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The Pod News Weekly Review uses chapters. Use a modern podcast app to skip between stories and interviews, or show us how grown up you are by listening to the whole thing.

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

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

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So the listeners don't want to skip these ads Michael Bayston from Acast on the company's new talent voiced ads. To skip these ads. Michael baston from a cast on the company's new talent voiced ads. Plus. Spotify's play count continues to split opinion and youtube looks at alternatives to advertising. 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 so, james, look a bit of fallout from spotify's uh play announcement.

Sam Sethi: 1:13

There's been a lot of backlash. What's this all about?

James Cridland: 1:15

yeah, this is a really interesting development spotify announcing something and then all of a sudden going, oh, we didn't, we didn't realize that people would take this so badly. Yes, quite a lot of adverse reaction. Reaction to Spotify's announcement that it's going to be adding play counts to podcasts on its app. They've put something on threads addressing creator concerns, saying we really appreciate the honest discussion Not sure you do, no, but anyway and then saying that they're going to say something. Well, as we record tomorrow, that is the last post from them on threads, so we're not quite sure what it is that they are going to be saying today, friday, may the 16th. But yeah, do you think they handled it well, or what do you think the issue is here?

Sam Sethi: 2:06

I don't think Spotify did anything wrong. Actually, personally, I think the only thing they did was not give anyone a heads up. But I think it's a data point. Right, you have a download number, you have a play number. But actually here's my bigger question to you, James In the Spotify for Creators dashboard, do you actually, as the creator, get better metrics like listen time, percent completed?

James Cridland: 2:31

Yeah, they do, and they've got some pretty good metrics that are very Spotify centric. So, for example, there's a thing called Spotify Discovery. So, for this show, over the last month, 2,662 people have seen our show in their app, 176 people are interested in it, apparently, and 102 people have consumed it, which is an interesting thing. But you also get things like analytics. So you get the analytics are both plays, whatever a play is, consumption hours, so we know exactly how long. You know how much of this show has been consumed, how many followers we've added in the last 30 days, and the audience size as well. Audience size as well. So you do have some pretty good data in terms of that. You're asking about specifics for individual episodes and you also have that information in there as well. So you've got information about each particular episode how long was that consumed for, and all that kind of stuff. So they've got some very good data. You know, hidden away in the background, certainly.

Sam Sethi: 3:50

So I don't see the problem. It's a number, right? People don't like to reveal their numbers about plays. That's transparency. If you don't like it, the only thing that Spotify could do is to provide a user setting which says to the creator you can turn this off, right, that's all it would do.

James Cridland: 4:07

Yeah, no, I would agree with that, and you know, I mean, you can very clearly see. So this show, for example this show may be slightly too long, sam 34% are still listening by the end of the first quarter, 17% still listening by the end of the second quarter, 10% listening by the end of the third quarter, and only 14% actually complete the show. Interestingly, though, what you can see from the audience graph and I'm just talking about last week, for example, here, week, for example, here so what you can see from the audience graph is you can see some real sort of chunks now where people have forwarded through because of the chapters. So you can see a little peak where some of the conversations were a little peak, where we went into the tech stuff and all that kind of stuff. So you can very clearly see that chapters work, which is nice, but, yeah, so there's a ton of information there.

James Cridland: 5:11

I suppose there are two things that people are concerned about. One of them is that the data has just been released, and it's just okay. We're doing it and we're doing it now, and maybe Spotify should have given a heads up, which is, you know, as you say. The other thing, though, is that we don't actually know how plays are calculated. We know that plays of trailers and clips aren't included, which I think is the right way of doing things. Spotify have given a little bit more information this week in terms of how they're worked out, and they worked out the true fans way, which I find amusing.

James Cridland: 5:48

So a play is only counted once per user, per session, per episode.

James Cridland: 5:53

So if you play an episode and then you pause it and then you start playing it again, that's one play.

James Cridland: 5:57

Now, interestingly, that's two plays on Apple, and so I did a little bit of work on this show and I thought OK, what is this show? How many plays has this show got on Apple Podcasts and on Spotify? And, interestingly, over the last 60 days, we've had a total audience size quite a small audience size because of these two platforms aren't really used by our audience of 185 people on both Spotify and on Apple Podcasts. So that's nice. So we've got some really nice equal numbers here. So the play count on Spotify is 715 and the play count on Apple 2,800. Almost four times as many plays from the same audience size, because Apple measures a play differently to Spotify. So I think it's good if you just want to compare shows on Spotify itself, because you can see Spotify's random plays number. But I don't think it's particularly good if you want to then compare plays on Spotify with plays on Apple, because they are worked worked out obviously in a very completely different way.

Sam Sethi: 7:05

Well, most people won't use their play count anyway, because the number's lower than their download number. So people like to say big numbers. So, oh yes, 10,000 downloads, 2,800 plays. No, I'll stick to the 10,000 downloads then. So I don't think people will use it anyway.

James Cridland: 7:20

Yes, Although there's an interesting question. I was just wondering whether Buzzsprout tells us how many downloads we've actually got from Spotify. It probably would, but I can only see the top five there. But OP3 will also tell us. So I'm wondering how many downloads we've actually had from Spotify and whether that correlates to the plays or to indeed anything else. But of course it's not necessarily going to. But Spotify is tiny for us. It's 6% of our plays. Apple Podcasts, interestingly, way bigger 32% of our plays. So what does that tell you? That tells you that Apple Podcasts has four times the amount of downloads but seemingly, in terms of audience, has the same amount of audience as Spotify's numbers. Of course, neither of these platforms actually use the IAB anyway, so it makes the IAB look a little bit ridiculous, but still. But there we are 3.25% to true fans, which is always nice.

Sam Sethi: 8:31

Ah well, you know we're coming up the back. You know Early days as, yes, the tortoise and the hare. You know, let's not race along too soon. Indeed, and will the AIB be the company that is going to unify this?

James Cridland: 8:48

I don't know whether the AIB will. I mean the AIB certainly won't. It's run by a nice man called Simon.

Sam Sethi: 8:54

Yes, okay, yes, yes, yes, the.

James Cridland: 8:57

Association of International Broadcasters. Hello, yes, but no, I'm not sure that the AIB necessarily will, because Spotify hasn't signed up, apple haven't signed up and YouTube haven't signed up. So you know, at the end of the day, I mean, maybe it comes down to us as an industry shouting enough to get it fixed. But on the other side, you know, spotify just wants a number, and the only number that Spotify can actually calculate the same as YouTube can actually calculate is just the number that they can see on their own platform, and True Fans is doing exactly the same as well. But at the very least, if there's something that says plays, let's make sure that we're working out a play in the same way, and clearly Apple and Spotify aren't. So perhaps that's one thing that we can hopefully work on.

Sam Sethi: 9:50

The reason I can't remember the acronym IAB is because it's so irrelevant to me.

James Cridland: 9:54

But anyway, hey, hey, yes, they are though working on a new thing called Attention Measurement Guidelines. The document which I've taken a read through doesn't mention the word podcast once, which I think says quite a lot there, but in terms of being able to actually say whether or not somebody is actually paying attention to it or not. But I would just sort of put the brakes on that and say the point of a podcast is it's entertainment for your ears when your eyes are busy. So the point of a podcast is, yes, you are paying attention to it in a way, but you're also paying attention to the road, because you're driving at 70 miles an hour down a busy motorway and you want to avoid dying. So there are things that you are paying attention to when you're listening to a podcast which is very different to watching a YouTube video or, you know, looking at an ad banner or whatever it is.

Sam Sethi: 10:56

Well, I read that report because I've been involved in attention metrics for about 20 years. You know, when I spoke to Steve Pratt, we had a long conversation about attention and it's something that I focus a lot on for what we do with True Fans, and so, in a word, when I read that whole report, my summary was don't waste your time and attention. It's totally rubbish. I have not seen a bigger bag of rubbish written I mean the eyeball twitching moment.

James Cridland: 11:26

I know exactly, by the way, that was 10 words and not just one word. But yes, exactly, it's all very focused on video. Of course it is, because that's really what the advertising industry cares about, hence why we're all jumping to do video and we're, you know, rushing around with our sweaty cameras and everything else going. We've got to turn everything into video because the advertisers are telling us and at the end of the day, it's not what podcasting is all about, in my humble opinion but if you want to make cheap crap television, go ahead, be my guest. That's not necessarily what a podcast is.

Sam Sethi: 12:07

I think it's more quick money. Anyway, moving on, james Acast have launched this new feature called Talent Voice Ads. It's authentic voices in programmatic audio. What do you think, james?

James Cridland: 12:21

Yeah, well, you know, it was certainly when I used to write radio commercials. Sometimes we would want a recognisable voice to do an ad for a local advertiser because all of a sudden that meant that that local advertiser seemed really, really big. If you had Tom Baker doing an ad, or if you had, I think we had, jeremy Brett, who used to play Sherlock Holmes doing an ad, and I made the mistake of booking him after lunch. That was a mistake. Yes, what is this that I'm supposed to be saying, dear boy? Anyway, there we are. It'd be nice to get somebody from Acast on. So, as if by magic, you had a word with Michael Bayston from Acast and you started by asking him what are Talent Voiced Ads?

Michael Bayston : 13:12

Talent Voiced Ads is an ad format that is executed by Programmatic. It's a 30-second ad spot which, differently for us, we have the ads voiced by one of our wonderful podcasters, by the talent themselves. So it's different to our sponsorship format, which is a 60 second long host read, if you like, which is from that host, just specifically demonstrating that a product or services sponsoring their show. Instead, Talent Voiced Ads, as I said, is an ad spot, but the brands are licensing the voice of a much loved podcaster.

Sam Sethi: 13:46

Now give me some names, as that might be available within the talent pool.

Michael Bayston : 13:50

Certainly Well. In fact, the way we try and do things at ACAST is, you know, we'll dream up an idea or we'll think about an opportunity in market and then we'll look to have like a really strong due diligence and then testing period. So in fact we've already gone live with talent voice ads in a number of our test markets. So that's the test markets for the US, australia, a few others as well. So actually the talent that's already got involved with talent voice ads includes podcasters like Couples Therapy, we Mean Well and Equity Mates and many others as well. We've actually seen this lift off very quickly. So we've gone very quickly from a test period into a sort of live approach with lots of different talent being approached by our teams on behalf of brands.

Sam Sethi: 14:29

Now, is this an AI? Is this a voice that you license? For example, Catherine Ryan goes in the studio. She does 10 lines. We've now got her AI voice and now you can put scripts and scripts and scripts of ads against her voice. Or is this actually Catherine Ryan doing each ad?

Michael Bayston : 14:46

Yeah, it's a great question and I can completely understand where it's coming from. You know, with all of this in the news about generative AI and cloning and so forth. So, no, to be absolutely clear, talent Voiced Ads is only the voice of the hosts themselves. So these are podcasters who are exclusively signed to the ACAST marketplace. Yeah, so the way it works is, very quickly, is that brands will brief us on their products or services, and then our wonderful in-house account management and planning teams they'll make a match up of the process, really, in order to try and figure out which would be the best talent for that, and then they will approach our talent via the proprietary internal tools that we've created for the purpose. Yeah, and then they would record fresh ad reads for each different campaign.

Sam Sethi: 15:28

Again, being that they are talent, they're not going to be cheap. So how are you pricing this against a normal host read ad or a programmatic CPM rate? What's the difference going to be?

Michael Bayston : 15:40

Yeah, definitely so. In terms of our sponsorship which, as I mentioned before, that's a much longer piece, that's a full on host read. So, for example, in the UK they come in at a price of around £40 CPM. Now, your standard advertising spot, which is like a brand spot, if you like, which is run by programmatic with limited targeting, that might be anywhere in the region of £10 to £12, £13. But talent-voiced ads because, if you think about it, it exists in that medium ground.

Michael Bayston : 16:10

We're going out to market in the UK, for example, at 25 pounds CPM, and it's very similar in other markets around the world because, of course, this is a global solution, so this is now available globally. Now there is one other element to this, which is that we do ask for a minimum spent, and that's also relevant because the way we execute this is via programmatic guarantee. So I know we'll probably get to the weeds in a bit, but that is crucial because we need to ensure, you know, with something, this premium, that there is a specific amount of budget running against us. Now what that means is that, in terms of our internal financials, we're able to ensure that the hosts get a really good host read fee, if you like, because the way we calculate that is that's taken from part of the revenue and then the rest of the revenue goes on. All of the shows that this ad will run across.

Sam Sethi: 16:53

Now look, we all are in the market of making money. We all sell ads, we all make podcasts, again hoping to get some return. But maybe I'm the sceptic in the room. One of the things that I do with many things right now is I skip ads or, being fortunate enough, I pay to not have ads. So do you think that the relationship with the talent voice is going to lead to a higher engagement of listening with these ads?

Michael Bayston : 17:26

Yeah, I think that is a very interesting question. Ultimately, people do talk about ads being skipped quite a lot, but inevitably, what you find with virtually all digital advertising is that, beyond the metrics campaigns, they deliver a certain amount of return on investment, and that is something that we see with podcasting. In fact, it's something that we see particularly with any podcast ads that use the talent. So, for example, you'll have seen in our press release that one of the key benefits of using talent within your advertising is that you get a huge amount of loyalty from the listeners, right? So the listeners don't want to skip these ads, because what they want to do is they want to hear from their much loved and much treasured hosts, basically, with whom they have this incredible parasocial relationship.

Michael Bayston : 18:20

So, for example, we put out a great piece of that much deeper example with the sponsorships. We're taking it to talent-voiced ads, which is obviously it's a shorter period of time that the talent is speaking to them, but that's made up for by an enormous amount of scale that can be achieved for the advertiser and indeed for the host actually, because, let's not forget, this is a great promotional tool for the host because their voice will be heard across the entire network, so we tend not to worry too much about skipping. We instead focus back on trusted third-party measurement solutions that we use in terms of things like brand lift, attribution and, of course, seeing brands rebooking, and the great news is that one of the very first brands that tested out this talent voice to ads with us. Within two weeks they'd come back and they'd rebook for the rest of the year, so I think that's a great example of a brand enjoying a new format that clearly delivers results.

Sam Sethi: 19:10

And where are you going to extend it? So you've just come out of the beta trial, which you said has been working. You're now live. It sounded like you were working in English language. Only territories right now. Will this go beyond into other ACAST platform territories?

Michael Bayston : 19:26

Absolutely yeah. So as of today, this is now available globally. So anyone who's listening to this and who's interested in this please do get in touch with us via sales at ACASTcom or indeed with local sales teams that ACAST has all over the world. In theory, all of our podcasters around the world are up for this, but, of course, one of the crucial things we do at ACAST is we give the talent the choice. Basically, so if they want to get involved in a fantastic new way to make money for themselves and therefore they can make more podcasts, they're very welcome to do so.

Sam Sethi: 19:53

Do you also geographically fence these? So if I want to campaign just in the UK or if I want to roll it out more globally, what's the difference? I'd be interested to know what that minimum cost is. But is there an increase in that minimum cost?

Michael Bayston : 20:05

Yeah, well, I can give you a straight up answer to that. So, for example, in the UK we've decided that the minimum spend for this should be £25,000. Whereas in the US we've decided on a minimum spend of $50,000. Now every single market will have their own minimum for this. And again, you know, minimums with programmatic guarantees is not a rare thing, it really isn't. So for our standard audio ad campaigns, all of our markets have a minimum for running via PG. It's just, it's a little bit more for this because of course, it's the talent who are speaking. It's that much more premium and influential, if you like.

Michael Bayston : 20:35

Now, in terms of the targeting piece, yes, all of this will be targeted by Jio. Now, at this early stage, the targeting that's available is essentially it's sort of basic ad service stuff. So you know time, geo, device, et cetera. And then we've also got ACoS, contextual targeting with this. So very often a brand might think well, you know, I really love this particular host, but I think it would probably work best if this ad which is talking about my products or service, which is from that particular host, is if it goes out in, say, the comedy vertical, or if it goes out across lifestyle or news or politics or whatever it might be. Now, in the future we're looking to improve the targeting on this, but for the moment that's a great position for us to start and we're seeing a lot of the initial campaigns using targeting of that sort.

Sam Sethi: 21:22

It just dawned on me when you were talking through all the categories that certain voices will hold better within certain genres. I mean no offence to Catherine Ryan, but her in a news or a business podcast would not hold the gravitas of, say, a other person, maybe a Stephen Fry or a newsreader. Is that something that you would agree with? Or is Catherine going to be across the board just based on the customer?

Michael Bayston : 21:49

Well, I think that's an interesting way of putting it, because, really, what you're talking about is a comms planning challenge that, really and ultimately the way we work at ACAST is very much in cahoots with our customers.

Michael Bayston : 21:59

If they come to us and they say my advertiser here has got a real hankering for Catherine Ryan, ok, they absolutely love her and they think there's a real match there, but we also want mega scale. We want this to go across the entire network. We're not going to stand in the way of that, and actually, someone like Catherine Ryan, I think, would have mass appeal across virtually everything because she is such a household name. But let's not forget, though, one of the great benefits of podcasting is we've got thousands of podcasters who are not as well known as Catherine, and they deserve the opportunity to speak on behalf of brands, and, frankly, some of their audiences are probably even more loyal to them than they would be perhaps to Catherine. But that would be another thing I think worth thinking about and that's definitely a trend that I've personally seen over the last 10 years is a brand's understanding that it's not just about dropping big cash on big names. It is about using so-called micro-influencers or smaller things who might have say 50,000 to 100,000 followers.

Sam Sethi: 22:51

So really are we saying this is the advent of what I would think of as TV advertising brought to podcasting? It's that quality advertising from a branded name that lends itself to the podcast, as opposed to the host read out of the individual who's just reading out within their own podcast.

Michael Bayston : 23:11

I think that's a fantastic take. Actually, I really do. Yeah, most definitely. We keep talking about Catherine, but obviously there are many, many other comedians who've had there's a long history of comedians appearing in fantastic TV ads. There's probably some of them one of the reasons why I even went into marketing and advertising, actually so I think that's a really good take on it.

Michael Bayston : 23:28

I think the thing I would add to this, though, is that it's also the dawn of talent being aligned with the efficiency of programmatic technology as well, and so we've not really touched on that, but one of the things that I said in my LinkedIn post, actually early today, is that you know what we're doing with this is.

Michael Bayston : 23:51

You know we're bringing the opportunity for a hugely influential element of talent within advertising to now be available to programmatic buyers and, crucially, for them to be able to run it in omni-channel campaigns.

Michael Bayston : 23:58

Alongside the display advertising they're doing on web and mobile, the video advertising they're doing across various different platforms, the stuff they're doing on digital out of home, the connected TV, podcasting, really is a big part of the Omni channel for those programmatic buyers now, so it made sense that we could also bring them the power of talent voice. But then the other piece to it as well is that there are undoubtedly some budgets out there that are controlled by programmatic buyers that may not have been able to come to some of these creators in quite the same way. Now and I can say, you know, from this test period we've had this clear evidence that programmatic buyers are bringing incremental budgets to us because of this format, which again means new budgets going to our podcasters so that they can create new shows and then bring in new and diverse audiences for our advertisers. So hopefully this is a really nice and very positive addition to our open ecosystem offering.

Sam Sethi: 24:51

One last question If I've got a podcast and I've got multiple ads within it, so that can happen. We haven't quite reached radio saturation, thankfully, with ads every 15 minutes, but they are getting more and more within the same podcast. If I listen to certain podcasts I now get five or six ads. If you have a Catherine Ryan, sticking with the example we have, you wouldn't want the same ad five times. You would then have multiple ads. How does that fit within that? Does that mean you're happy to have that as a premium ad early up and then maybe some other ads that are maybe lower down in terms of value? Again, any thoughts on how you see the premium ad, that is, this new talent ad, going in it's positioning, maybe at the front and then other ads within it? Any thoughts?

Michael Bayston : 25:43

We've not gone that complicated with it actually, but I'm glad that you're thinking about it because hopefully that means lots of other people are thinking about it too. To be really honest with you, I love the way you're thinking about it because it is a premium offering and therefore it does deserve that sort of respect. But I think the way we've decided to do it really is that sponsorship ads at that super high premium, which are the host is sponsoring the show. It's a super deep relationship that goes on for a minimum of four weeks. That will always take priority. Now we do offer the opportunity to our podcasters to sort of decide where ads will go, but generally speaking, that's the best practice. Then we roll from that into audio ads. Now, as this format rolls out, what you will find is you'll see a mixture really. So there'll be brand spots and there'll be these talent voiced ad spots, sort of intermixed with each other.

Michael Bayston : 26:28

We think that the premium we've put on this in terms of CPM is more to do with the talent voicing the ad rather than the position, if you like. Now, in my career some years ago, I worked in TV for a bit, so I certainly know where you're coming from. In terms of the first in break and all that stuff. As we know, in TV significant premiums are attached to first in break, but that, if you think about it, is more about the positioning rather than the content of the ad, if you like. So we believe that the premium on the CPM here reflects the premium nature of it.

Michael Bayston : 26:58

One other thing I'll mention as well is that we've decided, in order to scale this, to go fully scripted on these right. So that's another bit of clear water between this solution and sponsorship, where sponsorship very often with 60 seconds, we encourage the hosts to do something interesting and to bring their own flavour to it. I mean some of our real OGs like Adam Buxton and folks like that, who are particularly well-known for that with talent-voiced ads. It's the voice of the host, but we are scripting this and that works well, I think, both for the host and also for the brand from an efficiency perspective as well basically Now, michael, remind me again.

Sam Sethi: 27:30

if I want to go and find out more about what ACAST is doing here, where would I go?

Michael Bayston : 27:35

Certainly so. First and foremost, you can find us across all of our socials. We've got a great post out on LinkedIn about this particular thing, but of course, we've also got the ACAST website as well, ACASTcom, which has just had a lovely makeover recently. So everyone go and check that out. It's beautiful, Super proud of that. And then, of course, once you've had a look, you know, make sure you get in touch with us. You know, fire us all those questions over, get in touch with us at sales at ACASTcom.

Michael Bayston : 27:59

That's the best way to do it and I think, just in sort of terms of signing off, our belief here is that ACAST, as I said, you know, it's nothing new about putting talent voice into programmatic. But we think that, because of ACAST's position as a technology company and the world's leading independent pure play podcast platform, that no one else can deliver this quite like us in terms of the scale, you know, creativity and depth of our network, Plus, of course, this rather accommodating but premium price point we talked about. The other thing I'd say as well is this is proving popular already. You know. Brands really need to get on the bandwagon. We've got a long pipeline already in our test markets and other markets. You know, in Central Europe, Germany, France, the Nordics going out, Asia Pacific and so forth. You know we've got brands beating our door down. In fact, you know our revenue pipeline is well into the six figures now. So we're super happy with that.

Sam Sethi: 28:51

So we would love to hear from other brands to get involved too. Now I do have one last question. One of the things that we as consumers do is build up association with a individual celebrity to a brand. We've seen this throughout the years. You know, I can't think of who he is, but the Go Compare man is associated to Go Compare the brand. If he then went and did another brand, it would be a jockster post. My brain would explode. I wouldn't understand what he's doing doing that ad. Is there a danger that host-read brands can associate to a particular but then you get multiple brands going to particular celebrity? Does that cause confusion? Or is it a case of you increase the supply of celebrity and therefore actually eventually it doesn't matter?

Michael Bayston : 29:36

Yeah, it is an interesting one. Well, look, I mean, in a way, the proof is in the pudding, right? So, actually, our very first brand partner who decided to test this out. They went large. Now it was in America, so you're hardly surprising. But we'd sort of hope that maybe a first customer would test out with one voice, with one deal, but instead they decided to go large and they ran six different voices all at the same time.

Michael Bayston : 29:59

Now, there was a method behind the madness. Actually, again, it's a comms planning challenge here, because they wanted to speak to different audiences, basically. So, for example, in order to speak to a hispanic and spanish-speaking audience in the states, they decided to work with our podcast, so that that was good. But then they also use some other ones as well, like couple therapies, and each of these, you know, speak to different audiences and again, I think that's one of the crucial reasons why podcasting is growing so fast. It's because of these diverse I think.

Michael Bayston : 30:25

The other thing I'd say is I'd sort of speak again to our PodPulse report that we brought out last year, so we've already talked about four, and five of listeners will consider a brand or product promoted by their favorite host, but you know we've got some other fantastic stats as well.

Michael Bayston : 30:38

Like you know, one in two people trust recommendations from podcast hosts full. So you know, yes, I completely understand where you're coming from in terms of the, the connection between certain talent and certain products, but I think that builds over time. But I think the most crucial thing is actually just that position that podcasts provides in generally in people's mind space. So another stat that came from that result, from those roles, the results was really interesting was about the fact that podcasts rank top for media to provide a sense of community. So that was ahead of youtube, ahead of social media and indeed ahead of our friends in radio and television. So I think what we're doing here is is we're leveraging the power of podcasting, the diverse number of hosts that then give us diverse audiences. So I don't think brands should worry too much about having, I suppose, what you might describe as that cognitive dissonance that you were worried about them. Indeed.

Sam Sethi: 31:35

Look lovely to talk to you. Michael, nice to meet you. Will you be at the London Podcast Show as well?

Michael Bayston : 31:41

Yes, I will be. Actually, there's going to be eight casters all over the show. We've got quite a few panels going on, and I'm actually on a panel with our good friends at ad swiss on day one talking about programmatic audio in particular, and there may be a few other panels as well going on which we're all looking forward to and will you be attending the lp bar? I certainly will, or otherwise, as it's known by its proper name, the Acast Arms.

Sam Sethi: 32:07

Yes, of course. Yes, yes, look, michael, thank you very much. Lovely to meet you. Look forward to meeting you at the London Podcast Show. Congratulations on the launch of this new programmatic ad platform and, yeah, I look forward to speaking to you again, probably in six months or maybe 12 months, to find out the success of what this program has done.

Michael Bayston : 32:27

Fantastic, we can't wait for it. Thank you very much again, sam Cheers.

Announcer: 32:29

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

Sam Sethi: 32:36

Moving on now. Youtube ran a survey of the weekend James, to make YouTube podcasts even better. What was the survey about?

James Cridland: 32:44

Yes, it was. So I was tipped. This I was. I was tipped off by a pod news weekly review listener who very kindly screenshotted all of the questions that YouTube were asking. It was basically interested in fan membership programs, so things like Twitch, patreon, facebook support, youtube channel memberships, for example. It was wondering whether you'd taken part in a paid brand partnership, for example, or sponsorship, and it asked some interesting questions about short-form podcast content. I'm not sure what short-form podcast content is, but doing a five minute show every single day, I suppose I should know. So anyway, that was interesting. I mean, obviously, true Fans you're talking a lot about. What's your phrase? Monetising fandoms?

Sam Sethi: 33:39

Yes, that is the phrase that pays, as somebody once said. No, I see a massive trend right now. We talked about Patreon Substack last week. I think they are in the conversation now very firmly when you talk about podcasting. My three pillars are content, commerce and community, and I see a massive move right now towards paid subscriptions. I think more and more people are moving to quality content, and I think it then brings up this whole thing that you raised, james, which is, if people are paying for ad-free quality content, what does this mean for advertising? Who is going to be left for the advertisers to go and target?

James Cridland: 34:21

Yeah, and I think you know I mean certainly there will be a percentage of people who will pay to get rid of the ads, as I mostly do. I either pay to get rid of the ads and pay the creator, or I pay tools to get rid of the ads and the creator gets no money. But I don't suppose that I'm alone, you know, in terms of that. So, yeah, I think you know. Interesting on that side, and I think you're absolutely right. You know there is a lot of money, as we saw last week in that data from Hernan Lopez's Owl Co. Showing us, you know, the amount of money which is being made that isn't advertising based and, of course, streaming payments, the thing that are sometimes incorrectly called value for value. Streaming payments are a good example of that as well.

James Cridland: 35:07

So, yeah, interesting to see whether or not there will be a bit more talk about this at the podcast show next week. I know that Patreon are going, because Patreon want to meet up with me and talk to me about some of the things that they're doing in the podcasting world. Um, I will. I will be asking them why did you tell one of my, one of my would-be supporters that they couldn't support the pod news newsletter. Uh, the other day, no idea why, it was just this random error message saying no, you can't support them. Um, so I don't know about that, but anyway. Um, so that'll be interesting to uh find out a little bit more about, no doubt now.

Sam Sethi: 35:52

Um, this is an interesting one. Um. Wondercraft posted about the world bank launching a podcast in seven languages, obviously using their technology, and I thought, wow. And then you look at what they've actually done. They've been able to produce versions in hindi and french and arabic and all sorts. Um, again, this is really clever and I just thought we may talk about again how you can take your original content and rapidly now convert it into multiple languages. This is what Mr Beast's been talking about with YouTube's audio dub and how the meta platforms don't have it and how people now should be using tools like WonderCraft to go and reach a wider audience.

James Cridland: 36:43

Now, yes, I think that this is two things. There is all of the translation which is in here, and translation is really interesting. Not everybody speaks English in this world, even if you talk very loudly.

Sam Sethi: 36:57

Thank you, very much people, lovely, lovely, it always helps. One biryani, two chicken tikka.

James Cridland: 37:05

No, only you can do that, sam, I can't possibly do that Anyway. Yes, so not everybody speaks English. The other side of it is that, from what I can work out, these aren't podcasts the way you or I would talk about it. It's essentially Notebook LM or the equivalent that Wondercraft have access to, and so they have taken their research papers, their policy briefs, and they have done some work with that. So I think two things going on there One, taking relatively turgid, complicated papers that nobody's really going to read anyway and turning into a couple of different versions of nice shows that you can have a listen to while you're doing something else, but also, secondly, making those available in seven languages, so Spanish, french, arabic, portuguese, chinese, hindi and English. So I think it's a crafty idea as a listen. I'm not sure it's going to be a stupendously exciting listen because there's not going to be very much human connection and shared experience in it, but I think as an idea for companies like the World Bank to get things over, I think that that makes an awful lot of sense.

Sam Sethi: 38:29

The two things technically that I was hoping was going to be in there. One was that we're going to use the alternative enclosure. No, they don't, and that would have been lovely to see. And then the other thing that I think would have been nice was the AI flag that we've mentioned in the past. We built that into TrueFans. It's like the explicit tag. You turn it on and we put a little robot icon next to the content. No one's adopted it. No one may adopt it in the future. Even that would be lovely if there was a standard that we could all adopt where the creator would flag the content as AI spoken. That would help. Maybe other people then make decisions to filter that content out if they don't want it.

James Cridland: 39:14

Yeah, I think there's definitely something in flagging, certainly AI generated content that's been generated by AI and has been voiced by AI. In terms of the alternate enclosure, I don't think this is the use case for that, because I do think that you still need all of the metadata to be in that language, and so it does mean different RSS feeds for different languages. But a way of linking from one to another makes a lot of sense. There's a standard in HTML and maybe that standard should be used, so this podcast, but available in Arabic over here. I think that makes a bunch of sense, but as an alternate enclosure I don't think it works, because you do need the name of the show, the description of the show, in that other language as well.

Sam Sethi: 40:05

Yeah, no, you might be right there, but then maybe just do a pod role.

James Cridland: 40:09

Yes, well, do a pod role, which more on that later. So, yes, absolutely, let's go round the world, sam Indeed.

Sam Sethi: 40:17

Yes, we've done the World Bank. Let's go round the world In the Middle East and Africa. Podio, who we had on the show a couple of weeks ago, have announced officially their partnership with the SMC Group. James, what's this one?

James Cridland: 40:30

Yes, so SMC Group is a company that sells advertising, and they will be doing that in both the United Arab Emirates and in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and Podio is working with them as an exclusive sales partner. If you saw that and you thought, oh, hang on a minute, I'm sure I knew about that that's because, of course, you had the exclusive, because you interviewed Podio's CEO a few weeks ago. So that was a you know, you heard it here first, folks.

Sam Sethi: 41:03

Indeed. When I read it in Pod News Down, I went. I know this already, We've said this.

James Cridland: 41:09

Yes.

Sam Sethi: 41:10

Yes, well, there you go.

James Cridland: 41:15

Now whizzing round to Australia. What's going on in Australia, james? So two things. Australia's podcast production house, deadset Studios, has appointed Sarah Dabrow as head of development and executive producer. Now Sarah Dabrow has worked for all kinds of people in very senior creative roles people in very senior creative roles Foxtel, which is our equivalent of Sky, abc Sky themselves, mamma Mia, endemol, shine Australia and ITV Studios. So she knows what she's doing and she's working for Deadset Studios, which is a pretty good and rapidly growing podcast production company. It's headed up by Kelly Reardon.

James Cridland: 41:53

Now Kelly Reardon used to be in charge of ABC Audio Studios from the public service broadcaster here, and there is a brand new job which is available podnewsnet slash jobs which looks eerily similar to her old job. I think the title is Manager Podcasts, which is, in true ABC form, a very dull title, but when you have a look at what that title actually is, it is in charge of basically all of the podcasts that the ABC sticks out. So if you want to be working for the number one podcaster in terms of downloads in any case in this country, not in terms of plays, no, just downloads Get that in. We don't know in terms of plays.

Sam Sethi: 42:44

Might be in terms of plays as well.

James Cridland: 42:46

yes, that's the whole problem. So, yes, so that's going on. What's going on in America?

Sam Sethi: 42:55

Do we have to? No, sorry, what's going on in America? No, in terms of broadcasting, right, right, yes, stick to the story, sam. Stick to the script, right? Michael Tobin, the non-exec chairman of Audioboom, has bought another well near $2.6 million of Audioboom shares. I think that's quite cool. He now owns 5.4% of the company. They're very, very profitable. I guess that's what you call putting your money where your mouth is.

James Cridland: 43:18

Yes, I think he's doing an interesting job. Michael Tobin OBE, who is a very big entrepreneur. He's on many, many boards, so that is interesting. That, of course, happened in the UK. Uh, happening in america? I heart media releasing. No, no that one.

Sam Sethi: 43:38

I heart media releasing wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Stewart, who you interviewed was in new york. Right, he was in new york.

James Cridland: 43:45

Yes, no, you're absolutely right. Stewart last is based in new york. Who's the ceo ofotape?

Sam Sethi: 43:49

Thank you so that's why I said America.

James Cridland: 43:53

No worries, no worries. Moving on, iheartmedia Seamless, releasing its quarter one 25 earnings, podcast revenue, up 28% year on year. It now represents 14.3% of the company's total revenue. Chris Peterson, who used to work there, so he should know a thing or two, says the podcasting is now driving that particular company Blimey. It needs to.

James Cridland: 44:17

Two things happening at iHeart this year. Firstly, let's not forget, they still have debt of $4.6 billion. That's a big overdraft which they've got to pay off at some point. Secondly, they are planning $150 million worth of cost savings this year. But the interesting thing because I went into the slides that they showed the investors they showed where that cost saving will come from. So 10% of that cost saving so $15 million will come from the digital audio group, which is the group that includes podcasting. 65% of that cost saving whatever 65% of 150 million is is going to come from the radio stations. So they are continuing to gut the radio stations and you know, and focus more on the podcasting world. So interesting from that side seeing, you know, a typical broadcaster doing what most broadcasters are doing now really pairing the broadcasting down to the smallest amount that they possibly can.

Sam Sethi: 45:23

Well, it explains why they might be at the podcast show then as well, if the company is being driven by podcasting.

James Cridland: 45:28

Well, yes, yes, they clearly need to be, you know, as visible as they possibly can be in that shape. So, yes, I'm looking forward to seeing some of the iHeart people there.

Sam Sethi: 45:40

Now we covered Ashley Carman reporting that $30 million was the amount for the acquisition of Luminada by PodX. But in that piece you wrote, james, there was a little bit that stood out for me. Goalhanger looks set for funding from the churning group.

James Cridland: 45:58

How do we know that? Well, I mean, ashley knows that from somewhere. She's a good journalist, she talks to people. But yeah, so Goalhanger, which won an award this week for the best audio brand or something like that, seems to be doing very well. But I think what's very clear is they're ruling the UK in terms of content, not necessarily doing that in the US, and there's a big opportunity for them, obviously, to move out into the US. So perhaps the churning group, which has put some money in the past into other places, might be helping them with expanding into the US. That's just a guess, but it would kind of make quite a lot of sense, wouldn't it?

Sam Sethi: 46:46

Whizzing over to Latin America. Who's doing what over there, james?

James Cridland: 46:55

go. Who's doing what over there, james? Well, so the co-founder of Sonoro, who is a man called Joshua Weinstein or Weinstein, I never really know but anyway he's been interviewed by a media writer called Simon Owens, who's a very good media writer. I think he interviewed me about a year and a half or so ago talking about his podcast network. Sonoro generates over 100 million monthly downloads, which seems to do quite well. So if you're interested in that part of the world, that is worth a read. Just do a search for Sonoro in the Pod News website. Down to Egypt and the Podfest Cairo event took place last week. This time around it was an evening of panels, curated listening sessions and networking. You might remember that we interviewed Kim Fox from Podfest Cairo on this show about six or seven months or so ago when she was in this part of the world. I interviewed her on my deck, I seem to remember. So, yes, there was a thing.

James Cridland: 47:57

you could hear the birds in the background. And then one final thing I always love all of this Advertising buyers. People who buy advertising are so divorced from reality. They are not like the rest of us. For a start, they're very young. For a start, they're also very highly educated, hang on a minute.

James Cridland: 48:19

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa no no, no, but I'm saying of all of us, of all of us. I know you're very educated, you know, et cetera, et cetera. You're not young but you're very educated. Black, don't crack, I can look young, but in terms of you know, I have been saying for many, many years that ad buyers are not like the rest of us, but they make a decision based on them, not based on you know, the people that perhaps their clients would like them to make a decision on, and this is a great example of that.

James Cridland: 48:58

Some work from the excellent Pierre Bouvard, who works at Westwood One. He reports that 85% of Americans commute to work, but ad buyers aren't like the rest of us. Ad buyers only commute into work 4.2 times a week. Of us ad buyers only commute into work 4.2 times a week. The average American commutes 4.7 times a week, so they're commuting less. And in fact there's other differences between ad buyers and people who work in advertising and everybody else. So it's a really interesting piece of research. The other thing, by the way, it said and I think we all know this, but Friday is lowest for everybody in terms of commuting time. So don't you would argue from this research don't, whatever you do, release a podcast on Friday, particularly a long one that might be good for a commuter. Oh don't, don't.

Sam Sethi: 49:52

Hey, it's great for gardening at the weekends, don't you knock it? The thing I took away from this is either advertising. People are lazier than us or richer than us. I'm going for the richer.

James Cridland: 50:04

Yes, well, I think probably a little bit of both, to be honest, judging by the advertising people I've met. We did something when I was working at a radio station. We did something which I thought was really clever. We couldn't afford any poster advertising, apart from about five sites in London when we were advertising the radio station I think it was a New Breakfast show, I think and so we put up the poster sites right next to where the advertising agencies are in London, just off Tottenham Court Road. So if you were driving to work, or even walking to work from the Tube, you would pass these ads for the radio station and you'd see all of those ads and you'd think, blimey, this radio station is doing amazingly well, isn't it? We should be advertising on it. And the reality was that was the only place where the ads were. But I thought doesn't that tell you everything you need to know about people who buy advertising? I thought that was a really interesting thing. People News on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 51:14

Lots of things going on at Libsyn. Libsyn has hired a new VP of technology. He's Andy Wright and he's joining from a company called Robots and Pencils. So, interestingly, not somebody from the podcasting tech landscape, but definitely somebody from the tech landscape, but definitely somebody from the tech landscape. He's replacing Libsyn's old CTO, who left the company a couple of weeks ago. So that is, I think, a very good move from that company. I think that their tech has been letting them down for a long, long time, and so that makes a bunch of sense.

James Cridland: 51:51

They've also made a number of hires in their business development team. Nick Zier joins as Senior Manager of Creative Partnerships. Cliff Clinton steps into the role of Senior Manager of Strategy and Podcast Operations. He used to work for Lemonada Media, ossa and AdResults Media. You've got Scott Hurd, who is national account director, joining from Sonant and Daily Wire, and Brittany Hall, who comes aboard as director of Brand Partnerships, and she joins from Spotify, triton, seeker, chartable, megaphone, sony Music Entertainment all of the places, basically. So clearly Libsyn spending a lot of money in um, making a number of um big uh hires, um, which is very impressive. I think the new ceo clearly uh doing quite a lot of hard work there yeah, look, it'll be interesting.

Sam Sethi: 52:44

I think libsyn's one of the what you call them, the ogs, aren't you, aren't they? So, um, yeah, it'll be good to see them. You, you know, come back to life a bit more. I think they've gone very quiet, so this will be good.

James Cridland: 52:56

I think the heritage podcast host is a good word for them, but unfortunately they have heritage tech right now. So the sooner that they can get rid of that tech debt the better, I think. And one person who is leaving and starting a new thing is AJ Feliciano, one of PodNews' long-term supporters. He's left the roost after almost eight years at the video-first company. They of course used to own Rooster Teeth as well, the big podcast network. He's working on a new venture and we find out what that is later in the year. He said autumn or fall, but of course I can't say autumn or fall because that's in a totally different time of the year for me, so I've just written later this year. But anyway, it'll be interesting to watch what's going on there. I'm interviewing Christina from the Roost on a panel all about video podcasting and whether or not we're going to hell in a handcart, basically. So looking forward to doing that at the podcast show next week Now.

Sam Sethi: 54:05

awards and events. James the Webby's had a ceremony in New York. Who was the winner?

James Cridland: 54:10

and ceremony in New York. Who was the winner? Yes, so the big winner of Podcast of the Year was the Midas Touch podcast for groundbreaking contributions to digital political commentary and cultural advocacy, which is all very exciting. So, yes, lots and lots and lots of winners from the Webby's.

Sam Sethi: 54:29

there Again, I looked through the list. Is it my imagination? But were there only Americans winning it this year?

James Cridland: 54:34

It's just your imagination, sam. In fact, one of the winners, tony and Ryan, who won an award for best comedy show, are Aussie, and there's a really nice email this week from Irene Hume, who does a podcast down here, basically saying that Tony and Ryan were a totally missed piece of talent from Australian Commercial Radio. They'd worked within Commercial Radio for a long, long time. They were clearly incredibly bright people, but Australian Commercial Radio just dropped the ball, never put them on air, never really got them working together. Um, so, uh, yeah, so it's, um, it's a pretty good um, uh move from them to uh get um. I mean, they only won one webby and not two, obviously, but nevertheless, uh, they won one.

Sam Sethi: 55:26

I'll pick those up for you, james, don't worry.

James Cridland: 55:30

Yes um, but uh, many, so many congratulations to them and to brad march, their manager, as well, because they have had a storming couple of years and, of course, the arias took place this this week. The arias um are a big audio and radio industry awards in the uk. Um Already mentioned it already, but Goalhanger ended up winning the UK Audio Brand of the Year, so congratulations to them. It's mostly radio that wins this type of stuff, so it's nice to see podcasters also winning in the arias as well. All of the winners for that even the radio stations are in the Pod News newsletter.

Sam Sethi: 56:16

Oh good, Is it an OP mail file? Can I import it?

James Cridland: 56:20

Not for the radio stations. I mean, I suppose I could, but no. So yes. And finally, of course, the London podcast show happening next week. We will be there. So if you are going to the London podcast show, make week, we will be there. So if you are going to the London podcast show, make sure on day two that you are hanging around at about four o'clock in the afternoon. We will be doing this show live from the smallest room available. No, we will be doing this show live from one of the cavernous rooms at the podcast show in London.

James Cridland: 56:51

Looking forward to doing that. Please come along, because the guests are going to be you and a few other people, so that's worthwhile you doing. Also, please turn up early because I'm doing the opening keynote. Heaven knows what that's going to say, because I'm supposed to have written it by last Friday and I still haven't. So that'll be good. One new thing that I have just learned about is the Infinite Dial UK, which is being released at the podcast show. Gabriel Soto will be there, along with a couple of people from their sponsors, I think there's also a free webinar the week after, and the good thing about the Infinite Dial UK is that it's specifically designed to be comparable with other Infinite Dial data. So that happens at the moment in the US, australia and New Zealand. So we can see how big or not the UK is in comparison to those other countries as well.

Sam Sethi: 57:48

So worth a peek as well, so worth a peek. I'm doing a on the Thursdays before our event at 12 o'clock. I'm doing a podcasting 3.0. I know, I know, james cringe, you're going to hate it, but that's fine, I decided it's going to be so. I hope still to be able to demo, rather than slide where, the use of micropayments and also AI voice interfaces, but I don't know. Again, they haven't told me whether there's Wi-Fi in the room yet, which is always a little bit nerving.

James Cridland: 58:24

Yes, well, yes, that's always a slight concern. I believe that they do have Wi-Fi, but I believe also that you can't necessarily guarantee on it actually working, which is, you know, always the way.

Sam Sethi: 58:36

My after-installing can see if I can get an account.

James Cridland: 58:41

We will see, see if that works. But, yes, very much looking forward to being at the podcast show next week. If you are around in London, it'd be lovely to catch up. Obviously, the two days of the podcast show. I'm completely chockers is, I believe the phrase, but certainly relatively free on the Monday and relatively free on the Friday, on much of the Friday before I fly back. So it'd be nice to see you. James, at podnewsnet is my email address. He says thinking very carefully about which one I was going to give out there the Tech Stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 59:20

Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday in the Pod News newsletter. Here's where Sam talks technology. What have you got for us, sam Well?

Sam Sethi: 59:27

Amazon seemed to have woken up a little bit. They've got AI-voiced audio books now, which again, I don't want them. I don't want these, but anyway they're going to launch them.

James Cridland: 59:41

Equivalent you say here they've made a profit of $59 billion, yes, last year, yes, which I calculated if you were going to pay proper professional human voiceovers, then you could use that profit to make 39 million audiobooks.

Sam Sethi: 1:00:05

That was just me being sarcastic. Well, no, no, they can't.

James Cridland: 1:00:09

They can't use that money, james because Katy Perry wants to go back to space. Oh well, yes, yes, there is always that. There is always that, my goodness, and our sponsor, buzzsprout, who we use for lots and lots and lots of things. They have done some really, really welcome stuff. So you might remember that Castos added integration of Apple Podcast subscriptions last week or the week before, and it seems that Buzzsprout have done pretty well exactly the same, which makes life so much easier. If you want to offer premium content that's, ad-free content, or maybe it's content which is additional stuff, but only for people who are paying, then now you can do that through the Buzzsprout tools and people can get that through the standard Buzzsprout way of doing things with a private RSS feed, but now it interfaces directly with Apple Podcasts subscriptions as well. At least, that's what I think it does. What do you know, sam?

Sam Sethi: 1:01:09

I know nothing, as they say, and Manuel in Fawltyulty towers.

Alban Brooke: 1:01:13

but um other than that, I thought I'd interview alban brook, the wonderful marketing director over at buzzsprout, and ask him all about buzzsprout subscriptions this is what we launched two years ago to help podcasters offer a premium version of their shows, and it's been growing over the last two years and we did really our biggest update we've ever done. So we added all sorts of different types of shows. You can have bonus content and ad free listening and subscriber only shows and early access and back catalog. We added a bunch of different types of shows. We did a lot of refinements to how you set those up and run them and then probably the biggest thing for a lot of podcasters is that we built an integration with Apple podcast subscriptions so that they can manage everything from their Buzzsprout dashboard so you're able to offer it to everybody on any podcast player and also run your Apple podcast subscription.

Sam Sethi: 1:02:14

So why and when did this decision come about?

Alban Brooke: 1:02:17

Well, we also did some other things with Apple just before this. So the Apple launched this opportunity where you could submit shows directly to them, rather than podcasters going through that a little bit longer submission process. James talked about this in the pod news report card and they launched another way for people to claim the shows that were submitted that way. So we supported both of those and I think it just made sense. We were working with them on these other opportunities. We were doing some upgrades to Buzzsprout subscriptions and this is another great thing that we can offer to our podcasters, because I think the ad model works exceptionally well for a big portion of podcasters really large shows, but the smaller shows with really dedicated fan bases it's really hard for them to monetize and so having something like, you know, early access episodes is going to be a good way for them to monetize their shows. So it just kind of worked out perfectly.

Sam Sethi: 1:03:22

Now, when I come to my Buzzsprout dashboard, what will I see as the way? So I've uploaded episode X. How do I now determine that that episode is going to be put behind the firewall or paywall for couple of subscriptions?

Alban Brooke: 1:03:39

So you'll go over to monetization and then go set up a Buzzsprout subscription and which episodes land behind the firewall, as you put it, will determine based on which of these benefits you're offering your listeners. So if we do full archive access, you know the archive is going to automatically be getting locked. If we do early access and we say, hey, subscribers get access to everything but non-subscribers, you don't get access for a week, and so most of that is going to be happening automatically. If you're doing a show that's like bonus content with bonus episodes, then you have in the upload process you've got a toggle so you can say, ok, this is a premium episode, let's lock it. And the other one that I should mention is ad free episodes. With those you'll upload two audio files to us One that has ads or maybe is getting ads added to it through Buzzsprout ads, and then another ad-free version that we will serve up to your subscribers.

Sam Sethi: 1:04:46

And you also do private feeds. Don't you Like Patreon or Memberful or Supporting Cast?

Alban Brooke: 1:04:51

Well, the way we would do that is like a subscriber only show. So if you don't want to run a Patreon in addition to your Buzzsprout account, you can just set it up and say, hey, pay $5 a month, you get the feed from Buzzsprout and you don't have to go set up a second or third service. We are trying to serve as indie podcasters and we want to give them as many ways as possible to monetize their show to be successful and not have to jump to a bunch of hoops to make any money. The prospect of, hey, we're going to do bonus episodes every week wasn't a great option, because if you've only got a few hundred listeners and now you're promising a bonus episode to the two people that sign up to pay, that's not sustainable.

Alban Brooke: 1:05:44

It's actually why I really, really love that we added early access to this, because early access you really align all of these interests right. You've got the podcaster who's already creating the show and the listeners who are getting it. All the back catalogs still open. You still have the maximum growth opportunity, but there's a real benefit to your subscribers that they hit the end of all the shows and they go oh, there's actually two behind the paywall there. I'd love to get early access to those and they can be end of all the shows and they go. Oh, there's actually two behind the paywall there. I'd love to get early access to those and they can be a patron of the show. They can support you and help your show grow.

Sam Sethi: 1:06:21

That's super cool, by the way. Now, if I want to then take a Apple subscription episode off, can I do that in my dashboard on Buzzsprout, or do I have to go to Apple and take the episode back? How, how does that work?

Alban Brooke: 1:06:38

You would just inside of Buzzsprout, so you set up your Buzzsprout subscription and then you would log into Apple podcasts connect and then you'd get your API key, you'd set up your Apple podcast subscription. You'd hook that into Buzzsprout and we're trying to do as much as we can so you don't have to go log back in to anywhere else. And so if you take a episode and you say, oh, this is locked, then it's going to be locked in Apple podcast subscriptions as well. And if you take it off and you make it public for everybody, it's public for everybody.

Sam Sethi: 1:07:10

Okay Now, because I can do this within my rss feed, within buzzsprout. What happens to other podcast apps other than apple? When they see a subscription base, do they get any way that they can access that as a paid item, or is it just no, you don't get this episode because it's specific to apple so that's why we wanted to build out Buzzsprout subscriptions as well.

Alban Brooke: 1:07:36

Apple Podcasts is the largest podcast player. It's the most important. This subscription offering works really well, but if you're someone like me who uses Overcast a lot, well, the best way to do it would be to go sign up for a Buzzsprout subscription. I pay for the podcast, maybe I pay for Pod News Weekly Review Plus, and then I get a feed that is unique to me and I can just add that RSS feed. So any podcast player that supports adding a custom RSS feed, I will be able to listen inside of a podcast app Perfect RSS feed, I will be able to listen inside of a podcast app Perfect.

Sam Sethi: 1:08:17

Now, one of the questions that I asked James this morning, when we said we were going to interview you, was is there a worry within Buzzsprout and, by extension, all other hosts that the actual audio is being hosted by Apple? Is that giving away the crown jewels to Apple, in effect, because you are a host? Should you not be? Because the way that it works within Spotify with SOA, you go and get a token authorization and so it gives the controlling let's say, patreon or member for where the service has been paid for some control over what Spotify does, because they can remove that authentication. But fundamentally, from what I understand, you're enabling the Apple subscriptions and the audio goes there and then the person's paying. Is there any worry at all? Or is this just a partnership deal and you just accept it? That's how it goes.

Alban Brooke: 1:09:08

No, I think this works really well the way we're doing it. I mean, we're able to control what's being delivered and what's available via the API, so we can technically manage it. That's not going to be an issue. As far as, like a strategic question, is it a bad idea to let them host it? We're coming up on the 20th anniversary of Apple adding podcasts to iTunes and, from my vantage point, they've done nothing but support open podcasting for 20 years. And Apple podcast subscriptions is not an attempt to become our competitor. It's a really nice value add that, as a platform, they're able to offer a seamless way for people to pay for premium content inside of a podcasting app while still leveraging the open ecosystem. So I I see it as a win-win. I don't really see it as a strategic concern.

Sam Sethi: 1:10:05

Now as a paid subscriber to Buzzsprout. Will I get this as a free extension to subscriptions, or is this an add-on pricing that I'll be expecting to see?

Alban Brooke: 1:10:16

Oh, this is out for everybody. So everybody on a paid plan right now has access to the updates to Buzzsprout subscriptions and this integration with Apple.

Sam Sethi: 1:10:27

Cool, nice. Thank you, buzzsprout. Now moving on, we haven't had you on the show for a long while, it feels, and you've been busy working on other things as well. One of the things that I was listening on Buzzcast actually Kevin was talking about is you've got your beta of your transcriptions currently running. So I remember interviewing you when you first brought that out and you were talking about the third party provider I think it was Rev that you used, and so you are currently in beta testing for all Buzzsprout users for transcriptions. Two things, then why are you looking to change and how's it going?

Alban Brooke: 1:11:08

Man, you mentioning Rev, I forgot that we ever used Rev at some point. Transcriptions have changed so much in the last 10 years. You know it was a really, really painful process. It was super advanced and so we partnered with I think it was Rev first, and we had a deal with Otter at some point, and then Rev became Temi and you know we added so many different things, became Temi and you know we add so many different things and really, as we've moved more into offerings with co-host AI, so we want to be able to do more on the AI side for Buzzsprout.

Alban Brooke: 1:11:43

We need really high quality transcripts and we worked on the transcript tag years and years ago because we thought just having transcripts of podcasts was important. Well, the combination is hey, this is something that the technology has improved and we can bring it in-house. We think we can do a really good job. Doing a really good job in-house also means we can lower the price, so we don't have to charge as much for transcripts. I mean, if you just look across transcription services right now, you can find some where you're paying a dollar a minute at the high end and some where it's very, very inexpensive, and I think that we want to be able to leverage, you know, those cost savings so that we can pass them on to you know. 120,000 indie shows on Buzzsprout, you know 120,000 indie shows on Buzzbro.

Sam Sethi: 1:12:33

So with the beta now, what's the sort of feedback you're getting? I mean, I personally think the transcription was pretty good. You've got the data comes back, you've got then the speaker labels, you've got sampling, and it all seems to work. We pull it into apps like TrueFans and it works beautifully. So you're hoping, I guess, to get a higher quality transcript. Is that one of the metrics that you've been going to be looking at?

Alban Brooke: 1:12:59

Yeah, I think there's probably three metrics to think about with transcripts you want higher quality, you want it to be faster and you want to be able to offer it inexpensively.

Alban Brooke: 1:13:10

Another benefit is the more of it that we control that whole pipeline, the more we can optimize it, and so we can.

Alban Brooke: 1:13:19

You know, for people who want to edit the transcript and make updates, we can control the UI and make it a seamless editing experience. One of the benefits from having partnered with so many different companies over the last 10 years for this has been we've seen the pieces of each editor that we really like, We've seen limitations and we've had customers who've used all sorts of different options, and they're all giving feedback on the transcripts we're offering now, so that we're able to continuously refine it, continuously refine it. I think that's one of the things we often consider when we're looking at are we going to partner with a company or are we going to do something ourselves? Is, are we going to be able to bring something unique to the table that we can iterate on this for years and keep making it better? I mean the same way that we're talking about Buzzsprout subscriptions now. Being able to iterate on something for years is always going to provide a much better product in the end.

Sam Sethi: 1:14:13

So, oldburn, two features that I'd love to have and you don't have to answer, you can just give me the nudge and the wink if it's in there, but keyword summaries would be one of the things and data extraction of key references so maybe someone's mentioned a book, or somebody's mentioned a restaurant or a location. These are sorts of features that you're hoping to add to the transcript within what you're doing now in the version you're building.

Alban Brooke: 1:14:41

Well, we never have anything planned more than six weeks out, and I always say that because it really is true. We just started our I know what we will work on for the next six weeks and I don't think either of those are in there. But if you want to tell me more about it, so you'd hope that the keywords that we put in for your episodes, that those be automatically detected right, that would be a summary that I think would be really useful.

Sam Sethi: 1:15:06

So you bring the transcript in. You then summarize it down using the AI so I can quickly go through the summaries of a podcast and say, yeah, that's. That's a really cool thing. I want to see and there's five bullet points maybe that the AI summarized that whole thing on. That could even be used in my show description if I wanted.

Alban Brooke: 1:15:31

Well then we've built this. Oh, okay, cool. We rolled out, since the last time we talked, an update to Co-host AI, where we're writing multiple descriptions for you now, and one of the descriptions was the version that I wanted, and I think most podcasts that when I listen to them, I don't want a long written out description. What I wanted was one to two sentence and then bullet points of the main topics, exactly, and then give me the chapter markers, and so co-host AI will do that. Now we run the transcript, then we do the AI piece, so we give you both of those so you could select. Give me the bullet point version that'll show up in your description, then you can go over to the chapter markers, where I feel like we've been doing refinements on these and they're getting much, much better at finding the key moments where the topic is changing, something interesting is happening and labeling it correctly.

Alban Brooke: 1:16:34

But I guess I should mention, you know, a few other things off the top of my head We've done for co-hosts. We've added more things so you can share content. So, sharing to social media content, we'll write a blog post for you. We're doing a lot around titles, anything we can to make that last step of publishing the podcast easier. We are going to keep tackling that because I find you you prep the interview and then you do the interview, and then you edit the interview and you're kind of like, oh, I'm done. And then to go in and go, oh yeah, I didn't keep tabs on where the chapter markers were. Oh, now I've got to sit down and write a description when I'm kind of need a break. It's really nice for co-host AI to come in and do that work for you, rather than you need to go through the episode for a fifth time.

Sam Sethi: 1:17:24

So two of those things I really love. So you're creating a social media written clip. What I'd love is an audio clip put into the soundbite automatically so that it actually goes with the RSS feed as well. That would be genius for me, because then I don't have to go and create soundbites. The AI is creating me five soundbites and they're ready to go and I just choose one or multiple. That would be awesome. And then the other one is with the blog posts. I'm actually using those blog posts within Pod News Weekly for TrueFans because we have a blogging capability within the platform and, again, I can copy and paste that straight over. I will privately send you an email, if you don't mind, about how you could actually, I think, maybe extend that into the RSS as a new tag where we would actually take from Buzzsprout a blog entry for that episode and then we could pull it in as well. That would be my two high wishlists, please.

Alban Brooke: 1:18:24

I love it and we need to make sure that if we launch any of these features at any point, that you clip this piece of the interview and say, ah, you could see where I suggested this to Buzzsprout and then they built it years later.

Sam Sethi: 1:18:37

Yeah, I'm loving co-host AI, and I'm just curious as to know what's in in Buzzsprout's roadmap along those features, cause I think each one of those is adding or simplifying the workflow, which is what I love about it. Now, one of the other things that you did is also improve your websites, so tell me more about why you did that and what you're planning.

Alban Brooke: 1:18:56

Well, podcast websites are important for people to have kind of a home on the internet that is platform agnostic, so you can send people to one page and then they can click and they can go listen to the podcast in any app that they choose. They can read the transcripts, they can read the descriptionss, they can read the descriptions, they can learn about the show, they can see your pod role and so many of these new new data has been collected. The hosts their photos and we went. You know we can make a much better website than we did a few years ago, and so we went through. We pretty much tore them down and rebuilt much, much more beautiful websites that are much more full featured, and those again were focusing these websites on indie podcasters. So we rolled them into all buzzsprout plans and you can go and see the one for buzzcast, you could go see it for pod news review and we've got tons of other examples up on the Buzzsprout website.

Sam Sethi: 1:19:54

So are the blog posts within the website. Is that going to be anything that merges into the two, so that you offer both an audio tab, maybe in a blog tab, just as a thought?

Alban Brooke: 1:20:08

We don't have any plans for that now, but in six weeks we will probably have a whole new batch of things that we will come up with to build, so I don't mean to be evasive with it. We we honestly we try to keep, you know, ourselves focused on what's the next best idea, that we have to make things better for indie podcasters, and sometimes that means, you know, kind of keeping the blinders on and focusing on what's right in front of us, you know. So I'm I'm over here working on enamel pins that I want to take to podcast movement in a few months.

Sam Sethi: 1:20:43

Now with the, with the work that you're doing on websites as well. One sorry I'm, I don't get to talk to you all, but enough, clearly. So well, one sorry I'm, I don't get to talk to you, albin, enough clearly. So I'm giving you all of my wish list.

Sam Sethi: 1:20:56

One of the things that james of art and I've mentioned in the past is actually, what would be lovely is a landing page within buzzsprout, which would be the aggregated view of some of your best podcasts, because what you've got is a single page podcast, which is great. So ours is weeklypodnewsnet Lovely, it's a, you know, a customized domain. Thank you very much. But actually what would be really cool would be a bit like the pod roll, but actually a Buzzsprout landed page, somewhere where I could actually see thumbnails of some of the other cool podcast webpages that are available by Buzzsprout that I can oh yeah, let me click on that or maybe even by category. So what other podcasts does Buzzsprout host that are business technology news podcasts, and then go and see theirs. And again, I don't know if this is something that you go no, we're never going to do that, but I just thought I'd throw that into the pool.

Alban Brooke: 1:21:52

if this is something that you go, no, we're never going to do that, but I just thought I'd throw that into the pool.

Sam Sethi: 1:21:54

So the idea here is it's like a pod role where you could select other podcasts, but instead of taking you to the podcast index, we'd be taking you to the buzzsprout website so that you could get a bit more information about the podcast yeah, and just you know, and then if I wanted to click on their web page and have a look through theirs and see more about them, so it's a landing page of thumbnails, in effect, for want of a better visual that I can then go okay, now I've got here. Oh, that's an interesting podcast. I hadn't heard it. It's a discovery mechanism. That then, yes, and then the next extension would be I want to add that to my pod role as well.

Alban Brooke: 1:22:31

Yeah, we. I like that idea, especially as we recommend more that people build their own websites. You know we could add the option for the pod role to point towards a website. It's not a bad idea, and we've had people I mean as long as I've been at Buzzsprout, so over a decade saying I'd love a Buzzsprout directory. I've always resisted it a bit because I'm like you know the podcast index is a great directory, apple podcast is a great directory, spotify is a great directory. We've got all these directories and I'm not sure if there's something unique about Buzzsprout that makes the content any better, and so I don't know if I'm thinking I want a list of all the websites that are hosted on AWS. Also, if that makes sense, I'd rather go to ChatGPT or Google and say, hey, find me the best website you can for me with this query.

Sam Sethi: 1:23:24

Yeah, it's just one of those ideas that was bubbling through the head and I thought, yeah, put that to the cutting room floor now. So, based on everything you were doing and based on the market, a lot of people are talking about video podcasting. Right, and where does Buzzsprout sit with video podcasting then?

Alban Brooke: 1:23:44

My feeling and I'm not speaking for, I think, the whole company because I think we still have some debates going but my feeling is that I'm not all that interested in video podcasting. I watch YouTube. I really enjoy YouTube. I watch TV shows. I really like TV shows. I like movies.

Alban Brooke: 1:24:03

I like podcasts for something different and I love that it's audio and I love that it doesn't take over my whole life. It's perfectly happy that I'm at the gym or I'm out for a run and I'm also listening to the show. So I don't dislike that. A bunch of my favorite podcasts also have a video component, but I'm not really drawn to it and I keep running into this feeling that as podcasters we're being told hey, you've got a nice thing going on there, but you know you would be really cool if you made that into a TV show. But the next thing that you hear is you know it'd be really cool if you made that like TV show into clips. And we just basically start creating new content for TikTok and we all just get TikTokified and I don't really want every app and every medium to just rush towards short form video.

Alban Brooke: 1:25:02

I really love the craft of audio storytelling. I loved books on tape. As a kid I loved listening to radio dramas and I love listening to podcasts, and even if podcasting is never a tenth as big as YouTube and video, I'm OK with that. We don't have to be everything for everybody and it's exciting to be part of something you're really proud of, rather than being part of a larger industry that you kind of think is.

Alban Brooke: 1:25:32

It's not really healthy for us all to be on our phone watching TikToks for seven hours a day. But if podcasting is encouraging me to go on a road trip with my brothers and listen to a show together and have a group experience, that's cool. Or listen to a podcast when I'm out for a run, that's a cool thing. So I think I'm most excited and Buzzsprout is most excited about leaning more and more into what makes podcasting unique, and that's audio and helping people make great audio shows. And then if some point, the people that we help lean into audio say I also want to do video and I want to put on YouTube or I need to go somewhere else to do video, I think I'll be very happy for them that they found what they really wanted to do, because what I'm excited about is audio podcasts.

Sam Sethi: 1:26:25

Yeah, I'm with you on that one. You know, I listen to a lot of radio stations. I don't need to watch the radio station, and that's fundamentally how I see it. I listen to radio that now is on YouTube, but I children, for example will watch YouTube podcasts but not actually watch the YouTube itself until maybe there's something that's said that they lean into it and then they'll look away from it. So again, there are two schools of thought, but I agree. I think you know, if we try and be everything to everybody, I think we'll be nothing to nobody.

Alban Brooke: 1:27:13

So Well, I feel like this is the lesson that podcasts have taught me over and over for a decade is you get podcasters and they come in and the biggest red flag for a new creator is what's the most favorite famous genre, what's the biggest? I want to be big and they try to be everything to everybody, and so what they do is they pitch basically a Joe Rogan show. That they do and they're like oh, I'm going to talk to anyone I find interesting. I'm not going to do a lot of prep and I'll just be charismatic enough that it will be big and I go. That's actually a really bad formula. What you have is a unique skillset and a unique life experience and a unique story and a unique perspective. Lean into that. Yes, the audience is naturally going to be limited, but the audience are going to be people who are actually interested.

Alban Brooke: 1:28:06

The reason that we've got some of these kind of really big interview shows is because those people are celebrities or they're comedians or they've been working on this for 15, 20 years. They've been honing a craft and they're pretty good at it. For us to say I'm going to be everything to everybody is bad marketing for a podcast. It's bad marketing for an app. It's just not a great place to be and it's also just not what gets us excited. Just not a great place to be and it's also just not what gets us excited. I think if we spent the next two years working on video podcasts, it would just be less exciting and it wouldn't be what we were passionate about.

Sam Sethi: 1:28:44

Yeah. So it does draw me into one more question, though, holben, which is live podcasting, which isn't a video live podcast but is an audio live podcast, very much like adam and curry and dave jones do on a friday night podcasting 2.0. Is there going to be anything from buzzsprout that says, okay, we're not going to lean into video, but we will lean into live podcasting? Maybe we'll offer our users the support for the live item tag. Maybe we'll provide an HLS server. You know you can time split, that you can charge that as a premium service.

Alban Brooke: 1:29:28

Is there anything in your thinking around that as a feature? From my personal experience not really speaking for Buzzsprout I don't love listening to many things live the. I really love reading books and watching movies and listening to podcasts that were created and edited and they're tight and they're really thought out, and I also really love doing in-person events with people, and the middle ground of a happening in real time on the internet has never been that compelling to me. I'm honestly, I'm not even a fan of like zoom calls, you know, and so it to me doesn't land is like we've got to do it just because I, as a consumer of media, am not clamoring for it. I'm also not, you know, watching Twitch, but I know that Twitch and YouTube live are massively popular, so just kind of giving, I guess, my feelings on it. It's not the most exciting thing. I'm more excited that you know we did premium podcasts or that we updated our websites or we did more with mobile, because those are all things that, as a podcaster, I will use.

Sam Sethi: 1:30:41

And again. Last question then, really, with the podcasting 2.0, I know that you guys follow it quite closely. I know that you're great supporters of the podcast index. Every Friday night we hear a wonderful donation from you guys. So is there anything on the roadmap from Buzzsprout? James has been working diligently on the new location tag. There are some other tags that are in the offing that people are pushing, like funding tag, which was now at the episode level rather than the channel level. Is there anything in that space, then, that you are working on or thinking about?

Alban Brooke: 1:31:10

Well, again, we don't have anything that we're currently working on right now over the next six weeks, but I think it's very important as a industry that we consider if we think there's value in podcasting being open and decentralized, then how do we build on some kind of consistent framework? We have some standards across lots of podcast hosts and lots of podcast listening apps and lots of aggregators. How do we make sure there is stuff moving forward so that there's innovation happening, that's not just innovation from the YouTubes and Spotify of the world?

Sam Sethi: 1:31:51

Alban Brook. Thank you so much for your time and again. If anyone wants to go and find out more about Apple subscriptions, buzzsprout subscriptions, the websites, where would they go?

Alban Brooke: 1:32:02

You can come to buzzsproutcom and if you ever go to buzzsproutcom, slash new, you can see all the new things that we release and that's where we throw all our press releases and photos, and so you can see whenever something new comes out of all our press releases and photos, and so you can see whenever something new comes out.

Sam Sethi: 1:32:16

And sadly you're not going to be in London. Are you for the London Podcast Show?

Alban Brooke: 1:32:21

No, we won't. I will be at Podcast Movement, so hopefully I will see you there.

Sam Sethi: 1:32:26

Alban. Always a pleasure to see you and good luck with your trek this weekend. I know you're going to be doing the Grand Canyon, so good luck with that.

James Cridland: 1:32:42

Thank you, sam, I appreciate it. The excellent Albin Brook from Buzzsprout, and thank you to them for their support. Lots of interesting things going on with Apple Podcast Premium subscriptions the Atlantic, for example, just jumping in there, according to Axios, and uh, various uh other people um getting involved. Um, I have a feeling that Apple may be, um, just you know, uh revving up to make an announcement about how successful that has been, um, uh, and I only say that because whenever I talk to anybody from Apple, I'm saying you should share how successful this product is, and so hopefully they've had a listen to me and hopefully they're going to actually turn around and say you know what podcasters have made X million since we launched it, or whatever. But we'll find out next week, I guess.

Sam Sethi: 1:33:30

Now moving on, james, sticking with Apple for a little bit longer. They've unveiled some new accessibility features. Not that I normally look at those, but what's in there that might appeal to podcasters?

James Cridland: 1:33:41

Yes, so there are a few little things Now. Obviously, apple Podcasts has probably led the way because of the transcripts that they launched in March 2024. But there's a thing baked into iOS called live captions, and live captions have been available in a few English languages and that's basically been about it. So now it's available in many other languages, and so that essentially adds live captions for any audio on your device. Android's had this for quite some time as well, so that'll be good to end up seeing. There are a few other interesting things. I had no idea that half this stuff existed in the iPhone. They've got a thing called Live Listen, which gives you captions on the screen of your phone, so you can basically turn it on and get captions from any conversation that you're in. So you can basically turn it on and get captions from any conversation that you're in, and they've now done it so that those captions can also appear on an Apple Watch as well.

Sam Sethi: 1:34:42

Can I tell you, can you tell you something? Sorry, Jay.

James Cridland: 1:34:45

Yeah.

Sam Sethi: 1:34:46

There is a naughty way of using that feature. If you use your, take one of your earbuds and you stick it in another room and then walk out of that room, you can actually have that as a listening device appearing on your phone.

James Cridland: 1:35:00

yes, so yes, yes yes, or or just leave your phone, uh, in in the room as well. That also works. But, yes, and they've also got this thing um, if you're, um, if you're one of these people that loses their voice quite regularly, they've got this thing called a personal voice, which is a voice cloning system, and you used to have to read 15 minutes to this tool to get it to clone your voice, and even then it didn't do a particularly good job. Now you say 10 sentences to it, literally, and it gives a much better clone of your voice that you can then use on those occasions where you lose your voice. You can then use that to chat with your friends and family. I've had to do this once. What? Three, four years ago, I lost my voice for about two days. Three, four years ago, I lost my voice for about two days and, yeah, and I was typing things out on my Android phone getting the phone, to say it out loud, which is quite a thing.

James Cridland: 1:36:05

So, yeah, so that's built into the iPhone, so they're doing some really interesting things. The last thing, probably worthwhile knowing if you're an app developer, is that they're adding accessibility labels so you'll be able to see does this app support? You know magnified text? Does this app support? You know black on white rather than white on black? You know, et cetera, et cetera. So there's quite a lot of changes. They're all coming later in the year, but, as we know, we are getting a brand new version of iOS which apparently, according to all of the leaks, is going to be quite a big change. So perhaps this is part of that quite big change.

Sam Sethi: 1:36:50

Now Metacast. They've launched a new sharing capability, james. What have they done?

James Cridland: 1:36:56

Yeah, so Metacast is a podcast app. It's nothing to do with Meta, the makers of Facebook. It's much nicer and they've got some nice new sharing UX in their app so you can share bits of podcasts and stuff. Part of what they've done is, you know, when you look at the URLs, you actually know what it is that you're likely to get. The URLs are written in English instead of just some impenetrable ID numbers. So that's all very nice. Metacast is worth a peek at and we should probably get the developers of that on. I think that would be interesting. Talking about apps, fountain is doing interesting things. It says here the big announcement will be revealed on Podcasting 2.0 with Adam Curry and Dave Jones in two weeks. Well, that's what.

Sam Sethi: 1:37:49

I was told when listening to last Friday, they're going to be guests on the show for the big announcement.

James Cridland: 1:37:54

That's definitely what I heard on the show as well. So, yes, more information on that is doubtless going to come out in a couple of weeks. Obviously, I know what the announcement is, but I can't say anything. I can't even say it to you, Sam. So there we go.

Sam Sethi: 1:38:10

Well, no, that's fine and I don't mind, because they actually revealed on Mastodon what it looked like half of the new UI was on there. So yes, yeah well, yes.

James Cridland: 1:38:21

Well we will see if that's really what they're announcing.

Sam Sethi: 1:38:26

No, it's great, and I think the more that Fountain does. I mean they are leading the charge on the podcasting 2.0 apps so great It'll be interesting to see. They've been secretly squirreling away for a long while, so it'll be good to see what they've come up with.

James Cridland: 1:38:42

Indeed, it'll be fun, and I think one of your predictions was that hosts will build or buy apps. I think you said yes. Is that because you've seen somebody else building a? Is it? Is it pod home, who are building an app?

Sam Sethi: 1:38:59

yeah, well, I think one of the predictions at the beginning of the year is, I think, the there will be more requirement of hosts to get first party data. Now we've talked for a couple of weeks about, you know, john spurlock's idea of getting metadata given to third parties. We've talked about how, possibly I don't know you know a host could do partnership deals, but maybe another way of doing it is just go around the apps themselves altogether and build your own app. So, yes, podhome is building their own native client app. There were some screenshots of it flying around on the web recently. I don't know any more about it from you know, the guys over there, but Barry hasn't said anything, particularly given a date or anything. But yeah, this is quite interesting. I suspect, though, that if hosts start building apps, I wonder whether apps will start hosting podcasts.

James Cridland: 1:39:58

Ah well, there's a thing the wheels have changed. Eh, the wheels have changed. Now, what's this about Jason Calacanis?

Sam Sethi: 1:40:06

Jason Calacanis. Oh, yes, your friend Jason Calacanis. Yes, count your fingers, right, jason? No, he's lovely, he really is lovely. Yes, I'll say that, says the lawyer. Um, now, uh, jason wants adam to be on the show with him. Um, so he actually, to be fair to jason, started talking about podcasting 2.0. He started talking about the funding tag, uh, and podcasting. He even knew about the lit tag, which I, you know. Again, that's really cool and we, you and several other people have been promoting this to Adam and asking him to go and do it. So I hope Adam will say that he's going to go on the show with Jason to go and do a big push for Podcasting 2.0.

James Cridland: 1:40:56

Yeah, that would be great if he could. Here's a clip of what Jason said.

Jason Calacanis: 1:41:01

I heard Adam Curry and Chauncey Dvorak on the no Agenda podcast, which I kind of like. They're kind of like two. It's kind of like Walter and Statler, Is those the yeah Statler and Waldorf. They're the old Muppets, Statler and Waldorf, the mean Muppets guys on the balcony.

James Cridland: 1:41:15

Yeah, they're the old, mean Muppets of the back, if you want the who make fun of Kermit and Foz.

Jason Calacanis: 1:41:18

But, in fairness, adam Curry's not mean, but John C Dvorak is very mean, right? I get what you're saying and Adam Curry is, I think, the cocaine in his system from released. I don't know that he did Cooking News, I'm just joking, but a great show and they were talking about it and I just happened to. You know, if I'm having a hard time sleeping, I put on no Agenda. It's just like my own personal.

Alban Brooke: 1:41:40

I'm joking, it's just a zing. The godfather of podcasts.

Jason Calacanis: 1:41:43

He is the podfather. I want to have him on the program and he's doing really interesting things. I'd love to do a live show with him. Podcasting 2.0, podcasting 2.0, he's created this great standard. Number one in the standard a donate button. The donate button is set in the RSS feed and so I've been giving it to the Spotify people and Apple.

Jason Calacanis: 1:42:05

You guys have to stop breaking podcast standards. I want this podcast standard, daniel. This is a message to you. Tim Cook, apple, eddie Q message to you guys you have to support standards or I'm going to be on your asses big time and I'm going to tell people to use Overcast or other podcast players as the default player, because I want these standards Perfect. The other thing you can set is the live tag. So if we go live, as I was just mentioning at the top of the show, we go live on a bunch of platforms. We could pick whatever platform we like most. If we're like a YouTube shop, great. If we have thisweekinstartupscom slash live or Leo Laporte uses his own proprietary one, and Twitter, you just put in the RSS feed when you go live and then all the applications will send people to the same stream. Is this just like an updated?

Alban Brooke: 1:42:48

RSS form specifically for podcasting that contains the features you mentioned. Just to make sure that I understand, it's the upgraded standard.

Jason Calacanis: 1:42:54

He keeps adding to the standard and he added to the standard. These two absolutely brilliant. I really do think Adam Curry is a brilliant technologist because he does his own tech, he edits his show, he uses the soundboard. He's kind of like he was always inspired by Howard Stern and he had an influence on Joe Rogan, adam Curry and Howard Stern. One of the things Howard Stern did very well was he controlled the sound deck so he was able to do timing better and all this stuff. Adam Curry does all this stuff himself. He vibe codes, he does RSS feeds and he always has. Which inspired me.

Jason Calacanis: 1:43:26

Remember, like I don't know, a couple of months ago I was getting frustrated and I was like this, I'm doing my own lights. I did my own lights, I did my own camera, I did my settings. I found the pool that cools the back of your camera before my own tech team found it. Then I said send it to these guys Like I'm on it. I tested three different cameras, four different light systems. I'm on. And that was because I was like you know what Adam Curry's right If you're the artist and you want to really be the tip of the spear, you got to understand the brushes, and if a new brush comes out, you need to try the new brush, you need to understand it, you need to A B test it. If a new canvas comes out, you have to be in there and roll up your sleeves, shout out to my guy, adam Curry. There you go.

James Cridland: 1:44:01

So the thing that confuses me about some of that is Jason talking that he will switch people to Overcast. Why would you want to go to Overcast when Overcast supports nothing in terms of podcasting 2.0? Nothing, zero. There isn't a single feature Unless Jason knows something we don't know. Well, yes, maybe. So yes, and interestingly, given that Pocket Casts have been doing some interesting things, I've actually switched away from Overcast. I'm sorry hell has frozen over.

James Cridland: 1:44:39

I know hell has frozen over, and I've switched over to Pocket Casts, and I was there thinking, you know, I bet the playback engine isn't going to be as good, and the playback engine isn't as good, but it's nearly as good, but the UI is so so much better. Pocket Casts is just about to announce something new as well, though, isn't it?

Sam Sethi: 1:44:59

Thankfully, they're adding more and more 2.0 features and the next one on the line is the pod roll. So they're adding that, but they're calling it similar shows, and I think this is interesting. It's something I wanted to ask you about, which was language. How do we position it? Because I don't call them pod roles in True Fans, because unless you're as old as we are, james, no one knows what a blog role is. I mean, I've talked to people who are much younger and they don't know what a blog role is, so adding a pod role made no sense to them. It only made sense to us older people who were nostalgic for the past.

James Cridland: 1:45:38

Well, yes, exactly. So there are a few things here. What Pocket Casts is launching is two things. Firstly, it's launching a feature called Similar Shows, and Similar Shows will always be there and they're algorithmic, as they are in Apple, as they are in Spotify. People who like this also like this. They're calling it similar shows. So that's what Pocket Casts is launching.

James Cridland: 1:46:05

But if you, as a creator, are using the pod roll feature the pod role feature um, then the shows that you recommend will be top of that list, um, which is exactly the way that it should be. So, so there will always be something in there that says similar shows, Um and um, and anyone will be able to. You know, jump into um. You know, jump into that and see, um, uh, similar shows to the show that you are currently listening to.

James Cridland: 1:46:37

But the beauty of this is that, for those podcasters who have added, you know individual shows using the pod role tag, then those appear at the top, and it appears at the top in a little thing which says recommended shows by the creator, which is exactly what should be happening. So, if you want to add, if you're hosting with Buzzsprout, as we are, and if you want to add some shows to your pod role and you go into the dashboard, you go into podcast info and then underneath there is a thing which is called pod roll, which explains what it's all about, and we recommend three shows currently in this feed and, yeah, and so all of those three shows will actually appear, including one that I'm not updating anymore, so I should probably get rid of it, but I, um, but I think that that is a is a brilliant way of um getting around the fact that this won't be, uh, supported by absolutely everybody quite yet.

Sam Sethi: 1:47:41

No, but I, I I okay, so similar shows contains both the algorithmic and the user generated or creator generated podcasts.

James Cridland: 1:47:51

Yes, um, so similar shows will do both, but, um, if you have, if you have any shows in your pod role, then that appears right at the top and under a little subtitle called Recommended Shows by the Creator, which is really good. Well, you know what are we calling this? Because some people are calling it Podroll, which is an awful, awful name. Some people are calling it but you know, it's just a tag, it doesn't matter. Some people are calling it other things.

James Cridland: 1:48:24

I think I call it shows, you know, shows that you might like, or something, and I've noticed it appear in other places as well. It appear in other places as well, and I've recommended to the podcast standards project that they stop calling it pod role and they call it something like creator recommendations or recommendations for creators, or something, because the word pod role makes absolutely no sense. Maybe this is one of the things that the PSP could actually work with their members with, of actually working out okay, what are we going to call this, what's the right wording for this, and why don't we all agree on recommendations for creators or some form of those words? And nobody really should see the phrase pod role in any UX.

Sam Sethi: 1:49:14

I would have thought really should see the phrase pod role in any UX. I would have thought Well, when I was at Microsoft, one of the things that happened in the early early days was that the Excel, word and PowerPoint teams never talked together and so there were different icons for the same function within different apps and it was just very hard for user training. And then some smart aleck over in Seattle decided to create the Microsoft Ribbon and Office as a single package and they unified it. One of the things I do try and do is look at some of the other apps and what icons they're using, and try and look at those apps and see icons they're using, and try and look at those apps and see that we're using the same apps within TrueFans.

Sam Sethi: 1:50:00

And one of the things that would be lovely for the PSP would be not just the terminology but also the iconography, and I think it would be really useful if we could get a standardization. So if somebody was looking for, um, I don't know, uh, the funding tag icon, it would be uniform across all of our apps so that you know somebody goes oh yeah, no, that that's where it is. Okay, I'm just in pocket cast. Now I'm in popverse. Oh, no, that's the icon. I understand it straight away. It would be lovely, because if we have seven different icons for the same function, I think it's just yeah, it's going to cause problems.

James Cridland: 1:50:39

Yeah, and I'm not. I'm not necessarily sure about exactly the same icon for everybody, but I think certainly it should look like some money or it should look like a dollar coin or something like that, so that you know it does look the same sort of thing, in the same way that a save icon isn't always and this is a really bad example but a save icon. When you do see a save icon, it's redrawn by everybody but it's still obviously a floppy disk, rather bizarrely. So you know what I mean and but, but yes, I mean, I think I think all of that you know is is is really important of just getting you know the gnarly bits of getting the UX right is something that I think the PSP could be doing a really good job with.

Sam Sethi: 1:51:29

They have a meeting in London. Maybe that'll be one of the items on the topic list to talk about. Now, spotify this is one that I get more excited about than you, james, I think. At the moment they have finally launched their interactive AI feature. Now, a couple of unbeknown to me.

Sam Sethi: 1:51:56

You've actually met DJX, but other than that um, yes, other than that the the feature and function was basically I would click my DJX in Spotify and it fundamentally went through my playlist and then gave me what I'd actually chosen in the past. So you know it was. It was nice, it was affirmating, but it wasn't actually very useful and it got very boring after a while because I knew what it was exactly going to do with each playlist. But they've now added the ability to hold down the AI agent icon and now made it interactive. Now it listens a bit like Shazam, a bit like I don't know what else would be interactive in that way, but it allows you to now speak to it. Oh yeah, the Netflix one, the Netflix agent AI Now, when you can say to it I'm in the mood for something romantic and it'll find you films. But I think it's a really interesting use of the AI and that's just been revealed. I don't know if you've tried it, if it's in Australia yet, but Danielette was very excited about it.

James Cridland: 1:52:55

Yes, I've not tried it quite yet. I mean the idea of the AI DJ taking music requests. Well, you know that's nice. I mean, I've been A. I bet it'll be rubbish. I love a band an English band, but they're in France called Archive. Imagine talking to a voice tool and saying I'd like to hear a little bit of Archive, and then it plays me something from you know 1940 or something.

James Cridland: 1:53:24

Yeah, exactly, it never works. So I think, I think, yeah, but you know, so we've had voice. You know those sort of voice things in the past. I mean, as I think I said when we mentioned this the first time, I said it's basically copying what YouTube music has made available for quite some time in terms of AI. You know AI playlists and AI tools, such as that. So I'm not very excited by it, but I can see why, you know, some people are going to be excited in terms of some of these tools. Doubtless, you're going to tell me next that all apps will have some form of AI interface and probably then tell me that you're going to be demoing it or something.

Sam Sethi: 1:54:13

Well, you might say that, yes, I think that's exactly what I'm actually going to say to you. I think AI is, you know, and drink if you're playing the AI game. I think we've seen it with Netflix, I think you're seeing here with Spotify. There will be other platforms and if you go back to what Tom Webster was asking about, which was the button of serendipity, I think this is where you get the button of serendipity, so you can literally press a button and then use what is a voice medium anyway on podcasting, to use to find you stuff, to leave comments, to get content that you want, um.

Sam Sethi: 1:54:57

I think this is the way forward. I think it is the ui interface that we will start to look at now. Time will tell, but I do think about it. Daniel ek did an interview in the new york post imagine the world where he said where all seven million of the platforms podcasts now are available in a range of languages, from arabic to albanian, um. And he said you know it's podcasts now are available in a range of languages, from Arabic to Albanian. And he says you know it's affordable now to translate from English to those languages using AI. And I think they've got to deal with Wondercraft, don't they, if memory serves me right.

James Cridland: 1:55:28

Yes, I think so, Something like that, yeah, so yeah, no, I you know, I mean I can certainly get it. I can get why some people would find that exciting. I'm not so sure that I necessarily do, but yes, no absolutely Fan mail, super chats and email.

Announcer: 1:55:53

Our favourite time of the week, it's the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 1:55:59

Inbox so many different ways to get in touch with us Fan mail by using the link in our show notes, super comments on True Fans, boosts everywhere else, or email, and we share all of the money that we make as well, and some of you may be able to drink some of it back in London next week as well, and some of you may be able to drink some of it back in London next week. We've got a number of comments for this show, but this is where I read comments from the Pod News Daily as well, because I can't really read those out.

Michael Bayston : 1:56:28

Although I might read, yeah, maybe not 1,000 sats from C Brooklyn.

James Cridland: 1:56:35

I've been trying to work out how much 1,000 sats is in real money, but I've completely failed in working it out, hang on, I'll tell you, go on, you keep talking, I'll tell you there you go.

James Cridland: 1:56:46

Anyway, somebody called C Brooklyn. Very nice of you, C Brooklyn, who sends a message to the Pod news daily saying all the companies and topics you cover I would never listen to or use. This is all many stream junk. There are more interesting things being done in podcasting than this drivel. So wow, there you go. Thanks for the thousand sats.

Sam Sethi: 1:57:09

C brooklyn uh, one dollar, 77 aussie dollars. There you go well, one dollars.

James Cridland: 1:57:14

There you go, well, $1.77. There you go. So I can afford a chocolate bar on that. So thank you. Please send more invective using the boost button to the Pod News Daily. That's very kind of you. The Pod News Weekly Review lots of entertaining stuff. Neil Velio sends us three messages, one of them saying he loves the intro about chapters, which is nice. One of them saying that the Apple patent story is outrageous. I agree, why is it? They come off squeaky clean while Spotify comes in for all the icky rep? Ah, of course, because Apple are sneaky about it. He says you said that, not me. And finally, yeah, because you've got a meeting. So no.

James Cridland: 1:57:59

Yes, I've learned to, yes, bite the tongue on certain things. And finally, something about Libsyn and the CTO. Neil, thank you so much. He's speaking at the podcast show in London. After slagging it off and basically saying, oh, I can't get anybody interested in what I have to say, All of a sudden I think he's on three panels or something, so it should be interesting to see him there. We've got something from Seth which I'm not fully sure I understand. Seth, which I'm not fully sure I understand.

Sam Sethi: 1:58:36

Yeah, always gives me a smile and it's often different too. What a treat I'm just maybe the whole show. I think that's a reply to somebody else in True Fans that comes through. Oh, maybe he's replying.

James Cridland: 1:58:51

Ah, maybe he's replied to Neil Velio saying I love the intro about chapters Because, yes, that would make sense, Right? Yes, Well, there you go. There's a feature request. How can you make that more clear?

Sam Sethi: 1:59:06

Label them as replies. Yeah, I'm literally sat there going with the same with you. I'm going damn one more feature to add Sugar, yes.

James Cridland: 1:59:14

And finally, one from John McDermott 2,969 sats. If we're going to make video podcasts and upload them to all these services, can anyone get Spotify and YouTube to agree on thumbnail size? Spotify recommends 1920 by 1080. Youtube recommends 1280 by 720. Help me, james, I will help you. John. Just upload80 by 720. Help me, james, I will help you, john. Just upload 1920 by 1080. Youtube is perfectly happy with that. It asks for 1280 by 720, but you can upload bigger, as long as it's the correct. What's the phrase you know? Width versus height proportion. That's the phrase I was looking for.

Sam Sethi: 1:59:58

I'm so glad.

James Cridland: 1:59:58

Thanks for your help there, sam, what was going?

Sam Sethi: 2:00:00

through my mind is not programmable.

James Cridland: 2:00:02

Thanks for your help there, sam. So yes, so yes, just upload 1920 by 1080, you're fine. And then he says also, sam, because this comes from true fans also, sam, you've made it very easy to top off a wallet. Thanks, gents. Well, thank you, sam, for making it easy for John to put more money in his wallets, to then send it to us.

Sam Sethi: 2:00:24

It's an interesting conversation going on about. I was listening to the future of podcasting with Daniel J Lewis and Dave Jackson and gosh, I want to go on that show and correct so many of their misconceptions. Um, they boy, oh boy, oh boy, they, they. They are not. Um, yeah, I was. I was screaming at the uh, at the car. Yes, their their view of how and where we are with value for value and micro payments. Um, yeah, they need to change. Yes, that's all I will say, gents, gosh, that's all I will say.

Sam Sethi: 2:01:03

Well, yes because it is much easier now to do it and it is much simpler and I think it will get even easier with the way. Oh, yes, it will get much easier. Sorry, I forgot we have a new supporter. I forgot to add that in yes, sorry, I just saw you highlighting it. I'm going buggered. No, no, no, sorry.

James Cridland: 2:01:21

No, we are all good, and so thank you to all of those boosts and things. Use the boost button if your podcast app has one or the super comments button, and if it doesn't, then you should be upgrading to a new podcast app. That would be a good thing. Or, of course, and the only reason why I was highlighting that particular phrase is I was trying to think of something that begins with an N for 19. I'm going Paul Hardcastle every time.

Sam Sethi: 2:02:08

I hear that number.

James Cridland: 2:02:10

Noteworthy 19? I don't know. Anyway, yes, we've got a brand new person and that person, super kindly, he went to support Pod News, the Pod News Daily podcast, and very kindly ended up doing that. Then he sent an email and he said Hi, james and Sam, I finally got around to pledging you guys a monthly amount through Patreon. I wanted to pledge around $10, but only got one option for around $5. Patreon's UX is not the best. Please let me know how I can increase the amount. It's not much, but it's something. I will increase the support beyond 10 when I can. I really appreciate the podcast and the work you do, so thanks for the efforts.

James Cridland: 2:02:54

This is from somebody called Elias Elias Strand. Elias, thank you so much. I said well, you're supporting the Pod News newsletter, which is brilliant. If you wanted to, why don't you put $5 into the Pod News Weekly Review as well? Um, and in fact, he's put 10 um in for us, um, so that's very kind. Weeklypodnewsnet um, so, uh, that's very kind. The only thing I know about uh elias is that, uh, he is in uh norway, uh, because he's paid in uh norwegian, uh crowns. Um, he did say, as I enjoy the pod news newsletter and the weekly review both. I think it's good to support Sam as well, so that he can keep the lights on in his house in Portugal. I don't want anybody walking around in the dark. He adds he's in Norway, he would know, so yes so that's, all nice.

James Cridland: 2:03:51

And he works for a tech startup called Ukumi. Ukumi has actually advertised in the Pod News newsletter before, and yes, so that's a good thing. And he says by the way, do mention the Monsters of Design podcast by John Sonstag, Adrian Crabtree and John Delman. They deserve it as well. Ok, well, we will.

Michael Bayston : 2:04:15

They deserve it as well, okay.

James Cridland: 2:04:16

Well, we will do just that. So, elias, thank you so much. Tak, tusen, tak is, I believe, the phrase that I should be saying, unless I've said that in Danish instead of in Norwegian.

Sam Sethi: 2:04:27

You have? Yes, have I. Well, I think it is Danish. Yes, because my favourite expression in Danish is ul tak, which means beer, please.

James Cridland: 2:04:36

Yes, there you go. So, elias, thank you, and thank you to the other 18 excellent 18 power supporters, much appreciated. Weeklypodnewsnet is where to go if you want to join Elias. So what's been happening for you this week, sam? Have you had any exciting parties in large rooms with strange?

Sam Sethi: 2:04:56

people. Yes, I somehow got taken to a Nazi party book launch that's the expression. My wonderful wife works with Lord, one of the well, the ex-chairman of the Conservative Tory party, and he had a book launch called Red, which was a hit job on Keir Starmer and Jill said do you fancy going along to a book launch in London? I said you know it's a Tuesday night in London or whatever. Let's go for it. I walked into the room and we had Hartley Brewer, aaron Banks, nigel Farage, richard Tice and the rest of the German high command and I absolutely hated it, I can't think. And then the whole room was Lord so-and-so or Baroness so-and-so, and it was. I mean, they were like bees to honey around Nigel Farage. I'm just thinking what am I doing here? So we had a couple of glasses of champers and I took off very sharply and you stood on a table and you told them all off.

Sam Sethi: 2:06:10

Well, can I point out as the only brown person in the room? I don't think I was the most popular person in the room either.

James Cridland: 2:06:16

Good Lord. Yes, the book is called Red Flag, the Uneasy Advance of Sir Keir Starmer. It's all about the current prime minister in the UK by Lord Michael Ashcroft. I wouldn't recommend it because, who knows, sorry, I called him Michael Ashcroft. He is of course Lord Ashcroft. Kcmg, pc, pc. How hilarious. He's got two PCs after his name and he used to work at the Conservative Party, anyway.

Sam Sethi: 2:06:49

No, to make matters worse, James, his next book is with Nigel Farage.

James Cridland: 2:06:54

Oh, brilliant. Well, he's also written a book about Angela Rayner, called Red Queen. He's written a book about Kemi Badnok, called Blue Ambition. He's written a book about Rishi Sunak, called All to Play For the Advance of Rishi Sunak, good Lord, yes. And he's written something about Boris johnson's wife one of them, anyway, uh, and so on and so forth. Gosh, he writes a lot, doesn't he? Um?

Michael Bayston : 2:07:24

there's a thing anyway, yeah.

James Cridland: 2:07:26

So apart from apart from that, have you been?

Sam Sethi: 2:07:29

and then, and then the next night I went to see my sister-in-law, who is now the new mayor of Windsor and Maiden in Royal.

James Cridland: 2:07:39

Borough. Honestly, it's how the other half live.

Sam Sethi: 2:07:44

Yes, very good, I thought that would tickle you Very good. Yes, so what's happened for you, james Gosh?

James Cridland: 2:07:50

Well, I was on a podcast this week. It's the Media Roundtable and it's all focused on what a podcast is. It's a conversation that I had a couple of months ago now. Larry Rosen is also on it. Nick Giorgio from SimpliSafe, who's been advertising on podcasts forever, was on there. I amazed everybody by saying that Robin Williams was the first podcaster, which is actually true, although nobody really wants to know that.

Sam Sethi: 2:08:22

So, yes, All I will say to you James is nanu nanu.

James Cridland: 2:08:24

Nanu nanu, indeed, so the Media Roundtable is that podcast which is there. It's been lovely being home here for a week because, of course, last week I was in Canada, and what I've learned about Cathay Pacific, let me tell you, is that all of their fancy lounges which I can get into are lovely, if you can find them. But what they've basically done is they've got this big sort of black door with a logo which is also in black, so you can walk past the Cathay Pacific Lounge in Vancouver Airport, for example, three times without knowing it's there. So, yeah, so that was fun, but I eventually got in and got some free noodles, so that was all good. I'm looking forward to landing. I think I'm landing very early on Sunday morning in London and I've got basically a free day on Sunday before doing a bit of work on Monday, and then the madness begins Tuesday, wednesday, thursday of next week with the podcast show. So looking forward to being there and to seeing a bunch of my English friends.

Sam Sethi: 2:09:38

Well, I've got a 25 mile walk on Sunday so I won't be around. But there's a number of people and we can talk off air James, who would like to meet you on the Monday.

James Cridland: 2:09:48

Ah, uh, oh. Well, I look forward to that. I'm looking forward to also having a beer with Clean Feed with one of the marks from Clean Feed on the Monday evening, which would be nice, given that we use Clean Feed to record this show, and that's why this show sounds so excellent. Well, that's possibly one of the reasons. So there we go, and that's it for this week. All of our podcast stories taken from the Pod News Daily newsletter, which you should subscribe to it's free at podnewsnet you can support this show by streaming to that.

Sam Sethi: 2:10:21

You can give us feedback using Buzzsprout's fan mail link in our show notes. You can send us a super comment or a boost or become a power supporter, like the noteworthy 19 at weeklypodnewsnet.

James Cridland: 2:10:35

Our music is from TM Studios. Our voiceover is Sheila D, 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.

Michael Bayston : 2:10:52

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