James Cridland: 0:00

It's Friday, the 21st 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.

Sam Sethi: 0:13

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

Matt Medeiros: 0:18

I just don't agree squarely putting the blame on the podcasting 2.0 team, having just huge respect for folks who dedicate their time to this.

James Cridland: 0:25

That's Matt Medeiros. He's on later, also in the chapters YouTube TV gets podcasting the Infinite Dial 2025. I spill all the tea and lots of Spotify news. This podcast is sponsored by Buzzsprout with the tool, support and community to ensure you keep podcasting, start podcasting, keep podcasting with buzzsproutcom. From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly Review.

Sam Sethi: 0:54

This is going to be a long one. Remember we do do chapters. So if you haven't got chapters in your app, change to a modern new podcast app. So YouTube TV it's basically adding a dedicated podcast tab to its main screen, james.

James Cridland: 1:10

Yes, so TV is now the premium device for YouTube viewing in the US. So TV is a big deal. And a big deal for us in podcasting is that they have added, or they are rolling out, a new tab on the front page of YouTube TV which is called podcasts. So that has existed, but it's existed under a more icon and they've moved us away from the more icon and into the front page. So that's good. I mean, less good is the fact that the podcasts actually listed in there aren't necessarily podcasts. There seems to be some automation that goes on there to put all kinds of things in there, but nevertheless, really good to see podcasts on the front page of YouTube TV. So that's good. Do you watch YouTube on your smart TV in your mansion?

Sam Sethi: 2:05

I don't, but I did this weekend to test it and actually it wasn't a bad experience. They actually sized the image. It's not grainy, it is immediately loaded. Yeah, I mean, I can see why. If you were getting into a habit of doing that, why or how you would do it? Yeah, I think a lot of people are putting it on in the background. Again, the long form podcasts leave them on. I'm not a subscriber to YouTube music, so that wouldn't be how I'd listen to music through my TV. But again, yeah, I can see the experience working.

James Cridland: 2:37

Yeah, I have to say, as a subscriber to YouTube music when you because, of course, you can control all of this through your mobile phone if you want to, and just tell the TV to show YouTube and it will show whatever it is that you're doing on your phone, which is great, and it is the best way by far to consume music. Spotify is okay and it's got some playback stuff and all of that YouTube, of course, it'll play you the video if it's got the music video, so automatically. You don't have to press any magic buttons and so it works fantastically in that way. But, yes, no, it's a good thing. Youtube clearly, as we've heard from the Infinite Dial, doing really well and so, from that point of view, yeah, you know more YouTube podcasts, in inverted commas, so hooray Does this generate the need to have more video with podcasts.

Sam Sethi: 3:33

I mean I don't want to do video, but you know we are seeing a trend towards it. Does the fact that the generic word podcasts now appear on the home screen mean that actually there is more benefit in having a video with your podcast, because people can then watch you on the big screen?

James Cridland: 3:53

Yeah, you could argue that that's the case, and certainly. I mean it seems that podcasts that are in their system but that are just a graphic don't seem to do very well, and you can actually have a look at this pretty clearly if you have a look at the Edison podcast metrics list and you go through that top 10 list and you have a look at YouTube for those shows which are in video and they do fantastically well on YouTube, as you would expect. And then you have a look at things like well, normally I would give the example of the Daily from the New York Times. They've actually started doing a little bit of video now, but you can very clearly see that those don't do very well, nor do some of the things from NPR. So, yeah, I think there's definitely something to be said for doing podcasts in video if you think that that's a podcast and if that suits you. There are plenty of podcasts who are perfectly happy not to including anything I do.

Sam Sethi: 4:55

There may be, you know, super comments or boosts, asking James, you never know.

James Cridland: 5:01

Well, if there are, then boost away and make it a big boost and uh, we'll, we'll consider and still say no oh right anyway.

Sam Sethi: 5:11

Um now, friend of the show, justin jackson from transistor has put a report out about video or audio podcasts. What's the report?

James Cridland: 5:21

He has. Yes, this is the Transistor Gen Z report or, as we are both British Gen Z report, and those are people aged 13 to 28. And according to that, video is Skibbity Toilet and audio is Slay.

Sam Sethi: 5:38

They apparently Look at you down with the kids.

James Cridland: 5:40

Anybody would think I've got a 12-year-old. They overwhelmingly prefer audio podcasts, apparently according to that new survey. Now, it was a survey with not very many people taking part in it, so take some of what it says with a grain of salt, although it was quite similar to some of the other studies that I've seen over the past year looking at Gen Z. So I think that that's interesting. But, yes, 76% primarily listen to audio podcasts, 18%, it says here, consume a mix of audio and video and just 6% primarily watching video podcasts. Just for Gen Z. That's interesting because that kind of goes against what you would think.

James Cridland: 6:22

But certainly Justin has had a tremendous week in the news, I think. All of a sudden an Indian newspaper picked up on that and every other Indian newspaper has followed and printed something about that particular study. So Justin must be patting himself on the back for the money that he spent trying to get a bunch of Gen Z people to take part in that survey. I should say it's Gen Z podcast fans, and I was very careful to say that it's not Gen Z as a whole, it's Gen Z podcast fans. The first question to get into the survey was are you a fan of podcasts? So just bear that in mind. But super useful data.

Sam Sethi: 7:04

So I look forward to the launch of Transistor in India. That'll be great. But he also went on to talk about what device as well, and it wasn't YouTube.

James Cridland: 7:15

Yes, he says Spotify is the most used podcast app for Gen Z YouTube at 21%, Spotify at 56%, Apple Podcasts just at 10%. Now, I could agree with all of that. I think that makes sense. If you have a look at Apple Podcasts, for example, then typically kids these days don't have iPhones because they're still quite expensive, and so therefore most of the kids have Android on there. And of course, Apple Podcasts isn't available properly, at least on Android. And certainly, if I can use my list of one, my 12-year-old informs me that all of her school friends have Spotify Apart from her. She has YouTube Music. She's the outlier, James.

Sam Sethi: 8:04

You've got to get her on it. She is the outlier.

James Cridland: 8:06

I'm not giving her Spotify. We're already paying for YouTube premium, because it gives you no ads in YouTube as well. So, yes, I think that's a good thing.

Sam Sethi: 8:16

Well, now one of the other things that Justin has been doing is building a new podcast website gallery. What's he been up to? He's a busy boy, isn't he over there?

James Cridland: 8:27

Yeah, he is a busy boy. All of a sudden he's. I mean, maybe it's because ski season isn't on right now.

Sam Sethi: 8:32

Ah, that's it. Maybe that's the thing. And he hasn't got to build the Canadian wall yet, so he's okay.

James Cridland: 8:39

Yes, elbows out yes, no. So from that point of view, yes, he's produced a podcast website gallery, which the company says is an archive of awesome and interesting podcast website designs for your inspiration. Interestingly, some of those are transistor shows, but not all of them, so I think that they are still worthwhile. Taking a look at the feedback I've given, justin is this is brilliant, but you should give reasons why they are good, because I think that that is a useful thing. But, yes, if you want some inspiration in terms of what a good podcast website might look like, then pop along there and take a peek.

Sam Sethi: 9:17

Yeah, justin kindly said it was because of what we've been talking about how a meta page of websites provided by the hosts themselves would make a lot of sense as a landing page. Now, james, yesterday you were a very busy boy. The reason you were a very busy boy you were co-hosting the Infinite Dial 2025. So the Infinite Dial itself please tell me what it is and then tell me what they say.

James Cridland: 9:47

Yes, so the Infinite Dial is a study that Edison Research have run in the US and in other countries. In the US, it is a really, really old piece of research. It has existed for a long, long, long time and that means that, in terms of trends, that's super useful. So one of the first slides that we showed in the Infinite Dial, for example, was smartphone ownership, and it starts in 2009, which was the first year that the Infinite Dial asked the question about smartphone ownership, and only 10% of Americans have smartphones back in 2009. Now, of course, the figure is pretty static at 91%, which I'm surprised that it isn't higher, to be honest, but 91% is pretty good. There's a mass market medium.

James Cridland: 10:42

So the Infinite Dial has been going for a long long time, and one of the questions that it started asking, of course, a long, long time ago, was about podcasting. In fact, they started asking this question in 2006. Did you know what a podcast was and do you listen to a podcast? So, in 2006, 22% of the US population did know what a podcast was. That figure is now 85%. But also, ever listened to a podcast? Well, in 2006, ever listened was 11% of all US adults. That figure, as you would have heard if you were taking part in the webinar on Thursday afternoon.

James Cridland: 11:27

That figure is now 70% of the US population listening to a podcast, so that is brilliant, but, as you will also have heard, the phrase listened to is not that handy, given that, of course, we're now talking about video, and so the first question that they have added this year was have you listened to a podcast but also have you watched a podcast? And actually, when you add people watching a podcast, then that figure goes up even higher another 3%, which is more millions of people, so 73% of people have consumed a podcast. So that's pretty good in terms of podcast consumption. The big number, as you might remember from yesterday, was how many people are now monthly consumers of podcasts, and that number has broken 50% for the first time, and I reckon that must mean that podcasting is mainstream. Do you reckon that 50% if 50% of people are doing it, it's now a mainstream thing? No, it has to be 52% Clearly every election is.

Sam Sethi: 12:40

You know, when we have oh, here we go, so 52% is mainstream, I'm sorry you're. When we have oh, here we go, so 52% is mainstream. I'm sorry you're not quite there yet.

James Cridland: 12:48

Well, it was 55%, so that was good. So podcast listening, listening and watching went up a little bit from 47% to 48%, but if you added those people that were just watching podcasts but not listening, then you got to 55%, which is 158 million people. I think that's mainstream. So hurrah. As I said, go podcasting. I'm sure that Adam found that absolutely hilarious. No, it was really good fun to take part in the middle of the night here. So, yes, all good news, I think.

Sam Sethi: 13:28

So, overall, where do you give a scorecard to what's going on? What does the Infinite Dial, I suppose, give a scorecard to what's going on?

James Cridland: 13:37

Yeah. So I mean overall, the takeaways were the podcast consumption is at an all-time high, as you would expect, of course, audio consumption continues to grow, but podcasts using video are attracting more podcast consumers to the medium. Online audio adoption is at an all-time high. That includes things like Spotify, but also things like streaming radio and that sort of thing. And then the stuff around social media. The social media stuff was yeah, mastodon did not do very well. 1% of people in the US use Mastodon. I mean, that's still a lot of people, but it's not very high.

Sam Sethi: 14:19

So yes, Now a friend of the show, rocky Thomas, who is at Soundstack. They've been working with Edison as well. What have they been doing?

James Cridland: 14:28

They have been. They have launched a. In fact, edison has had a really busy week because they've launched a download metrics service. So they already produced this Edison podcast metrics survey, which is a really useful survey, but that's not as useful as it could be, perhaps, for smaller and short run shows. So what they've done is they've produced a download metrics service using Soundstack, the solutions, iab version 2.2 compliant, and it just adds the numbers in. What Edison Podcast Metrics could say is you're about as big as Joe Rogan or you're about as big as Smartless. But what Edison Podcast Metrics by themselves couldn't say is how many downloads you've got, the more people, of course, that tie in with this download metric service. You can actually see that data in there. So, yes, so they've been busy in terms of that and also launching their fandom stuff as well. There's been a whole bunch of information about fandom, which they're going to be talking about at Evolutions in a couple of weeks time, and so, gosh, it's been a busy, busy week for Edison Research.

Sam Sethi: 15:40

That word is becoming more and more common. I find it really grating. I use it within TrueFan, so don't get me wrong.

James Cridland: 15:50

Yes, sorry. What's the name of your product?

Sam Sethi: 15:51

Yeah, yeah, I know I know, and I don't know why, the word fandom just sits badly with me in my head. I just can't equate it to what it's supposed to be. I don't know, I'm just going to say I just can't equate it to what it's supposed to be.

James Cridland: 16:05

I don't know, I'm just not allowed to say. Well, you'll find the data which is released sort of fully at Evolutions. But the report is called the Fandom Phenomenon and one of the chief findings is that emotional connection bonds hosts and podcast fans, with 71% of fans reporting that they feel like they're friends with the hosts of their favourite podcasts.

Sam Sethi: 16:32

Ah, isn't that nice. Well, alberto calls it parasocial, and many other people begin to call that as well the ability to bond with your host because you feel like you know them better, whereas the host doesn't really know the fan very well.

James Cridland: 16:53

Ah well, yes, well, yes, now interesting stuff. Um, so more um information uh there from edison research at evolutions. Um, it was a piece of work that they did with wondery and with densu, uh, the big um advertising uh company. There is a quote in that press release from somebody with the excellent name of Jennifer Hungabula Hungabula, yes, hungabula, hungabula. So, yes, there you go. So watch out for that at Evolutions in Chicago if you're going.

Sam Sethi: 17:18

Moving on. A few weeks ago, we talked about a new VP role that was available at Spotify VP of AI. This week, james, they've announced an update to their DJ, their audio DJ, which was a basic function before, but now you'll be able to press a button on your Spotify. Well, you won't, because you don't have Spotify Pro, but other people at school will be able to press their button on your Spotify. Well, you won't, because you don't have Spotify Pro, but other people at school will be able to press their button. You've got the ability to now talk to DJX English only, and you'll be able to ask for the tracks or ask for a genre. So it's an interface, an AI interface, an agentic interface, which is the term that everyone's beginning to talk about.

Sam Sethi: 18:06

Ah, agentics gosh, this is the new Web 4.0 terminology, but I think it's very cool. I've been playing with it and it is very useful actually to be able to say, oh yeah, play me some David Bowie, play me some Paul Weller, whatever, and then you get, or it'll just go back to your playlist and start playing stuff, and it's actually great for serendipity, um, being able to go oh yeah, god, I haven't heard the counting crows in ages or I haven't heard uh x track like vertical horizon, and you go wow, thank you, you know, and and it is a great way. But I think music's different to podcasting, because I love listening to old music or new music and you know you can get a feeling or an emotion to it. I don't think listening back to this podcast back in 2023, an episode is going to be an emotional feeling.

James Cridland: 19:00

No, and I agree, I think definitely music evokes emotion of time and place. So yeah, absolutely, although I have to say I did feel incredibly nostalgic when I went back and listened to a couple of CNET Buzz Out Loud shows, which was a podcast that I was listening to in 2004, 2005. It's Friday, march 14th 2008. Happy Pi Day.

James Cridland: 19:27

And I went back to listen to some of those and I thought, wow, this is something else. But yes, it's an interesting plan. I have met DJ X. He's a real person and he's very nice. So there you go.

Sam Sethi: 19:39

Yeah, spotify said they are going to let you know that you're talking to an AI, but they will be storing and analysing your voice requests to make improvements. They say Now, this is similar to March the 28th. You don't have Alexa's in your house, do you? You have Google.

James Cridland: 19:56

Yes, but Alexa's going to do the same thing, isn't it? Yes?

Sam Sethi: 19:59

They're going to now stop local processing. It's all going to go back up into the cloud. So, yeah, yes, just be aware your voice will be traveling. Now, um, uh, the. The reason I mentioned this was because I did think there will be, at some point, an element where the agentic ai interface is used for podcasting. I'm, as I said last week and I won't be talking much more about it looking at it for true fans, but I'll leave that there. We do have enough data. Well, this is going to link into something that Tom Webster was talking about, which we'll talk about in a minute, but so you might say, hey, whatever, djx, it wouldn't be called that but hey, mayo, or whatever it would be called, play me my latest podcast. Or it might tell you there's three comments waiting for you, or there's a new event that you might be interested in, or whatever. I think we are moving to that. It's too early yet, but I think it's worth looking at as a UI and an interface to the way that we get information.

James Cridland: 21:00

Yeah, exactly, and I think we should come back to user interface and that sort of thing when we start talking about what Tom Webster ended up saying. Spotify also launched a new publishing program for independent authors as well, allowing independent authors to submit short form stories for audio creation. That was another thing from the Infinite Dial which I found really interesting. So if you've not yet seen the Infinite Dial, let me tee this up for you.

James Cridland: 21:31

If you remember, right at the end of November 2023, spotify ended up giving everyone with Spotify Premium a free audio book. If you kind of remember, I think they give you what? 10 hours, don't they? Something like that? 15 hours worth of remember? I think they give you what 10 hours, don't they? Something like that? 15 hours worth of free. So that's essentially a free book every single month. So every single Spotify premium user has a free book. Amazon now does the same thing. So if you are a subscriber to Amazon Music all three of you then you, too, can get a free book from Audible every single month as well. So I was really interested in seeing from the Infinite Dial that audiobook listening in the last year has gone down, gone down 2% from 38% to 36%. Why is that?

Sam Sethi: 22:22

I am actually not surprised. I am not surprised. Well, I've been a member of Audible for I don't know decades, it feels like, but at least a decade, let's say and through my Amazon Prime account, I buy credit and I love listening to books. We've talked about this on this show here.

James Cridland: 22:47

Yes, because you can't read You're like Donald Trump.

Sam Sethi: 22:49

Yes, like Donald, big words, can't I? But the thing about it, what's interesting is my attention has been drifted more to listen to podcasts than it has to audiobooks. Now, because I actually find most audio books are nearly all books. Right, you could summarize the book down to probably 10 minutes and get everything you needed to know in that book, but because you need to sell 300 pages, you waffle and bloat it out. Oh yes, and I think audio books are just bloated podcasts, right. So there are audio book summaries, but I still listen to them at the weekend because that's the only time I can get time to actually concentrate and have a book, because it takes so long to read or listen to, whereas I think my time available now has gone down for listening to audio books because I listen to more podcasts.

James Cridland: 23:47

And I completely agree that a lot of the books that I read are basically filled with stuff. Would you like to hear my review of Seth Godin's Poke the Box book?

Sam Sethi: 24:04

from.

James Cridland: 24:04

April 2011. Yes, please. This is my review. I've worked out what Seth Godin does, and it's very simple. He takes one valid and interesting thought and writes it in lots of different ways to fill a book. What Seth has done in this book, I discover, is that he's had one idea and expanded on it repeatedly to make a book out of it. Seth's a clever man because essentially, this book is full of one concept which he's phrased and paraphrased over and over again to comfortably fill quite a lot of pages. What's kind of happened here, you'll discover, is that Mr Godin has suddenly woken up and thought goodness, if I just write the same thing over and over again, but slightly differently, for a number of different chapters, then I'll manage to complete a book and then I can sell it as a concept of a book. This is pretty clever. Seth Godin has come up with one central talent and discussed it in quite a circumlutory way over a considerable amount of paragraphs etc.

Sam Sethi: 24:50

Yes, yes, that is it in a tea. That is exactly it. Yes, yes.

James Cridland: 24:54

Anyway.

Sam Sethi: 24:56

So I can see why audiobook consumption is dropping, because people really don't want to have bloated, long-winded books when they can get that summarised very quickly.

James Cridland: 25:07

Correct, yes, correct, absolutely.

Sam Sethi: 25:11

Now here's something from Spotify again. Sorry, we should have had that jingle in at some point, James. Oh, yeah, Shall we play it now.

Announcer: 25:17

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

Sam Sethi: 25:29

Yes, yes, the Spotify warnings. Now they're coming up with something called Spotify mashups, and then they are going to really, really really annoy music artists further. I mean not that they're doing it already, but they're going to try and do more of it. So what you get is with the upcoming music pro, which is a new premium subscription oh yeah, this is spotify hi-fi, isn't it?

Sam Sethi: 25:55

yes, I'm just about to say yeah, finally, yeah, uh, what they're sneaking in under the the door is the ability allegedly and because we haven't seen it yet of um you being able to take multiple tracks and smash them together and create a new one using ai. Yeah, now, that in itself is not new. There are many um apps you can get off various app stores that will do that for you. Tiktok does a lot of it, but the question here is who owns the rights to a spotify mashup? Who's going to get paid for it? Um, when you take two original songs, what will the artist think? Do the artists have to opt in or opt out? Um, and it often lacks um any sort of resources for independent artists to stop this.

Sam Sethi: 26:45

I think it's like David and Goliath, and you know poor little independent David. Independent music artists are not going to be able to stop the Goliath of Spotify from doing this. What do you think, james?

James Cridland: 26:55

Yeah, it's really interesting, isn't it? I mean, somebody who would have an opinion would be a friend of the show, will Page, who doubtless would jump in and give all kinds of erudite opinion in a Scottish accent. But from my point of view, yeah, I mean that sounds really interesting. Does that mean that people will earn less money? Does that actually mean that people will earn more money because it counts as a play for both of the songs? I don't know. People will earn more money because it counts as a play for both of the songs, I don't know. So you've got all of that.

James Cridland: 27:28

I mean, I remember that there was a radio station that started broadcasting about 15 years or so ago and its idea was that it will play twice the amount of songs as every other radio stations. And the way that it would do that is it would edit the songs down, and so, instead of a song having three verses and a chorus, the song would have one verse and a chorus. A song would be much, much shorter, so you could essentially get 24, 25 songs an hour instead of about 12 or 13. And as a programming tool, that was amazing, because it meant that you would hear much more of your favourite songs, but the artists absolutely hated it and there was a big, big kickback by the Canadian artists who basically said no, you are absolutely not allowed to do that with any of my songs, not knowing, of course, that Broadcast Radio edits songs anyway.

Sam Sethi: 28:19

I think the worry I have here and look, this is all music related, but let me bring it back to podcasting for a minute, and I think it's something that's happening to you, james, as well. So what if I wanted to take a snippet of this show, a snippet of another show, a snippet of a third show, smash it all together, use an AI voice and then put it out as an RSS feed? Where's the law going to stand then?

James Cridland: 28:44

Well, yes, exactly, and I mean it's not just something that might happen in the future, it's something that is happening right now. I don't know if you heard Satya Nadella, the big boss of Microsoft. He ended up saying this in a podcast just last week.

Satya Nadella: 29:03

The best way for me to consume podcasts is not to actually go listen to it, but to have a conversation with the transcript on my commute using my copilot. It is more convenient because of the modality, the fact that I can speak to it.

James Cridland: 29:18

I can interrupt it and if I can interrupt him, then I mean that is, is that not a kind of stealing? I mean, you know, if you're just having a conversation with a transcript of a podcast, you've stripped all the ads out, you've stripped all of the value for value call outs from it. You know, is it basically helping yourself to the food but leaving the jar in the supermarket?

Sam Sethi: 29:50

possibly, but I think we just talked about audiobooks being bloaty. We talked about people being time efficient.

Sam Sethi: 29:57

Um, we talked about spotify's agentic ai interface. Well, what he's doing is using copilot, which is Microsoft's agentic interface, fundamentally to have a conversation. Is it more efficient, possibly? Is it actually better for you than hearing the actual people speak? I know a number of people who I talk to who listen to this show and the first thing they do is do a name search in our transcript. They do right, that's funny. Yes, I, I won't reveal who, but there are a number of people who tell me I check that I've been name checked and then then they'll listen to the episode.

Sam Sethi: 30:36

Possibly, um, and so there is a lot of that and I think, with transcripts and we're going to be talking about apple shortly, um, there is going to be talking about Apple shortly. There is going to be more and more push to say, actually, how do I get a short form, how do I get a summary? Or, as I said earlier, you know we're looking at Sesame as an example, where you know you can have a conversational AI and you could say, hey, any mention to me across the. You know there was a mention to me across the you know podosphere.

Sam Sethi: 31:06

Oh yeah, no, there was a mention of me in that podcast. Oh, I've never heard of that podcast. Can you play that snippet, not the?

James Cridland: 31:11

whole podcast. Yeah, well, yes, I'm sure that there are people doing that and let me say hello, Sharon Taylor Ross, adams, lizzie Pollitt. Who else can we name check, just randomly? And by the way, I was listening to Adam Curry over the weekend and he was talking about listening to power, as he calls this show, and I think he's mentioned in the past that he's very pleased that we have chapters, because I think he skips through some of the things, yes.

James Cridland: 31:50

So what we should do is we should put a chapter point in here and then say something like anyway, I don't think Adam Curry will do that, so what else do we have in terms of Spotify? Deplatforming is a thing.

Sam Sethi: 32:07

Yeah, I mean, there are two schools of thought, aren't there? One is the.

Sam Sethi: 32:12

You know you shouldn't be deplatforming. It's freedom of speech and people should be allowed to say what they want. And then there's the other form, where Spotify this week decided to remove some podcast episodes of Andrew Tate. Spotify says the content was removed because it violated its policies. The content's already been removed by YouTube and TikTok.

Sam Sethi: 32:35

Tate is a self-described misogynist. In fact, in the UK it was mentioned in the Houses of Parliament at the PMQs yesterday, it was mentioned in the Houses of Parliament at the PMQs yesterday there's a new show called Adolescence. That's sort of really hit the zeitgeist at the moment in the UK. It's about what they call incels boys who are very insular and celibate, who play games, watch porn, um, and and and have never interacted with a female and they're they're just taking in all the Jordan Peterson's, the Andrew Tate stuff, and women are awful, people of color are awful, it's all the white power stuff and um, yeah, you are seeing a generation of young men who that is their role model and um, the question is, do you de-platform somebody like that? Um, and I guess here's an open question. The podcast index was partially formed to prevent de-platforming so I had a quick look and there are 10 plus shows from andrew tate.

Sam Sethi: 33:40

I didn't even know he had one. But there are 10 plus shows from Andrew Tate. I didn't even know he had one. But there are 10 plus shows in the podcast index. Should they be removed? Should those episodes be removed? Because I think the episode that was removed was how to pimp or how to treat women in that way where you can pimp them out, and I think you know when you're putting content like that out. I think it should be removed. But there you go.

James Cridland: 34:05

Yes, I think it's. It's interesting the way that some people remove content is to make it available in search, but not to make it available in any. If you're like this, you're like this type of stuff, so it's shadow banned, if you like. It's still available in the net, in the, in the system, if you know what you are searching for. But if you don't know what you are searching for, you will never find that stuff. But podcast apps should consider, you know, marking some of these things to be, you know, not worthwhile. You know appearing. You know what I mean.

Sam Sethi: 34:53

Yeah. Yeah. I've gone one stage further. He's banned. I'm not having his content on, and if you don't like it, don't use my app.

James Cridland: 35:00

No well, I think that is absolutely fine, and that is absolutely fine and that is absolutely fair. You are a, you are, you know, a an app which is surfacing this information in front of people. The podcast index is just an index and I guess I would kind of argue and say it's up to the app developers. Possibly a useful thing is for someone and I don't know who that somebody might be and imagine the excitement of it, but someone producing a list of you know, a block list, if you like, of shows that shouldn't really be appearing in, if you Like this, you Like this, or pod roles or any algorithmic lists, and perhaps that's the way forward.

Sam Sethi: 35:47

Well, when you say Andrew Tate's best friend is Donald Trump, there's a saying, a Japanese proverb when the character of a man is not clear, to look at his friends. I think that says it all.

James Cridland: 35:59

Yes, donald Trump Jr, by the way, not President Donald Trump, just for any lawyers listening. He was allowed, though Tate, not Donald Trump Jr, by the way, not President Donald Trump, just for any lawyers listening. He was allowed, though Tate, not Donald Trump Jr was allowed to return to the US after the change in administration and he faces charging of human trafficking of minors, rape and money laundering, all of which he denies. Again, andrew Tate, not Donald Trump Jr. Just to be totally clear yeah, andrew Tate not. Donald. Trump.

James Cridland: 36:26

Jr. So just to be totally clear.

Sam Sethi: 36:28

Yeah yeah, please, god, you're the one travelling to America, you're the one who could be body searched, not me. Yes, well, there's the thing.

James Cridland: 36:38

All I'd say is ice ice baby yes, good luck. Anyway, let's skip away from all of that and let's talk about podcasting 2.0. No, let's talk about podcasting 3.0. Why don't we do that?

Sam Sethi: 36:51

Well, we will by the end, that's for certain, right, ok. Now, in the last few weeks we've seen a number of friends of the show podcasts. So Danny Brown, mark Asquith, rob Greenlee, todd Cochran, they're all talking about has podcasting 2.0 failed? What is the lack of video support in apps? It's not a first party client right. Youtube wins there.

Sam Sethi: 37:16

And last week Tom Webster talked about podcasting 3.0. That was the title, but he actually said he would rather possibly talked about how podcast apps are failing us and um, but he wasn't feeling that grumpy so he thought he'd call it podcasting 3.0, which I read and I have to say I pretty much 100 agreed with tom and I actually have to sayi agree with danny brown and mark casquith and I have to say I agree with Rob Greenlee and Todd Cochran. They're all saying that we, the app developers, are not providing the user experience that we should be. That whole conversation is about how the apps need to change the user interface in order to grab and I think the infinite dial talks about it again. You know, where is Gen Z, where is the community and what's the experience they want. And I think, as an app developer, I'm probably developing only a podcasting 2 or even a 1.0 UI at the moment a podcasting 2 or even a 1.0 UI at the moment?

James Cridland: 38:23

Yes, and I think that there is definitely something in saying that the idea of a podcast app and this has been Adam and Dave's thing for the last couple of weeks the idea of a podcast app as something that you use is fine for lots of people, but also not so fine for many others, and it's worthwhile going back and listening to Podcasting 2.0, their podcast for that, and indeed their interview, which you'll find the full version of in this feed as well with us, and I think that there's definitely something there.

James Cridland: 38:53

I mean, I think the whole difficulty with all of this is Podcasting 2.0 is not a thing. Difficulty with all of this is podcasting 2.0 is not a thing. There are lots of individual features, some of which the vast majority of which, let's be fair have failed, some of which have been tremendously successful. The podcast transcripts tag, for example, has been tremendously successful, so it's a lazy thing just to say has podcasting 2.0 failed, because there isn't anything like podcasting 2.0. There is, though, certainly some ideas of you know the future in terms of what could other podcast apps look like. Now. Tom Webster, in his article and indeed in his podcast, ended up saying the good news.

James Cridland: 39:45

I believe is that a lot of these things can be accomplished by AI without having to overhaul RSS.

James Cridland: 39:52

Now I would potentially say, yes, ai certainly has a part to play, but have you seen the RSS feeds from many podcasters recently? Because the RSS feeds are not great and they do not have great content in them to help the AI agents. I mean, you know, the example that I always give is the Joe Rogan podcast, one of the biggest podcasts in the world, but if you go and have a look at the description for that show, then you get absolutely nothing which is of any use to anybody. Literally, the only thing it says is the official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan. The only thing it says is the official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan. That is the full thing that would appear in any podcast app.

James Cridland: 40:47

And so how you can make a entertain me button, as I'm going to call it I think Tom calls it something different but how you can make the entertain me button from information from publishers, which is that weak, that poor um, is really interesting. So I'd love to um sit down with Tom and um see. Well, what can we do here? Is there something that we can um take and uh work out and make you know work a little bit more? Hmm.

Sam Sethi: 41:17

I, I looked at what Tom said and initially, when, when I I got pointed to the article, I was like, okay, I'm gonna go in all guns blazing, I'm gonna protect the podcasting 2.0 community. I, this is this is not fair, right? Yeah, as somebody who's building an app, I, and who's betting my future on on what podcasting is going to be doing, then I I was like, don't, don't have a knock at it. And then I read everything and I went, yeah, you're right, tom, you are so right the the way that we do things. And and again, when I heard rob greenlee talk about how the the apps, if it's a video podcast, we don't make that front and center. We, we make it a secondary two clicks, three clicks before you can watch the video, and I'm like, yeah, you're right. Actually I can't knock it. I do have, though I actually wrote. I remember actually and I'll pick out the article because Adam referenced it but I actually said, probably two years ago, that we need to be calling what we're doing currently Podcasting 3.0. And and my argument for it was we mirror web 3.0, right, so podcasting 1.0. In my humble opinion and this is an opinion, so you can, you know, everyone has one like they have an asshole the. You can edit that out later, but the, the, the, the.

Sam Sethi: 42:39

The point was podcasting 1.0, in my head was when Adam Curry and Dave Weiner added the enclosure to RSS 2.0. That's podcasting 1.0. Podcasting 2.0 was when Adam and Dave Jones came back and started to add some of the namespace, but podcasting itself was in the web 2.0 paradigm. We were DAI driven ad driven ad supported. The user wasn't part of the conversation particularly, and it was all about centralization. And the centralization was still saying Spotify, apple, youtube, it's all around those big behemoths like we have Facebook and Twitter. So that's my head.

Sam Sethi: 43:20

Podcasting 2.0 has that similar paradigm to Web 2.0. But Web 3.0, the characteristics of it are decentralized data ownership, monetization, bitcoin and blockchain. Those are the things that people talk about as characteristics of Web 3.0. Now you look at podcasting where we are today. I think podcasting is a brilliant example of a Web 3.0. Now you look at podcasting where we are today, I think podcasting is a brilliant example of a Web 3.0 app where RSS is data ownership. We have data portability. I can move to any host or any app. I have monetization coming in it's early, we know but micropayments we have open standards. I think I would like to get podcasting 3.0 out as a name, tom, as well.

James Cridland: 44:05

And, by the way, tom is absolutely not saying that I don't want, as in do not want, to brand this as podcasting 3.0.

James Cridland: 44:12

But anyway, yes, go on.

Sam Sethi: 44:13

Okay, he's not lying there, and this is my argument. We have created an elephant, and it's a massive elephant of 27 tags. No wonder people are overwhelmed by what the hell's going on. No wonder people can't get their head around it. There's a famous parable, a Buddhist parable, of four blind men feeling an elephant, and each one thinks they've got something different, but they can't see the bigger picture. And I think that's where we are, you know. We're saying, oh yes, you've got to add transcripts, chapters and tons of enclosures, medium value, time splits, micropayments, lit live. Why aren't you doing it, host? Why aren't you doing it? And they're going. I don't know which bit do we break off? First, why do we? And then the customer's going.

James Cridland: 45:03

I am the clue. It's so much, it's overwhelming. You know what? Screw it. I'm just going to go and play with Spotify, youtube, because it's easy.

James Cridland: 45:06

Yes, except of course lots of people have said okay, the podcast transcript tag. I understand that. I'll do that Because I know where that'll go and I know how important that is and I hope that we end up in a position where we have a few tags and I would suggest the podcast transcript tag, the funding tag, because that's massively important and it's kind of seen as a bit old fashioned and rubbish by most podcast apps and I wish it wasn't. Thirdly, the podcast location tag, which I think has real opportunity there. Podcast location tag, which I think has real opportunity there, and potentially even the tag, which is something new that Nathan has been working on, which actually helps you link to other places. It's useless for an app like TrueFans, but super useful for being able to link to an app from you know, to a podcast from elsewhere. You know, if you were to look at four tags that had, you know, approaching mainstream so more than 50% take up I think that would be pretty good.

James Cridland: 46:11

I think the closest that we've had is for self-preservatory reasons. We've had a lot of podcast hosts implementing the totally useless, not fit for purpose podcast lock tag and you know, and we've seen all of that, and then everybody has gone well, what the hell is the point of that? What a waste of time this whole podcasting 2.0 is. So I wish that we could just focus on a few of these tags, get them over the road so that we can actually see the real benefit out of that, and then we can continue moving on. Potterol is a wonderful thing, you know all of these. Then we can actually move on. But that's kind of where we are, I think, at the moment.

Sam Sethi: 46:50

Well, with my marketing hat on from my past, I say we need to break the elephant into smaller parts so that people can see achievement and success.

James Cridland: 47:01

And I think that's what I'm saying is to break it into. Okay, just focus on these four tags. That's what the podcasting standards set of people were supposed to be doing. Here is a subset of those tags that we are all going to support but, as we know, that's not really gone anywhere. But I do think that that's where the future might end up being is to focus on some real obvious listener benefits from the new podcast namespace and focus on that. And you know, see if we can get the branding right, because the branding is all over the place.

James Cridland: 47:41

I heard the other week Adam Curry saying that there's no such thing called Podcasting 2.0. They only named the podcast Podcasting 2.0 to piss off Dave Weiner and I thought, well, had I known that, I wouldn't have bothered trying to make friends with Dave Weiner, would I? You know the whole thing. You know, the whole thing seems a bit driven by ego and you know and I kind of wish it wasn't really we are at a point at the moment, sam, where we have a number of tags which are going into the next phase of the podcast namespace, but we don't have a suggested spec for any of those tags.

James Cridland: 48:26

We're linking to long, complicated discussions on GitHub, which are not a specification. It's just a long random discussion, with people agreeing and disagreeing and saying, well, have you thought about this? Have you thought about that? You know, we're not at a point where we can actually agree on the spec for the new tags, but we seem to be. This seems to be how the thing works these days is, you know, we'll link to this complicated thing and you've got to sit there and read through all of the argument and work out whether or not you know what the final spec might be and at the end of the day, it's, it's. You know, it's just. It's just a mess, it's a proper mess. So I do worry about the whole thing.

Sam Sethi: 49:12

So you're going to Chicago. I'm pretty sure that the group formerly known as the Podcast Standards Project will meet. I'm sure that there will be a known as the Podcast Standards Project will meet. I'm sure that there will be an announcement from that group of something I'm not sure what. I did put my hand up to be an evangelist, but an evangelist with no funding and no you know when it takes. I think it's a full-time role nearly is useless, so I stepped back away from it.

Sam Sethi: 49:43

But that group should have had this role of marketing podcasting and they could have broken it down into. That's what my suggestion was then was break it down into smaller component parts so we can all win. So the success metric is yes, it's look, we've achieved all these tags. Now we're going to achieve the next ones. Equally, I think the consumer and companies like Wondery and companies like Persephoneca and Goldhanger could then get their heads around it and then start to implement it, and then you could have case studies, success wins. But also the work that you and Daniel did on that website should have been part of the PSP. I think the person tag or the person um taxonomy lives in a totally another group nobody has control over. I think wave like you've got a music category list that no one's got control. All of this should be brought together and that should be marketed under one. So if I was to say to you I want to use the terminology now, podcasting 3.0, who do I need to get the blessing from Adam Dave else's?

James Cridland: 50:43

um database, a slow database on somebody else's computer right um, and bitcoin um, which, as we all know, is just, is just a ponzi scheme. It's I mean it's not but that's what most people think yeah, I, I wouldn't go.

James Cridland: 51:10

I wouldn't go anywhere near podcasting 3.0. I, I would go. I would go towards um, what are the features that we want to push and how can we make podcasting better? And the brand comes at the end, but that's my personal opinion and Tom has said very clearly he does not want to call anything podcasting 3.0. See, I go.

Sam Sethi: 51:40

The other way People understood when we were talking about in the day, HTML 2, 3, 4, 5. It was a shorthand for oh, there's a new version, Is that great? What's in it? What features are there? We do that with iPhone 15, 16, 17,. Right, it's a shorthand for people to understand. There's been a step change and in that step change.

James Cridland: 52:02

Yeah, but it's only a shorthand when somebody hasn't ruined what that shorthand is. If you were changing the name from podcasting Toyota to podcasting Tesla, everybody would go, oh my God, no, Because Tesla has such a bad brand these days. In the same way, Web3, I mean, that is not a brand that anybody wants to be aligned with, surely Well I mean DeepMind are already talking about Web4.

Sam Sethi: 52:34

We talked about Agenta KI. I mean I think you know in the circles that maybe we talk about within podcasting, people don't like it, but the there is a world of people talking about web3 and what it means and what characteristics are of web3 and they do align very well with podcasting in terms of what podcasting delivers. And I think web4 we talked about, you know, in this show, spotify. We talked about Copilot. That interface is coming. You can pretend, like King Canute, that you know the wave is coming and you can hold it back, but you're not going to.

James Cridland: 53:12

No, and I'm not saying that I want to hold it back. I'm saying that if you go out there and you say this is called podcast turd, then no amount of polishing that turd is going to stop people from thinking hang on a minute. You've just called it after a turd. Why would you do that?

Sam Sethi: 53:33

Well, I strongly strongly disagree.

James Cridland: 53:35

And on that bombshell.

Sam Sethi: 53:38

No, I think the PSP failed. So here's an example of my weakness week James right as an app developer. So I launched FanZone and it's kindly sponsored by rsscom. They've given us a platform, but they have no speaker labels for transcripts, so I'm like oh God, okay, right.

Sam Sethi: 53:58

And then it was like we put the wallet in for the old b wallet but there are no splits, so thankfully I can do it in the dashboard in true fans. Then, uh, there's a new show from ancy costello which is looks like it's going to be very good. Um, it's talking about the music industry, um, and talking about how her experience of it so, so great. I then looked in the sats. The sats sorry, the splits. It's in sats, not percentages. I pulled my hair out for years about this stupidity. Oh yes, you can have 130% in the splits. And I'm like does no one do maths anymore? Right, I don't get it. I fundamentally do not get it. I'm not blaming RSS Blue, but they're following the spec and the spec's wrong in my opinion. And then Blueberry we're pulling in the new media show. They support the alternative enclosure, but they don't add the MIME type. These are just examples of every host not implementing things.

James Cridland: 54:53

And the way of fixing all of this is to have an individual feature champion for each of these things, so that when Blueberry produces an alternate enclosure incorrectly, then the alternate enclosure champion says to Todd, no, you've got this wrong. Or, even better, todd can actually talk to the alternate enclosure feature champion and say have we got this right? Prior to actually sticking it live. And the same way goes for splits in wallets and all of the other stuff. There needs to be a point person for every single feature out there, every single feature out there. And if no one wants to take responsibility for the features that they have, you know, put in and wants to, I mean, frankly, there should be a website for every single feature out there. This is how to do the podcast location tag. I mean, that's mine, so maybe I should do that, but you know what I mean.

Sam Sethi: 55:56

I thought you did with Daniel, right? Yes, I mean the starting point was there.

James Cridland: 56:01

The frustration with that site is that the only person that could update it was Daniel. So I pushed very hard to make it a simple markdown document, but no, that was not what it turned out to be, which was a frustration, and that's why my name isn't on there anymore, because I can't do anything with it. So, yeah, no, I mean, I think, you know, I think we've got all of that on one side. We've got all of the frustrations that individual companies aren't supporting these things properly, and then we've got on the other side the fact that, actually, even if you give a lot of the podcasters the tools to do this stuff, they don't do it right either. And so you end up with, you know, the Joe Rogan experience there of one line in a description, and that is supposed to be, you know.

James Cridland: 57:03

So we got all of these, all of these problems, and you know time was when, whatever Apple would do, everybody followed. And so Apple would say we don't want episode numbers in your titles, please, because that makes it really hard for voice assistants, it makes it really hard for lots of things. Please get your episode numbers out of the titles. And everybody went okay, apple, yes, yes, sir. Now Apple's strength is so reduced that it can't actually do any of that and some of the things it's done recently. We want a website for every single podcast which is out there. People have simply ignored because, oh well, it's only Apple and it's only 10%. We don't care because, oh well, it's only Apple and it's only 10%, we don't care.

James Cridland: 57:40

And so we actually don't have anybody in that leadership position for the technology of podcasting anymore. Again, arguably that might be something that the IAB should be doing, but it certainly isn't. Maybe it's something that somebody else should be doing. I mean, I don't know who should be doing, but it certainly isn't. Maybe it's something that somebody else should be doing. You know, I mean I don't know who should be doing that, to basically be able to turn around and say, well, where's your trailer? How are people going to promote this podcast if there's no trailer in there? You know, all of that kind of stuff is, I think, really important, but that doesn't happen.

Sam Sethi: 58:17

No, it doesn't. And I think the the other challenge with all of this is you know you talk about having champions, but somebody's got to herd the cats right, because nobody's just going to stand up randomly. You might put a location tag page, right, fine. Um, I might put an alternative enclosure page because I I'm pretty wedded to that one. Although adam has said he wants to do lit, that's his champion, right, right, yeah, that's three. Who's going to? Who's going to do the block one? Who's going to? I mean, no, it's not going to happen. It's not going to happen. We know it's not going to happen.

James Cridland: 58:48

Well, and in which case all all of those um, if, if nobody feels strongly about those particular features to be the champion of that, then they should go. But we seem to have a real, a real um worry about getting rid of stuff. I mean, just have a look at the podcast images. Um, oh, don't, no don't open that.

Sam Sethi: 59:08

Leave it alone, james. Let it go frozen.

James Cridland: 59:11

Let it go let it go, we fixed it we'll talk about that later then, but yes, now um one person, friend of the show, who's also a power supporter, matt medeiros.

Sam Sethi: 59:22

Um, he was um a little bit miffed with what tom had written. Um, now, matt works very closely with the wordpress um uh open source community and he's been an advocate of that community and he sees the parallels with the podcasting 2.0 open source community, in effect, the tag community that exists, and he put up a video link saying he didn't agree with what Tom had said. So I thought I'd reach out to Matt. I started off by asking him what were your thoughts on all of the recent podcasts that saying Podcasting 2.0?

Matt Medeiros: 59:58

has failed. The backdrop of my perspective on all this is I also cover WordPress. I have covered WordPress for 15 years. Wordpress is another open source publishing platform that complements podcasting perfectly. Todd at Blueberry knows this really well. We were kind of competitors back in the day when I worked at a podcast hosting company and I've seen the WordPress grow through the lens of open source and I have a huge respect for all the efforts. People contribute their time and efforts to grow WordPress and I have the same affinity for this podcasting thing.

Matt Medeiros: 1:00:35

When I hear criticisms, like in the WordPress world, where people say it's slow, it's lethargic, nobody uses this anymore, yet 45% of the internet is powered by WordPress I scratch my head and I say, well, we got to be doing something right. Same goes for podcasting 2.0. Get criticized. I have to look at this and go look, there are people trying to innovate in a space that is fragmented, of course, but this is all done in the open. This is your chance to vote and have a say in improving podcasting. Why punch down on it? And even if things were said as like clickbait and to hype you know, hype the conversation. Only so much of that can go around, like at some point we have to stop and say you know, hype the conversation, only so much of that can go around. Like, at some point we have to stop and say, like, here's all the good things that podcasting 2.0 efforts and RSS feeds grant us.

Matt Medeiros: 1:01:29

Right, when we look at the crowning achievement, you know the ragtag team of podcasting 2.0 folks got their transcript tag adopted by Apple. That is massive and I look at these as real, solid wins, not only for podcasting but for open source, for groups of people without any VC backing, knocking on the door of Apple saying you want this and Apple saying, okay, we'll take it the biggest company in existence, almost. And you know I have to take a step back and say let's, let's talk a little bit more positively about podcasting 2.0 instead of just going at it for all of its you know, warts and bruises. Like, let's look at the good stuff happening. Claire Wade Brown does this as well with her podcast Fantastic resource for podcasting 2.0. And there should be more advocates like Claire, like yourself and others, to just say we've got this thing here, let's adopt it and let's be good stewards of it. In my opinion, tom Webster wrote a post last week.

Sam Sethi: 1:02:30

What did he say?

Matt Medeiros: 1:02:32

Yeah, so there was a lot of criticism and I took it as criticism because I was under the weight of all of podcasting 2.0 criticism, right, and the headline podcasting 3.0 was something that just kind of, I guess, sparked me to write a blog post and makea video, and I agree with a lot of what Tom said, especially with his recent article that he put out today. But the criticism for apps is certainly just and I look at this as criticism all around. I worked three years at a podcast hosting company as I was the advocate for podcasting 2.0. And this is not easy, right. Hosts have to do their part, apps have to do their part, the podcasters have to do their part in convincing listeners to do it and, at the end of the day, the listener has to want to engage in all this cool stuff that we're putting together. But I just don't agree squarely putting the blame on the podcasting 2.0 team and again, having just huge respect for folks who dedicate their time to this.

Matt Medeiros: 1:03:36

Is the listener experience getting better for podcasting? Like you said, I think a lot of us drink our own Kool-Aid Probably not as much as we want it to be. Are we under the gun against YouTube and Spotify Absolutely. Is it hard to put audio up against this behemoth video social platform that is YouTube? Yes, these are, these are challenging times, uh, for podcasting, but I I believe that preserving all things open podcasting is important to humanity and I think for publishers it is, at the very least, a thread of insurance to say well, if YouTube changes the algorithm, if Spotify changes the algorithm, if some other player comes into the game and they're trying to do a walled garden, you always have your fundamental base of audio RSS or your blog with written words of content to fall back on as your foundation.

Matt Medeiros: 1:04:38

So it's a long way of getting at. You know, I don't think Tom was completely off base. He is steeped into this industry further than I am. He is an award winner and I am not, so I have a high respect for his point of view. I am just coming from this as like let's not beat up the podcasting 2.0 efforts. Let's try to find the parts where we can make it shine and adopt that as tech providers, hosts, apps and advocates.

Sam Sethi: 1:05:07

So I think when Tom Webster said two things. One was where is podcasting 3.0? I want to ask what does that mean? And then the other one was he talked about it being rudderless and tillerless. What do you think he meant by that mean? And then the other one was he talked about it being rudderless and tillerless. What do you think he meant by that? First?

Matt Medeiros: 1:05:23

Yeah, I mean, once again it was a little disheartening for me to, you know, read those words. But then also I got the double take of Adam and Dave sort of almost agreeing with that, that thread of thought, and you know, I sort of lost a little bit of air in my chest because I was like man once again, like you guys have been doing an amazing job, and you know I won't belabor this but like just a huge amounts of respect for both sides, um, but especially those who have, you know, committed the time to podcasting 2.0. And yeah, you know, when I look at, uh again, if you look at WordPress as an open source movement, and I look at what, what I've been in for the last 15 to nearly 20 years, yes, there are more community. It's a first of all. It's a much bigger community, right? You're talking about 40,000 people in Slack that are, you know, interested in committing to WordPress Slack? That are, you know, interested in committing to WordPress? Nevermind the hundreds of thousands of people who develop for it, right? So, huge, huge community.

Matt Medeiros: 1:06:26

And, yes, there are regular meetings, like we have the Friday afternoon show, as, like the air quotes boardroom as the only official meeting that I see. Could it be more organized? Yes, what I know is that open source is slow and messy and you know it's a snowball effect as it rolls down the mountain it gets a little bit bigger and a little bit bigger and it's just going to take time for that to grow. And you know it's unfortunate that I feel like now both sides feel like, yeah, there's nothing really here, it's just a little experiment that we're all doing. I wish it wasn't. I wish there was more organization around it.

Matt Medeiros: 1:07:05

I know Adam and Dave just don't have the time nor want to be in that direction together and try to get some momentum going around this so that there can be quarterly meetings, you know, some kind of in public meeting that breaks down the different 2.0 tags that are being adopted. You know, once again I look at if you were to buy an account from GoDaddy. You're going to get WordPress one way versus a Bluehost. You're going to get WordPress one way. It's still WordPress at the core, but this open source framework allows them to build their own experiences and I hope that's what that hosts will do and apps will do in a more joint effort. So I guess at the end of the day, as the dust settles from this. It sounds like it is slightly rudderderless, though I hope for a future where it does get a little bit more organized, much to the corporate chagrin of podcasting 2.0.

Sam Sethi: 1:08:07

I guess tom webster said it very well podcasting 2.0 apps have failed because, as an app developer, we are not gaining market share in the way that Spotify and YouTube are doing it, and so, therefore, are all of our efforts leading to nothing.

Matt Medeiros: 1:08:28

I'm not a developer but I have a chatbot that tells me I am. And I certainly wouldn't want to debate Tom Webster on his knowledge in, like, let's say, the ad tech industry or the ad industry for podcasting, but I see a world you know where I hear Todd talk about. Well, we have a way to look at, let's say, completion rate of episode listening with chapters. Right, let's say, we got the chapter tag and maybe why I'm so critical or what made me critical of Tom's post was I would love to see Tom and maybe he isn't, I just don't know it like advocate for okay ad platforms or large publishers. Like, we've got this chapter thing over here and see, see down there in podcasting 2.0, there's this tag called chapters. We can tie up a way of reporting on completion rate by just leveraging, let's say, this chapter tag. You complete the chapter. We know you've made it X, x, y, z percent through the episode and, by the way, chapters, we can display an ad or something like that, an impression for your brand.

Matt Medeiros: 1:09:29

I would love to see those efforts tied in Now. That would also mean that Tom would come up with some data or some feedback from big ad tech and that means folks in the podcasting 2.0 world would have to look at that and say, ok, critical feedback, let's adopt it, let's think about it, let's not shun it away because it came from, you know, amazon or some you know big publisher that we don't like to, uh, you know, align with. Let's look at it respectively. Just like tom's respecting the podcast 2.0 tags, I would love to see that world where, uh, you know, tom, is that conduit to add tech and advertiser advertisers out there and leverage some of this technology so that we can see something happen, um, you know, in that space matt, matt mediros, thank you so much.

Sam Sethi: 1:10:14

Thank you for coming on and sharing your thoughts with us. Podcasting 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 is not going to die and there are too many good people behind it. But I do think it's not going to go as fast or as far as people think and it may take a little time for the tortoise to catch up to the hare. But when it does look out hare, we're going to win.

James Cridland: 1:10:35

I agree, I agree, sam, the excellent Matt Medeiros, and you can hear more of that interview in Monday's Pod News Weekly review feed. So where are we? Good news from Apple? Just to round off with some good news, because we should probably round off with some good news. Apple announced podcast transcriptions just over a year ago, the beginning of March last year. The good news from them is that they have finally managed to complete creating transcripts for all previously published episodes. So that's 13 supported languages, more than 100 million episodes in Apple Podcasts that all have transcripts now available, which is super good. If you want to, you can supply your own transcripts and that's all good, using the Podcasting 2.0 tag, of course. So well done to Apple Podcasts there, I think.

Sam Sethi: 1:11:29

Yeah, I thought, on the back of YouTube announcing 1 billion and Spotify announcing their big number, I thought Apple have to announce a big number. I thought they were going to announce 100 million subscriptions. No, it was transcriptions. But anyway, nice that they've done it. What are they going to do with it all, james? What are they going to do with their data?

James Cridland: 1:11:48

Good question. So one thing that you can do with your data yourself is you can download your transcripts from Apple, which is good, which Apple has always made available, so that's a good start. I'm imagining that they will use that to do a bit of training of their internal AI tools, and you know why not. It reminds me trying to think whether or not Apple's terms and conditions actually were explicit about that or what they were actually using that for. But certainly transcripts have been in Apple's terms and conditions for some time now, as, by the way, they are in Spotify, even though Spotify aren't making any yet. By the way, they are in Spotify even though Spotify aren't making any yet. So that's all good, I think. So, yes, it'll be interesting to see if they actually do anything more, you know with those tools.

James Cridland: 1:12:47

I guess Now another company that's also focusing on transcripts is Pocket Cast. What are they up to, james Pocket Cast? Well, they're up to a few things. Firstly, they appear to be considering generating its own transcripts for its app. If you look at the next version of the app, that includes something which they have called a remote feature flag for generated transcripts. Typically, what a remote feature flag is is it's something that they can turn on at a later date when they are ready to launch a particular you know tool or whatever, and so maybe they are warming up a ton of computers to produce a whole set of transcripts as well, who knows? Of course, pocket Casts is another podcast app that supports the Podcasting 2.0 podcast transcripts service. So yeah, so that might be a thing.

Sam Sethi: 1:13:42

Right, james, let's whiz around the word rapidly. What's going on in the US? No, not just in podcasting terms. Nothing else I don't want to know.

James Cridland: 1:13:49

Yes, just in podcasting terms. The power of branded podcasts is a thing that Jar Audio and Sounds Profitable released a couple of weeks ago. It's a good piece of research 43% of Americans aged over 18 would likely listen to a podcast about a favourite brand or product. According to the study and there's a tonne more data there If you make branded podcasts, then this essentially, is your next six months worth of marketing. So go and grab that.

James Cridland: 1:14:20

In the UK, interestingly, one podcaster has got very upset to the Daily Mail about the fact that Michelle Obama has apparently stolen the name of his podcast. Um, not really Um, but the podcast. Uh, his podcast is called In my Opinion. Um, he's a bit grumpy that. Uh, michelle Obama's new podcast is called IMO. So for a start, they're not called the same Uh. Secondly, they've trademarked the name, but only in the UK, so that's useless. The podcast index I looked has 261 shows called In my Opinion, 30 shows called IMO, and so, yeah, I think this is a desperate attempt from a unknown podcaster to stir up some anti-Michelle Obama stuff in the Daily Mail, and the Daily Mail fell for it. So hooray for them.

Sam Sethi: 1:15:16

Well, in my opinion, I think he's a lucky, lucky boy, because people are going to be doing searches and guess what? His unknown podcast is suddenly going to appear in searches that he's never appeared in before.

James Cridland: 1:15:29

Well, yes, indeed, and suddenly people might go.

Sam Sethi: 1:15:32

I might listen to that one as well. Yeah, that may well be happening.

James Cridland: 1:15:35

May well be happening. Many congratulations to Dino Sofos, friend of the show from Persephonica. His company has announced a video version of a podcast that they make called Miss Me, with Lily Allen and Mikita Oliver. It was a big exclusive reveal, except Pod News had already broken that a week before, so I didn't bother covering it again. The one question that we asked last week is really weird that they are allowed to do that on YouTube when the BBC would probably do it on iPlayer. Anyway, it turns out that it's on the BBC Sounds YouTube channel, which, ah, that makes more sense. So that's where that's going to be and it's only the question and answer version of that show. So it's very similar to some of the Goldhanger shows in that it's got a full version and then a Q&A shows. In that it's got a full version and then a Q&A and it's just the Q&A which is being filmed.

Sam Sethi: 1:16:34

So, anyway, that's all quite nice, so that will be live as well then, because there's no point doing Q&A if it's not live.

James Cridland: 1:16:51

I mean I suspect it'll be Q&A.

James Cridland: 1:16:52

That is done in the gold hangar way of taking emails in and then responding to those emails. I don't think it's going to be long, but yeah, I know that the rest is politics.

James Cridland: 1:16:57

Yeah yeah, yeah, but yes, so that's going on in the UK. In Australia, the Australian podcast ranker released for January which was exciting SEA's listener returned to number one. Arn's iHeart is top publisher. If you look at top downloads, then the ABC is number one. Arn's iHeart is top publisher. If you look at top downloads, then the ABC is number one. So everybody wins the data. So normally I don't.

Sam Sethi: 1:17:18

I normally wouldn't be bothered with these things because nothing changes. But you have a bit that says two significant changes. I thought, okay, what's the significant?

James Cridland: 1:17:26

change. Oh, you want those, do you? Okay, well, I'll tell you those Two big changes. Firstly, a podcast called it's A Lot with Abby Chatfield was up quite a lot of places to number five. And the reason why? Well, there are two reasons why. Firstly, she's been talking a lot about Maths, married at First Sight, which is a reality TV show that sounds just as awful as the name would imply, but it is absolutely massive in this country. Married at First Sight They've got a new spin-off of that?

Sam Sethi: 1:18:02

Have they, yeah, divorced on the Second Bloody Day?

James Cridland: 1:18:06

Well. Married at First Sight does incredibly well. But the interesting thing about Married at First Sight is that it's totally changed the audience that it used to aim at. So it used to aim at. It used to aim at, you know, women of a certain age, you know 30 something. It's got nothing to do with that anymore. It's very much aimed at younger people, very much aimed at young men and yeah. So it's really fascinating. It's a really fascinating show. I know Weird, but anyway it seems to be doing really well. It seems to be the water cooler moment TV show.

James Cridland: 1:18:39

So anyway, abby Chatfield talking a lot about that, but she also interviewed the Prime Minister, anthony Albanese, in mid-February. We've got an election coming up any moment now, not yet been announced, but you can imagine it's going to be announced relatively shortly. So of course, the podcast election going big here. Also, the unpleasant Kyle and Jackie O, who do a dreadful breakfast show in Sydney which is also broadcast to Melbourne, which nobody listens to because it's dreadful. They are up 20 places to number six. They released 85 episodes in February, almost double the amount of January, and if you have a look at their podcast feed then it's the full show. But then they also cut bits of the show and make those individual episodes as well, presumably so that they can get more advertising around their tawdry and unpleasant content. So there's no accounting for taste.

Sam Sethi: 1:19:35

Tell us what you think, James. Tell us what you think. Don't sit on that fence.

James Cridland: 1:19:38

No accounting for taste. Australia Dreadful, anyway. That's enough about Australia In Canada. This is a brilliant idea, I think, and well done Katie Law for coming up with this idea. She didn't come up with the idea, I should say, but she has reported on it in her Pod, the North newsletter.

James Cridland: 1:20:00

An initiative which I think is a really good initiative, to just place a graphic of a small red maple leaf on any podcast which is made in Canada, so you can download the image, you can overlay it on your graphics right now. If you do a Canadian podcast, go do it today. I think that's a really nice idea, just so that it's really obvious when you're there scrolling through, particularly in Apple Podcasts. If you're scrolling through the Apple Podcasts top list, you can see all of these shows from Canada and we should feel proud about that. I think that's a really good idea.

James Cridland: 1:20:37

Actually, one of the things that I did when I was working at the original Virgin Radio back in the early 2000s is I suggested that every single podcast made in the UK should have, at the bottom right hand corner, a UK flag. Don't care what it looks like, just put a UK flag on there. If you're proud of the web coming out of the UK do that, and our competitor, TalkSport, ended up doing that pretty well instantly as soon as I came up with this idea. Also, lastfm ended up doing that as well, because that was from the UK. Yes, I thought it was a splendid idea. So seeing the same sort of idea for podcasts is, I think, a good thing.

Sam Sethi: 1:21:17

Can I just say a couple of years ago, when I said to you that we have a country tag field, that we then show the country flag next to the podcast, you said why have you got that? No one's going to use?

James Cridland: 1:21:29

it yeah, just thought.

Sam Sethi: 1:21:31

I'd remind you.

James Cridland: 1:21:32

Yes, yes, I think slightly different. I think having a sticker on something that says made in Australia is different to having an additional web field somewhere that you can filter shows from Australia from.

Sam Sethi: 1:21:52

Well, hey, if you've filter shows from Australia from, but I well, hey, if you've got, if you've got every show from Canada, you can then filter it and then say I just want to hear Canadian shows, or I think I'll just put it out there. We do that on true fans and I'm going to continue to do it.

James Cridland: 1:22:06

There you go and you do put, you do put a little flag next to every single show. So, and I appreciate that, which is clickable.

Sam Sethi: 1:22:13

Oh, it is.

James Cridland: 1:22:13

There's a thing and then you can filter Very nice Filters as well. Very nice, so many congratulations. I should also say, just by the way, that I am speaking at Pod Summit, yyc. Where's YYC Sam? What airport code is YYC? Go YYC.

James Cridland: 1:22:29

Go YYC, yes, go Go. Yvr, vancouver. Okay, what's another one? Yto, toronto City Airport. Yyc is Calgary and I am speaking at Pod Summit, yyc, in early September. I would love to see you there. That would be lovely. I've just booked my flight because my airline had a deal on, so that would be excellent. And if you are in Calgary, I do have a day before I'm due to be on stage and stuff, and so if you're in Calgary and you drink beer, then that would be lovely, right? Can I just say why? Why bother? Hey, very good, there's a fascinating asterisk piece of information about why all of the Canadian airports are all called starting with a Y and, as you may already have guessed, it's not that fascinating, right? And in France, deezer has broken even Hooray For the first time, so they're very excited. They have grown revenue by 12%. They are now cash flow positive. I don't see the word profit anywhere, but they're cash flow positive, whatever that means. And so many congratulations, dizer, for that.

Sam Sethi: 1:23:55

May we.

James Cridland: 1:23:56

Yes.

Sam Sethi: 1:23:57

But they do podcasts. That's the thing. The reason I put it in there is not because they're a music streaming service, because they also do podcasts.

James Cridland: 1:24:04

They also have podcasts in Zaire. If you wish to get your podcast in Zaire, yes, that was my Benjamin Benhamy impersonation. I hope you liked it.

Sam Sethi: 1:24:13

Oh, I thought that was my Benjamin Bellamy impersonation.

James Cridland: 1:24:15

I hope you liked it. Oh, I thought that was Inspector Clouseau. Maybe it's just very similar.

Sam Sethi: 1:24:18

Do you have a room? A room, yes.

James Cridland: 1:24:21

People and jobs. Congratulations Jared Easley, who has got a job at the NAB so very excitingly. He is Director of member content programming and education for the NAB. The downside is he has to go to Las Vegas at least once a year, so sorry about that, but apart from that, that's all good. I found the job ad for his job and the job ad says that the successful applicant will host the NAB podcast. So we will hear Jared doing that. Of course, he still continues as a shareholder of podcast movement. What else? Pushkin Industry looking for a director of business development? That's exciting. They've also ratified a union contract, so lots of exciting things there in terms of AI and a minimum salary and all that kind of stuff.

James Cridland: 1:25:10

And hello everybody at Odyssey. Big changes going on at Odyssey, including the chief digital officer and president of podcast and streaming, jd Crowley, who has been left, as I believe the phrase might be. It's time to move on to my next chapter. He said yes, and a bunch of other people gone. Apparently, 300 employees being terminated. They've got a new president and CEO who is the same as the one that they've had ever since January. They're just tip-hexing out the phrase interim, so that's all good. Awards and events. So gosh Evolutions next week, no, the week after. I'm looking forward to going to Evolutions the week after that. That should be fun. Catching up with the folks from Mopod for a deep dish pizza, oh okay, yes.

Sam Sethi: 1:26:04

Chicago pizza there you go, yes.

James Cridland: 1:26:07

I know. So that'll be good Unipodfest. You are there in Birmingham Much the same sort of time, aren't you?

Sam Sethi: 1:26:16

Friday, the 4th of April, yes, yes, the only way to do a Birmingham accent is to say Dudley, and once you say Dudley you can do a Birmingham accent. It's really useless.

James Cridland: 1:26:24

Oh Dudley, yes, that kind of works. Yes, there are also equivalents for Newcastle, which is photocopier? Oh, okay, I do. Kawasaki, oh Kawasaki, yes, that also works. And also Scotland, just random Scottish accent. You just have to say Curly Wurly and then you are good there. So that's all good. Oh gosh, look, it even says Pod News Weekly Review. They capitalised Pod News wrongly, but at least it says Pod News Weekly Review and not just Pod News Weekly. So that's nice, so hurrah. Where can they go to find out more information? Unipodfestcouk for that. And, dare I mention, no move on Next. Okay, right, let's move on.

James Cridland: 1:27:18

Then in that case, there is a big awards which has gone live. There are actually a number of awards which have gone live this week, including the Signal Awards, but the one that I want to point you to is the 20th People's Choice Podcast Awards. It's the one that Todd Cochran runs, getyourhomecom, and it's open for registration. The awards have been running since 2005. We are another sponsor this year. Can't decide whether it's going to be Pod News sponsoring it or whether it's going to be newpodcastsnet sponsoring it, who knows, but anyway we'll find out. You can enter that awards. It's very cheap to do at podcastawardscom. The Tech Stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 1:28:00

Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday in the Pod News newsletter. Here's where Sam talks technology. Sam Zoom, Talk to me about.

Sam Sethi: 1:28:07

Zoom yeah, fat Larry's band. That's all I'll say, right.

James Cridland: 1:28:12

Just one look and then my heart went boom.

Sam Sethi: 1:28:17

Exactly, old DJs never die young, right? This is directly from Pod News Daily. So you tell me, james, what's Zoom?

James Cridland: 1:28:28

Zoom with a Z rather than or a Z rather than Zoom with an X, zoom with a Z make podcast hardware and audio hardware, and they've released a thing called PodTrack P2, which has nothing to do with PodTrack. In fact, they spell PodTrack differently than PodTrack. It's a portable recorder for USB microphones, which is very cool. Actually A little thing it's $99. It includes background noise reduction, it's got a built-in dynamic compressor and all of that. It records up to four simultaneous tracks. That's two microphones folks onto an SD card and, yes, quite neat. So if you have a couple of USB microphones and you want to go on the road, then the PodTrak P2 is for you, I think. Let's mention Spotify again, shall we? Brilliant.

Sam Sethi: 1:29:16

Yeah, didn't want to, but have to. They've added comments back in now for Spotify. I think they had them before, but now they're making much more front and centre. So you have to answer three questions before you can answer your first comment, so you have to know that they're public. You have to answer three questions before you can answer your first comment, so you have to know that they're public. You have to know that they can be reviewed and you have to read the terms and services. But other than that, you can get on with leaving them, and they've also added nice emojis now, so again it's some UIE stuff that's what they're doing Right.

James Cridland: 1:29:48

More about Podcasting 2.0. This can be nice and quick, I guess yes.

Sam Sethi: 1:29:54

You and I actually talked about the location tag a long, long, long, long time ago. You came up with the original idea and then I sort of said I'd like it to also be where you record. And I think we've come to a lovely compromise, James.

James Cridland: 1:30:07

Yes, which you can now do both. So the podcast location tag now supports a location of the creator as well as the subject of a podcast, so you can record a show about the Eiffel Tower and make it available in a map that shows podcasts about the Eiffel Tower and podcasts about places in Paris, but you can also add your location in there as well. I'm recording the show in Chicago. That's all absolutely fine. The proposal, which isn't yet written as a proposal, see earlier in this podcast. Then you can absolutely do that. There's a couple of lines of JavaScript which allows you to automatically query the OpenStreetMap map and grab all of the information from that. So that is a very good thing. I'm sure that TrueFans already supports it.

Sam Sethi: 1:31:08

We do. You know that because PodNews Daily is our standard bearer for this. You correct zip around the world, yes, and you add your location of where you're recording and we can now build feature on it like where's james?

James Cridland: 1:31:23

yes, and you will see um when I am uh next, uh, on the move, which is next week, then you will see um. See that I'm coming from Dublin or I'm coming from a random airport somewhere, or wherever it is that happens to be. So that is a good thing. Go and find us on True Fans for that.

James Cridland: 1:31:42

Two other new features coming for Podcasting 2.0, if we all agree with them. Firstly, an expansion to the podcast images tag, which essentially makes it actually useful. It adds links to banners. It adds links to YouTube size thumbnails, other images as well. Again, it isn't specced out properly yet and if it's specced out the way that it currently is specced out, it will still be a spectacular failure. So I'm hoping that it gets properly specced out in between now and when it gets launched. But the podcast images tag is a good thing. There was a talk of deprecating the podcast images tag and making this one, which deals with differently sized images at different sizes, be called the podcast image tag, but I think I've made everybody see sense on that, because nobody was really using the podcast images tag apart from three people, and we know all of their email addresses. No, you don't.

Sam Sethi: 1:32:43

Yes, we do. Yeah, you got mine, I know. Okay, fine, we did it.

James Cridland: 1:32:46

Yes, yes, I've got the other two as well.

Sam Sethi: 1:32:50

We're all good, we're all good.

James Cridland: 1:32:52

And then finally, the podcast follow tag, which, if you want to see a version of that running, then just have a look at the PodNews RSS feed podnewsnet slash RSS. No one is going to use this apart from people like PodNews and episodesfm and other podcast directories. It will be super useful for us. The podcaster need never see this. This is something that really the podcast hosts should be doing automatically, and it's basically a list of all of the places where you can follow that particular podcast on Apple, on Spotify, on YouTube, all of that kind of stuff, and so that will be very good. If you want to take a look at the version that is in the PodNews RSS feed, you might work out how you can actually just copy and paste the JSON for your own podcast, because I've actually written an API that will do it for every single podcast out there. It's just that I don't really want that to be used that much for that, because I don't think I can afford it.

Sam Sethi: 1:34:00

But yes, so that is all good. Two questions, Well, two things. The first one is Radiotopia added this right. Yes, who in Radiotopia is part of the podcasting 2.0 group? I'm like how fast did they get this done? I mean, they beat you to the beat.

James Cridland: 1:34:19

Yes, nobody. And in fact it's not just Radiotopia, it's all of PRX, who use their own inbuilt app called Dovetail. What I think has happened is that they have worked out well. We already have all of this information because we use it in our web player anyway, so we can very easily produce the JSON file. That should be what Buzzsprout, our sponsor, does. That should be what you know anybody else is capable of doing without annoying a podcast, a podcast podcast publisher, directly. So PRX has shown us the way to go. So hurrah for PRX.

Sam Sethi: 1:34:58

And the running joke is this is the only tag that True Fans won't implement, so there, you go.

James Cridland: 1:35:01

Yes, indeed yes, which is good. Radiotopia, by the way, getting a lot more shows for 2025. There's a quarter two for spring in their part of the world. So, yes, there's more details on that too.

Sam Sethi: 1:35:16

Last couple of things Antenapod, the open source podcast app for Android, has a new release and they're also allowing you to download individual shows. Now, hopefully, yes, that's right.

James Cridland: 1:35:28

So it used to be auto download everything or nothing and now you can say I only want to auto download this show, but not all of these shows. Good, which is good. Antenapod is if you are looking for a clean replacement for Google Podcasts, antenapod is my number one choice. I know that I talk a lot about Pocket Casts being very good. Antenapod is the number one choice if you want a Google Podcasts replacement. I mean, I would say, where have you been for the last nine months? But it's really good Open source. You can nick the code if you like and work out how they did everything, but that is super good.

James Cridland: 1:36:05

Two big changes from Headliner Firstly, good news Yay. Two big changes from Headliner. Firstly good news Yay, eddie by. Headliner is now offering automated transcripts, which is good for your SEO and good for promo assets and stuff like that. It's free if you are a Headliner Pro user, so that is a good thing. What I love about it is that the automated transcripts learns from the corrections you make. So if you are forever changing what the transcripting system thinks co-host is spelt like to change it to the correct spelling of co-host, you need only do it a couple of times and then it'll get the hang of things. That would be super useful for me, given that the Pod News Daily is currently sponsored by co-host.

James Cridland: 1:36:59

And secondly, headliner has a thing called Forever Free. Well, that's lovely, a thing called Forever Free. It is still going to be forever free, but instead of getting a free number of videos per month, you are going to get one un-watermarked video per month, but additional videos will have a Headliner logo on it. I'm imagining, knowing the folks at Headliner, it won't be an obnoxious logo and it won't be accompanied by these. People haven't paid us. I think it'll be just a nice small, you know, smart one, but nevertheless just something to be aware of. If you are a Headliner Forever free account user, we are a Headliner Pro user and we thank them for giving us that, so that's a good thing.

Announcer: 1:37:48

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

Sam Sethi: 1:38:01

My word we've reached the inbox, james. What are we going to say?

James Cridland: 1:38:05

My word. Yes, we have so many different ways to get in touch with us. You can press that fan mail link in our show notes. That'll send us a text message. You can use super comments on True Fans boosts everywhere else. Or you can use email weekly at podnewsnet. All of those are valid and we share any money that we make too. A ton of boosts 501 sats from True Fans. From Seth saying I think we definitely have a problem with diversity in podcasting and we need to push out different viewpoints from different types of people. I'm not saying demote anyone, just highlight all of the different voices. Especially now we need more diverse voices than ever before. Seth, I would agree with you and that was one thing that I was quite sad about seeing in the Infinite Dial that including video in those podcast consumption data means that we've again skewed more male than female. We were pretty well 50-50, and now we've skewed a bit more male again. So we do need to work on that. So completely agree with you, seth.

Sam Sethi: 1:39:18

Now a thousand sats from RW Nash coming through loud and clear on Fountain. Good, that's good to know. And what app can we mention this week, james, and see if they will send us sats from that app now?

James Cridland: 1:39:31

Yes, indeed Great strategy. Yes, it's an excellent strategy, in fact. Three more from Fountain, one of them from Silas on Linux. Or is it Silas on Linux? Let's not even go there, Anyway, he says right. This talk about missing Fountain boosts got me to top up again. I just ran out of sats. Lads, I could never dislike your show. It's not new media, Call back to a past episode. I have a suggestion for Sam. After the Thames walk, he should walk from the UK to his house in Portugal.

Sam Sethi: 1:40:04

Can I say, silas, we're doing the Camino way. Ha ha, ha, ha ha ha.

James Cridland: 1:40:09

Oh, there you go.

Sam Sethi: 1:40:09

I've got no idea what that is, but it sounds impressive. It's the walk from North Portugal down to South Portugal, past my house in Portugal. So, yes, I will be doing it.

James Cridland: 1:40:18

Right, very good, while exclusively listening to Portuguese podcasts. How about that? No, no, no, because they grate.

Sam Sethi: 1:40:25

It's a horrible language.

James Cridland: 1:40:26

I'm sorry, Portugal, but it's a grating language, yes yes, news just coming in of a house fire in Portugal. Weird. Thank you for the 6,300 sats. Silas then says I forgot to fill in the report card. I wanted to, but I just forgot Rubbish. I am super, super busy and it all gets tracked back to Sam telling me to make my own app on Mastodon. Genuine thanks for that, because that could turn out to be really good. Nothing to show yet, though. Still have the day job. And finally, another 1,000 sats. Actually, I don't even think it was on the Mastodon. I was joking around on Mastodon and on the show I got told to make my own app. It doesn't matter anyways. Here's more money for reading nonsense. Excellent, thank you, silas for uh, all of that.

Sam Sethi: 1:41:13

Uh, this one from podcast guru here to to, to to sat the uh from bruce, the ugly quacking duck, and try that again. The ugly quacking duck even. Yes, yes, uh, yes, put your teeth back in sam. Uh, you called it from the us. I'm in the midwest, enjoy your news and the conversation quite a bit. Um, sorry, I enjoyed hang. I'm in the Midwest, enjoy your news and the conversation quite a bit. Sorry, I enjoyed Hang on, I'm in the Midwest, enjoy your news and the conversation quite a bit. I did read that correctly first time around. Thanks, 73. 73.

James Cridland: 1:41:41

Is that how old? He is 73 and he's sending us sats. Wow, wow, that's very impressive, very impressive. Thank you for the row of ducks, bruce, and also thank you to Neil Velio 304 sats through True Fans. Why did Spotify's spokesperson sound like a badly behaved kid who's just smashed a window and said I can't help it if the window is in the way of my stones? I've got no idea what any of that's about, but I like it. Neil Velio, thank you so much for that, for that now I'm going to tell you off again.

Sam Sethi: 1:42:15

I'm afraid um you're not putting your blue sky um social interact tag in your feed anymore ah, it should be in there.

James Cridland: 1:42:24

um, I have a feeling it arrives in there 24 hours late, uh, and I think that that's a bit of a mistake. Um, but yes, I will go and take a look at that. John Spurlock has already hassled me about that. He'll be in Chicago next week, sam just saying, or in a couple of weeks time, just saying, but yes, I should get that fixed, it's.

Sam Sethi: 1:42:46

Just saying people of a brown colour may not be welcome.

James Cridland: 1:42:48

It's yeah, no comment. It's very difficult, interestingly, to do the timing right, because what you've got to do is you've got to post something, you've got to publish the show so that there's a show there. You've then got to post that episode onto Mastodon or onto Blue Sky one of the two. You've then got to get the ID of that post and then put that in the RSS feed and then republish the RSS feed again. So there's that sort of double publishing thing that you have to do in order to actually get the you know, the base message in there, and that's just something that my flung together code can't quite work on yet. So I need to continue working on that. I know exactly what it is. It is literally that the thing that sends the blue sky what are they called skeets posts the thing that sends the Blue Sky posts runs on a cron job every one minute, and so therefore, it's just not running fast enough in terms of the publish thing. So, anyway, I need to get that sorted.

Sam Sethi: 1:44:06

I'm going to sneeze Now. Good news, James we have a new power supporter. We do, James. We have a new power supporter.

James Cridland: 1:44:14

We do. We've got a new power supporter Absolutely right, and that's very exciting. And I've no idea who they are. The only thing I can tell you is that they are called Star Tempest and they have a very exciting email which I'm not going to read out, but they are one of our big supporters, giving us $10 a month. Thank you so much for that, star Tempest. That will be very, very welcome for Sam to buy some more cut price wine and for me to buy some beer. That is a very good thing. So thank you so much for becoming our excellent 18, the latest excellent 18. So thank you very much for doing that Much appreciated. You can do that too. Weeklypodnewsnet is where you can plug your credit card into Buzzsprout, our sponsor, and help support us. Other people who've done that Brian Entsminger, david John Clark, james Burt, john McDermott. I'm looking forward to meeting in Chicago, I hope, even if he's now ignoring my email saying when are we going to meet up?

Sam Sethi: 1:45:18

He's travelling. He's travelling. He's in Ireland. Is he? Yes, he's in Ireland.

James Cridland: 1:45:22

Is he? Oh right, well, there you go, I'm in Ireland next week. Clare White-Brown, ms Eileen Smith, neil Velio, rocky Thomas, jim James, david Marzall, si Jobling, rachel Corbett, dave Jackson, mike Hamilton, matt Medeiros, marshall Brown and Cameron Mull All of those excellent people all giving us an amount of actual money. Thank you so much for doing that, really, genuinely. We really appreciate that. And um, I've just, I've just emptied the buzzsprout wallet, uh, so you can, you, you can, eat again, sam, and I will send you, send you your half as soon as, as soon as paypal, uh, send it all the way through, cool. So what's happened for you this week, sam?

Sam Sethi: 1:46:06

uh, we finally finally launched fan zone, so it's out in the wild. It's also thank you for for your name. Check on Pod News Daily because we updated it on the new podcast URL that you have.

James Cridland: 1:46:21

What's the URL, james? Yes, the new website that I've got. Yes, it's called newpodcastsnet. It is the easiest way. If you want to be in that list of new shows at the bottom of the Pod News newsletter, it's the easiest way to you want to be in that list of new shows at the bottom of the Pod News newsletter. It's the easiest way to to achieve that. You do the work, not me. So newpodcastsnet is where you go for that. Don't worry, I do take a look at them before they get published. But typically what happens if you've got a trailer, as you do, if you've got a trailer marked in your podcast feed, then typically we can probably get you about 600 downloads. So that's a pretty good thing. So, yes, it's worth a look at WebSub. It says here it says here PodNews WebSub. What's PodNews WebSub?

Sam Sethi: 1:47:05

Well, so we've been implementing WebSub, as you know, and we came across a slight sticky point with Superfeeder and then you, under the amazingly brilliant moniker which I think is your company, have a lovely page all about WebSub and how to implement it. So we looked at that and we found what we were doing wrong. So thank you very much. Podnews oh, excellent. Well, there's a thing. Yes, See, I'm fascinated to find out what you were doing wrong.

James Cridland: 1:47:32

So thank you very much, pod News. Oh, excellent, well, there's a thing. Yes, see, go on. I'm fascinated to find out what you're doing wrong now. Anyway there's a thing.

Sam Sethi: 1:47:39

And then I had an absolute hair-pulling moment trying to get my River Radio podcast off Podcast Connect. I've not been on Podcast Connect for two or three years, but I had to do that to get fan zone up there and I then went oh what are all these podcasts still up here for? And I was trying to. I got. It took hours, it's like, and then I had to pay the pleasure of 1799 to do it as well, by the way, thanks. Now you.

James Cridland: 1:48:03

You didn't have to pay. You would have. You have to pay if you are going to sell a premium version of that show.

James Cridland: 1:48:11

Well, can I just point out, it's not bloody clear then I agree, I agree, but you didn't have to pay. And secondly, you also mentioned that Apple wanted hundreds of documents to verify you. Yeah, you only need again. You only need that if you are wanting to earn money, because Apple sends you through I think it's the Dun Bradstreet, you know, business verifier or whatever it ends up being. So you can ignore both of those. But I mean, you didn't, but you can. That's all I'm saying.

Sam Sethi: 1:48:45

Yes, and also there's EU rules as well that you have to comply with now as well. Ah, yes yes, well, that's your fault, not my fault. Blame Brexit, Blame Nigel. Farage. Send back the rubles, Nigel. Anyway, James, what's happened for you?

James Cridland: 1:49:04

Well for me. I've had an entertaining week still trying to work out why, all of a sudden, I'm getting you know 300 times the downloads for the Pod News Daily podcast, which is lovely, but they are all very clearly automated. They're all something to do with Google. They're all coming out of either Indonesia or Malaysia. So far, I think I have narrowed it down to be able to confidently say that this is a bug in Google and that Google is making lots of people in Indonesia and Malaysia, two of the more poorer parts of the world, and they are chomping through data, making automated podcast downloads, and it happens to be my show which is getting the automated downloads.

James Cridland: 1:49:54

I've so far been trying to get Google to pay attention to this over the last two weeks and Google have just said we're looking into it. Well, they haven't asked me for any logs. They haven't asked me for any more detail. So either the blog post that I wrote was really good and contains all of the information that they were looking for, or they're not looking at it. But it's costed me quite a lot of money and I wish they would stop, because it's also costing people in Malaysia and Indonesia quite a lot of money as well, so, naughty Google, you can expect to hear more of that over the next couple of weeks.

Sam Sethi: 1:50:30

There was that famous track Big in Japan Does that mean you're big in Indonesia now?

James Cridland: 1:50:35

Well, I'm not big in Indonesia, because nobody is actually listening to this. They are automatically downloading all of these shows. You can really clearly see on OP3 that I'm getting, you know, x amount of downloads per hour and there's no fade off. If you have a look over the weekend, I'm still getting the same amount of downloads per hour and there's no fade off. If you have a look over the weekend, I'm still getting the same amount of downloads per hour. It just happens across Friday, saturday and Sunday as well.

James Cridland: 1:51:00

There's absolutely no fade off. There's absolutely no. You know, you can't see when Indonesians go to bed or wake up. It's absolutely rock solid X amount of downloads per minute automatically throughout the day, all coming from individual Android phones in Indonesia and Malaysia, and at least one of those countries doesn't have Google Audio News, which is where the service is that Google is actually sending these things to. So none of it makes sense, and I have heard from a couple of other podcast hosts who are seeing the same sort of thing. But the fun thing is, of course, that they are all IAB certified downloads, so according to the rules, I can claim all of this. So so that's good.

Sam Sethi: 1:51:54

Anything else, James, apart from you doing that amazing Infinite Dial show.

James Cridland: 1:51:59

Anything else. No, apart from apart from that, it was my birthday on Wednesday. No, it wasn't, it was my birthday on Tuesday. I forgot to. I did all of pod news, but I forgot to press the button right at the end of the process, which meant that the first I knew was sitting having a nice relaxing coffee the morning after and then seeing a little signal message from you, sam going, are you all right, mate? No pod news. And I thought, oh, so I finished my coffee very, very quickly and came back to the house.

Sam Sethi: 1:52:30

Can I tell you why I was also miffed with you? Because we were using your podcast for a web subtest and we're going. I know he does a daily one. I know he does a daily one. Where is it, James Hurry up?

James Cridland: 1:52:45

Yes, yes, no, indeed. So, yes, there's a thing, and here's a fun fact for you. Every time I send pod news out, it costs me $1.79.

Sam Sethi: 1:52:57

And then the last thing I'd say is happy birthday, james.

James Cridland: 1:53:00

By the way, oh well thank you.

Sam Sethi: 1:53:08

Thank you very much. It's been a. You know it's been a great pleasure.

James Cridland: 1:53:10

Yes, I'd like to thank my mum and dad. Yes, yes, and without whom, etc. And that's it for this week. All of our podcast stories were taken from the Pod News daily newsletter, podnewsnet.

Sam Sethi: 1:53:22

You can support this show by streaming stats. You can give us feedback using the Buzzsprout fan mail link in our show notes. You can send us a super comment or a boost or become a power supporter like the sensational 17 at weeklypodnewsnet like the exciting 18, obviously, of course, yes, yes, like the exciting 18 I, I don't know.

James Cridland: 1:53:43

Exciting is the wrong word, isn't it?

Sam Sethi: 1:53:45

uh, the excellent I couldn't find a moniker for that. Yeah, any suggestions excellent 18.

James Cridland: 1:53:49

I don't know. Anyway, our music is from Studio Dragonfly. Our voiceover is Sheila D From the free state of Arizona. Our audio is recorded using Clean Feed, we edit with Hindenburg and we're hosted and sponsored by Buzzsprout. Start podcasting, keep podcasting. Get updated every day. Subscribe to our newsletter at podnewsnet.

James Cridland: 1:54:13

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