James Cridland 0:00

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

Announcer 0:04

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

James Cridland 0:13

I'm James .

Sam Sethi 0:13

Cridland , the editor of Pod News , and I'm Sam Sethi , the CEO of TrueFab .

Annalise Nielsen 0:18

Doesn't matter who the client is or what the type of project is . There needs to be some strategy around YouTube . Youtube needs to be part of the story , no matter what that's .

James Cridland 0:26

Annalise Nielsen from Pacific Content on video podcasting and more Plus . Spotify money for artists and money for video podcasts . We've got feedback . Spotify open access or is it closed access signs another partner , google kills another app . And where's the best place to record an Apple Podcasts chart topping show ? This podcast is sponsored by Buzzsprout with the tools , support and community to ensure you keep podcasting , start podcasting , keep podcasting with buzzsproutcom

Interview: Annalise Nielsen, Pacific Content

James Cridland 0:58

From your daily newsletter , the Pod News Weekly Review .

Sam Sethi 1:03

OK , live , live , live , live , live . It's everything's live . Right Before we get into what's going on with live everywhere else , Evergreen has launched Evergreen Now , so tell me more about that first .

James Cridland 1:15

Yeah , this is a free , ad-supported streaming TV channel . It works on your Apple box or your Android phone or your Roku television , as the Americans love to play with . It's a free to watch channel which includes films and award winning podcasts , presumably from Evergreen podcasts . It also includes live sports , because Evergreen has a deal with a particular live sport and I can't remember which it is , but it's some college sport thing . So , yes , evergreen Now is one of these fast channels which is now available .

James Cridland 1:50

So that's one side of the live . Also , another side of the live includes things like the news agents who have done their first YouTube live , which is a big UK political show , miss Me , which is a show produced , interestingly for the BBC by Persephoneca . They did a live show , a couple of live shows , at London's Hackney Empire and both nights were sold out . They just said that their Q&A shows will be available on YouTube in podcast form , which makes me wonder why the BBC has allowed that , because it's a BBC show . So why have they allowed that show to make stuff on YouTube rather than on the BBC iPlayer ? But anyway , let's not go there . And also , you know , lots more video podcasts with Michelle Obama have been announced and CBS News have been announced and goodness knows what else . So clearly the future is all about live . Clearly the future , quite a lot of the future , is all about video as well , I guess .

Sam Sethi 2:51

Well , we keep talking about it , but I thought it might be interesting . Annalisa Nielsen is Head of Podcast Strategy and Development at Lower Street , part of Pacific Content , the acquisition that was made last year , and she put out a report talking about youtube's 1 billion plays , the video strategy of spotify , um , and she talks about something else called the attention diet , and we have a wonderful conversation about women in podcasting . Do they need an international podcast day to raise awareness for women in podcasting and why aren't more women podcasting ? And yeah , I started off , though , by asking Annalise last year , lower Street bought Pacific Content . You were there at Pacific Content when it was purchased . What's changed ? What's life been like as part of Lower Street ?

Annalise Nielsen 3:38

Well , in a lot of ways things are similar . I would say like my role is pretty similar across across both companies , so I sit sort of between marketing and sales . I , you know , put together proposals for clients , I write our newsletter , I do a lot of thought leadership kind of content and plan events for Lower Street . So that's maybe something that's new for me at Lower Street , but still sort of within the same wheelhouse , is what I was doing at Pacific Content and I would say , like the difference between the two companies or like where we're at now , you know , pacific Content was previously owned by a very large media conglomerate , so that definitely impacted sort of day to day business , and now part of a scrappy startup . So there's a lot more flexibility that comes with that .

Annalise Nielsen 4:29

We are also a global team , so there are people all over the world across lots of different time zones , which is pretty cool , and we all work remotely and so , yeah , those are the main sort of differences . I would say Lower Street also , like with the acquisition of Pacific Content , has much more of a broad offering , I would say , than Pacific Content did . Pacific Content was known for a very specific type of project , whereas Lower Street , you know , we sort of run the gambit in what we can offer to different clients . So those are , I would say , the main differences , but overall , um , a lot of similarities . A lot of my colleagues from pacific content came over to lower street as well , so a lot of familiar faces where I am too now I was going through linkedin and I saw you writing about youtube and , of course , youtube is now the flavor of the month .

Sam Sethi 5:23

Everyone's talking about it allegedly being the place that podcasting should be , and everyone's going to it . What are your initial thoughts ?

Annalise Nielsen 5:31

Where is YouTube in the podcast landscape and where is video more importantly , within that podcast landscape , as well , I think that in a lot of ways , we conflate video with YouTube , and I don't necessarily think that those are the same thing , but , to start to level set , a lot of the conversation around YouTube started when it became clear that YouTube was now the number one platform that people are using to consume podcasts .

Annalise Nielsen 5:54

So YouTube beat out Spotify and Apple Podcasts for the first time , and that was a huge deal . It is a huge deal . We should definitely be thinking about that data . The reality , though , is that it's YouTube , and then there's every other podcast platform that exists out there , and , for the most part , youtube is the only platform that people are using to watch video . Now , I know that there's exceptions there . I know that Spotify is pivoting towards video . I know that Apple has video capabilities . I know that lots of podcasts that podcast 2.0 , there's lots of video watching capabilities . Most people don't even know that they can watch video podcasts across these other platforms , particularly Apple , which has always had video podcasts , and so , for the majority of the video podcast consumption , that's happening on YouTube . And then the other thing I will say is , like YouTube still only makes up about 30% of the podcast consumption that we see . So , yes , it's more than Spotify , it's more than Apple still about a third of the consumption . So if we sort of take all of those things together then we can say , like video consumption primarily happening on YouTube , that's really still only about a third of the consumption that's happening . I also would say that out of all of the consumption that's happening on YouTube , that's really still only about a third of the consumption that's happening .

Annalise Nielsen 7:07

I also would say that out of all of the consumption that's happening on YouTube , not all of that is video , actually video watching . A lot of that is consumption of podcasts that were published on YouTube but don't have a video component . So this is like , you know , podcasts that are published with just a static image , or podcasts that are published on YouTube music without a video component . So that's a big part of that as well . And then there's also , you know , the consumption that happens where there is a video element of the podcast but people aren't actually watching that . They're minimizing their screens .

Annalise Nielsen 7:37

I think we know now a huge amount of YouTube consumption is happening on people's televisions , so they're putting it on and then they're doing other things in the background . This is a huge trend that we see with YouTube now and YouTube's really leaning into that . You know there was a recent report that they're beating out traditional television for consumption on televisions and that's you know that consumption makes a lot of sense . It's something to put on in the background . Does that mean that people are watching those entire videos , those entire you know one , two , three hour long episodes ? They're not right . It's something that's on in the background .

Annalise Nielsen 8:10

So I think all of those things are important for us to think about when we think about our video strategy . When it comes to podcasts , I think you know there's a lot of nuance in this conversation that I think we're missing when we just look at this data of you know YouTube is winning podcasts and we all need to pivot to video like maybe maybe video makes the most sense for your podcast project , maybe it doesn't make the most sense for your podcast project . Video comes with a lot of additional costs the majority of the time , and to do it right especially , there's a lot of costs involved and there's also a lot of sacrifices involved in making a video podcast , because it means that you're sacrificing the ability to do things that you can do with audio only projects one of the things that I've noticed recently , though , with the high-end podcasts is that they are moving to live as a core strategy .

Sam Sethi 9:00

so if you look at podcasts like the News Agent or the Rest is Politics , or even Zateo or the Rest is Politics USA some of the politics podcasts I watch , so you know now what I listen to or watch right , but they've gone live . Why do you think they are also moving to live ? What are your thoughts ?

Annalise Nielsen 9:23

I see what you're saying and I do see that trend as well . I don't know . I think that there's always been a bit of a live element in podcasting . It's just that we had a lot more live in-person events back in the day Before COVID . That was a huge business line for a lot of podcasts . Right Like my Favorite , murder would have massive tours that they would do of live shows . Criminal still does like massive live show tours . I feel like they're constantly on tour . So I think that's kind of always been there as a bit of an element .

Annalise Nielsen 9:55

I think the difference is now it's just moved to being more of a digital experience rather than an in-person live experience . I think probably part of this comes from a desire , I think from the audience , to interact more with podcasters . You have this very deep parasocial relationship that builds between a listener and a podcaster . We know that podcasting is very it's cliche to say now , but it's a very intimate medium . You're listening to them by yourself , usually with headphones on , although maybe that's changing now with the rise of YouTube and people putting it on in the background on their TVs . But for the most part you know that's what's sort of been .

Annalise Nielsen 10:31

A strength of the medium is sort of this relationship that builds between the listener and the podcaster , and I think , you know , most podcast platforms do not really support interactivity in the way that a lot of other platforms , a lot of other digital media does .

Annalise Nielsen 10:47

Right Like , social media really is built on that interactivity . That's what it's for is for us to have that , you know , connection to somebody and being able to go back and forth with them . And YouTube also really prioritizes interactivity between the creator and the audience and I would say that , you know , a live event affords that type of interactivity in a way that we don't really get in other spaces in podcasting . So maybe that's where part of this is coming from and also maybe that's part of the push on YouTube . Right Like , youtube has a comment section that is usually very robust and oftentimes creators are in that comment section responding to people . It's more of a conversation compared to a lot of other podcast platforms that I know that there are lots of other podcast platforms that do have the ability to allow people to leave comments or to leave reviews , but that type of interactivity is not something that's been prioritized or emphasized across other podcast platforms , so maybe that's part of it .

Sam Sethi 11:51

The last part I wanted to cover . It's international women in podcasting . Right , and what does that mean ? What does that mean for you as a woman ? What does that mean for us as an industry ? Where do men fit within that conversation ?

Annalise Nielsen 12:08

So let me go back to one of the points that you made . That was around discoverability , that you said that you think that there is a problem and James said that there isn't , and I think I agree with you that I do think discoverability is a problem . I think it's always been a problem in podcasting and we haven't solved that problem yet , but I think that it used to be the case that discoverability was the issue and that if people took a little extra time to dig , you could find really , really amazing , great content . I'm not saying that that's not true today . I know that there's a lot of amazing podcasts being made , but I think that we are slipping into a space where there is also a content problem . The quality of the content that I'm seeing come out today it's not the same as it was five years ago . It's just not . We've seen like huge budget cuts . We've seen pivots towards quantity over quality , really because there's an understanding that if I can just throw a bunch of ad markers into this podcast and pump out content every other day , then I'm going to make more money than I would if I were to invest in quality content . That got a lot more downloads over a much fewer episodes and I think that , like when I talk to , when I have friends , that friends reach out all the time and are like what are you listening to ? What should I listen to ? I don't have recommendations like I used to have for them . So I think that there's a real risk in that and I bring this up now because I think with that has sort of come , there's a huge diversity problem in podcasting that it's always been there again , but it is getting much worse and being in New York , I think that was really highlighted for me .

Annalise Nielsen 13:41

I think there are definitely on the gender side of things . Podcasting has always been much more male dominated . You know there was it sort of started as like a tech product and it was definitely gated and very difficult to get into if you were a woman . Back even when I started getting into podcasting about 10 years ago , it was very hard to find anybody who would help me to learn in a space as a woman . There wasn't a lot of welcome spaces for me . There's a lot of jargon that was being thrown around without any sort of , you know , attempt to sort of let me into that space , and it took a lot of persistence to really push through it to even figure out how to set up an RSS feed , frankly , which is crazy back then . So you know , I think there's always been that sort of as a through line in podcasting and that's something we should be working towards fixing for sure . I think we've come a long way . I think podcasting has gotten a lot more accessible for women .

Annalise Nielsen 14:45

But if we zoom out beyond just our industry and see how people perceive us , they perceive podcasting as being a space for white dudes sitting around a microphone . Right , that's what podcasting is to a lot of people . That's problematic and I would say , beyond women , there is a huge lack of people of color who are on microphones right now and podcasting and it's it's alarming to me . Like at on air fest I , I really felt that I'm not . This isn't a dig at on air fest , it's just , you know , looking around the room , um , it's gotten worse , we're going in the wrong direction .

Annalise Nielsen 15:20

I would say , um , and that is alarming and I think again , I think that comes with the lack of budgets , huge budget cuts , unfortunately . You end up with women and people of color . Their shows get cut from those budgets . So , yeah , I think that's part of the problem . I would say , as I'm saying this , I think that there's a little bit of a misconception , too , that when you have the people in charge be primarily white men who are making these decisions , they view podcasts that are hosted by women and are about women's issues as being niche or like not scalable , uh , and that's why they get cut early on or they never get made in the first place , and that's just not the case at all . Um , so yeah , I think that's . There's also probably a little bit of that happening now .

Sam Sethi 16:08

Are you going to be at chicago for podcast movement ? Are you going to be in london for the london podcast show ? Where can people find you ?

Annalise Nielsen 16:16

so I would love to be at both of those , but actually I am heading off on maternity leave as a congratulations so thank you very much . So , yeah , I will be on a bit of a break from about a year , but I will be back in full swing again 2026 .

Sam Sethi 16:31

So yeah , well , look congratulations and look when you come back . I look forward to meeting up with you . Thanks a lot and there's plenty more from that interview on monday

Spotify news

Sam Sethi 16:41

james , I'm sorry , and everyone else I'm sorry , but this is a Spotify full show , not a Spotify free show , so you better play that jingle .

Announcer 16:49

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

James Cridland 16:59

It's always good to hear that , isn't it ? Oh good Sam , what have ? What have we got ?

Sam Sethi 17:04

well , spotify we he loud and clear . They've got the loud and clear report out and they say they've got a record 10 billion dollar payout . Now I've got some thoughts on what the report said , but I can't be critical . 10 billion dollars paid out is a fantastic now this is for ?

James Cridland 17:22

this is for music artists , isn't it ? They haven't released anything about how much they've paid for podcasters , but for music artists , yes , $10 billion in 2024 . It brings total lifetime payouts from Spotify to nearly $60 billion .

Sam Sethi 17:37

They're always very careful to talk about paying publishing rights holders , because Spotify themselves don't pay artists or songwriters directly no , this is the thing you keep saying as well , when everyone goes oh , you make no money on spotify , when you're a music artist , and you say and correctly say , by the way that it's not spotify's job to pay the artist directly . And daniel egg um had a post on your favorite platform , linkedin , talking about um . He says Spotify doesn't actually pay artists or songwriters directly . We pay rights holders like record labels and publishers , and it's up to the artist , based on the contracts they've signed , to the amount of money they get paid . But you know and again , I suppose that's the stick that everyone gets beaten with or beats spotify with and daniel , like you , is saying no , no , no , we make the payouts . Two-thirds of all the money gets paid out , but we can't determine how much of that money then gets handed on to the artist well , it's quite a um .

James Cridland 18:37

It's the battle of the billions , isn't it ? Because here's spotify talking about 10 billion dollars to the music industry and , of course , youtube , last week , saying that they have 1 billion listeners to podcasts 1 billion listeners , and so I guess you know YouTube has just released a big number . Why don't we release a bigger number ? But yeah , I did wonder if that was the case . It was like a FU to YouTube .

Sam Sethi 19:04

Yeah , you might have lots of , yeah , you might have lots of people watching , but we have lots of people paying , which is the bigger announcement , I guess .

James Cridland 19:12

Yes , I guess . So Spotify interestingly didn't send that to me , but they did send an email saying that Bill Simmons is going to stay at Spotify . Now the interesting thing from the PR people Bill Simmons to remain at Spotify as head of talk strategy , reporting into newly appointed head of podcast business , roman Vossenmuller . Now , roman Vossenmuller excellent name , crazy name , crazy guy . I ended up sitting down with him when I was in LA anyway , so he is a very interesting guy . He's worked at strategy and monetization for Spotify . He's now just called head of talk strategy , so he's actually dropped a bit , possibly because he hasn't really been too keen on the whole video thing . So you know , from Spotify he seems to be much more interested in pushing YouTube . So , but you know , interesting to see that he is staying at Spotify . Last month was five years since Spotify acquired the Ringer , but you know , certainly re-signing . So , yes , interesting too .

Sam Sethi 20:37

Has he moved his video over to Spotify yet ?

James Cridland 20:39

I mean , some of his video is on Spotify . There is a . So the note says and the note is a very strange note , it's seemingly Spotify's word wrap has completely failed , so it's a very wide email , but the video says that Spotify's the Ringer is rolling out video across its podcast portfolio now with the majority of shows featuring video episodes . Well , that's been the case on youtube for quite some time . Um , it then has a video case study , talk the thrones , which introduced video episodes on spotify and quickly saw a 70 increase in followers , with 84 of new users actively watching in the foreground .

James Cridland 21:26

This seems to be a trope from Spotify that they will say introduce video and you get a significant increase in followers , which I don't fully kind of understand why that would be the case , but nevertheless , that's what Spotify is saying . So , yeah , and I thought it was interesting . I mean , it's five bullet points that I got from the Spotify PR people , and one of those bullet points was all about video and how Spotify is really leaning into video for the Ringer , which I thought hmm , I wonder why they would be so keen in pointing that one out .

Sam Sethi 22:04

I thought , hmm , I wonder why they would be so keen in pointing that one out . Todd Cochran and Rob Greenlee that's right , todd , it's like he's in the room and basically , great show worth listening to . They're talking about lots and lots of things to do with audio and video , um , and one of the things they talked about was the user user experience on audio first , podcast apps , right , and they're talking about spotify being um a video now app , and how the ui does not lean or lend itself into video discovery . So if you actually try and find a video podcast on spotify's app , it's not easy to find . You have to search for it , then it doesn't auto play it , it plays the audio version first and then you have to choose an option to play the video .

Sam Sethi 22:59

And again , the thing that you say the pr people are telling you is that you know there's an an increase in the number of people who follow video because now video is there , right , I could get that if it was TikTok , the report we had a couple of weeks back , which was you know , the follower count is dead and the idea is that the algorithm of TikTok is just presenting video to video to video . Algorithm of TikTok is just presenting video to video to video . I could see that people would then start clicking on the follow button because their new users being discovered video from a new creator that they didn't know about and therefore they just go . Oh , that's really cool , click , follow , follow . But when you're on Spotify , that isn't the algorithmic experience . You're just having to find the one you want . Then you have to choose the video . Then you might lean into it or lean back from the video , whichever way you're going .

James Cridland 23:48

So I don't agree that they could have so much of an increase in the number of followers just because they've added video to the podcast feed and I think one of the interesting things about the new media show is Rob Greenlee tries everything and is very keen to try new technology and make sure that that works . I don't think that Todd Cochran uses any of these new tools . I'm not sure that he knows what any of these new tools are . If he'd actually tried Spotify I just did a search for the Ringer found the Bill Simmons show , pressed the play button . Now it's not obvious that it's video , but once you get into the podcast and you press the play button , it is in full screen and it just plays the video in full screen . And I wonder you know on the new media show how much of it is Todd Cochran who simply hasn't tried anything , just making stuff up in the confident way that us white men do .

Sam Sethi 24:44

It's all that us white men do it's all right , brown men do it as well . Hey , I could do this . Yes , just I just thought to go . You know it's not you white men don't have the uh monopoly on making up bullshit .

James Cridland 24:54

Yes , yes on confidently spouting bullshit , but I think , certainly , I think certainly that is an interesting one and , I think , making the ui clearer . It's certainly not clear when you're searching for the Ringer , for example , you we talked about . Would Spotify be a good podcast app ?

Sam Sethi 25:28

if it didn't have the music . So if you could take all the music away from Spotify and it was just a standalone podcast app , is it a good podcast ?

James Cridland 25:36

app . Well , yes , no is the quick answer .

Sam Sethi 25:40

No no , it's not . It's a rubbish podcast app . The UI sucks .

James Cridland 25:46

I mean I have to say I think you know , I mean my , my views are pretty clear on this . I actually think that the apple podcasts um app itself is very nice . The ui is very , is very good , it seems to work quite nicely , but it's not a good player . The actual player is not very good and that's the reason why I use Overcast . The UI is slightly less good , it has slightly less features , but the player , when you're playing the audio , it has voice boost , it has speed , you know skip smart speed , whatever it is , it's got all of that stuff around the player and that is why I end up using that , because I mean that at the end of the day , that's what matters really . But yes , completely agree that Spotify and YouTube music are both not very good podcast apps and I think that's an interesting point that Annalise makes . Is that you know , if it didn't have everything else in there , would you still use it as a podcast app ? And I I'm sure that the answer is no .

Sam Sethi 26:50

Yeah , and I think , uh , you know what I find . Obviously , with my CEO of True Fans , I look at other apps from time to time and what you notice is Spotify is trying to jam more and more into the same UI without changing the UI completely , and it's becoming , I think , nearly impossible to discover most of the features that they're building now , because they're so layered that you actually can't find things on the homepage .

James Cridland 27:21

It was one of those things that I said to Roman . Actually , I said , look , I've . You know I hadn't used Spotify for a number of years . I'm back using Spotify . There are so many new features in there , but I only noticed them because I've been away from the product for a number of years . And he said , yeah , it's a problem that we've got , you know , it's a problem that we've got . That actually , you know , we're always rolling out new features , but how do you communicate those ? Well , and you know , without covering your app full of you know , windows saying new , you know , every time you hit a button . So , yeah , I find that fascinating .

Sam Sethi 27:59

Now you got some other feedback from Spotify , because Amanda McLaughlin had said that her clients were not happy with the amount of money they were making from video podcasting on Spotify and the fact that they'd left the program and gone back to the Spotify Span program , which is the Spotify advertising network . So what did ?

James Cridland 28:20

Spotify say Come on , yeah . So Spotify gave us a statement that says , while we can't comment on specific creators or shows , just remember that creators who join the Spotify Partner Program late in the month , have irregular posting schedules or experience broader declines in audience engagement , may see lower initial earnings and less accurate month-to-month comparisons . Are you not just commenting on exactly that specific creator or show there ? Spotify spokesperson .

Sam Sethi 28:49

Yes .

James Cridland 28:50

Because I checked and the particular show that Amanda McLaughlin signed up joined the platform in the middle of January . So I think it was . Well , I can't say what date it was , but let's just say it was in the middle of January , because otherwise you'll guess who it is . Irregular posting schedules yes , this particular show has irregular posting schedules . Sometimes it posts more than one show a day . Experience broader declines in audience engagement . Well , it did see a slight drop between December and January . So basically , spotify have said we can't comment on specific creators or shows , but let's comment on this particular creator or show and say that that's the reason why it's not doing very well . And at the end of it , my query back to Spotify was I don't understand if this show joined . Let's just say that this show joined on the 15th of January .

James Cridland 29:48

If this show joined on the 15th of January , why would that have made a difference to the amount of money earned through Spotify video versus Span ? Because if you've halved the amount of money that you've earned on Span , you've got half of that money back through the Spotify video thing . So surely that wouldn't have made any difference at all . And there was a kind of an um and an uh , from Spotify and they promised to get back to me and they haven't . So you know I'm not quite sure what's going on there .

James Cridland 30:18

Spotify spokesperson goes on and says overall , though it's still early , the programme has proven valuable for the vast majority of enrolled shows . Proven valuable for is not earning more money than span . So , again , that's just worthwhile , bearing in mind . Amanda McLaughlin came back to me and said look , you know , our experience is my client opted into video on Spotify , lost a pretty significant chunk of money during their first month in the program . We've made the best decision for us with the data we've received and we've opted out , and that's as far as it goes . Now what I would love is to hear from other creators . So far we've heard from one creator and that creator has not had a good experience with the Spotify Video Partner Program . It'd be lovely to hear from some more , and if they're doing fantastically , then great .

Sam Sethi 31:14

I would give Spotify one get-out-of-jail card , which is it is early days , right ? We can't throw the baby out with a bathwater just after one or two months of data , because I don't think there's insufficient time . If this was the other way around .

James Cridland 31:29

If somebody had joined the Spotify partner program to join SPAN , to join the Spotify advertising network , that Spotify audience network , if we could be strictly accurate , that obviously you need to find clients , you need to educate them on this particular show , blah , blah , blah . That is not going to be instantaneous . It is going to be instantaneous the other way , because it's a revenue share of the money that Spotify is earning . So I'm not sure I buy the , but it's early days . For the Spotify Partner Program I could totally buy . If you're joining Span and you wonder where the money is on your first month . You're not going to have very much money on the first month . But for the Spotify Partner Program I'm not so sure .

Sam Sethi 32:30

Well , I'm sure we'll come back to this one , james

Audiobooks and AI

Sam Sethi 32:32

. Now the final bit of the Spotify trilogy of stories . Spotify is going to mark audiobooks as AI what's ?

James Cridland 32:42

going on , James ? Yes , so they launched a product from Eleven Labs which , essentially , if you are an author and you've written a book and you want an audiobook version of that to appear on Spotify , then you can press a couple of buttons and a voice from 11 Labs will essentially make you an audiobook version with that AI voice . So that's what they are doing . They say that they are going to be marking the use of AI , so you know that a particular book has been done by AI , but that's the announcement that they made at the end of last month .

Sam Sethi 33:28

Now we've talked about in the past using Notebook LM , and we've talked about WonderCraft and we've talked about other tools for creating AI voices , and we've said that in RSS there's the explicit tag , but we don't have a AI tag yet , right ? So there isn't a standardization of marking up an RSS feed that the hosts were AI or the content was created and I don't think the content being created with AI is that important , but the hosts are AI and if Spotify is doing this , are they going to give the industry a standard that allows us to follow in the way that we all should mark up content that is AI , or are we going to still have to come up with our own standard as ?

James Cridland 34:14

well , sorry , I'm just checking . You've just said the word Spotify and standard in the same phrase .

Sam Sethi 34:20

Okay , okay , let me lead ?

James Cridland 34:22

No , I mean no , yes . Well , I will tell you no , because it's internal to Spotify . It's an audio book which is internal to Spotify . It's not sent out via RSS to anywhere else , so Spotify has no standard that they wish to end up doing . Now , the way that it is mentioned that it is an AI-read book is in two places . Firstly , it will clearly say AI in the book metadata in the app , so you will clearly know that it is voiced by AI . But also , the first words you hear are this book has been voiced by AI or something similar in the actual audio itself .

James Cridland 35:07

And I think there's a bit of a misunderstanding from quite a lot of people that just putting something in the show notes absolves you of mentioning it in the audio . That is absolutely not the case , and I have found now quite a lot of information from the FTC , from the Federal Trade Commission , basically saying no , it's not good enough just to put something in the show notes , it has to be in the audio or in the video as well . So that's the way that Spotify is doing it . Fun fact , by the way , I asked the FTC , I got in touch with their press office and was asking them about this for a story that I'm going to be writing soon about making it clear that you know you've been paid for something and a very nice man from the FTC was helping me with that inquiry . And then all of a sudden , after Doge and everything else , he's not replying to any of my emails . Can't think why that ? Oh , yes , because he's been fired , really yes absolutely .

Sam Sethi 36:10

Oh my God , my emails can't think why that ? Oh yes , because he's been fired . So really , yes , absolutely so . Uh , yes , there's a thing the only joy I have this at the moment is watching the tester share price on a daily basis drop yes , well , but other than that , and it's very sad . Now , um , one of the things that we have , in the past , talked about in the GitHub podcast community is how do we do AI , james ? So I'm going to ask you should there be an AI tag ? Is this the way forward ?

James Cridland 36:35

Now I was having a conversation with John McDermott from Canna Roga Shark Media the other week , who listens to this particular show , and he was promoting a new show which is called White Smoke , which is all about what happens when the Pope dies . I think he may have spotted an SEO opportunity there and of course , it's all AI voiced . So he ended up using AI plus human intervention to make a script to make a series of six or eight shows . They've been AI voiced , they sound quite good , apparently , and that's all fine . And I said where does it say that it's AI ? And he kind of pushed back on that a little bit and said why is that important if it sounds good enough ? And I thought , well , that's an interesting point . And then it reminded me of Queen's A Night at the Opera album . Do you have Queen's A Night at the Opera album ?

Sam Sethi 37:29

I did . I don't have any vinyl . I stupidly sold it .

James Cridland 37:33

In the vinyl in the gatefold . There was a bit on the gatefold that said no electronic instruments keep music live , or something uh of that sort . So there was actually a not AI , if you like it , if you like it that way um , uh thing in that . Now obviously you know what happened to Queen . They ended up suddenly realizing that they could produce much better , more exciting music , arguably um , using uh , using uh , arguably using electronics rather than just acoustic instruments . And so it comes back to do you insist that every Howard Jones track has a declaration on the track as you start playing it , saying this track includes the use of a drum machine ?

Sam Sethi 38:30

I mean , no , no , but I would like them to include it that this singer can't sing and has used auto-tune .

James Cridland 38:36

Ah well , there we are . That would be lovely , well there we are .

Sam Sethi 38:38

You know , cheryl Cole , spice Girls , name them all , right ? Who , when you hear them without auto-tune , sound like a cat screeching ? Yeah , I'd love the auto-tune label on that , please , but they won't do that . And , pushing back on John a little bit , give me the choice , right , john ? Yes , I agree , the AI voices are getting much , much better . There's a really cool new AI that came out this week called Sesame , and the character voice is called Maya and it is truly amazing . It's a conversational AI and every demo I've seen and I've tried it myself it is very , very hard to tell that you're not talking to a normal person . The quality is unbelievable , and so I can see how you know going down the road . The Alan Turing test will we be able to tell that this is a computer ? I think we will fail and they will pass the Alan Turing test right and we will fail .

James Cridland 39:40

Yeah , I think there's a bunch of people who are listening to some of the Caloroga Shark Media stuff now , or to many other podcasts , who don't necessarily realise that they're listening to an AI voice . I guess my mind has been changed somewhat . Remembering Queen's album , remembering the use of drum machines Do we really have to mention that ? Do we have to mention if an AI voice has been used for a 30-second ad in the middle of this show ? You know where are the lines here and I think nobody really yet knows , do they ? You know in terms of that ?

Sam Sethi 40:19

No , we don't know .

James Cridland 40:19

We had a panel in a couple of weeks' time in Dublin talking about the use of AI , and then on another panel in a couple of weeks more in Toronto talking about AI . So doubtless I will be saying all of this all over again .

Sam Sethi 40:38

And that's kind of how it works . Ai from other people is . In a world of AI where we're going to get more and more of it , I want to cling to the human relationship more and more . Um the , the , the reality of human , uh connection , uh , feeling , uh , sentiment , experience , uh , the backstory . The AI has none of those and it can fake some of it , but it can't actually have it .

James Cridland 41:05

It doesn't have kids , they didn't go to school , they don't have a partner , they , you know , as Notebook LM characters , found out one day , and let's also just remember that there are lots of people out there who watch movies and you are watching actors You're not watching . You know a guy who really is on Mars .

Sam Sethi 41:26

Really , come on . I thought Elon had got there already .

James Cridland 41:30

So you know . So quite a lot of this is . You know , the point of quite a lot of this stuff is to suspend belief and to enjoy the moment . So I don't know , I think it's an interesting one . Should there be a clear disclaimer for I'm being paid to be polite about Tesla or whatever it might be ? Yes , there should be in my mind , you know , a very clear understanding of where somebody has paid me to say something . But should there be something where I just turn around and I say you know what ? You know , I messed up when I said something earlier and I got my , I got a cloned voice to say that in my voice and you'll never know ? I'm not sure , necessarily that that needs to be a disclaimer .

Google closes another thing

James Cridland 42:19

The Pod .

Announcer 42:20

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

Sam Sethi 42:27

James , now Google . We love , love Google , don't we , Because they always add something to the graveyard . What have they added to the graveyard this time ?

James Cridland 42:36

Yes .

James Cridland 42:37

So if you want to talk to your Google smart speaker and you say Google play the latest news , with an additional word at the front of that , then that would have given you the latest news from a big broadcaster .

James Cridland 42:52

In the US it's NPR , in the UK it's the BBC , but it might also be LBC In the UK , it might also be Sky News , but it'll play you a news bulletin and that has been responsible for significant download numbers for many shows that Google play the latest news thing . Anyway , if you have a relatively recent Android phone which has switched over to Gemini , it no longer plays anything for you and it just reads you some bad and out of date news headlines instead Another Google triumph . I am a content partner for Google News Audio Briefings and Google didn't bother to tell us anything about that , which I'm a little bit salty about . But yes , so it's yet another example of Google making a change a product that wasn't , frankly , ready yet to launch , but they felt that they had to instantly change , get rid of Google Assistant and stick Google Gemini on mobile phones , and that's had a very bad effect for quite a lot of shows .

Sam Sethi 44:02

It's one of the reasons why I no longer use or trust Google . I try to keep away from every Google product because I don't believe it has longevity . I think they , on the whim , will change things . We saw that with Google Podcasts recently , obviously .

James Cridland 44:15

Yeah , we did , although you know . I mean I would be interested to know from the Pod News report card . I would be interested to know how well YouTube has actually done this time around , because obviously we had quite a lot of negative stories about YouTube last year . Youtube wasn't particularly high in the list of podcast platforms for anything really . So I'm quite keen to find out where YouTube is in the Pod News report card this time around . I will be doing that at Evolutions by Podcast Movement . Don't know when yet , because that session hasn't yet appeared on the timetable , but as soon as I know , then you will know about it as well in the Pod News newsletter . But I think that there's , you know . It'll be interesting to see whether podcast creators agree with us that you know Google , you know , seems to have lost its way , or whether actually podcast creators are much happier with Google and moving forward

Round the world

James Cridland 45:16

.

Sam Sethi 45:17

Let's whiz around the world very quickly then , James . What's going on in the USA ?

James Cridland 45:20

What's going on in the US ? Well , audia released its annual financial report . If you remember , this is a company that launched a ad skipping podcast app , which , actually , they've still failed to launch it . They made a loss of $8.7 million last year . They've not earned a single dollar in revenue . The CEO , though , received a 17% pay rise . Well done , well done Audia . And if you wanted to waste your time , you could have gone to South by Southwest and seen Audia , a company which is totally useless at making money , sharing their thoughts on how the company views the podcast industry's financial landscape . Why did anybody give that company any time and space on a South by Southwest stage ? What is going on there ? That makes no sense to me whatsoever , unless they paid to be there .

Sam Sethi 46:17

I thought you were going to say why did any VC give them money ? Because that's the bigger question . I mean not having released the product . I mean I didn't realise that . I thought they'd released the product , but it was just failing To me .

James Cridland 46:27

this is everything . Again , this is everything that is wrong with large areas of the tech landscape where you get charlatans like this lot who've earned no money , who don't seem , by the way , to believe that podcast creators should share in any of the money that they may make in the future , even if they're going to strip out their ads . But they're utter charlatans . They clearly know nothing about running a profitable , successful business and they have the temerity to turn around to us and say what our financial landscape is going to be . Go and get in the sea . From my point of view , let's leave them alone .

Sam Sethi 47:16

I think we've .

James Cridland 47:17

No , let's not . Let's have another 10 minutes on all .

Sam Sethi 47:22

No , let's move on . Let's put that boot in again . Where is it ?

James Cridland 47:27

Let's move on . There's a new comedy podcast network in town . It's the WITZ podcast network . No , it's not , it's the WITZ podcast network . It's been launched by a company called Cineverse , which is better known for horror and true crime , and a comedy club brand called the Stand . Of course , comedy is the number one podcast category in the US . So there's a big thing going on there , which is nice . There's the Golden Lobe Awards , which is a comedy podcast awards ceremony . If you want to enter , you've got one more day to enter . That Entries are just $32 , 25 quid if you want to do that . So that's all good .

James Cridland 48:12

In Australia , Mamma Mia Out Loud is recording a show in the Apple Store in George Street in Sydney . That's a clever plan if you can do that . It's quite late in the day , I think it's between five and six on a Saturday evening . You can go there . I once went to the Apple store in George Street , Sydney , because the MacBook Air that I was using had ballooned in size , so the battery had gone completely wrong , and in three hours I was due on an aeroplane and I went into the Apple store and I said I'm not leaving until you take this battery out .

Sam Sethi 48:47

So you were there until about Monday the following week .

James Cridland 48:49

Were you no , no , no . And they went and they did that pretty well instantly and I said I will not be allowed on a plane if they see the state of this thing because it's about to burst into flames . So there we are . So that was nice . A couple of people and jobs Jason Kalin now working at Frequency as their chief commercial officer . He's worked for ad exchanges and creative ad platforms for a long , long time and Matt White has been promoted at Podimo to be global director of Content and Production . Of course , podimo having a fantastically good time of it . Go and have a look at some previous shows to learn a little bit more about that

Awards and events

James Cridland 49:33

.

Announcer 49:33

Podcast events on the Pod News Weekly Review .

James Cridland 49:38

Well , lots of awards are happening or have just happened . The iHeartMedia Awards happened last week in South by Southwest , the winners and stuff on the Pod News website at some point Also in India . I mean , they're all American winners , so not that interested In India .

Sam Sethi 50:02

The Podmasters 2025 podcast awards they're not all American , that's fine .

James Cridland 50:06

They won't be all American . You can only enter in rupees . Their early bird deadline has been extended to March the 17th . If you want to try and enter that , there's quite some form to fill out if you do . And , of course , let's not forget that the AMBIs are happening on the 31st of March in Chicago in the US as part of Evolutions 2025 .

James Cridland 50:32

They've announced a number of speakers . They've announced me finally . So that's nice . So I'm definitely talking once . I think I'm talking three times , but I'm not quite so sure yet . I'm not on their list yet , but I'm sure that I'll find it out sooner or later . Also talking , dan Granger from Oxford Road is doing a keynote session on what is a podcast . What is a podcast , as well as Steve Goldstein and Jay Nachlis . You would have heard Jay a couple of weeks ago on this very show talking about the state of video podcasting and how important that is . And , who knows , the Pod News report card might have some of that kind of stuff as well . You can still use the code podnews if you want to save on evolution's passes . So that's nice .

Sam Sethi 51:18

Yeah , well , while you're gallivanting over to Gilead sorry America and doing keynotes , in April I will be at the Birmingham University at UniPodFest run by Nina Robinson . It's her third year . This is in Birmingham , it's on the 4th of April and I'll be talking about the future of podcasting there , so that will be a little event that I'll be doing there .

James Cridland 51:41

Very nice . And PodCamp 2.0 , which is your thing happening around the same time as a podcast show in London . You've got some exciting news there , don't you ?

Sam Sethi 51:56

Yeah , nick from Fountain and I have been talking and I had a two-hour conversation with Julie Costello . It's all looking good . Unfortunately , jason and Frida couldn't make the call last week so we haven't still spoken , so I've gone for plan C . I can't wait any longer to find a venue . So I've got a venue that I will be announcing which is nearby . I just , yeah , city University couldn't do it .

Sam Sethi 52:19

I don't think the London Podcast Show have a priority around this . I think they're too busy with other things now , so I'm not going to wait any longer . So you'll hear the announcement from all of us next week where we are going to be doing the event . But good news is that Julie Costello and the whole crew are coming over to do two concerts in the UK . One will be on Friday , the 23rd of May .

Sam Sethi 52:45

Strangely , where I used to live in Leon C in Essex , there's an event down there and that's going to be fun to go back and a few of my mates from around there are coming with me . But they're also doing Dingwalls in London during the London podcast show . So on the Wednesday night they'll be doing that . So if you want to go along , there'll be details about that venue and that gig . And then , yes , we will be doing the agenda . I'll be putting that out of all the speakers and panels and what we're doing it's a show and tell . No one's allowed PowerPoints I'm not having any . So if you've got slideware , don't bring it . We want to have people showing and talking about what's actually tangibly out there now in podcasting 2.0 land and , yeah , that's the goal of the whole event . So that'll be on the 20th of May , 2.0 day .

James Cridland 53:34

Very nice and more details on the website , which is Podcamp2.live

The Tech Stuff

James Cridland 53:39

.

Announcer 53:39

The tech stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review .

James Cridland 53:43

Yes , it's the stuff you'll find every Monday in the Pod News newsletter . Here's where Sam talks technology Pocket Casts good news from them .

Sam Sethi 53:50

Yeah , pocket Casts has opened its web player to everyone . You don't need an account to listen , which is very good . You can go and try it out . I think you've put your Pod News Daily up there as an example link on the Pod News website , so , yeah , that's an example you can go to . Why have they done this , james ?

James Cridland 54:09

Why have they done this ? Well , they talk about the future of podcasting . Shouldn't be locked behind walled gardens . They talk about podcasts .

Sam Sethi 54:15

Belong to the people , not corporations they talk about podcasting is one of the last open corners of the internet and we're here to keep it that way . It feels like Matt Mullenberg's been writing some press releases .

James Cridland 54:27

Yeah , well , yes , and great that they have opened their web player . It's a very good web player . It's almost as good as the Apple Podcasts web player , and therein lies the problem for me it's almost as good as that . It's not as good as that . It doesn't work on mobile , yet it doesn't show transcripts , which , by the way , apple Podcasts doesn't either yet on the web you can't install it as a PWA . Why would you ? Because obviously , pocket Cast has its own app , which is a good app . So I'm kind of there thinking I mean , it's great that they have opened up their web player to everybody . It's great that it is available . I have used that web player in the past . It is a good , fully featured web player . You know it's very nice .

James Cridland 55:12

My question would be I'm just I don't quite get the talking of OpenRSS and how exciting it is and blah , blah , blah . And we're here to make sure that podcasting shouldn't be locked behind a walled garden because you know , I mean you don't need an account or anything to get onto Apple Podcasts on the web . Spotify works fine on the web . You can get a free account on that . You know , I'm kind of there really wanting to make it succeed . But if you were to ask me my own personal opinion , I'd say I don't really understand why they've done it . Maybe just to make life a little bit easier for their paid-for service .

Sam Sethi 55:54

I don't know I think I call it crack cocaine marketing , right , which is you give something away for free , hook people in and then charge them on the back of it , right , and that , I think , is what they're doing . It's a way of saying look you , the barrier to entry to use pocketcast was you had to create an account , um , or maybe subscribe or or whatever . But now you don't have to do that . You can experience the whole pocketcast environment and then , if you really really like it guess what ? If you want the cooler features , then you can create an account , and if you want even more cooler features , buy a subscription , right , and it's just a natural thing to do . I think it's a very simple , clear strategy of how you bring people into a funnel . But the things that I find quite frustrating for companies of that size because , let's be honest , it's part of the big automatic company it's not a little plucky startup .

Sam Sethi 56:54

I think it's quite . I'll say it . I think it's lazy of Apple , and I would go as far to say it's lazy of Pocket Cast as well not to code it correctly , to be a PWA , not to have it mobile ready . I just don't see why you put something out that's half-baked in both cases right , when you've clearly got enough resource to go and do it .

James Cridland 57:17

I mean , apple's is a PWA now . It wasn't when it launched , but it is now . But the Pocket Casts web player , yeah , I mean , you know it was a bit weird that it didn't work for mobile . Now the interesting thing is that the share links that it produces are share links which will open the Pocket Casts app if you have that installed . If not , it will open the web player and that's quite nice . But there again , it will open the web player and that's quite nice . But there again , apple Podcasts does that too , and you know I'm not Apple Podcasts' biggest fan . But on the other side , their web player is a good quality thing . You can install it as an app . It works best if you're using Android , weirdly , but you can install it as if it's an app .

James Cridland 58:03

I'm trying to understand the Pocket Casts plan because their crack cocaine thing . You'll use the app . You'll download the free Pocket Casts app on either iOS or on Android . That's where the majority , vast majority , 90 X percent of podcast listens happen . So I'm I'm I'm just kind of looking at this and saying you know it was a very excited press release about how you know podcasts belong to the people , man , um , but you know you can't even link to it without using either an iTunes ID or a uh or Pocket Cast's own GUID . So actually there's no real openness there . You know , I don't know , am I being ?

Sam Sethi 58:51

maybe I'm just being a little bit grumpy about it , maybe , but look , I think it's all positive in the fact that you know Apple and Pocket Cast and Adam Curry and Dave Jones , who we talked about last week with GodCast , true Fans we're all web-based players , right , and we talk about Buzzsprout , blueberry all having web players as well . I think it's good that the web is being supported , that it's not all Flash 2 , sorry , iOS and I think you know the proprietary nature of those , but equally , I know I have to go down that road as true fans . You just said it 98% of plays are on mobile . People are Pavlovian , trained to go to app stores , and actually it's a good thing in some ways . The app to home screen debacle that Apple have , where they won't say add a app , right is , is a frustration for me and you said something else just now which is ? It strangely works better on android than apple . Yeah , because apple support for pwas is rubbish and they put yeah , and they've designed it to be rubbish right , whereas android have not designed it to be rubbish , or at least a lot better than than the Apple experience . So we know what's going on .

Sam Sethi 1:00:06

I think what will happen , though . I think Fountain has this . We will have this soon . Any web-based platform that has a player gets a lovely banner at the top of the screen , courtesy of Apple , that says oh , by the way , you can now load this from the App Store if you want the app experience and that nice banner which makes users who'd happen to find you on the web an easier way to install . You have to go down that route , and I'm wondering whether Pocket Cast is saying oh yeah , people have been searching for us or been looking and there's been a gateway to entry . Okay , open the gateway . And oh , and , now we can put a banner at the top of this that says install Pocket Cast from the iOS or Android app stores . Right , I think it's just that . So it's a little bit of give away something , but we're going to bring you back into the iOS native experiences and then we can get the subscription out of you later .

James Cridland 1:01:02

Yeah , and as it currently works , um , uh , then , uh , it does give you a splash screen the first time that you go there , which basically says hey , this doesn't work very well on mobile , but here's where you can download and install the app . Um , they aren't actually using the app banner , which is weird .

James Cridland 1:01:20

Um , but um yeah but , but you know , there we are , are you can also see that banner working , by the way , um , if you visit a um a podcast page on the pod news website , because I've coded up those banners to automatically dive straight into the apple podcasts app , which seems to work quite nicely , very nice um .

Sam Sethi 1:01:40

I fancy having an audio shake with you , James . Why would I do that ?

James Cridland 1:01:51

This is a company that produces a bunch of different AI audio tools , presumably so that other companies can license them .

James Cridland 1:01:54

So Wondercraft has licensed this one , for example , which is a tool to separate overlapped voices .

James Cridland 1:02:00

So if you or I , if I was recording this as one track I record this multi-track so that I can actually do this anyway , but if I was recording this as one track , if we were in the same room and all of that , what this tool will allow you to do is go , okay , I want from this one track where two people are talking over one another , I want just Sam on one track and just James on the other track , and it will automatically work out and separate the two different voices from that one piece of audio , which is really clever and could make life an awful lot easier for podcast editors .

James Cridland 1:02:42

So I thought that was quite nice . There's a nice demo that I linked to in the release and , as I say , the tool is already integrated into WonderCraft and , from my point of view and I may have got this wrong , but I think WonderCraft is essentially a big company which is essentially licensing other people's tech , but putting a standard UX , you know around it and from that point of view , it works really well , so it's a very clever idea .

Sam Sethi 1:03:11

Yeah , they license 11 labs . I mean again , you know , I remember I mean Microsoft used to license a ton of third-party IP and call it Excel or Word and you , you know , wrap it with their own ui around it . So , yeah , it's not a bad strategy , right ? Yeah , talking of video , talking of other stuff , alitu , or alitu , how do you say that , james , anyway , um , yeah , alitu , I think yes . What have they done ?

James Cridland 1:03:40

yeah , yes , they , uh , they now record video . So if you're doing a remote recording , then you used to just get the audio tracks . Now you get a fancy little MP4 download with all of the videos neatly arranged into a grid , ready to upload straight to YouTube without any additional editing . It's Todd Cochran's ideal product and it's available to every customer with no additional cost .

Sam Sethi 1:04:02

Maybe a license ?

James Cridland 1:04:02

Hooray , I mean maybe he might like um , and it's available to every customer with no additional cost . Maybe a license , hooray , but I mean , maybe he might , maybe he might

The inbox

James Cridland 1:04:06

boostergram , boostergram , boostergram , super , super .

Announcer 1:04:09

Comments , zaps , fan mail , super chats and email .

James Cridland 1:04:14

Our favorite time of the week , it's the pod news weekly review inbox yes , so many different ways to get in touch with us fan mail by using the link in our show notes , super comments on true fans or boosts everywhere else , or email , and we share any money that we make just between sam and I . None of the rest of the massive pod news team , um , gets , uh , any of that , um , so , uh , yes , and my umbral is up and running as , as you can see , a ton of little messages in here . Bruce , the ugly quacking duck has sent a row of ducks . Double two , double two sats . Thanks again . There you go , that's nice . There's another one here saying another great episode , there you go See . Great episode , there you go See . So Bruce actually gave us some additional sats for the longer version of Adam and Dave on the Godcaster that we published on Monday . If you've not yet seen that , what else is here ? There's ideas about what to do with our power supporters here from Lyceum ?

Sam Sethi 1:05:25

Yeah , I will become a power supporter in the near future . He says James and Sam , how about stickers or coasters for my tea mug , beer , wine glass ? Here is a symbolic krona . One sec is now around 100 satoshis . Very nice , yes . No , we're not opening a merch store .

James Cridland 1:05:53

I don't think we need James and Sam on a t-shirt . No , I don't think anyone's buying that . I got a lot of pod coasters printed up . See what I did there . A lot of pod coasters printed up and I thought , well , these will be really nice to send to people . And then I realized that because they're not flat like a sticker is , it's obvious that there is something in the envelope . Australia Post wanted to charge me $26 every time I sent one of those overseas and so no , so I got rid of all of them in New Zealand . So that's how that works . But yes , you know , I wouldn't be too upset in terms of stickers . I would go to Sticker Mule , but the guy that runs Sticker Mule has turned into an idiot , so I can't do that anymore . But if I can find a decent company , then I'm up for stickers .

James Cridland 1:06:54

I think one of the exciting things about sending a new subscriber a sticker is that it ends up being sent with an Australian stamp from Australia . Sticker is that it ends up being sent with an Australian stamp from Australia . So , firstly , it takes about six weeks to get to you and you'll forget that you were getting anything in the first place . So it'll be a nice surprise . But also , secondly , it'll have , I don't know , a cuddly koala or a kangaroo on the stamp or wherever it works . So I'll be up for stickers , but I know that you've got other ideas as well . In fact , neil Velio sends us 1,500 sats . As a power supporter , I'd say you do enough for us all . Oh , thanks , neil , but I'd never complain about a WhatsApp group for us . Oh , a WhatsApp group for the Sensational 17 . That's an interesting idea .

Sam Sethi 1:07:40

Yeah , I mean , they're pretty quick to do . We can put one together . I just wonder how the conversation will go within it . That's all . I'm on several other WhatsApp groups and they get initial excitement and then they fade away , unless somebody within the group .

James Cridland 1:07:57

I agree . I mean , I would be very happy if anybody wanted . I would be very happy to give , wanted , I would be very happy to give um , uh , our power supporters , um , access to the pod news mastodon so you can post there . But then you can post on the on the podcast index , uh , mastodon as well , or you can post on on you know your own one , um , but I'd be very , very happy to end up uh , doing that . But yeah , you know , I'm just sort of yeah , yes , I , I agree , it's what you actually put there .

James Cridland 1:08:24

Claire Wheat-Brown , 1,000 sats . Thank you , claire . Thanks for the mention of Podcasting 2.0 . In practice , she says in the upcoming Fan Zone Next week , on Podcasting 2.0 , which is this week , march the 13th , which was yesterday , I tell a story , jackanory style , that'll go way over the heads of the Americans , of boosting and personal connection and how I got into this 2.0 stuff in which Pod News , weekly Review and Buzzcast are main characters . Excellent , excellent work of mentioning our sponsor , buzzsprout . Thank you , clare Wake-Brown .

James Cridland 1:08:59

Looking forward to seeing you in London in a month or two's time . What else have we got ? Two to two again from Bruce . Yes , more from Bruce . I'm a big fan of Bruce , I enjoy Saturday mornings with a cup of tea and pod news . Thanks , the ugly quacking duck . Now , if you're enjoying that , that must mean that you're in the US , bruce . I'm guessing , but I don't know , because it turns out that you're in the US , bruce . I'm guessing , but I don't know , because it turns out that you are also anonymous podcast guru user . Thanks for the entertaining news and conversations . So , yes , there we are .

Sam Sethi 1:09:32

Neil Velio . Again , I agree , hosts need to remember why they're here to serve listeners , not just creators . If a tag benefits a listener , it should be a no-brainer . What's that in reference to , I wonder ?

James Cridland 1:09:45

What is that in reference to ? I think that's in reference to podcast hosts not integrating as many tags as you would like them to integrate . Yes , indeed , yes , hosts are there to serve listeners , but obviously the creators are the people that pay them the money , which is an interesting dichotomyotomy , that isn't it ?

Sam Sethi 1:10:08

but have you noticed where the boosts are coming from , uh , and who they're not coming from ? And I'm I'm actually worried about where they're coming from and not coming from in the sense that podcast um , uh , guru and true fans are the people where we're getting the content from or the boost from . Yes , we used to get a ton from Fountain . Now , either people on Fountain just don't like us anymore , which may be a case because they're , you know , into their nostrils , I don't know , but we don't seem to be getting any from Fountain anymore . And where is Mitch ? Where's ?

James Cridland 1:10:45

Podfusk , yes , indeed , that is an interesting point , and an interesting point well made . We've not made any changes .

Sam Sethi 1:11:18

An interesting point well made . We've not made any changes . We still use good old fashioned , you know , links to proper nodes and everything else . So really there should be no reason why those haven't . You know those have gone away , but they clearly have . So , yes , who knows ? I know , I know fountain's moving to ln address and , uh , ln urlp , um , but we , we support that as well . Um , I know that um , but you know where's where , where is um other apps ? I just don't get it . I mean , have we has the old b apocalypse really hit , um , I'm not sure .

Sam Sethi 1:11:34

Yeah , I just thought I'd make an observation , just it just surprised me , that's all you , you make you ?

James Cridland 1:11:37

I mean , has the old bee apocalypse really hit ? I'm not sure . I just thought I'd make an observation . It just surprised me , that's all . You make a good point . It would be interesting , with Adam and Dave , to listen carefully as to where those are coming from as well and see if there's any correlation in between those . It may just be that you know everybody using Fountain is friends with Mr Trump or whatever . I don't know , but that may be the case . Anyway , thank you to our power supporters for your very kind support . Weeklypodnewsnet if you would like to join the Sensational 17 , who are Cameron Moll , Marshall Brown , Matt Medeiros , Mike Hamilton , Dave Jackson , Rachel Corbett , Cy Jobling , David Marzell , Jim James Rocky , Thomas , Neil Velio , Ms Eileen Smith , Claire Waite-Brown , John McDermott , James Burt , the late Bloomer actor , and Brian Entsminger , who is our newest supporter . Thank you all for doing that , Much appreciated and that makes a real difference . So that's very kind .

James and Sam's week

James Cridland 1:12:43

So what's ?

Sam Sethi 1:12:44

happened for you this week , sam . Thanks to you I think Thanks to you we are now looking in the audio for the ID3 tags when we don't have chapters , and we've also added support for Podlove's simple chapters as well .

James Cridland 1:13:01

Very nice too . So Podlove is supported , I know , by Omni Studio and some of the other Triton podcast hosting companies , podcast um hosting companies . Um , so that's a nice thing . And um , so you are using id3 chapters as a fallback if the podcasting 2.0 chapters don't exist , because obviously podcasting 2.0 chapters the benefit with those is you don't have to re-upload audio . Um , you can just change the json file and away you go .

Sam Sethi 1:13:30

Exactly , yeah , perfect but we just thought , where there isn't a chapter , let's try and find something . And Spotify and YouTube used the Podlove format . So again we're seeing within a lot of bigger podcasts that the chapters they're using . So we thought , why not ?

James Cridland 1:13:49

You're also supporting WebSub now , which is nice , and you've updated Podping as well . Everything going fine with WebSub . It was relatively easy to support .

Sam Sethi 1:14:00

Yeah , it took us a day . That's all Not a big thing . And again for the non-Podping supported hosts again it just means we get quicker updates . So yeah , it's a fallback , another fallback .

James Cridland 1:14:13

Worthwhile looking at that , I I would still love to understand why I'm I'm told by some people that web sub is impossible and completely unfit for purpose , so not , not not from where I'm sitting . Um , uh , you're doing something to um anger uh podcast , aren't you ?

Sam Sethi 1:14:34

Old podcast hosts . Yes , the podcasting 1.0 host , yeah , quite happy to anger them . Really , the idea is we decided , instead of having blank pages when you go to something that should have chapters or transcripts , that we will tell you that this host does or doesn't support the feature . So , for example , with the newsagent , captivate does support chapters and transcripts , but the newsagent Global does not provide transcripts or chapters . So , on the transcript page , if the email is available in the RSS feed , we'll even then put a request chapters or transcripts option for you as well , so it'll send an email on your behalf to the creator . So we're doing that . We are going to take it a little bit further . We are going to try and agitate now to ask creators to switch and we are going to promote podcasting 2.0 hosts very aggressively . I think , yes , very interesting , and some podcasting 2.0 hosts very aggressively .

James Cridland 1:15:33

I think yes , very interesting , and some podcasting 2.0 hosts have affiliate deals which you should probably sign up to .

Sam Sethi 1:15:41

We have .

James Cridland 1:15:42

That way , you can earn some money too , as do our sponsors Buzzsprout I think they've got an affiliate deal . They do , yes , they do , and we have the link to it .

Sam Sethi 1:15:52

Yes , we're going to be doing a little bit more . We're working with a couple of hosts on some ideas about how we can be a little bit more aggressive than affiliate deals , but anyway , uh , it requires a few more things from us , like a support for the verified tag and an api from true fans . But anyway , we'll talk about that in another show . Um , we also added co-listening , which is fun , and we've had some really good feedback from people , so people are now getting real-time notifications when people are listening to the same episode and that's working nicely . And claire weight brown , who we mentioned earlier , um , who's one of our past supporters . Um , she's done a fantastic job . Fan zone is now 18 episodes are ready to go . We're on rsscom with that . Who's hosting it for us ? Thank you guys . And that will be out next week . So I'm very excited , very cool .

James Cridland 1:16:38

What's been happening for you , james ? Well , I have been doing a few things . So , firstly , having a look at the pod news report card , diving through the data . It's too late for you to fill it in now , but diving in through the data , good news is that we got a significant increase to last year's numbers from people who have filled that in , which is great . I think possibly even double , so that's super helpful . I mean , we got 20,000 coming in , but 19,500 of those were bots , so that was handy and , in fact , one of the things that I am now seeing .

James Cridland 1:17:17

If you've been following the number of subscribers to the Pod News newsletter over the last week or so , then you will have seen that drop quite a lot . The reason why it's dropping quite a lot is that Yahoo has finally got around to cancelling quite a lot of accounts that were used by some robots or something to weirdly to sign up to the Pod News newsletter . I'm not quite sure why you as a robot would want to do that , but anyway , all of these have finally been cancelled and the way that PodNews works is after three times , after your email bounces three times , then we automatically unsubscribe you . So that's why the numbers have been going down quite a lot over the last week or so , but it's nice to get rid of the robots because that'll increase the open rate , which is always good . So , yes , and obviously I should have been going to Athens in Greece . This is where .

James Cridland 1:18:18

I should have been speaking to you from , but no such luck . I've been here , which has actually been really good because I've been able to hunker down and get a few things done which I've meant to do . One of the fatal mistakes , sam , that I did yesterday was that I typed in the upgrade code to just update the version of Linux I was using on one of my servers to the latest version . You know how that works and normally that works fine . In this particular case , it got halfway through and then hung the box , and that was the box that I send the Pod News newsletter through . Now I did . It was on my list to move it from where it was , somewhere which was cheaper anyway . But , yes , I spent six hours trying to get that box fixed and set back up again .

James Cridland 1:19:16

One of the frustrating has the expletive jar . Is it full ? Oh , my goodness . I mean one of the annoying things is that Amazon has lots of documentation . Quite a lot of it is wrong . So you go in and you go , okay , well , you know what are the magic incantations to set up let's encrypt on this box . And so you go and you use them and it doesn't work . And so you've removed the box and start all over again , assuming that you've made a mistake , and you try again and it doesn't work , and then you realise that , ah , actually no , these instructions by Amazon for their own boxes don't actually work and you should use some weird instruction by some Japanese blogger who's worked out how to get it to work , and it's just a deeply frustrating thing . But anyway , but that's all fixed now , so that's nice and that will save me somewhere in the region of $7 a month or something One less box for me to worry about , in the region of $7 a month or something One less box for me to worry about . But yeah , how ?

Sam Sethi 1:20:16

frustrating . And are you got the full roof on ? Have you got a car that's still on four wheels ?

James Cridland 1:20:24

I mean how are you ? Yes , so we ended up . We didn't lose power , which I was amazed at . I thought that we were going to lose power because all of our power and all of our internet are all on overhead poles , so I was assuming that any old tree would fall onto that and we'd be without power for days . 300,000 households in Queensland were without power during the cyclone , but we were not one of those . So , hooray , it did rain a lot , um , uh , a pool turned bright green , because of course it did Um , but um , so that was um , so that was good . But yeah , we , um , uh , we and most of Brisbane got away relatively okay , uh , which was uh , good , um , cause nobody really wanted that kind of stuff . So , yeah , so it was an interesting time , but no , everything is sort of relatively good . The only casualty has been I took our yard brush out to brush away all of the leaves from all of the drains close to our house to make sure that all of those works , and managed to break my brush , so Amazon is very lucky .

Sam Sethi 1:21:43

I thought you were going to say you found a cobra hiding in there .

James Cridland 1:21:45

No , no , no so Amazon is very lucky that I've ordered a new brush from them , and a brush made out of plastic this time instead of out of metal that rusts . So that's all good . But no , everything was remarkably okay for us . Not so okay for people on the Gold Coast , not so okay for some people on Bribie Island and places like that , and in fact , if you have a look at Surfers Paradise , which used to be this beautiful sandy beach where you could watch people surfing from and everything else , the waves has essentially washed all of the sand away . So now Surfers Paradise is most definitely not a paradise . It's a two and a half metre cliff of sand and that's it sand and that's it . So there'll be no playing around on that beach for a while until they manage to , you know , scoop up all of the sand and stick it back on the beach again . So that's a bit of a shame , but apart from that , everything was all good , which was nice .

Sam Sethi 1:22:45

And I just have a little thank you for you , which is thank you for that email you sent me , which is some of the feedback from the report that made me skip on a Monday morning .

James Cridland 1:22:56

That was really nice . Yeah , the report card's nice . It's got a lot of really nice feedback about individual podcast apps and particularly nice feedback about I wouldn't want to be the guy at Apple Nice feedback . No , it's actually as much better for Apple .

Sam Sethi 1:23:09

That wasn't me , I promise you . I didn't write that . It wasn't me .

James Cridland 1:23:18

Much . That wasn't me , I promise you . I didn't write that . It wasn't me Much better for Apple this year , but yeah so . But no , it's been really nice actually seeing it and really nice this time actually having the time to go through and do that properly and also , for the first time , having the bravery to go in and have a look at the mentions that people made about the Pod News newsletter . Because that was the last question is can Pod News do anything better ? You know what's your feedback Blah , blah , blah And- .

Sam Sethi 1:23:42

Less AI , less AI .

James Cridland 1:23:43

I don't remember a single negative comment in there .

James Cridland 1:23:47

It was all positive , which was really nice . I didn't make that question just so that you would write positive things . I made that question because I'm genuinely interested , but everything was all positive , which was really good . The one interesting piece of feedback that I've had this week has been somebody replying to the email saying I don't suppose anybody will read this , but which is always a good start , and saying it'd be really nice if , instead of the top two , I listed the top five podcasts in the middle of the page .

James Cridland 1:24:23

Now , in the middle of the page , it's a little section called number one for podcasting , which is a little bit of a joke about iHeart , and then it lists well , what she called the top two , but clearly is not clear enough . It's the number one in Spotify in the US and then the number one in Spotify in another country because there are flags there , but it's clearly not clear enough because she's looked at that and gone . It's the top two in Spotify and the top two in Apple . So really interesting , really interesting getting feedback like that and you go oh , I can see why you've read it that way . Right , I'll need to go and change that and make that work better .

Sam Sethi 1:25:02

User feedback yes .

James Cridland 1:25:05

Yeah , so really interesting . So I've enjoyed doing a little bit of that . A little bit of that as we record this 114 minutes so far . Let's see how much of that has escaped after the edit .

Sam Sethi 1:25:20

But that's it for this week All of our podcast stories taken from the Pod News Daily newsletter at podnewsnet . So the length of this show is your fault , fundamentally because everything's taken from your podcast daily . Right , that's what I thought I'd say . But you can support this show by streaming such . You can give us feedback using buzzsprout fan mail in the link in our show notes , and you can send us either a super comment or a boost . Uh , you can also become a power supporter with that now sensational 17 . Who's going to be the ? What would 18 be , james ? What's the moniker that we'll add .

James Cridland 1:25:53

Maybe the 18th can tell us .

Sam Sethi 1:25:56

There you go At weeklypodnewsnet .

James Cridland 1:25:59

Yes , bring your credit card . Our music is from Studio Dragonfly . Our voiceover is Sheila Dee . We use Clean Feed for our audio . We edit with Hindenburg and we're hosted and sponsored by Buzzsprout . Start podcasting , keep podcasting .

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