James Cridland: 0:00

The Pod News Weekly Review uses chapters Use a modern podcast app to skip through the stories if you're a lightweight, or listen all the way through like an OG. It's Friday, the 2nd of May 2025.

Announcer: 0:12

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

Sam Sethi: 0:21

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

James Cridland: 0:26

I'm James Criddon, the editor of Pod News, and I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO of True Fans In the chapters. Today, spotify report their quarter one financial updates but was it any good? They also say that they've paid out $100 million to podcasters in the first quarter of this year. Also, youtube's ad revenue jumps 10% and Himalaya reportedly to be acquired by Tencent Music for $2.4 billion. This podcast is sponsored by Buzzsprout, with the tools, 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: 1:04

Now, james, I'm just going to say it straight up play the jingle. It's Spotify heavy this week. Now it's time for more news about Spotify. Oh good. If you've got chapters and you don't want to hear about Spotify, skip ahead. But other than that, we've got to start off, james, with the Spotify Q1 revenue. Now it looks on the surface that it's very good 12% growth in premium subscribers. Monthly active users are up 15% growth in total revenue. Is that how you read it? It's a good quarter.

James Cridland: 1:36

Yeah, I think it is a good quarter. I mean it's a good quarter for podcasting, but a good quarter overall for Spotify and for that product as well. So, yes, I mean I thought it was interesting that Daniel Ek basically didn't really want to say very much about the quarter and instead used his prepared comments to talk about increased economic uncertainty in the world and how Spotify will probably deal OK with that, because everybody needs music, don't they? And also said which I thought was interesting and I thought that you might have seen that interesting as well around the company's app development. They've done an awful lot of work with their apps, which means that they can now add new features to their apps six times faster than they've been able to in the past. But they were talking about Spotify having individual apps on more than a thousand surfaces now, which must be incredibly complicated to keep all of those up to date.

Sam Sethi: 2:35

Yeah, look, one of Spotify's, I think, secret sources not so secret, really is that they are on everything and everywhere, unlike Apple or any others, and I think that's what's given them the you know the, the economic or unique advantages that they have, because if you start a playlist on your desktop and then it's on your mobile, oh, you get to your car, it's there. I mean, they've just done a deal with um, a gaming company, haven haven't they? So they've just announced that you'll be able to use your Spotify on EA Sports, a new FC. Can you tell I'm not a gamer? Can you tell he says reading words that don't seem to make any sense to me at all. But allegedly, you can now in Australia, the test bed for everything. But allegedly, you can now, in Australia, the testbed for everything, and Saudi Arabia, you can now play music and podcasts on your EA Sports FC console. Now, that's just an example of where they're extending the reach of Spotify to make sure that people just use them as the singular platform. I think their other big push that they announced their CTO was on the call was their push into AI, and we'll talk about that a little bit later on.

Sam Sethi: 3:49

But I do think there's a problem in them hills at Spotify HQ as well, james. I don't think it's all rosy. They missed significantly. So they increased the number of paid subscribers, which I thought was great, but they missed their quarterly numbers. They were significantly below what they told the number of paid subscribers, which I thought was great, but they missed their quarterly numbers. They were significantly below what they told the market. And when you dig deeper into it, it looks like it was due to employee-related taxes. Now we've seen Spotify has had to do significant cost-cutting in the last couple of years in order to get to profitability and keep it there, and I think we're going to see either another big cut in employee numbers or there's going to be an increase in pricing.

James Cridland: 4:37

Yeah, well, I guess. I mean, it depends really how much pressure Daniel Ek is going to be under in terms of whether or not he has to continue increasing profit, or whether the amount of profit that they're making, which is more than a billion dollars in just a quarter, is enough for the market. I mean, that amount of profit enables them to do all kinds of exciting things in the future, so perhaps that's going to be enough. But yes, yes, nope not enough, james.

Sam Sethi: 5:09

The market, on the announcement of the Q1 report, dropped the share price by 8%, and that tells you everything that the market was upset with Spotify for missing their expected quarter returns. You can't tell the market. I'm going to hit a number and they're not hit it. They do not like that. Secondly, the underlying net profitability of the business is not strong. They lost a 39% year on year. So it tells you that the revenue they're generating is not significantly stable enough year on year and that's why the market reacted with a share price drop.

Sam Sethi: 5:47

Now Daniel's talking it big up. He's talking about a billion users. He's talking about again this 6X speeding up of platforms. He's talking about how they can see and this was the significant part, james. There's two bits. One was they are going to do a price hike. So in europe and latin america, but not in their biggest market, the usa, they are going to increase it by a euro, um, or you know, not, not, not a massive amount, but I think I've talked about it on this show before.

Sam Sethi: 6:21

There is a price elasticity. There is a point at which growth in user numbers paid subscribers will snap, because there will be a point people say no, I can't do that, and so daniel has announced in that um, you know financial report that they're looking at variable pricing. I still believe there will be more segmentation. He and I think the opportunity in pricing is big. So Daniel sees that there is a way that he can go higher with the pricing for certain people.

Sam Sethi: 6:51

Maybe they've talked about this super fan product. They've talked about a super premier tier. You know he talks about having concert tickets in there, high fidelity audio, ai powered remix features. So he's certainly going to be raising the bar above the $19.99, I think. But they also need to come down to match what I think YouTube did, which I thought was a really aggressive position against Spotify with YouTube Lite, with $7.99 for music and podcasts and ad free. I think they really went straight to Spotify's heart and said look, come on, play in our same field at $7.99. Spotify's looked and gone. Jesus, how do we get down to that level? Because you know, if I've got music and I've got podcasts I want to listen to and I can do it at $7.99, ad-free, why wouldn't I switch?

James Cridland: 7:43

Well, indeed, and I think actually you've got sort of two sides of this. Spotify is its own company, it needs to be profitable, it needs to be making enough money, Whereas YouTube is kind of the same to a degree, but of course it's part of Alphabet, part of Google, and so therefore it doesn't necessarily need to be its own profit centre if it doesn't have to be. And certainly that's the case when it comes to Apple, and Apple Music is a pretty big deal and that has pricing that starts at $6 a month for students, $7 a month for individuals in the US, and if it's $11 a month or $12 a month, depending on what the current price is, but if it's that price in the US for Apple Music, well Spotify isn't going to be able to turn around and say you know what? We're going to be more expensive, because you need a differentiator, and I'm not sure necessarily that there is one.

Sam Sethi: 8:51

Yeah, and that's their biggest problem. I joke about Netflix and you know, but but at some point I genuinely believe Netflix has talked about in recent weeks about getting into podcasts and you say you know it's cheap content for them to be able to fill the back channel if they want with attention you could yeah, I mean you could argue that obviously Netflix has an awful lot of material which is theirs, and theirs alone, which you can't get anywhere else.

James Cridland: 9:22

Apple TV Plus has as well, but that, of course, is a different product. When you look at Spotify, well, they used to have quite a lot of exclusive podcast content. They don't anymore, and so actually they've kind of given that particular thing away in order to chase the ad dollar. Well, now that policy may come back to hurt them, because they don't actually have anything particularly different that is not available on any other platform. You look at all of the music that they've got Well, that's music that Apple Music has, that YouTube Music has. You look at the podcasts Well, that's podcasts that particularly that Apple podcasts have access to. So, therefore, there's no actual differentiator there, other than Spotify's algorithms. And how much would you miss, you know, the Discovery Weekly thing, how much would you miss some of the more popular Spotify playlists? And I suppose that's the thing that Spotify really now needs to be competing on features, because it can't compete on content.

Sam Sethi: 10:31

Yeah, and I think you know we've said it before without music, is Spotify a good podcast app? Generally, we think no. So those catalogues, as you rightly say, are available everywhere. I think it comes back down to Spotify everywhere as an app is a unique selling point to me and I think some of the ai work they're doing is really interesting. But again, will that have a short-term unique value but then again be caught by the rest of the market? I suspect that will be the case.

Sam Sethi: 11:01

So they have the problem that when you're in the market you have to continually get higher and higher um profitability. It's not a, it's good enough to have got to a billion, aren't we clever? Yes, you are very clever, but I think you may have read. Um daniel talked about 1 billion paid subscribers. Is what he sees now as his goal, not 200. He was talking about 100 million. When they reached 100 million subscribers. He thought that was amazing when they started at the 1 million mark and now he's at the 260 odd million and he's now talking about 1 billion. So I think they know that they have to go. It's a volume game and it's a cross-platform game for them. You're right, they haven't got that uniqueness and I suspect if they don't and the share price becomes a problem and it starts dipping it hasn't. It's gone up massively. It's 150% above where it was last year. But if it does drop and it continues to drop, then they become in play for an acquisition and that may be their exit out.

James Cridland: 12:09

Well, it'll be interesting to see what happens with Music Pro, which, of course, is still coming, but that is a premium version of Spotify where you get better sound, you get early access to concert tickets, ai powered remix features, all that kind of stuff. So interesting to see what happens there and whether or not that will actually be the ticket into earning more cash for Spotify on that side in the market. Things like YouTube Music, which is actually seemingly growing quite fast, and, of course, apple Music that has the benefit of actually being on the device that you have bought, and you get a three month free trial with every iPhone that you buy. So that's still a pretty impressive thing as well.

Sam Sethi: 13:01

So it'll be fascinating to see what happens there impressive thing as well, so it'll be fascinating to see what happens there. Now, talking of Apple, I saw yesterday they announced or there was an announcement that Apple have willfully violated the 2021 injunction that came out of Epic Games case. Judge Rogers said basically that the Apple vice president, alex Roman, outright lied to the court about the Apple 27% levy and she basically wants to allow software developers to link to their websites inside of your iPhone app for customers to make purchase. So Spotify want this, clearly, micro Me wants it and, at the end of the day, I think Apple is under a lot of pressure to remove their 30% tax. I think this is a ruling that we should be watching, because if they lose that, I think again keeping it in the Spotify news, I think Spotify will be doing cartwheels, because then they can really push hard on in-app purchase.

James Cridland: 14:09

Yeah, so if you use Spotify and you go into Spotify's account system on your iPhone and you want to change the account that you're currently with, then it just basically says you can't do this on the phone. We know it's frustrating and that's literally all it says. It doesn't say you can go to the website, because they're not even allowed to say that. So they will be delighted to end up seeing that. Now John Gruber, who writes a blog about Apple at daringfireballnet he's essentially writtena blog post this week basically saying that Tim Cook should resign and resign now.

Sam Sethi: 14:50

Somebody who agrees with me.

James Cridland: 14:52

That Phil Schiller is the man of the moment. He comes across as Apple's sole voice of reason, fairness and honesty in that entire ruling and basically, you know, you can read between the lines, but what John Gruber is essentially saying is look, you know, Tim Cook, it's probably if he was able to retire now then he would leave in a positive light. But if he stays with that company for another year, then he may be leaving in a slightly less than positive light. But if he stays with that company for another year, then he may be leaving in a slightly less than positive light. And that, from a fanboy like Gruber, is quite a thing. So yeah, it's quite an interesting piece that he has ended up writing.

Sam Sethi: 15:39

Yeah, gruber wrote, equally being the big fanboy that he is a couple of weeks back about how AI was a complete miss by Apple and that they had fundamentally hoodwinked everyone with the last demos. They did because Apple intelligence doesn't exist and won't exist for another 12, 18 months, probably in the form that they demoed. And again, I call Tim Cook the Steve Barmer of his day. He's missed every big technology search, ai, cars, podcasting.

James Cridland: 16:12

Yes, he's kind of a slightly less animated Steve Barmer, isn't he? In terms of that, now, I mean, the final paragraph of Judge Yvonne Gonzalez-Rogers is absolutely fascinating. She basically says Apple willfully chose not to comply with this court's injunction. It did so with the express intent to create new anti-competitive barriers which would, by design and in effect, maintain a valued revenue stream, a revenue stream previously found to be anti-competitive. That it thought this court would tolerate such insubordination was a gross miscalculation. As always, the cover-up made it worse For this court. There is no second bite at the apple, yikes.

Sam Sethi: 17:02

So yes quite a thing, tim hello, is that Mr Trump? Mr trump, yes, please remove the federal judge. Please remove the federal judge. That's the only way I think it'll happen now, um, going back to spotify, james, um, they made what on the surface was a substantial announcement that they had paid out 100 million to podcasters and I was like, wow, that sounds really really good. Again, you have to dig below the level of the PR announcement, because actually a lot of that money went to Joe Rogan and to Alex at Call Her Daddy, and so they haven't broken out how much they actually paid for this Spotify partner program.

James Cridland: 17:48

No, and, to be fair, that's not what they were there, you know, to end up doing. But yes, they absolutely didn't necessarily share that amount of money, so that $100 million it's still a large amount of money for one quarter it's a large amount of money. So that $100 million it's still a large amount of money for one quarter. It's a large amount of money that they have shared with podcasters in some way, shape or form. Apple never releases any financials around how much money it pays to podcasters, but you can imagine that it's not going to be $100 million.

James Cridland: 18:22

And similarly, it is difficult, though, knowing whether or not this money includes all of Megaphone. Does it include all of Megaphone? I mean, I guess it might do. It's certainly Spotify video, but it's other things as well and, as you so rightly say, it does include things like Joe Rogan. It does include all kinds of other things as well. Now, to be fair, they were open about that. They did say no, you know, it isn't just video when they actually sent the announcement out. But yes, $100 million just in the first quarter is a pretty impressive number.

Sam Sethi: 19:06

I think they're playing on the attention deficient users that we all are. That don't read the full article. So if I read the article headline Spotify 100 million in Q1 to podcasters, that's all people will take away from it. They will walk away going wow, it's really successful this Spotify videoify video, isn't it wow? Yeah and they won't look at the underlying numbers, and that's the problem, and I think it's slightly disingenuous as a title or a headline and that, to be fair, is why it wasn't the number one story in the pod news newsletter.

James Cridland: 19:40

It was number two and um it, it basically got two sentences. The second sentence saying that's both ad-based revenue and from the Spotify partner programme. The company haven't split out the two, which is worthwhile mentioning. Also worthwhile mentioning what the number one story was that day from the UK and this is where the conversation around video and audio ends up being a bit complicated and not particularly helpful, because the IAB in the UK said that podcast advertising only grew by 8% last year. It grew 23% the year before, so only grew by 8% last year, but that number only accounts for audio podcast ads. The video display ad category, which includes video podcasts, grew by 20% year on year. So what you can see from that headline is podcast advertising growth slows, which isn't necessarily the case because, for whatever reason, they've chosen in the UK to define podcasting by audio advertising. So you know again, it's one of the perils of being too narrow in terms of what you say a podcast is, and that will inevitably mean that you just get lower figures.

Sam Sethi: 21:00

The last bit of info relates to that audio video balance is that sonderstrom, who is the I think it's a cto over at spotify um, said that video growth on the platform. We've seen a 44 year-on-year growth in time spent with video, specifically gen z, and I can understand that, given the edison research reports we've read, where you know the younger generation will have a video playing in the background and then, you know, leave it playing as opposed to just a pure audio podcast. So again, you know we've got to look at the underlying trend and that trend seems to be a video element for the Gen Z are very keen to watch occasionally, even if it's just two talking heads.

James Cridland: 21:48

Yeah, and you know, and, as I say again, of course consumption of video podcasting is up on Spotify year on year because there are more video podcasts on Spotify. The number of active monthly video podcasts have increased by 28% year on year. So if you add more video podcasts into the platform, of course you're going to get more consumption of those shows. So I do find the consumption conversations that Spotify are having. I understand why they're doing it, because they want to try and encourage more publishers to be on Spotify and do video. So I understand why they're doing it, but I mean, to me it's just bleedingly obvious, isn't it? If you add more video onto a playback platform, you're going to get more consumption of it. I don't really see why that's an exciting thing to put in a press release, but that's clearly, you know, spotify's what Spotify is doing.

Sam Sethi: 22:52

Moving on, sorry lads and ladies, one more element of Spotify. They announced something new, james, called Trending Charts. Tell me more.

James Cridland: 23:00

They did so. All of the podcast charts that we've seen from Spotify so far have been just normal podcast charts that are due to total consumption on the platform. So Joe Rogan has almost always been number one. It's a bit boring and all of a sudden they have finally decided no, we're going to have a trending podcast chart as well. So that is essentially very similar to the Apple podcast charts, because the Apple podcast chart is just trending, so it doesn't you know, it doesn't really show you the most popular podcasts out there. It shows you trending ones, ones which are all of a sudden getting listened to a lot more than they normally are.

James Cridland: 23:42

So that means that if you are there talking to clients and bragging about the great podcast that you have edited, well, this is good news, because now Spotify has a chart that will probably allow you to end up doing that, because if you're doing a brand new launch, it should be relatively easy to get to the top of Spotify's trending podcast charts. They've got a ton of those which are at the Spotify podcast charts website. You can also download the JSON if you're clever and you know where to look, and there's one of those charts trending charts for every single country which is nice. How would they? I was just curious.

Sam Sethi: 24:19

I looked at the JSON form and that's great that they've done that. That's actually one of the better things that they've done recently. I was just curious. I looked at the JSON form and that's great that they've done that. That's actually one of the better things that they've done recently, I think. But I was curious as to how did they curate the country? Because is it purely the Joe Rogan in the UK, irrelevant to it being a US? It's just users in the UK.

James Cridland: 24:44

Yeah, it's consumption from the country, so they know which country you're listening in, and so, therefore, that is the trending chart that they're actually giving.

Sam Sethi: 24:53

I was. Thank you for clarifying that for me, james, because I was thinking that there must be some way that they've got a country tag.

James Cridland: 25:00

You know, benjamin Bellamy and I were looking for a country tag in the podcasting 2.0 namespace last year, but sadly that has not morphed into a tag.

James Cridland: 25:20

So if you want to use the brand new podcast location tag, which went live this week, that allows you to both say where you are as well as where the subject of the podcast is. So if we're both in the UK but we're doing a show about the Eiffel Tower, then we can put the fact that we're in the UK and that the show is about the Eiffel Tower, the fact that we're in the UK and that the show is about the Eiffel Tower. But just for you well, not really just for you, but there is a country code in there, so you don't have to pass the latlon, you don't have to go off to OpenStreetMap and take a look at the ID. You can just literally use that country tag. It is in the spec as a highly recommended, which means that some people will ignore it, but hopefully that won't be the case for people who are doing it properly, and that essentially means that you can yes, you can automatically get that information straight from the podcast RSS feed. Hooray, finally thank you.

Sam Sethi: 26:21

Thank you, yes, because we already have that field in TrueFans but we have to manually update that.

James Cridland: 26:27

Yes and nobody wants that, so that is now available. The new podcast location tag specification is in the GitHub and you'll also, I guess, by now, find it at podcasting2.org.

Sam Sethi: 26:45

Well, we'll go and have a look at that later today. Now, moving on James YouTube. We've mentioned them briefly. Of course you can't not. Their ad revenue jumped 10%, but is that in podcasting or is that across the board for Alphabet?

James Cridland: 27:01

Well, what is YouTube? Is YouTube podcasting? Is YouTube something else? Who knows?

James Cridland: 27:08

There was a piece only yesterday from the founder of Mediaite, dan Abrams, who was saying what is YouTube? Well, it's really clear YouTube is now television. That's what YouTube is YouTube. Well, it's really clear, youtube is now television. That's what YouTube is, which is handy, because what does that mean? Does that mean that YouTube revenue is all television? Now, who knows?

James Cridland: 27:34

But anyway, yes, I mean that is total ad revenue from YouTube. It's a 10.3% year-over-year increase. Just worthwhile mentioning it's year-over-year, not quarter-over-quarter. Don't know what the quarter-over-quarter figure is, but that's basically where we are. And YouTube, in terms of YouTube Premium and YouTube Music, I did mention that it's growing really fast. Well, they have seen 100 million year over year increase in terms of those paid subscribers, so that's a pretty big number, albeit it's up to 125 million now, so much smaller still than Spotify. But all of that is interesting. Youtube itself is the biggest television platform in the US now easily, and apparently it's expected to overtake Disney by the end of the year as the world's largest media company, with a worth of $500 billion. Do you know, sam, where Disney makes most of their money?

Sam Sethi: 28:39

I'm guessing theme parks and boats.

James Cridland: 28:41

You are absolutely correct, it's theme parks, and particularly it's food at theme parks and boats. You are absolutely correct, it's theme parks, and particularly it's food at theme parks, which they totally rake the money in for. I learned this on the Rest is Entertainment podcast, which is a brilliant, brilliant podcast. But yes, it's things like the cheaper end of their food in theme parks is the thing that makes all of their money and the films and stuff like that pale into insignificance. Once you actually start having a look at the money that they make from selling burgers at theme parks, it's the most astonishing thing.

James Cridland: 29:20

Well, on a similar theme, where does McDonald's make most of their money? Oh, real estate. Exactly yes.

Sam Sethi: 29:25

It's not a food company, it's a real estate real estate company.

James Cridland: 29:27

We've been listening to the same shows.

Sam Sethi: 29:31

Yes, I loved the angle that you talked about there, with YouTube being the new TV, and I think what I find YouTube and podcasters are finding by creating channels is they can create that direct to fan reach and it's democratizing TV. That's basically how I see it. So in the past there were gatekeepers ABC, nbc, bbc, itv, whatever you want to call them who had expensive distribution mechanisms that nobody could really afford to get into, and now you can create your own YouTube TV channel and play it back on your big screen at home and you have very little cost of entry. I think that's one significant and I know you're going to hate this Um cause.

Sam Sethi: 30:22

For me, I think podcasting is the new radio. I think, whether it's on demand or live, I think again, we can get around the gatekeepers, the big globals, the um bowers, who have dab networks and you have to spend twenty five thousand dollars a year, you know, on just getting transmission networks. You can now go direct to fan with your own podcast and whether you want to do it live or on demand and include music you look at live 365 or you look at adam with booster ground balls those type of shows will become more common, I think. Um, I guess we have licensing issues still. But you know, if we can overcome that one big gatekeeper, then I think you will see. If we can overcome that one big gatekeeper, then I think you will see podcasts on the new radio Listen to you saying direct to fandom.

James Cridland: 31:11

Direct to fandom. It's almost as if you've been talking to investors this week. Direct to fandom On message Always on message mate, listen to you. The one thing I would say on that is that if you look at total audio consumed, for example, then total audio consumed AM FM radio is still two thirds 66% of all audio that is consumed. Podcasts 10%, that's all. It's even less in the UK. So I don't disagree that podcasts are an incredibly important part of the media landscape, but replacing radio they are not, at least not yet.

Sam Sethi: 31:56

Not yet and I think we've got technology barriers that we have to make better. You know you get in a car and you can flick between radio stations. You can't I think this is the tom webster thing you can't flick between podcasters quick. But I think we're going to talk about later on in the show um, a new platform that has come up, you know, which is very similar to radio garden. So I think we will see um, the uis and the interfaces changing that make it easier to change between various podcasts. It could be an AI interface, an agent-based interface. But you know, I think you're right now it's still a small percentage of radio as a podcast medium, but I think that number will switch.

James Cridland: 32:42

I think that number will grow and I think also new and different ways of getting into that content is important, as you say, and I think you know. The new podcast location tag is definitely one of those things, because all of a sudden you are getting rid of the paradigm of looking for a show and you're starting the whole paradigm of looking for a place and start your listening, and that should be a really interesting time. But anyway, we will see where we are.

Sam Sethi: 33:13

James, can we whiz around the world? I think there's quite a big story coming out of China, something to do with Himalaya.

James Cridland: 33:19

There is a massive story. So Himalaya, which is spelt in China with an X but pronounced Himalaya. So I've been told that is reportedly to be acquired by Tencent Music for $2.4 billion. Now you might remember, firstly, spotify buying Anka. Anka is similar to Himalaya in that it is a podcast hosting company that has its own app, as Anor did, that allows you to record into there. Spotify bought Anchor only a few years ago for 140 million, and this is Tencent buying Himalaya for 2.4 billion, which is an astonishing change. So you've got that sort of side, but I mean Himalaya. I mean it's a big old company. It's an astonishing change. So you've got that sort of side, but I mean Himalaya. I mean it's a big old company. It's got more than 300 million monthly active users easily but it's had quite the history as well.

Sam Sethi: 34:19

Yeah, I mean I wasn't around. You were when they were touting various numbers in the US about how they're going to grow, so I'll defer to you James because you were there, I wasn't.

James Cridland: 34:32

Yes, it was astonishing. It was the first podcast movement that I went to and Himalaya was splashing the cash out there because they had said that they had spent $100 million on a US expansion in 2019. They said that to me. I printed that as a press release, because it's a press release. More recently, people turned around and said where did that $100 million go, and was that actually $100 million ever spent? And the answer is no. No, it wasn't. It was a very nice looking press release. That's about as far as it got.

James Cridland: 35:07

The company tried to get onto the New York Stock Exchange, but it didn't because the Chinese government told them no. So the company then decided to get onto the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, but for whatever reason, that hasn't also happened. But I mean, the most interesting sort of part of all of this was a chap called Peter Vinser. Now, peter Vinser was a very high profile employee of Himalaya in the US. He owned Himalaya Studios and made the headlines in June 2021 with a long and complicated story one of Ashikarman's last pieces for the Verge Essentially all kinds of shenanigans going on, with Peter Vinser hiring a house or something, and this is where people would go for parties and also would go to record shows and everything looked a little bit murky and stuff. Peter Vintzer denied that there was anything bad going on, of course, as he would expect, and I thought I wonder where he is now.

James Cridland: 36:17

So the company is called Notorious LLC that he now runs. It's not part of Himalaya anymore, and I was just curious what is Notorious LLC doing? Well, it hasn't posted on socials for the last five months, and one of its last posts, really weirdly, was a picture of Peter Vinser dressed as Superman, which I have no concept of why or you know what the thinking is there, but anyway. So I'm sure he's doing well. So he's one of these chaps that seems to fall on his feet all the time. So, yes, gosh, what a thing.

Sam Sethi: 36:56

The ultimate statement fake it until you sell it. Then, I guess, is the answer here really.

James Cridland: 37:01

Yes, yes. Well, you can say that I couldn't possibly comment. Well, I just did.

Sam Sethi: 37:06

Now there is a bigger element for me in this, which is Tencent buying Himalaya sounds very similar, as you said, to the Spotify anchor. If Tencent can turn themselves into a multi-content platform not just music, but they move into other areas this is Spotify right. So this is now a massive challenger to Spotify's growth market, because that's where they've seen the biggest growth in the Far East. If the Far East then switches and says actually thank you very much, spotify, but this Tencent, which is much more in our local backyard, we're going to go and use that instead of you, I think Spotify has a real big problem.

James Cridland: 37:52

Yeah no, I agree, I agree. Certainly, if somebody in China is doing this properly, lots of people in that part of the world. So, yes, worthwhile taking a peek at world. So, yes, worthwhile taking a peek at. Interestingly, I spent the first meeting this week planning Radio Days Asia, which is happening in early September in Jakarta. No, she went to her own accord and so that's going to be good and I'm looking forward to taking part in that. But that will have speakers from the podcast industry right across Asia. It's the first one that I'm not running and it's quite interesting in that there is a lot of Asian podcast companies who will be speaking there as a result, so very much looking forward to that. Radiodaysasiacom is where to go for more of that. Shall we go to exciting Canada?

Sam Sethi: 38:50

Yes, congratulations, mr Carney, well done.

James Cridland: 38:53

Yes, former boss of the Bank of England, so it can't be all bad so also happening in Canada. Quite apart from that is BBC Studios have done another one of their deals. This is a partnership with the Podcast Exchange in Canada. Quite apart from that is BBC Studios have done another one of their deals. This is a partnership with the Podcast Exchange in Canada. If you go back to previous Pod News Weekly reviews, you'll find an interview with Perry Bell from the Podcast Exchange. Tpx will be the BBC's exclusive third-party advertising reseller for BBC podcasts in the country, so congratulations to them. Also, congratulations to Goalhanger, celebrating hitting one billion streams of its content in the UK. The company says it's the biggest independent podcast producer outside the US, which is quite a claim, but I think it's probably a claim which is correct. I can't think of any others which are going to be as big. So congratulations to them.

Sam Sethi: 39:42

Can I ask a question? Yes, why did they use the word streams in the headline and not plays or downloads? Because, yes, you say there isn't anything called a stream yes, I I still say that.

James Cridland: 39:58

Um, I don't know why they said streams. I'm assuming that they mean kind of plays, um, but of course, a play isn't necessarily a download, and what they've done here is to be clear why they've not used the word download is that it is both download numbers and YouTube play numbers. So what is a download plus a play? Well, it's not really a play, is it? So therefore, it's not really a listen either. Um, so therefore it's not really a listen either. So it's a thing, isn't it?

Sam Sethi: 40:27

Um 1 billion things of its content. So I suppose they're using something like streams to hopefully cover I'm not trying to, you know rain on their parade. I think it's amazing if they've got to 1 billion, whatever's. Yeah.

James Cridland: 40:42

But again when I think yeah yeah, I just.

Sam Sethi: 40:45

I just very critical of pr announcements and when you dig below the surface of them you suddenly find that the headline sounds great but actually the reality of the numbers or whatever needs to be well and this is one of the one of the reasons why we need um, a standard method of measurement.

James Cridland: 41:06

Because if YouTube has a thing called a play, which they've never actually said what it is, and then Spotify has a thing called a play, which is different, if you're hosting with Spotify, if you're just looking at Spotify's numbers, they don't have a play at all. Then you have a look at Apple, which has its own definition of play, which is how many times your finger may have brushed against the play button. You know, it's all a bit of a mess, so it'd be nice if we had something a little bit more, a little bit better for that. Down to Australia, triton Digital releasing a programmatic advertising update for Australia. Stroth impressions have increased year on year by 160%, it says, although, interestingly, podcast listeners have only grown 26%. So if podcast listeners have only grown 26%, that must mean that podcast listeners are listening to loads more ads than they were this time last year, because, you know, 160 divided by 26 is over six. So podcast listeners are hearing more than six times the ads that they were hearing last year. That seems to be what that figure says, possibly.

Sam Sethi: 42:22

It doesn't pass my sniff test, but anyway, yes it's possibly a little bit concerning.

James Cridland: 42:27

The other interesting thing on that is that live streaming because Triton also measure that live streaming listeners have only increased 1.3%, which I think actually means that live streaming audience has actually gone down, because there's more than 1.3% more people in this country than there were a year ago. So I'm curious about that and curious about what that means for the future of live streaming versus podcasts.

Sam Sethi: 42:58

I go back to. I think we have not helped ourselves in this industry. We see, still so. You know, rsscom friends of the show implemented live item tag support but didn't provide a server. So when you go to rsscom, you go to the dashboard, you fill in the field. That's not easy in terms of um. You know what's this field, what's that field? Yes, start and end times pretty easy. But then they give you this convoluted method of having to go here to go and get a server. You sign up somewhere else. You then copy that url over yada yada, so you know it's not going to get out of the world of geeks. You then go to other companies and you go, oh, have you got a live capability? Well, we sort of have.

Sam Sethi: 43:45

If you look at blueberry or um, it's just a mess. And and you go, oh, have you got a live capability? Well, we sort of have. If you look at blueberry or um, it's just a mess. And then you go and I interviewed um gotham rajan and from hub, who told me that basically, a couple of years ago they had everything in hls, um, but there wasn't any apps that supported it. So they turned that off and they went backward. And again. It's just, you know, the industry is not doing itself any favours. We know from the biggest hosts they're not providing live capabilities and it's still down to a very small geeky group who jump through all the technical hoops in order to get a live podcast.

James Cridland: 44:24

Now, it's certainly an interesting area, that, so I thought that that was interesting to take a peek. Of course, live streaming of course also includes, you know, live listening to radio stations as well, which is the vast majority of that, but yeah, Does this also this Triton report.

Sam Sethi: 44:41

Does this include live streaming from Substack from YouTube report? Does this include live streaming from substack, um from youtube? Because, or you know, because riverside and um streamyard have made it very easy to go live to other web platforms like linkedin or facebook, and youtube have made it super simple, and actually substack have made it super simple as well. So does this include data from them? Because I suspect it doesn't and therefore the number would be much higher.

James Cridland: 45:09

I suspect it doesn't, but I also suspect that that wouldn't necessarily mean that the number would be much higher. I suspect that what this is looking at is streaming of, you know, radio stations, of Nova FM and you know and Smooth FM and all of that sort of thing, rather than anything more than that. But that's where the majority of the audience is still, I'm afraid. So that's probably where it goes. But, yeah, interesting to watch at least what Triton is saying there.

Sam Sethi: 45:42

Now, lastly, you had a report you published from YouGov James about podcast listening across different countries.

James Cridland: 45:49

The interesting thing is there appears to be a lot of audience for podcasters, a lot of audience for podcasts in Asia. Mixed results in Europe, slightly below average numbers in the US. Now, this is according to YouGov. They've done their data in a different way than many other places, but that does seem to correlate, a little bit at least, with information that we do know from Edison's Infinite Dial, where Australia gets higher figures than the US does for quite a lot of audio consumption. So I thought it's interesting data. Doubtless flawed, the last time that YouGov produced some data I think they ended up putting one Asian country in Europe for some reason. So I'm sure that there's an entertaining flaw to be found all over again this time. But certainly, yeah, some useful data in terms of where podcast consumption happens.

Sam Sethi: 47:05

Let's move on James People in terms of where podcast consumption happens. Let's move on James People in jobs. Who's moving and grooving?

James Cridland: 47:11

Well, molly D'Amelie, who I saw at Evolutions working at Acast, she said that she was going and I said where are you going? And she said I can't say, can't say. Anyway, she has started her own. Remember is the big supergroup in the UK. Basically it's Platform Media plus, listen plus Goldhawk, all in one. So that's a pretty good deal from Susie, so congratulations to her. And somebody else has left Spotify Liz Gately, who was head of development for originals at Spotify Studios. She'd been with Spotify for six years. She's left Spotify. She's launching Damsel Media, which is a production company focused on Gen Z, and she will be using her six years of experience making podcasts for Spotify. By not making podcasts, damsel Media will be making TV and a little bit of video, I would guess, but that's essentially what Damsel Media will be making. So another big media exec from before times leaving Spotify and going off to do something else, which is presumably what Bill Simmons would have done had Spotify not told him to stay.

Sam Sethi: 48:54

Well, let's move on Awards and events. James, Anything happening?

James Cridland: 48:58

Yes, so the London podcast show is just about, I believe, to reveal its entire schedule, so that should be good, or schedule, if you prefer it that way, so that should be good to take a peek at. You can still buy tickets. Some of the tickets are sold out, but some of them aren't. You can use the code PODNEWS10 to see if you can save yourself some money. You can on selected passes. Here's the thing If you're coming to the podcast show from outside of the UK, because of your excellent government, sam, foreigners now need to pay 16 quid, and rightly so.

Sam Sethi: 49:36

Keep them out Bugger off.

James Cridland: 49:38

To come into the UK. It's a thing called an electronic travel authorization. It's like the thing that we have to pay when we're going into the US. It's exactly the same except ours, or rather yours, just costs 16 quid. You buy it directly from the UK government, so if the website that you're buying it from doesn't end govuk, then you're buying it from the wrong place. I saw one person sharing a link on LinkedIn to a different company that would charge you the equivalent of £120 to get hold of one of these travel authorisations, which is madness. So, yes, so don't do that. Just go directly to the UK government's website. But you will need that before you get on the plane, otherwise you won't get in. So that's important.

Sam Sethi: 50:31

But you know the country's bankrupt, so £16 is going to help us massively, so please do it yes.

James Cridland: 50:36

I mean obviously it will, so that'll be a good thing. Other things going on this time next week is Radio Day's North America, which is happening in Toronto in Canada. If you are listening in Toronto in Canada and if you know where to buy beer, then I will be very happy to help you with that experience. Drop me an email, james, at credland.

Sam Sethi: 50:57

Thanks, Sharing and caring. Sharing and caring.

James Cridland: 51:02

That's all going on. Also, the New Zealand Podcast Summit less than two weeks away, it's in central Auckland. It's a good day I went a couple of years ago and worthwhile. They even feed you, they give you lunch and morning and afternoon tea, apparently. And the Independent Podcast Awards are currently open for entry. You might remember Emma was on the show a couple of weeks ago. There's also the Independent Forum too. That's happening on June, the 16th and the last day to enter JAR Audio's Emerging Women in Podcasting Pilot Competition. Well, you've missed it. So tough on that.

Sam Sethi: 51:40

But yes, lots of things going on in this part of the world. Now there's a couple of anniversaries that I thought were worth noting. Friends of yours, they started the British Podcast Awards eight years ago today. Yes.

James Cridland: 51:52

Matt and Matt, matt and Matt the two Matts Podcast Matts, matt Deegan and Matt Hill, put on the first British Podcast Awards and, my goodness, it was one of those side projects that Matt excels in which really exploded, so congratulations to him. Eight years ago so there's a thing that company is now owned by Haymarket and is a very different award ceremony, but perhaps it's grown up, as the industry has as well. And also, you've also mentioned another anniversary, which was this week as well. What's that anniversary, sam?

Sam Sethi: 52:32

Yeah, yes, 2003,. This week, Apple introduced the iTunes Store, its digital marketplace for music downloads. It didn't support podcasts until June 2005. And then, of course, it gave it standalone mobile app in 2012. But yeah, thinking back, 2003 was when it first came out with the Apple iTunes Store.

James Cridland: 52:57

Indeed, first came out in the US, I seem to remember, because I think the UK took a little bit longer to launch. But, yes, quite a thing. The iTunes Store I remember buying a Mac pretty well, 2003, 2004, I think, and very exciting it was too. But also, yes, totally made my head hurt. But, yes, so that's been going for what? Over 22 years now, something like that.

Sam Sethi: 53:28

Yes, there's a thing I think I've still got an iPod somewhere in my drawer of old gadgets, and even a Nano somewhere in there as well. The Tech Stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 53:40

Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday in the Pod News newsletter. Here's where Sam talks technology. What's going on, Sam?

Sam Sethi: 53:48

Well, friend of the show, Benjamin Bellamy, has launched a new product called Podlibra. Now, that product used to exist in another guise. He's just taken the name and turned it into an open-source, privacy-first desktop app for editing podcasts. And again, that sounds like a very interesting idea. What's in the product, james?

James Cridland: 54:11

Yes, so it does all kinds of things. You know, everything from noise reduction and multi-track audio editing and mixing and all of that kind of stuff, to transcriptions, chapter editing and also a publish button which allows you to publish all over the place, including your own static website or, you know, castapod, or all of those sorts of things. It's got a plugin system as well, which is quite smart. Now, my understanding of this is this is Vaporware. At the moment it doesn't exist, but Benjamin has funding from NLNet to start work on it. I know that he's been talking about it for a while. Actually so exciting to see it being announced but I don't think you can go and download this particular app yet, can you?

Sam Sethi: 55:00

No, I tried, I thought, oh exciting, I'll go and play with it, because the thing that stood out for me was the music insertion and audio mixing. Now Stephen B, one of the wonderful geeks in the podcast 2.0 community, has a tool that he created for Adam Curry specifically to allow him to do audio and music mixing for his own shows, to create sort of that radio show thing, but, more importantly, to allow people to do wallet switching. So the more technical element of being able to stream sats to Adam's Booster Ground Ball show, but then when the artist played, the payments would switch to the artist's wallet and then switch back to Adam and switch back to artists. And I was just curious when he's got music insertion and audio mixing, will he then take it further? But again, as you said, maybe it's not quite ready.

Sam Sethi: 55:55

It's a bit vaporware-ish at the moment.

James Cridland: 55:57

Yeah, but I mean it will be, and I think you know the fact that it produces all of the correct metadata. It understands ID3, it understands RSS, it understands Podcasting 2.0, all of that kind of stuff. It's essentially at least it looks to me to be the simple, straightforward podcast generation tool that Anchor used to be, and perhaps this might be a replacement for that. So worthwhile taking a look at, but obviously it's very early days. But congratulations to him for getting the funding for that.

James Cridland: 56:33

Hindenburg has changed its transcription tool a little bit. You use this, so tell me more, I do. Yes, so now its transcription tool works with 99 transcription languages and, if you, you should have received an update earlier on in the week to make sure that your transcription keeps working, which I always think is a little bit of shorthand, for we've changed our transcription tool. I think that's basically what's going on there. So, yes, so you need to be making sure that you're running the very latest version of Hindenburg.

James Cridland: 57:14

If you're a Mac user, it's much faster as well, and what I understand from Nick at the team is that they are doing a fair amount of pretty quick iterations on that transcription tool to make it even better, which is nice. If you want to have a play with Hindenburg. It's the software that we edit this particular show on, or that I edit this particular show on, and it's very good. If you want to have a play with it, then there's a link for a free three-month trial and 30% off the final version that you'll find by just searching in Pod News for Hindenburg. So there's a thing.

Sam Sethi: 57:58

PocketCast has launched automatically generated transcripts for Plus and Patron members. Now, this sounds very good. James, Tell me more about this one.

James Cridland: 58:07

It does, yes, so they support the podcast transcript tool, so you will see the transcripts for this show in all versions of Pocket Casts. But if you are trying to listen to a show which doesn't have transcripts, which doesn't produce them because they don't care about you, then Pocket Casts does care about you and they will automatically generate transcripts if you are a paid user of Pocket Casts, which I think is exactly the right way of doing it. So well done to them. That just adds more good reasons why you should be using that independent podcast app.

Sam Sethi: 58:42

It is again, I think, the right way. I think apps now are going to have to start to look at what features will be free and what features will be pro, and I think, again, it's going to be a way to generate revenue, certainly, but also a way to differentiate yourself between the other apps.

James Cridland: 59:01

Indeed. No, you're absolutely right. Castos. They have done something interesting in terms of adding one-click podcast distribution, so they've added the Apple Podcasts one-click button. If you are making a show, it's not yet in Apple Podcasts, you can press that button and away it goes, goes. They've also added in their Spotify, amazon Music, pocket Casts, overcast, podcast Addict Player FM and Podchaser, and it's literally one button, is the idea, and it submits to all of those, which is great. One of the questions that I had for Craig Hewitt, who's the founder of Castos, is why not Podcast Index? And he said oh, I thought Podcast Index just got it from Apple Podcasts. It doesn't. Podcast Index is its own thing and doesn't just steal things from Apple Podcasts. So there is a simple, straightforward API to do that, and my understanding is that that will be done relatively quickly, so it'll go to nine instead. So that's a good thing. Truefans, though, isn't on that list.

Sam Sethi: 1:00:12

No, and rightly so. Right now, we are building a TrueFans API. You asked me a few weeks back why we're doing it, and this is one of the reasons we want to be a listed directory for you know, places like Castos to now include us, and the only way that will happen is if we have a direct API that they can publish to. So, yes, that's what we're working on. Now confusion reigns in my little head. Podcast page has introduced a new dashboard page and I instantly went pod page yes. And then I looked at it and went no, this isn't pod page, this is another one called podcast page. So confusion what is podcast page, James?

James Cridland: 1:00:52

Well, podcast page is much like pod page in that it is a website for your podcast. So pod page is one, podcast page is another. They both have blue UIs. I have to say I wish one of them would change colour, Because I'm as confused as the rest of them. But the fact that you've got the same pretty well the same name, but also the same colour, which is white on blue for both of them or blue on white, I'm kind of there thinking it's very complicated. I would love to see their support inboxes. I've tried to log in and I simply can't log in. Well, that's because you're trying to log in to our competitor. So, yes, very difficult, but yes. So Podcast Page, which is the other one, has added automated AI transcripts and AI-based page editor Good. And AI-generated SEO metadata tools, Again, all good. But if that floats your boat, then you'll find that at the podcast page website, not pod page.

Sam Sethi: 1:02:08

Now I recall why I changed my name from pod fans to true fans. Yes, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, yes, yes, exactly. Yes, now OP3, friend of the show, john Spurlock. What's he been up to?

James Cridland: 1:02:21

Well, he's been up to nothing. Oh, that's true. Literally nothing, Actually.

Sam Sethi: 1:02:25

I just read my own notes and went nothing to do with John directly, but it's using his data.

James Cridland: 1:02:30

There we go.

Sam Sethi: 1:02:30

Let's try that again okay, you you want me to start again, do you? No, no, I can. I can. I'll reintroduce it, or we can leave this in and just have it as a funny edit. Who knows, right? Um? Moving on then, james um yes op3 what's going on there?

James Cridland: 1:02:50

nothing, but I'll tell you but I'll tell you what op3. I'll tell you what op3 does have, though. It has a live feed, and that live feed is showing what people are listening to right now, and it's always had this as part of the standard OP3 live data that it offers. It's very useful for debugging and for other things, but one coder and I don't know what the coder's called, but one coder has created a website called Earport, and what Earport does is it plots every listener who is listening to an OP3 measured podcast right now and plots them all on a map and you can dive into the map. And plots them all on a map and you can dive into the map. You can find out exactly what people are listening to and you can click the little dot and listen to the same podcast that they're listening to right now, which is very cool.

Sam Sethi: 1:03:48

I thought it was really cool. Yeah, and also they're using OpenStreetMap, which will make you happy, james.

James Cridland: 1:03:54

Hooray, as they should, as they should.

Sam Sethi: 1:03:58

Which reminded me this when I looked at it, reminded me of Radio Garden if you've well, I know you've heard of it, but if other people have heard of it which was the ability to go to see what radio stations are playing anywhere in the world and just click on any of the dots and you'd listen to that radio station, which was really cool as well Indeed, which was very cool.

James Cridland: 1:04:17

There used to be a version of Radio Garden that wasn't Radio Garden where you could listen to a radio station while you were being driven around that city. So you had video of driving around in Sydney, for example, and you could hear that you were in a car, but what was playing on the radio was live, you know two-day FM or something, which was such a good thing. So you really felt that you were there. It's the most amazing thing. I mean, it no longer exists, hasn't existed for years and years and years. But yes, so this is kind of vaguely similar, but it's looking at the listeners, everybody who is listening out there vaguely similar, but it's looking at the listeners, everybody who is listening out there.

Sam Sethi: 1:05:03

And yeah, and you can just press the button and away you go. So, moving on, james Headliner, friend of the show, has just released a new tool called Most Replayed. It highlights sections of YouTube videos and also the most often skipped. It's great, therefore, for you to create shareable clips when you know where listeners are listening most or where they're listening least. I know that Diary of a CEO uses an internal tool very similar with their own user testing, where they find where people listen most to their podcast and then they clip those bits up and publish that as the highlight reel. And again, I think what Headline has done is taken that same similar concept and looked at where people are listening to the YouTube videos that they publish and then gone you know what. This is the bit where most people played. I would maybe turn that into a clip and I think that's a really clever tool.

James Cridland: 1:05:54

Yeah, it's really smart and there are a number of these little clues, little tells, where you can actually pick out the bits of shows that people enjoy the most. I know a few radio stations which are monitoring the volume control on your phone. So as you're listening to a show, you will turn up the volume control if you really enjoy. It is the theory, and actually that seems to work quite well as well. So you end up with some really obvious cues in terms of what the best bit of that show was that you might wish to share for later.

Sam Sethi: 1:06:32

Now you had a report about a company called Deepcast that has launched a new service called DeepChat. What's this one, james?

James Cridland: 1:06:38

Yes, deepchat is quite neat. It is an AI knowledge bot, so you can basically go and chat to a podcast. You can chat to this one if you like and you can ask that podcast. You know something, so you can ask the Pod News Weekly Review, for example. You can ask us what's the definition of a podcast and it comes back and it says well, we listened to a few of these episodes and this is what it says a podcast is, which is really nice. It's quite a nice, you know, essentially an LLM which is just trained on our transcripts but seems to work quite nicely. So if you want to give it a go with this very show, then you can absolutely do that. You'll find the link is available in the Pod News website.

Sam Sethi: 1:07:25

So, james, this isn't new, though. Somebody's done this before, haven't they?

James Cridland: 1:07:30

Yes, they had. A couple of years ago. There was a company called Dexa and you'd go to Jordan Harbinger's website, for example, and you would say what was the coupon code for Athletics Greens and it would tell you what the coupon code was or what is the best way to relax in the evening, and it would tell you you know what type of I don't know cannabis to smoke or whatever, but whatever it was, and that was a pretty good tool, but it was fearsomely, fearsomely expensive. And I think the interesting thing about DeepCast is that this is a tool which is available now and the pricing is much, much, much cheaper. So, you know and I think it just sort of highlights the you know, the advances in AI and how much you know it's just easier to do all of this kind of thing.

Sam Sethi: 1:08:19

Yes, yeah, and I think it's. Also. I think the value of the transcript is going up exponentially. I think people are beginning to understand that there's gold there in them hills. I've called it audio mining and I think what we are seeing now you know, we talked about Pocket Casts, adding transcripts. We've talked about other people having it as default within the app itself or the host bringing it in, and I think now that you can do that and then put you know AI to work on extracting I know, for example, snipped out of Switzerland, you know allows you to highlight books or locations mentioned in the audio and then have an affiliate link out. And again, I think this is another great way of being able to analyze the data.

James Cridland: 1:09:06

Um, yeah, I think it's going to be exciting.

Sam Sethi: 1:09:10

Now, uh, we talked about Spotify earlier, um, and how they think that AI is going to be a massive market opportunity for them, and they've just come out with their AI playlists. Now, they've had that before, they've been testing it, but the new announcement is that they've recently rolled out in beta to over 40 markets. I'm not really a big fan of the AI playlist yet. It's a bit like the music one, where you get to the end of your playlist and then it starts to add other music that's similar in genre, and now they've switched that off and they've gone to an AI one. I don't believe it works with podcasting yet. But again, gustav Sonderström, their CTO, basically, was saying that AI is driving productivity, and I quite like I don't know if you've played with it yet their DJ X I know you've met him.

James Cridland: 1:10:08

I have yes.

Sam Sethi: 1:10:09

I don't know if you use it. I've sort of got over the oh, that's exciting to the oh, this is really dull now. Moment, where I've realised all it's doing is taking my playlist and just putting a voice wrapper around it and making it sound exciting by saying now I'm going to play you something from 2022 that you really loved and you know that cheesy element that comes out. But again, I thought it was initially very exciting to listen to the back catalogue of my playlist and I think I guess AI is going to have a bigger part in Spotify.

James Cridland: 1:10:41

Yeah, I guess. So I mean, this is very much AI driven in terms of it works out your listening habits and it doesn't present it, but it plays you songs that it thinks right now you will enjoy. Clearly, you have different music tastes at nine o'clock at night than you do at seven in the morning, and so that's one of the things that this AI playlist will deal with. It's very much copying YouTube, I have to say. Youtube has had these sorts of tools for quite some time Now. Youtube has added an AI generated sort of a playlist generation tool, but YouTube, you know, always has a ton of individual playlists that it has worked out that you might be interested in right now. So, um, yeah, it's lots of this sort of AI uh stuff going on. Um in both of these uh tools, and quite rightly, because they need to compete. This is, as we were saying earlier, this is the thing to um to compete on, because they can't compete on the content.

Sam Sethi: 1:11:53

Yeah, and I do think you know we're not even halfway through the year, so let's not do the review of 2025 yet, but I think you know I think we will, at the end of the year, be talking about how much AI has been now included. You know, if they extended this to include AI playlists for podcasts, I think that would be really useful for the industry that we're in. You know Meta launched a new app called Meta AI. You know they've had it in WhatsApp. They've included it in other platforms. It now works cross-platform across all of their devices and on their glasses, so you can see how they're pushing AI.

Sam Sethi: 1:12:33

Duo Lingo. You know. Obviously you know learning your French or Italian or whatever. You're learning your chinese. I think you were learning chinese at one point, james um. Again, they've announced that they're going ai first and they're not hiring any more people, and they've announced that they also had 40 or 50 new language versions out recently. Where you've got agentic AI interfaces. I just I'm fascinated by what was initially an AI skeptic in me. I think. Now I can see how the data can be reused and repurposed and brought to the surface much quicker, and for the user interface to actually then give us the value, rather than us having to manually create playlists or check out comments or whatever it may be. I think AI is going to have a much bigger role.

James Cridland: 1:13:23

Well, there's certainly something there. I mean, I have to say I'm enjoying using the Carghy search engine, because the Carghy search engine doesn't give you AI unless you ask for it, but it also has access. Every user now has access to pretty well all of the big AI LLMs so you can play around with each one. You can find out what they're all good at. They're all included in your subscription and that's a fine thing. And there's a really good sort of quick answer thing now in the Kagi search engine which you can just press and it answers the question for you. You know, it goes off and does all of the research and answers that particular thing for you in much the same way that Google does, but seemingly in a much better, more focused way. So I think there's definitely something to do there in terms of playing around with, you know, with AI tools and seeing what those AI tools can do for you, or at least you know algorithms such as that.

Sam Sethi: 1:14:36

I've got a presentation that I've been approved for at the London podcast show, which I've titled the future of podcasting, or podcasting 3.0. And I'll be demoing TrueFan's AI integration, both with transcripts and also our new AI user interface.

James Cridland: 1:14:54

So come along if you fancy that Fancy. That sounds fun.

Sam Sethi: 1:15:00

Now the last bit of AI. I didn't mean to, but it does relate to podcasting. Google's AI podcast maker, the Notebook LLM, is now available in over 50 languages. So again, google doubling down on that feature.

Announcer: 1:15:16

Boostergram, boostergram, boostergram. Super Super comments, zaps, fan mail. Fan mail doubling down on that feature.

James Cridland: 1:15:31

So many different ways to get in touch with us Fan mail, by using the link in our show notes, or super comments on True Fans, or boosts everywhere else, or email or whatever, and Sam and I share the money that we make as well. We've got three boosts or super comments. Well, two boosts, one super comment, don't we?

Sam Sethi: 1:15:51

Yes, well, that's fine. I mean, look, you know I'm not called Podfans. I don't want to be in the same game now. So a boost from where would that be? Just podcast guru 222 from Bruce the ugly quacking duck. Mic match sounds really interesting. Thanks for the episode 73. Yes, thanks. Yes, mic match does. I think I was more excited by the extended different versions of mic match, which would be um I don't know what they would be called, but people match and um uh advertising match. They're not the names, but the idea of using the same technology to find editors or program uh producers or whatever within the podcast industry sounded really more exciting to me than guest matching, which has, you know, been done, seen before, I think.

James Cridland: 1:16:48

Yes, yes, it's a ton of all of this tools, which is quite nice. I'm trying to work out whether it's 73 or whether it's 73. Do you think it's? 73, or is it 73?

Sam Sethi: 1:17:03

There's no space between them. No, I'm going 73. There's no space. If it was 73,. Yeah, if it was 73, there'd be a space.

James Cridland: 1:17:12

Yes, okay, well. Well there we are then. Thank you, bruce, a kind of you, and thank you for boosting Adam and Dave's show as well. I hear you there every single week as well. Seth 1,060 sats from True Fans. Yay, I'm intrigued by Netflix and podcasting. Seth says Another place to get your show out to the masses if you're popular enough and doing video. Yes, indeed. Or, if you look at it the other way, another stupid content provider who will give another large company free content without that large company paying for it. Sounds like a good plan to me. Anyway, thank you, 1,060 sats from true fans.

Sam Sethi: 1:17:55

And now we have one well, a satchel of richards. I think it's called one one, one, one from fountain. It's silas on and silas on linux, or linux however you want to say it. Maybe there's something I missed, but in my testing the default video element in a browser and player, I am using constrain to partial content of just a video file if the server returns status 206. Don't know what it takes for a server to do that, though, but it can, and then we have alternative enclosures that can have multiple resolutions. Sure, just putting one file in the standard enclosure is bad. It's not the fault of rss.

Sam Sethi: 1:18:38

I so the background to this was james and I slightly disagreed. Um, I'm a big well, you know we're allowed to occasionally, um, but I I'm a big advocate of the alternative enclosure tag. James, obviously, is a proponent of the location tag, so if we were going to be champions, that would probably be my tag, and I certainly believe that video as an alternative enclosure within the rss should be used. Again, we talked about how podcasting doesn't do itself any favors with live broadcasting, live audio, and again, I think we're not doing ourselves any favors with video. Video, we've ceded that to Spotify and YouTube, but I think we can use it with the alternative enclosure. I don't quite understand what the 206 is, but if Silas is saying, look, he thinks that the alternative enclosure can be the place to put a video link, which is all it would be, then I'm 100% with him.

James Cridland: 1:19:39

Well, there we are. Yes, the whole, the whole vexed thing about video in RSS. I think video in RSS works absolutely perfectly as a method of getting a video file into a third party platform, which that third party party platform can then stream. I think that would work the best for everybody and that's probably the plan. But yes, it's a conversation that will run and run. I would have thought it's seven threes, by the way, seven threes Best regards seven threes, according to Reddit, and Reddit has never been wrong.

James Cridland: 1:20:19

Thank you also so much to our excellent 18. These are people who spend actual money on us every single month. Thank you for doing that. You can join them and become the 19th person to support us weeklypodnewsnet. We do that with our sponsor, buzzsprout, that makes that facility available to us. On our podcast page that you'll find that Buzzsprout runs. Weeklypodnewsnet is where to go, and thank you to Cameron Mould, to Marshall Brown, matt Medeiros, mike Hamilton, dave Jackson, rachel Corbett, cy Jobling, david Marzell, jim James Rocky, thomas, neil Velio, ms Eileen Smith, claire Waite-Brown, john McDermott, james Burt, the late bloomer actor, brian Ensminger and Star Tempest for your very kind support. So what's been happening for you this week, sam?

Sam Sethi: 1:21:16

Well, first of all, I have to give you a massive thank you. Um, uh. We launched creators, which is a new uh podcast aimed at well, as it says on the tin, creators, but we're aiming it at people who went to the event, uni pod fest. I went up there with claire weight brown, who does the show with me, and and I realised you and I, james, talk in the future, we talk about five years from those people. They would not understand Pod News Weekly from day one, minute one. They're still using Audacity for editing, they're still asking what is a length of show, what's the best mic? They are a very different breed of podcaster and I think Creators is a show that we're aiming at those people to help them understand how they can, you know, implement podcasting 2.0 into their podcast but also monetize, and again, we have to take it way back. But the big thank you to you, james, is you included our trailer, which was, you know, very kind and had a massive effect as well. We had over 500 people on the first episode download it.

James Cridland: 1:22:25

Very good, excellent. Yes, I think we delivered 609 downloads to your trailer in the new podcastsnet website and, of course, we slotted it into the main pod news daily. So imagine the amount of people in Malaysia and Indonesia that you are currently getting, yes, big in Asia.

Sam Sethi: 1:22:45

That's it. That's what I've always wanted to be yes big in Asia.

Sam Sethi: 1:22:48

Now we are also using in chapters something that I've wanted to try. So we and I don't know if this is going to work long term, but what we've done is we feature a podcast, independent creator, um, and we then switch the wallet to them. So we add them to our guest splits and then we switch the wallet to them and then when we have the music person, we switch it to them. So we're trying to use or eat our own dog food, and I've always wanted to do wallet switching and uh and use it with chapters, so we're trying that. So, yeah, that's one thing. We're trying to use or eat our own dog food, and I've always wanted to do wallet switching and uh and use it with chapters, so we're trying that. So, yeah, that's one thing we're doing at the moment.

James Cridland: 1:23:24

Very cool, and you've also done um withdrawal of sats back to a fiat currency. Uh, other car mates are also available. Um that's. That's something that apps I thought allowed, but not back into a fiat currency, into pounds or euros or dollars.

Sam Sethi: 1:23:45

Yeah, without naming names. I've checked. Other apps allow you to withdraw funds to Lightning wallets and that's fine. So if you want to put your money back into Strike or into one of the other wallets, so if you want to put your money back into Strike or into one of the other wallets, then you can, and then Strike will deal with the conversion from the SATs back to your local currency. So they are enabling you to put the money back into a wallet, but you can't then do it directly. What we've done is allowed out of TrueFans directly to put your money straight into your credit card or bank account or whatever you've set up on Stripe with a P. So one-click withdrawal out of TrueFans.

James Cridland: 1:24:27

Very nice, very cool. Good for funding the fandom. Have I got that right? Indeed?

Sam Sethi: 1:24:32

Yes, Thank you very much. Yes, put those teeth back in in case. So, james, what's happened for you? Well, I should say what's happened for me is I've had wall to wall Cridland. So what's happened to you?

James Cridland: 1:24:47

Yes, I've been on all kinds of shows. I've been on the latest version of Mike's to Millions, as well as In and Around Podcasting the one with those jingles in and around podcasting the one with those jingles. So that's been fun. I'm on a video with Stephen Robles at the moment, which you can see on the Riverside website as well, talking about hints and tips to grow your podcast audience, which I think was make a trailer. I think that's what I said, but that would. That was recorded at podcast movement evolutions. Uh, a couple of um a couple of weeks ago now, and I was on the bbc, bbc radio 4 um as well as talking about radio casting.

James Cridland: 1:25:29

There were you no, although I was introduced as the editor of pod news, so you know you takes your money, you pay your choice, anyway. So that was fun. If you want to hear that, it's only three minutes long and you'll find the audio is on my blog, jamescridlandnet slash blog, and you can go hunting that. So that is a nice thing. What I'm also doing is I'm packing for Toronto.

James Cridland: 1:25:59

I'm not packing I haven't started packing, obviously but I'm flying to Toronto on Sunday via Hong Kong because it ends up being cheapest for some inexplicable reason. So I'm doing that, looking forward to doing that, and mostly my week this week has been moving web servers. There's a web server that runs a website that I run called mediainfo, which I've run for 25 years, probably even more than that, and anyway, that website is yes, it's a little bit old, and I last updated the operating system that that website runs on in, I don't know probably eight years ago, and so, as a result, I couldn't even connect to it because the thing was basically saying, no, it's just too old to even connect to, and I thought, what with all of the 4chan conversations going on, I thought I better update it to the latest operating system. That would be at least a benefit. So I've ended up doing that and I've only broken one thing so far, so that's okay.

Sam Sethi: 1:27:01

Get on that flight and leave the servers alone. They're okay.

James Cridland: 1:27:06

And that's it for this week. All of our podcast stories taken from the PodNews Daily newsletter at podnewsnet.

Sam Sethi: 1:27:12

You can support this show by streaming sats. You can give us feedback using the Buzzsprout fan mail link in our show notes. You can send us a super comment or boost or become a power supporter like the excellent 18. I wonder who's going to be the 19 um at weeklypodnewsnet wow, 80s reference there.

James Cridland: 1:27:31

Yes, although uh obviously uh a reference from this week, because it's the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War this week.

Sam Sethi: 1:27:41

Wow, yes, there you go.

James Cridland: 1:27:45

Our music is from TM Studios. Our voiceover is Sheila D, apart from the thing at the beginning saying that we use chapters, which is just an AI voice from 11 Labs, sorry. 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. Tell your friends and grow the show and support us. The Pod News. Weekly Review will return next week. Keep listening.