

Sam Sethi: 10:22

No, I mean they're still pointing towards the Apple changes and iOS 17. The UK itself has been called a challenging market by Ross Adams, which generally means it's going slightly down, not up. But I think the American market, which is what we've spoken to Ross about in the past, is where they are putting their big bet and clearly the growth there is pulling the whole company through into profitability. But why would the UK be going down? Why would any of this happen? Because we've seen I think we've talked about certain podcasts moving off ACAS last week onto other platforms. Now Some of the big ones in Australia certainly moved off it. So you know, overall, is it case of america is where their market is and everything else is sort of slightly falling away, or is it a case of, um, you know, there's just a market re re change, ie, you know people are moving, moving horses. Oh, I've got a better deal over here, so I'm gonna move.

James Cridland: 11:22

Yeah, I don't know, I'm I'm sure there's a bunch of that going on and I'm sure also you know quite a lot of Acast's deals are three or four years ago and only coming up for renewal now and perhaps the renewal people are looking around and going I bet Megaphone could make us more money, or whoever it might be, or Adelicious or whoever that might be. So perhaps actually Acast's first mover advantage is coming back to bite them a little bit in the UK. But certainly you can see I mean 33% growth in North America. There was growth as well in Europe as well. So they said, and then they have used the euphemism of the UK being a challenging market. So you know exactly what goes on there.

James Cridland: 12:13

By the way, I should also say, although I've sort of been sort of sniffily talking about EBITDA profit and stuff, the numbers that they actually have on their release have also a profit line right at the bottom, profit stroke loss for the period, and that is in profit most definitely. So it's not just an EBITDA profit, it's a proper profit. So that's nice. And.

James Cridland: 12:37

I'm pleased to have cleared that up.

Sam Sethi: 12:42

I think also interesting will be based on what we said about Spotify a few minutes ago. It'll be interesting to see because they opened up their studio in London to do video when they start to produce video and will they see increased profitability from video based podcast?

James Cridland: 12:59

Yeah, indeed, and, um, they keep on talking about a lot of omni-channel campaigns, talking about video as well as audio in there as well. So I would imagine that that's going to have a nice impact. Also, what's going to have a nice impact is their acquisition of Wonder Media Network, which went through early January, and that will mean that, firstly, they've actually got some content, some original content, in there, but also, secondly, that will, you know, clearly move things, move things forward for them. So, yeah, I think it's, you know it's a good move.

James Cridland: 13:36

A few things just to watch out for is that number of listens in the last quarter was down by 8%. Number of listens in the last quarter was down by 8%. That's mostly due to the loss of the BBC, who moved away from the ACAS platform. But they only moved away from the ACAS platform in late November. So you can expect that there will be another drop of about 8% in quarter one of this year, because obviously that's what the figures will work out as being. So that's just sort of something just to bear in mind.

James Cridland: 14:11

So, you know, ACAR's not out of the woods yet, but, you know, making a healthy profit and certainly, looking at the last, looking at well, looking at 2024, they made 78,000, I think this is SEC that I'm looking at. Yes, 78,000 SEC in terms of profit, which is $7 million worth of profit if I've worked that out correctly. So $7 million worth of profit is nice. They actually made substantially more than that in their final quarter. So very clearly, the profit has been made in that final quarter more than the rest of the year. But even so, that's excellent for them and I see a very self-congratulatory post and why not? From LP on LinkedIn saying you know how much hard work it's been. It's been 10 years for them to make a profit. So you know, there is always that.

Sam Sethi: 15:15

Yes, yes, as they say. How come you were successful overnight? Yes, that's what they often see when people are on stage and they don't see all the kicking legs under the water like a swan. Now moving on Netflix. Now, this was a surprising one. It looks like Netflix is exploring licensing video podcasts. Here we go again for the next phase of their growth. What's this one about, james?

James Cridland: 15:39

Well, I mean, this did not come as a surprise to me. Netflix are interested in licensing video podcasts. Or, if you put it another way, netflix are interested in licensing cheap TV shows that they can buy from people who make cheap TV shows, which happens to be podcasters right now. So, yeah, you know, apparently they've been chatting around with a number of different people. Apparently they've been chatting around with a number of different people. They tried to hire Alex Cooper's Call Her Daddy, because they thought that that was, you know, a decent idea.

James Cridland: 16:17

And, yeah, I mean, why would they not buy some cheap TV to add to their catalogue if they know that it's going to get a fair amount of usage and they can stick it in there? So, yeah, I mean, I was just like looking at this story and going duh, but quite a lot of people got very, very excited. But I think you know, this is the whole thing around video podcasts, is it? What's a video podcast? It's a cheap TV show. Netflix are interested in cheap TV shows. Who'd have thought it? So, yeah, that's basically me.

Sam Sethi: 16:48

Well, I mean Jessica Cordova-Kramer, friend of the show from Limonada Media, said I could see a world in which audio only and vodcasts are streamed on Netflix. I think this is more about maintaining your attention with a platform, right, I think the whole concept. Now you talked about Omnichannel and ACAST talking about Omnichannel, and I think that's going to be one of the buzzwords of 2025, where people are talking about audio video constantly and Spotify want you to lean in to video, lean out to audio, listen to music, stay with audio books, go onto courses. They don't want you to leave the platform. Attention is the metric that we're all trying to get from us now and I think Netflix are going well. Okay, watch the film. We don't have music. What else can we do? Here's a podcast for you or here's a videocast, whatever you want to call it.

James Cridland: 17:42

Well, here's a cheap TV show. I mean, you know there's no difference for some of the shows that they have. They've been making sort of faux late night shows and trying those out for a while. Those haven't necessarily always worked, but they've been trying that sort of thing. If they can get some content in, I think the difference is it's less likely to be ad funded in this particular case because Netflix doesn't really do that. So if they're able to get some cheap TV content in that will keep people using their app, then I think that makes a ton of sense. I'm not sure I agree with Jess around audio also being of interest to Netflix. I don't see that at all. I think Netflix is a TV leanback experience and they're not going to be interested in audio. But are they going to be interested in buying some cheap TV shows? Yeah, absolutely, Of course they are. But I think Netflix expanding its catalogue, and particularly expanding its catalogue in terms of original material that they have access to that nobody else does, is super valuable to them. So why not?

Sam Sethi: 18:55

YouTube said people watched 400 million hours of podcasts. I don't know if they define that correctly because they're very loose with the way that they describe podcasts, but they say 400 million hours of podcasts on televisions in 2024. Find that correctly, because they're very loose with the way that they describe podcasts, but they say 400 million hours of podcasts on televisions in 2024. So that lean back lounge experience again is very interesting. I have never watched I have to be honest a podcast on my TV. I don't know if you have, but I've not.

James Cridland: 19:20

No, I mean, I certainly wouldn't find watching a podcast on my TV particularly interesting, Although I've watched the occasional podcast clip on YouTube. But you know, I mean I'm a big fan of, for example, the Rest Is Entertainment, which I know is available as a podcast on YouTube as well, in video. I wouldn't dream of listening to it there, so you know. But there again, I'm stuck in my ways and maybe it doesn't necessarily work that way, yeah, but I have noticed a lot, lot more of the podcasts that I listen to.

Sam Sethi: 19:56

The politics ones, for certain, are moving to the video format, but live video format and they I mean the rest of politics are now, uh, advertising quite heavily. Oh, here's our next live q a show. Here's our next show. The news agent's doing the same thing as well, and I've seen a few other shows doing that. Um, and it's that live interactivity with chat and super chats that they're looking for and they want that because, again, when they do a live show, the Q&A part is very important for them. I agree. You also predicted in our 2025 predictions that there would be production companies going video only or video first. Max Cutler's Pave Studios, I think you said, was going to be one of them, and we've talked about Flight Studio Again. Do you feel more confident about that prediction now?

James Cridland: 20:47

Yeah, I think so. I mean, especially if Netflix is jumping into the game, then you can very well see some organisations that are currently making podcasts in audio and a little bit of video turning around and going you know what. We'll just focus on the video stuff because we know that we can make easy money out of it. We don't necessarily have to rely on the ad market. I think that's the thing. I think you know. If you can get companies like Netflix to pay up front for a series, which is the standard Netflix way, then that takes all of the uncertainty out of it. As it stands, when you launch a new show, you are pretty uncertain as to whether or not the ad revenue will actually cover you. So if you can make it easier and simpler that way, then why not One of my predictions was there would be more super apps.

Sam Sethi: 21:42

I'm calling them super apps. Spotify is a super app. It's a non-singular app, so you can do multiple activities. Youtube now is the same Looks like Netflix is. I mean even Substack's now offering blogging and podcasting. It's not just a single platform. Now. I think this is the way it's going to go.

Sam Sethi: 22:01

I think single-function apps, in my opinion, will die in 2025 or become less important. Um, I said earlier, the battle is for a user's attention. Uh, we've talked about live sports on Netflix and Amazon now, and I think we've we've talked and predicted that Spotify will get into live as well. So I think again, um, all of this leads to one thing I think the price elasticity of these platforms are. Again, I think Spotify has a ceiling at which people will start to abandon their subscriptions, so they can't go to £35 or £25. I don't know what that number will be, but there will be a ceiling at which they can't and I think the way they'll get over that is by having non-singular payments. So you'll have, oh, you've got your standard music and podcast payment, and then there'll be a oh, do you want a one-off payment for this live event? And they will increase their revenue per user, I think, through that mechanism, rather than increasing the overall price.

James Cridland: 22:58

Yes, no, completely, completely. Get that Elsewhere in the TV world. Well, that's really what Fox Corporation does these days. Rupert Murdoch's Fox runs TV and runs a little bit of film. Does Fox still own the Fox 21st Century Fox?

Sam Sethi: 23:18

21st Century yeah.

Speaker 2: 23:22

Maybe I don't know.

Sam Sethi: 23:24

Let me be honest, I don't follow Fox Corporation very closely.

James Cridland: 23:26

No, which is probably a good thing. But anyway, tubi Media Group, which is part of Fox Corporation, has acquired Red Seat Ventures. This is what happens when you become a Pod News supporter is you get acquired by a large company. But anyway, red Seat Ventures, if you don't know, they make shows with people like Tucker Carlson, megyn Kelly and Piers Morgan, oh good. And they are now back in the Rupert Murdoch fold, which must be delighted. So that's interesting. Interesting to see that Murdoch is getting involved in podcasting. Of course, whenever Murdoch gets involved in anything, that normally means the entire death of the industry. If you remember Murdoch buying MySpace and he bought Bebo, I think as well, didn't he? He certainly bought a few things that's been far too late or far, or just a really embarrassing purchase. So I'm hoping that that's not the case here. But who knows?

Sam Sethi: 24:30

Yeah, the current chief executive, Lachlan Murdoch, has said that they're on the hunt for acquisitions. They're going to use basically their assets to leverage acquisitions.

James Cridland: 24:44

Well, they've got plenty of money from selling quite a lot of stuff to Disney I think so from that point of view and they sold all of the TV companies that they owned to them. So they've probably got quite a lot of cash hidden away. And, by the way, it's Lachlan, because he's Aussie mate. One of the problems with him is he lives in Sydney but he's supposed to be in charge of Fox News and supposed to be in charge of a few other of the big Fox companies in the US, but most of the time he's in Sydney, so completely the opposite time zone, which makes it very difficult if you are in charge of a company in New York. Well, I mean, you know, new York is significantly the wrong end of the day for you if you're in this part of the world, so that's very difficult.

Sam Sethi: 25:36

Maybe he's a bat and sleeps that day and goes out at night. I don't know. But overall, james, I mean what I'm going to say overall in the stories we've covered so far. Spotify is paying out to podcasters. Acast is profitable. We're seeing Netflix and Fox getting into podcasting. I think, if you want to just take a good feel story element to all of this, I think it's good news for podcasting overall.

James Cridland: 26:02

Yes, I think all of that is good news for podcasting overall. Of course, it hasn't stopped some good people being made redundant or fired this week and of course yesterday, Thursday, we covered that Amazon's Wondery has closed its operations in Mexico and in Brazil. So a quick staff meeting earlier on in the week and those entire people are now without a job, particularly when that was the week, or this has been the week, when Wondery have been nominated for yet more awards. So that's a great shame. But yes, for many parts of the podcast industry, it's good news and that's a nice thing, although we could be earning more money.

James Cridland: 26:51

An interesting story in the Media Leader this week talking about podcasting only getting 0.2% of all ad spend. Tom Webster from Sounds Profitable also pointing out the disparity between the reach of podcasts 53% of US adults and the significantly smaller revenue share in terms of ad spend, because it's far easier to buy ads in Facebook and on YouTube and everything else. So that's clearly something that we need to be working on. But yeah, and talking about YouTube, Neil Mowen, the CEO of YouTube, published an annual letter to the YouTube community. It was full of fluff and excitement and blah, blah, blah, but there was one phrase that they ended up. There was one thing that they ended up mentioning, and I think this was just particularly around podcasting.

(An AI voice): 27:50

He said this We've long invested in the podcast experience, and creators have found that video makes this format even more compelling. This year, we'll roll out more tools to support podcasters, improve monetization for creators and make it even easier to discover podcasts. I was made with Wondercraft. He was.

Sam Sethi: 28:07

I was going to say when you first played that I was going really, is that what he sounds like?

James Cridland: 28:13

Wow, I never thought that it's a voice made with Wondercraft, but anyway, I thought it was interesting in that quote at least it's a quote from his letter where he's talking about, firstly, improving monetisation for creators. Is that because of the Spotify earnings, but also rolling out more tools to support podcasters? What does that mean? What are those tools going to be? Who knows? So you know, as yet at least, nobody has. Nobody has. Youtube has got bored and wanted to move on to the next thing, so most unlike Google.

Sam Sethi: 28:53

So we'll see what happens there. Now, given time, it's early days, yet you know two year window, and that's when it all drops off. But what do you think? I mean, do you have any thoughts on what there might be, what they might have missing?

James Cridland: 29:07

Yeah, I've got. I mean, you know if, look, if I was working for YouTube, one of the first things that I would be doing is all of the fake videos that they've got coming in from podcasts. You know RSS ingestion and that sort of thing. I would be creating a much more interesting lean forward video experience for those. So actually doing some magic with AI.

James Cridland: 29:30

I know that they looked at a piece of software called Adoree a couple of years ago and you know those sorts of tools where you can easily add images and more information on the screen about what you're listening to and all of that kind of stuff. That would be a very interesting move forward for YouTube. I mean, maybe even just supporting native podcast chapters might be a good step forward. They do support chapters up to a point, but it's not the proper way that the podcasts support it. Could they do something with images, you know, in chapters and so on? So there might be something there. I don't know, but, um, uh, yeah, you know it was. It was interesting seeing that and also interesting he. He also shared some uh earning, uh revenue numbers as well. 50 of youtube channels, um, that earn at least ten thousand dollars on youtube also generate revenue from sources other than advertising.

Sam Sethi: 30:33

Two companies we never mention when we start talking about all this stuff is Apple and Amazon. I constantly am amazed. I think I've said it on numerous occasions Apple have gone MIA. I mean I don't know what Apple do anymore. I have no idea. 164,000 people and nothing comes out of them.

Sam Sethi: 30:52

And Amazon, they are just myopically siloed, you know, between Wondery, audible Amazon doesn't even say Amazon Podcasts highly fragmented. Yet if you look at where I think this is going towards, this super app, where you look at Spotify, youtube, aggregating everything into one UI so that the user is encaptured within their platform and their attention is monetized, I can't see how Amazon's doing it. Amazon Films with Prime yes, I've got that and TV works with it. I very rarely use Amazon Music because there's no link from Amazon Films to it. I do use Audible, but there's no link back to Amazon Prime. None of that's connected. And they've got live sports, but it seems so fragmented. And then you look at Apple again, totally fragmented. Will both those companies, james? Will both those companies knock their heads together and start to redo their UI and bring everything under one platform? Do you think?

James Cridland: 31:55

I mean, arguably, you could say that Apple has everything under one platform. It's the Apple hardware, and you know. And you pick up your phone and everything is there, unless you uninstall it. So I suppose, arguably, you could say that. But yes, one of the things that they are particularly bad at doing is cross-linking between the different apps that they have on their phones, and that goes for both Apple and for Amazon as well. You know the amount of cross-linking between you know Audible and Amazon Music is, as I understand it, zero. Similarly, amazon Prime, the TV thing, is also. You know that's its own silo, and so on and so forth. So I think that's one of the things that they can do better is cross-linking between the media. That they can do better is cross-linking between the media assets that they have.

James Cridland: 33:02

If you look at Apple, for example, with the, I was going to call it the Apple One plan. Is that what it's called? I know that there's a Google One plan as well, so it confuses me, but I think there is an Apple plan where you get essentially everything for one monthly price, and that monthly price is way too high, so I don't. But you can get Apple News as well as Apple TV Plus as well as all these other things, and that's lovely, but there's no cross-linking in between any of them. So it's you know. I mean, wouldn't it make sense and it would be interesting to see whether or not it actually does that If you're watching that big Apple TV Plus show, what's that show at the moment? The one Severance that everybody's talking about.

James Cridland: 33:47

Yeah, there are Severance podcasts as well, so one of them being made by Apple. So the question is whether or not the podcast is properly linking into the Apple TV Plus and Apple TV Plus is properly linking into Apple podcasts, and I suspect that the answer is no on both of those sides. They just mention, um, you know, they just mention, uh, each other, um. So I think that there's, you know, clearly work to be done there, um, but uh, yeah. And then, of course, you've got Google. Who, um, I mean who knows what Google is doing as well? But anyway, there, we are.

Sam Sethi: 34:29

Well, I look forward to Google IO starting today and lots and lots of sexy demos that lead to nothing but anyway.

James Cridland: 34:36

Oh yes, Lots of sexy demos of stuff that they will can six months down the line. By the way, we should also congratulate Apple for launching Apple TV Plus properly onto Android this week, which they have done, so that's nice. Not quite sure where the Apple Podcasts app is, but I mean nice to see that you've done it for Apple TV+, so I'm assuming that the Apple Podcasts app is only months away now, no only five years away.

Sam Sethi: 35:10

It'll be here soon, james, before you retire. Now, not before you retire, though you are going to be doing your annual Pod News report card.

James Cridland: 35:21

Tell me more. Yes, this is a report card which everybody. If you're listening right now, ok, stop. Go and fill out the Pod News report card. It'll only take you a couple of minutes and then you can carry on. That's absolutely fine. I give you full permission.

James Cridland: 35:37

Podnewsnet slash report card is where to go. So we were actually asked to do this four years ago by a large company, I think because they were trying to battle internally for more engineering resource or for more PR resource or for something, but anyway, and I thought, oh, that sounds like a good idea. So now we've got three years worth of data showing how companies are doing Apple, spotify, amazon and a bunch of others. We can see some trending information there as well, and it's really to help those companies understand where they're missing the mark and where they could be moving forward. And it's a quick piece of research for you to take part in.

James Cridland: 36:24

All you have to do is go to podnewsnet slash report card. I would very much appreciate it, and even better, if you could share it with your friends. Share it with your friends who are taking podcasting seriously. That would be very kind of you. So, yes, well worth doing. And then I will be going through the results at Evolutions in early April in Chicago, in the shadow of the Trump Tower, not really, but looking forward to doing that. So that would be great. But I can only do that if I get enough data to actually help me there.

Sam Sethi: 36:59

Good, we will keep reminding everyone next week as well. Now whizzing around the world, James, what's happening in Sweden, Sweden lots of podcast listeners, growing by 20% year on year.

James Cridland: 37:12

That probably comes as no surprise to anybody. The more surprising thing is that one in 10 households in Sweden one in 10 households are paying for podcasts. One in 10 households have a subscription to paid for podcasts in that country, which is a big difference. I would suggest to maybe the UK and certainly the US, so always worth keeping an eye on some of these other countries and what they're doing there. Portugal the Portuguese Podcast Festival announced the winners of the sixth awards in the country. The podcast of the year went to a show called Violeta, which was an investigative show looking at a trans person from Romania trying to get to Portugal because they thought that they would be safe there, and it turns out that they were anything but so worth a listen if you speak, of course, portuguese. And also the Ondas Global Awards announced their nominees as well. We get to know the winners, I think, in the next month or so. That's a Spanish language podcast awards. There is a category in there for the best non-Spanish speaking podcast. I'm sorry, sam, we weren't nominated, no not again.

Sam Sethi: 38:37

So there we are. Yeah, I. I actually have a house in portugal and I tried to learn portuguese once. It is not a nice language to learn, in my opinion, before I get castigated. You listen to french, you listen to italian, and it has sort of a song to it, right even spanish has a feel of a song to it. And then you come to Portugal and it was like a screeching break. It sounded a bit like Russian to me when I first heard it.

James Cridland: 39:01

Yeah, it does what is?

Sam Sethi: 39:02

this language? Why isn't it not soft and Mediterranean and sexy?

James Cridland: 39:06

I agree. I agree. It's nothing like Italian or French or Spanish, is it? No, it's a very different language, so completely agree. So, yeah, I love the way that you just dropped in that you have a second house in Portugal there. Is it a second house or is it a third house, mr Sethi?

Sam Sethi: 39:23

No, it's a second house, it's a villa. Yeah, oh, there was a pause there. Well, no, because we've got two houses in Portugal.

James Cridland: 39:32

Oh, there you go.

Sam Sethi: 39:33

That was the pause, that was the pause, that was the pause.

James Cridland: 39:37

It's how the other half live, how the other half live. And I was there listening to the Rest Is Entertainment this week and they were talking about how lovely Marlowe is and I was thinking, really Really, give me a break, yes, anyway. Anyway, let's move on. Before, uh, before we learn even more about satan seth's jet jet lifestyle. Um, there's a.

James Cridland: 40:01

There's a show in america called earn your happy. It's by somebody called laurie harder and she's been working uh harder on earning money because she charges guests ten thousand dollars to appear on an episode, which is quite a thing. We saw the submission form for the podcast, but what we haven't seen is any disclosure at all to audiences that guests are being charged 10 grand to come onto their show. I mean, again, she's very happy talking up some of these guests and how wonderful they are and you should go out and buy their books and you should go out and buy their courses and everything else. No surprise, because she's charging $10,000 to at least some of them. We asked Yap Media to comment and they didn't get our email. Clearly, I'd like to think that. But yes, the FTC has very clear rules. We have asked the FTC for a statement and the FTC have said yes, I'll definitely get you a statement, and have sent us nothing. So maybe the guy that I was talking to has just been fired by Elon. You know who knows. But yeah, there's a thing.

Sam Sethi: 41:19

Back into your part of the world. What's going on over?

James Cridland: 41:22

there. Yes, commercial Radio and Audio, or CRA, as I believe they now want to be called, has announced a unified digital audio ID for advertisers. What's fascinating is that the press release doesn't really explain what that means. Quite a lot of people on LinkedIn have been very excited about it, but again, very clearly don't quite know what that means, one of them calling it a new currency for advertising, which it absolutely is not.

James Cridland: 41:51

What I believe that this unified digital audio ID is is it is a way of targeting individual humans through the different apps that exist. So if you're a listener to the iHeartRadio app, then you will be given a ID which will also be the same ID that you use if you are also using the listener app, or if you are also using the Nine Radio app or various other things. So it'll basically follow you around. So it'll be better to target against, but also better to make sure that people aren't hearing the same ads over and over and over again. So that's quite nice. Imagine the privacy issues.

James Cridland: 42:40

So I'm not quite sure how all of that bit works, but it's very clear that it was a whiz-bang announcement at their big conference earlier on in the week and not very many people really understand what it is about and I may have got it wrong as well. They say that they are working on solutions which leverage world-class technology to make audio easy to buy, but they haven't actually said anything about the technology partners that they're using. Is this an existing technology? Is this something brand new for Australia? No idea, absolutely no idea. But I'm sure that they know what they're doing yes.

Sam Sethi: 43:13

It says it will launch in June and podcasting will follow. I was going to go. What will follow?

James Cridland: 43:18

Yes, I think it'll launch in June, because radio stations you have to sign in to listen to on all of these different apps. Podcasting, of course, you don't have to sign in to listen to on most of the apps that people consume podcasts on. So my suspicion is it's going to be much harder for them in terms of podcasting to achieve this, which is why they've kicked the podcasting bit into the long grass here. But I may have got all of that completely wrong and doubtless somebody will contact me editor at podnewsnet and tell me.

Speaker 2: 43:56

Podcast events on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 44:00

The top 50 over 50 podcast awards are taking entries from now until the end of February. The awards it's an award for us, Finally an award for us. Now, I thought you might say that I actually entered this show for the top 50 over 50 podcast awards no joke. But I am also a media partner for the awards and the award organisers have given me my money back because I can't be a media partner and also enter the awards. The one award that we qualify for.

James Cridland: 44:42

I know that is exactly what I thought the one award that we might actually stand a chance of winning the top 50 over 50, particularly if nobody knows about it. How brilliant, exactly, but sadly no. So there we are. I've got my speech ready. I've had it. How brilliant, but sadly no. So there we are, but you've got my speech ready.

Sam Sethi: 44:57

I've had it for years. Thank you, James Gridland.

James Cridland: 45:00

You can't have had it for that many years, Sam. So, yeah, so there's a thing. Other things going on. The Wickers Podcast Pitch Award 2025 is open for you if you make documentaries. The awards are the legacy of broadcaster Alan Wicker, who used to do a lot of interesting sort of travel-based stuff and all of that. You get a glob of cash and some other stuff as well to help make that documentary. It's a really good award and I think it's the fifth year for that, so well worth taking a peek at. The iHeart Podcast Awards has announced its nominations. That's exciting and Evolutions 2025, of course, happening in Chicago at the end of March. I will be there and you, Sam, will not.

Sam Sethi: 45:50

I think I can say no, I'm not going to Gilead, I'm not going there. The Tech.

Speaker 2: 45:54

Stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 45:58

Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday in the Pod News newsletter. Here's where Sam talks technology. What have we got? That's exciting, Sam.

Sam Sethi: 46:07

Well, Dave Jones, Nothing move on. No, Dave Jones has rolled out new updates to pod pink, so actually we are timely. We were about to do some updates anyway to our database at true fans, so we'll let you know what's in there. And one of the things that dave posted was new podcast mediums are supported. That hopefully means not just a podcast medium equals podcast, but audio book, music and something else, so I'll let you know. I'll let you know what's in there next week. Meta, you pointed out, have launched a demo tool called AudioBox. You know Zuckerberg in true form. If you can't beat it, copy it.

James Cridland: 46:48

Yes, it's a bit weird. It basically it allows you to create an audio story with AI voices and sounds, but you end up essentially writing a bit of a story and then you say I would like the sound of a crackling fire or something, and it'll make that as well. And I mean the. To me, the interesting thing was that it's basically got an AI driven sound effect machine so you can type in, typing on a computer keyboard and it gives you that. So that's quite cool. I had a little play with it. You'll find a bit of audio from that in Wednesday's Pod News Daily If you really want to have a listen to it. There's a lot of whispering, which is very strange. But anyway, one thing and I don't know whether you understand the reason for this, sam, but one thing it says this research demo is not available to residents of, or those accessing the demo from, the states of, illinois or Texas. What have they done wrong?

Sam Sethi: 47:46

Well, texas is because Adam Curry's there. That's the only reason, and I just wonder if Dave Jones lives in Illinois. I just I haven't.

James Cridland: 47:57

Don't think he does, no, no, I was just curious. Are there rules against AI use in those two places?

Sam Sethi: 48:06

I don't really understand that one. I can't imagine it, because I mean, you know what is it? Musk has moved down to Texas, hasn't he? He's moved his company out of California? Yeah, no idea. No, know what is it? Musk has moved down to texas, hasn't he? He's moved his company out of california? Yeah, no idea. No, we should look it up or answer on a postcard, send us some fan mail or a boostergram and let us know if you know the answer to why you can't use ai in the states of illinois or texas well.

James Cridland: 48:26

Congratulations to todd cochran. Uh, blueberry has attained version 2.2 of the iob podcast measurement technical guidelines, which is nice, joining a bunch of other people including Buzzsprout, our sponsor, who also have version 2.2 of the standards as well. They were certified last September. One thing that confuses me a little bit is whenever I talk to the IB Tech Lab, they always tell me that annual recertification is still required. You have to recertify annually, and that's why Blueberry has, that's why Buzzsprout has, that's why a lot of these companies have.

James Cridland: 49:15

But if you have a look at iHeart, well, iheart owns Voxnest Spreaker, omnistudio and Triton. They haven't recertified since at least 2022, if not 2021. So I'm not quite sure how they get away with it. But there again, apple, spotify and YouTube have never certified. So perhaps it's just worth bearing in mind that at least iHeart have, even if their stuff is very, very out of date. But I don't understand iHeart have, even if their stuff is very, very out of date. But I don't understand iHeart's view here. Are they going to recertify? And, if so, have they basically just been working on integrating VoxNest Spreaker and OmniStudio and Triton into one platform, which I think is how they're working it now, and so they've only got one platform to you know, to actually go out and get recertification for, and is that the reason for the delay? I don't know, but I'm just curious about that one.

Sam Sethi: 50:00

Or, like Apple, Spotify and YouTube, they don't see any value in it. Well, yes, there is always that too. Now here's a story you posted on Mastodon Transistor integrates with Blue Sky.

James Cridland: 50:10

Tell me more, yes this is really interesting and, I think, really exciting. So you can now automatically post. If you're on the Transistor podcast platform, you can automatically post. Whenever you publish a new episode, you can automatically post to Blue Sky, to Blue Sky. So that's nice. But any comments that you get to that message on Blue Sky gets pulled back from Blue Sky to Transistor's websites. So if we've got a Transistor website for the show that we're hosting on Transistor, then all of a sudden you will see comments appear there.

James Cridland: 50:52

It's almost as if this is cross-app comments, but using Blue Sky as the mechanism to actually post the comments. It's certainly how the social interact tag works. Yes, so one of the things that I've said to Justin is this looks brilliant. Firstly, you've got everything you need now to produce the podcast social interact tag, so please could you do that, and then every single one of your shows will have a social interact tag and that'll be lovely and it'll link off to Blue Sky and everybody will be happy.

James Cridland: 51:27

But then, secondly, you could, if you wanted to, since you're already ingesting all of those comments anyway, you could produce an RSS feed and uh, and then link to that from the standard comments tag in the RSS feed.

James Cridland: 51:43

So, essentially, the thing that I uh put forward as an idea in November of last year that no one has looked at, um uh, you know, you, you could actually support all of this. Um uh, it would be a really simple lift for you because you've done all of the hard work of the Blue Sky integration. So all you have to do is produce an RSS feed of comments easily done and stick the social interact tag into your feeds and again, easily done because you've already got all of the data. And so Justin has said to me that he will see if he can convince John to do the work for that, but I think that's a day's work. I think that would be a real simple win to actually push that concept further. So, both supporting the social interact tag, but also actually having a ready-made here's your RSS feed with all of your comments in, so that podcast apps can go ahead and start integrating that if they want to.

Sam Sethi: 52:39

Yeah no, look, I don't think it's people not looking at what you did. I think people just haven't got the bandwidth to look at what you did.

James Cridland: 52:46

Um, that's certainly what I'll just be honest and say that's where we are I mean, I think you know, the unicorn of cross app comments is what we all want, um, but yeah, but I think this is brilliant the fact that this is actually now, um, a podcast host who is doing this, uh, and this is the first podcast host that has actually done this sort of integration. So I think it's very exciting. If we can convince John and Justin to go forward and to do that integration and, as I say, they've done all of the hard work, it's just purely a couple of tiny little pieces of work on top here Then that would be brilliant. Then, all of a sudden, we've got proper rss comments that any app can ingest, but also the social interact tag for all of the big shows on the transistor platform. I mean that that would be, then that would be brilliant.

Sam Sethi: 53:46

So hurrah for them yeah, I tell you you've done a really good job. And it's not me, um, it's uh, fountain. Um, it's Fountain they have. When you look at the comments section in Fountain, they are pulling in comments from the Olby API. So they are pulling in other platform comments into their comments section which weren't originated into Fountain. So and probably they will be one of the first to go and do this, I think, yeah, well, that's nice too. Yeah, absolutely. The question I've got is we need to follow the way it would work. We need to follow the social interact tag, see what's in the comments section and then pull from there. I guess is what we would do.

James Cridland: 54:29

Yeah, so I mean they are kind of a little bit different. So, yeah, I mean, the social interact tag would be pointing to the blue sky, um, uh, root post, um, so that would be relatively uh, they already know the blue sky, blue root post because they're uh, already you know, um, uh, polling that. And then the comments RSS, um could include blue sky and other things as well, obviously, um, but again, they're pulling in those comments you know directly into their systems anyway, so they can easily produce the RSS out of that. And that could be something even that you leave to the client side, so you don't even have to import that yourselves, you just get the client to read the RSS feed directly. You know, I mean, that would probably work as well.

Sam Sethi: 55:17

Nice, well, hopefully they'll finish it and we'll have a look at it, james. Moving on, then Boost it's our favourite time of the week it is and get this.

Speaker 2: 55:28

Boostergram, boostergram, boostergram Super comments. Zaps, fan mail, fan mail, super chats, super comments, zaps, fan mail, super chats and email. Our favourite time of the week, it's the Pod News Weekly Review. Inbox.

James Cridland: 55:42

Inbox. Yes, it's an inbox. It's nothing to do with Boostergram Corner anymore. We've turned the corner. So it's our favourite time of the week. It's the Pod News Weekly Review Inbox. So many different ways to get in touch with us Fan mail by using the link in our show notes, or super comments on True Fans. Super comments have I got that right?

Sam Sethi: 56:02

Yep, you've got that completely right.

James Cridland: 56:04

Boosts or email. We share any money that we make to Sam and I, so that's a lovely thing. I don't think we got a piece of fan mail this week. A memory tells me that we did. We did get one yes.

James Cridland: 56:20

So thank you to 9625 who commented. Riverside really taking it to Descript. That was a comment about Kendall Brightman's comments last week on the show. If you want to go back and have a listen to that, you think there's quite a lot of animosity going on in between those two companies. Sam, I don't know if it's animosity.

Sam Sethi: 56:44

I think it's good competition. I think the gain will be for us, the user. I still think the integration of Squadcast into Descript has sort of stopped. I haven't seen any improvements since they first did it. Um, yeah, and I think, as I said, I think the way that riverside integrated fundamentally stream yard into riverside, I think it's really cool and I think they where they are strong right now is on live video, and that part where they may be weaker is on the editing and post-production side compared to Descript right, which is where Descript's core strength was. So I think one's got its core strength in one end and one's got it in the other. Hopefully they'll both, you know, push each other. That's the best one for both of us really.

James Cridland: 57:33

Yeah, indeed, and yeah, I mean, they're both clearly moving at this from different sides Riverside starting being a remote recording tool and moving into the editing stuff, descript starting being an editing tool and moving into the remote recording side of it as well. So, yeah, so more success to both of those companies. So far as I am concerned, of course, streamyard does continue. It's just incredibly expensive now and owned by an Italian company that don't really care about anything, so just worthwhile. Bearing that in mind, 3,120 sats from Miko using True Fans. Miko says Hi, hi.

James Cridland: 58:16

I first learned about Steve Pratt when he was a guest on Pod News, which led me to read Earn it. He'll be delighted to learn that In his newsletter on February the 10th he wrote an article titled Joe Rogan Isn't a Podcast, which perfectly clarified the thoughts I've been struggling with about video podcasts lately. It was a great piece. And Miko goes on and says any chance you could have him on as a guest again to discuss this topic please? He will be delighted and I'm sure he will jump at the chance, so we might ask him 381 sats from Neil Velio.

Sam Sethi: 58:55

Uh, he says, mentioning grundig televisions just took me back to my primary school era in 1983. No, 1883, neil, come on. Uh, remember being eternally creeped out by the boy from space. What the boy from space on what? What is the boy from space, james? Did you watch that?

James Cridland: 59:12

I never watched the boy from space. I've got no idea what that is. Neil is a brit, so I'm sure that so were you in the past. Well, yeah, um, the boy from space. I'll tell you what. When I was in switzerland last week, I introduced myself as an australian on stage and I felt very I felt very wrong.

James Cridland: 59:31

Um, yes, it was a. It was a program. I don't remember this at all, but yes, it was a sci-fi show made in 1971. You're never that old, neil Velio. You're younger than I am, I was born in 1971, but it was shown on the BBC. Apparently it's on a BBC DVD. You can go out and buy it wherever you buy DVDs, oxfam. So yes, starring Phil Chaney, charles Collingwood, stephen Garlick, loftus Burton. I've never heard of any of these people. I was about to say yeah. Storyline when brother and sister, dan and Helen, build an observatory in their shed, they see a mysterious object falling from the sky. That's the full story, apparently.

Sam Sethi: 1:00:25

Right, no, in 1983, I was just finishing sixth form, I think so. No, it would have passed me by anyway.

James Cridland: 1:00:34

Anyway, Move on, move on, no idea. Well, thank you Neil Velio. He was using TrueFans as well. Also using TrueFans, there may be a pattern here. Social Web Cafe 100 sats. Thank you. I love the Albi friends and family app. Brackets plug in close brackets. I set up my Albi hub and use the family and friends. For all of my podcaster, friends or other accounts who previously didn't have a wallet, I helped them set up an Albi wallet, added Albi Go to their phone and connect friends and family and we're off to the races. They have options and I can support them. From the Albi Hub side of things Works brilliantly. Thank you for sharing this. And this is from Deborah of Studio Fusion so excellent, thank you for that.

Sam Sethi: 1:01:18

This is the way to use the Orbi Hub If you have a network of podcasts. It is super simple and it works. Yes.

James Cridland: 1:01:23

So excellent for that. And also thank you finally to Brian Entsminger. Using Podcast Guru, Now I see 99 sats here in my helipad and it says testing from podcast guru to see if your strike wallet works from here. So my strike wallet account is in the pod news daily but not in this podcast, and so I thought, oh well, that's interesting. Went into Strike and, yes, at exactly the same time I see a payment of one sat, which is exactly as it's set up. It doesn't tell me who it's from, it doesn't give me any information whatsoever, but I do see the payment. So that is excellent. So at least the technology has worked in terms of the payment, Brian. So thank you for your test. I appreciate that.

Sam Sethi: 1:02:17

Moving on, then, James power supporters.

James Cridland: 1:02:19

Yes, thank you to our 16 power supporters who are supporting us every month with a bit of real money. It's all real money. I know it's all real money, but this is real money, through MasterCard and Visa and all that kind of thing. Thank you to David, john Clark, james Burt, john McDermott, clare Waight-Brown, mazzalene Smith, neil Velio, rocky Thomas, jim James, david Marzell, si Jobling, rachel Corbett, dave Jackson, mike Hamilton, matt Medeiros, marshall Brown and Cameron Moll. All of you went to weeklypodnewsnet and have clicked on the button to become a supporter in there, a power supporter. So thank you to all of you.

James Cridland: 1:03:01

I do want to call out David Marzell, because he has been doing a lot of work with OP3 to make OP3 more accessible. So nobody will see the difference, apart from those people that really need to see that difference. So super good of you doing that, david. I know that you've been testing with a couple of people who have been really requesting that accessibility, and so that's super excellent. So thank you for doing all of that. But thank you to the rest of the 16 power supporters. Who will be our 17th supporter? Will it be you? If it's you, weeklypodnewsnet is where to go. So what's been happening for you this week, sam, you've been doing presumably a ton more things on True Fans. What are your?

Sam Sethi: 1:03:50

top two. Top two right, we've added notes into True Fans. It was something. I had a eureka moment in the bath. I was listening to ezra klein, uh, talking to um cara swisher and I was thinking I really want to make some notes on this episode. Uh, where shall I stick them? And it was like, oh, I can put them in a book. I can email them?

Sam Sethi: 1:04:10

no, what would be next to the tap? Next to the tap, what would be? What would be more logical is to actually stick notes into the podcast episode so that if I ever go back to that episode I can see my own notes. So we just did that, so you now have the ability to put private notes into any episode and then you can search across all your notes. You can do, and you'll see it in your profile as well.

James Cridland: 1:04:32

So yeah, we added notes. Very nice, that button should say create private note, not just create note.

Sam Sethi: 1:04:37

Well, you only see it, no one else will see it, so it doesn't really matter.

James Cridland: 1:04:41

Yes, but I don't know where that note is going to go, oh, I see you want me to indicate that it's private to you.

Sam Sethi: 1:04:47

Okay, fine.

James Cridland: 1:04:50

I believe that that would be the right plan. De facto product manager.

Sam Sethi: 1:04:55

Um, yes, and you've been doing stuff with youtube as well, I believe yeah, we're starting to take a page out of pod page actually, um, the way that things are going with video and I've tried very hard, as you know we we did what some people call a hack, but I think it's just a feature, um, where you can take the shared URL from your YouTube video and put it into the old terms of enclosure in TrueFans and then switch between the audio and video and the video is then hosted, still on YouTube, but it's played out in the same app.

Sam Sethi: 1:05:28

So that's great, that works. But you know, people just don't want to do the extra work and I understand that you've got enough to do producing a podcast, let alone doing 20 other steps. So the api from youtube, which I think is what pod page does, allows you to take the playlist url and then we do a matching of the episode in youtube to the episode in the audio and we automatically populate the alternative enclosure field for you. So, yeah, claim your podcast, go into your creator dashboard, copy over the playlist from your YouTube playlist and then we'll do the heavy lifting for you and we'll auto-populate all your fields in your audio.

James Cridland: 1:06:08

Very nice too. Very nice too, I do notice. You can, of course, embed YouTube videos onto websites. There is no way of embedding Spotify videos onto any websites, which is interesting.

Sam Sethi: 1:06:23

No, and it's not even in the API so there's nothing we can do.

James Cridland: 1:06:27

That's a missed opportunity, isn't it? Oh, yes, so there's no even mention in the API that there might be video for a particular show. No, no, you can't do it, you can't access it. So there's no even mention in the API that there might be video for a particular show.

Sam Sethi: 1:06:36

No, no, you can't do it, you can't access it. There's no, no, we even looked at, you know, trying to do a similar, you know hacked, the one we did with YouTube. First of all, can we get the encoding? Blah, blah, blah, nothing.

James Cridland: 1:06:50

Nothing. Oh, that's interesting, Interesting, oh well there we are Shame.

(An AI voice): 1:06:54

And are you doing any more of these? What's that mean for you, James?

James Cridland: 1:06:58

Are you doing any more of these ridiculous walks that you're doing, because you're walking the entire length of the Thames, but not all at once.

Sam Sethi: 1:07:02

Yeah, it'd be too tiring to do it all at once. Yes, we're doing the one that we were supposed to do, so we're now doing Richmond to Chertsey this weekend, which I'm looking forward to, ah there we go.

James Cridland: 1:07:14

Eel Pie Island. Indeed, I'll stop there. You're well past that.

Sam Sethi: 1:07:19

James.

James Cridland: 1:07:20

So come on what's happening for you Something that I didn't fully get about podcasting in Switzerland that I thought was interesting. So I was in Switzerland last week. Geneva, let me tell you, is just as I remembered it. It's this sterile environment of, you know, very expensive watch shops that nobody is in, very expensive shops selling lingerie or high-end clothes. It's a bit like a very large airport lounge. So I stomped around Geneva over the weekend, last weekend before eating more cheese than a man has. You know that should be legal.

James Cridland: 1:08:06

But one of the things that I noticed, you know just, you can very clearly spot the banker's wives because they're walking around with their, you know, weirdly suntanned, with their puffy lips and their you know fur coats and everything else, and they always walk around in pairs or in threes. It's a very strange place, is Geneva, places Geneva. But one of the things I didn't really realise about podcasting in Switzerland is that Switzerland, firstly, speaks at least three different languages. It's really four. So they've got French, german, italian and Romance as well in Switzerland. So already that country, which is not a big country, is split up into four completely different languages. But also, secondly, what I didn't appreciate is that Swiss German is not German and Swiss French is not French. There are different dialects, different ways of expressing yourself, so actually it's a really difficult place for podcasting and it's one of the reasons why you don't see too much news or information coming out of Switzerland about podcasting, because it's just too hard. A Swiss German podcast will be unintelligible to many people in Germany because the phrases and everything else is just completely different. So I just thought that that was really interesting. I'm not quite sure what we can learn from that different. So I just thought that that was really interesting. I'm not quite sure what we can learn from that, but yeah, I thought that was an interesting thing.

James Cridland: 1:09:41

Is that a bit like Franglais or Chinglish? Well, yeah, I mean, maybe. I mean maybe it's that whole thing of you know. I mean, yes, you know the Philippines. The language there is supposed to be English, but it's not, because there's plenty of other languages squished into that as well. So, yeah, but that, I think, is why I was asked, at the event that I was at, I wouldn't spend too much time on podcasting, because, yeah, you can very clearly see, it's much harder for them, much, much harder than just having you know English or English and Spanish or whatever your languages are. So yeah, so I thought that that was interesting, just as a by the by. But no, apart from that, the only other exciting thing I've done this week is that I've replaced the daughter's phone with a new phone.

James Cridland: 1:10:36

Um, oh, what a nice dad yeah, what a lovely dad, not even christmas and you're buying a new phone somebody somebody, um, dropped their phone and it, um, and it went down the stairs and managed to, uh, managed to catch the side. I it's got a case and everything else, but it managed to catch the side of the case. Yes, managed to catch on a stair as it flew down and no case was ever going to fix that.

Sam Sethi: 1:11:03

So, yes, A mouse case. The mouse case is the one to get.

James Cridland: 1:11:08

Yeah well, I'm not quite sure A Moto G15, you can get one of those cases for that. You mean you didn't buy her an iPhone 17? No, I bought her exactly the same model that she had last year, except this is the model this is. I think she got a G14 last year and she's got a G15 this year because it's $220. So that's what £110. And it's a decent phone actually and she can have that. It's got everything on there apart from Apple Podcasts. So there we are, and that's it for this week. All of our podcast stories taken from the PodNews daily newsletter, of course, at podnewsnet.

Sam Sethi: 1:11:54

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

James Cridland: 1:12:06

Yes, we should get rid of the word boostergram from that as well. Our music is from Studio Dragonfly, our voiceover is Sheila D, we use clean feed for our audio with Edit with Hindenburg, and we're hosted and sponsored by Buzzsprout. Start podcasting, keep podcasting.

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