Gautam Raj Anand 0:00

The Pod News Weekly Review uses chapters so you can skip between stories and interviews if you're too soft to handle the whole thing .

Announcer 0:07

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

James Cridland 0:15

I'm James .

Sam Sethi 0:16

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

John Burgess 0:20

That really helps the advertiser feel confident that they are approaching the right shores for their audience .

James Cridland 0:25

Acast's John Burgess on their new smart recommendations tool .

Gautam Raj Anand 0:30

Plus , the growth rate of people uploading video podcasts is at a higher rate than the growth rate of people uploading audio podcasts .

James Cridland 0:38

Gotham Rajanand on a new way of doing video podcasts Plus Apple Podcasts paints the town purple and the Infinite Dial report for the UK . This podcast is sponsored by Buzzsprout with the tools , support and community to ensure you keep podcasting , start podcasting , keep podcasting with buzzsproutcom . From your daily newsletter , the Pod News Weekly Review .

Sam Sethi 1:03

So , James , welcome back from the London Podcast Show .

James Cridland 1:06

How are you feeling ? I'm feeling jet-lagged and tired , but at least I don't have the COVID which Neil Mody does from Headliner . Yes , yes , Get well soon , neil .

Sam Sethi 1:17

Thankfully I didn't hug him too long . I think I'm OK .

James Cridland 1:21

I think we're probably OK . He did launch two things at the podcast show last week which we did cover , interestingly enough , but we covered in the show that no one will hear on this feed , sadly , because the audio it's very weird . The audio just jumped every 30 seconds . So it must have been some kind of you know , I don't know sample rate problem or something , but that probably means that everything that happened in that room hasn't recorded properly . So , oops , anyway , there we are , but we might talk about that later . So , what's going on ? What's going down ? What's going down ? You're so with're so with . The kids aren't ?

Sam Sethi 2:05

you spill the tea . Oh , there you go , you're in there now , yeah

Acast launch Smart Recommendations

Sam Sethi 2:09

right . Um , well , our friends at acast pinged us about something called acast intelligence uh , playing on the ai . Um , they've come up with something called smart recommendations . It's an ai powered podcast ad planning application . The idea is they've been using uh transcriptions and conversational transcriptions and they've got third-party data and they've got lots of other signals and they're taking all of that data and they're giving it to their ad planners to say look , I want to put in a prompt such as find me , for example , women in Canada interested in investing , which is a very obscure prompt , but that will go away and find all the podcasts that might be relevant to that prompt and then they can then start to build a targeted campaign against it . So that sounds very exciting it does .

James Cridland 3:03

It sounds very smart . I love the fact that AI in this case stands for ACAST intelligence . Osha would probably like to claim that they were first for that , but anyway , I think Apple might as well . Oh well , yes , Apple , oh yes , yes , no indeed . Anyway , you

Interview: John Burgess from Acast

James Cridland 3:24

caught up with John Burgess from Acast and you asked him what is it ?

John Burgess 3:31

Well , it's a mouthful , but it's really . Smart recommendations is what we're calling it within the Acast marketplace . Smart recommendations is essentially an AI powered search engine that allows advertisers to find the perfect podcast match in seconds . Finding the right audience is the most efficient for their ad spend .

Sam Sethi 3:50

Okay , so it's AI powered . Now don't get me wrong . Many people talk about AI powered , but how are you using the AI to go and get a better result ?

John Burgess 4:02

Yeah , it's a great question . Ai gets thrown around a lot these days . Most people think about AI . They're thinking about the chat GPTs , the groks , the Claudes of the world , the typical LLMs .

John Burgess 4:13

That is certainly an element of what we're doing with smart recommendations , but it's a lot more than that . What we're doing here , what we've developed with smart recommendations , is essentially a way for you to use natural language so you can come into the platform , you can describe the audience you're looking for , you can describe the product that you're wishing to promote and with that natural language , we're taking that prompt . So I could type out I'm looking for my perfect audience is females in London interested in running and we take that and using LLMs , we can extract all of the nuances around that prompt . So , looking for females interested in running okay , running , what's kind of around in that space it might that you're interested in certain running brands , certain apps that are related to running , all of those kind of interests that runners may have and we kind of extract all of that nuance and that's using the LLM aspect .

John Burgess 5:14

But then we take it further than that and we across all of the kind of proprietary data that we have , both first-party from creators themselves and from third-party data that we have and also all of the kind of predictive demographic and audience data that we've built throughout our data sets . We understand a lot about our creators and we can kind of map all of those different signals to really find what is the perfect shows that you can promote against and that you can buy and support those creators . And then finally , after that , the most important thing is the why . Why is this show the best fit for me ? And again , that's where we're using the LLMs with all of the kind of data points that we've extracted and that reasoning , to kind of narrate that reason as the why , that justification , and that really helps the advertiser feel confident that they are approaching the right shores for their audience .

Sam Sethi 6:05

So ACAST did something really smart about a year or so ago , which was contextual transcription , which was the idea of being able to look outside the immediacy of what the podcast was advertising at the title or description level . So you might have a podcast that talks about knitting , but it had a mention of basketball and therefore you could pull basketball . So that's the basis of your data set right , which is what you're working against . Now you're applying an AI layer to that data set and other data points that you have as well . Now , if you're doing that , how are you seeing the results ? What is happening ? Are you getting you know ? 10% better , 20% better ? What's the return on this type of AI layer that you've applied ?

John Burgess 6:50

Yeah , you make a really good point there about the kind of transcripts and the contextual elements of that . And that's one of the problems that we found right that advertisers find and planners for these advertisers find is that it can take a lot of time to find the perfect podcast for you . There's millions of podcasts out there . There's 140,000 podcasts on Aircast and finding that right one can be really difficult if you're just relying on titles and descriptions and things like that . But when we're going deeper and we're really looking into the show and what is being talked about , that's where we can really find those perfect matches which might not be so easy to find .

John Burgess 7:30

And to your point about the kind of stats that we're seeing , we've been running this internally now for around six to eight weeks . It's been used on over 200 campaign briefs during the internal test period and anecdotally from our planners we see that we've gone from in the range of an hour to put together the recommendations to less than five minutes . So 92% time-saving , which is huge right . That allows those planners to really go and work on higher value campaigns . It allows them to do more creative endeavors that they may not have had the time for in the past . We're really seeing it as a second brand , if you like , for the planners and the advertisers to really allow them to optimize their time .

Sam Sethi 8:13

So okay , so you're seeing big gains in time efficiency . Are you seeing better retention of listeners to the adverts ? Now , one of the problems I perceive I'm not in the advertising game , but it's just my perception is that people , if or when they can , will skip past because the ad is irrelevant to their context . Right , so you might have a podcast . The ad's irrelevant . We've seen it all you know . Casper mattress in the middle of a tech podcast is really irrelevant and it's not even targeted at me and it's not even timely . So none of those context elements . So the natural thing is I'll skip past it . So are you finding , by using the AI and targeting the podcast to find better matching , that you're also getting better listener retention of the ad ?

John Burgess 9:08

I think the listener retention of the ad is a really interesting metric to measure . It's not something that we have numbers on right now , but what I would say is that , by using the smart recommendations , what we are trying to do here also is improve the relevancy of the ad which is being served . So the example that you use there with , let's say , a Casper mattress , or it could be any advertiser there has always been that inherent bias . Let's say , where you've built your relationship with that show , you have a really good relationship with them and you tend to go back to them , or you would typically approach to work with the big name shows that everyone knows about their top of the charts , and that's how it kind of manifests . We get all of these brands that are going for these top shows because they have a very large audience . But again , what that actually results in sometimes is that it may not be the most efficient and it may not be the most relevant , and what we're doing here is it's around surfacing the most relevant creators for your brief here . It's around surfacing the most relevant creators for your brief .

John Burgess 10:06

So what we hope here is that that relevance increases and therefore the retention and the skip rates and subsequent metrics will decrease over time as a result of the improved relevance and that data-driven matchmaking that we're generating here with smart recommendations , and we already do start to see that . So we already start to see that we are surfacing . Let's say that those shows that may not have made it onto a media plan in the past We've seen that from shows that have less than 50,000 listens in a week , we've seen 35% increase in visit rates to those pages as a result of smart recommendations and a 14% increase in purchasing of those shows that may not have appeared on a plan had it been through a manual discovery process . So we are seeing really big moves in relevance and to your point over time . The hope would be , and the plan would be , that those retention metrics improve .

Sam Sethi 11:03

Okay now Now let's dig a little deeper . What AI are you using ? You know what flavor of AI Because there's many LLMs out there .

John Burgess 11:14

Yeah , so we're using OpenAI's 4.0 , 4.0 mini at this point . We chose this because of the efficiency elements of it . There's many versions and and over time we need to see how things play out . We're really excited to be launching this week and over time we're going to be reviewing how it's being used , the types of prompts that people are putting in there , how long are they , how descriptive are they , how maybe you know very broad they are and finding that right model that most suits the need . But , as I say , we're using a very efficient model for the use case at the moment and we'll see over time if we need to make any changes on that to improve the results .

Sam Sethi 11:54

So prompt engineering is very critical . You've just said that , and will you be there for giving out help and advice , training , to people who are using the service in order to get the better result ? So how are you going to help them ?

John Burgess 12:09

yeah , it's a really good point . I mean prompt engineering . It's the term of the year so far and it's something that we've thought about through the design , the interface . And when you actually come into the acastad platform and you go into the smart recommendations , we actually provide you there with some guidance on how best to format that prompt . We'll give you two or three different kind of starting suggestions .

John Burgess 12:30

So my audience is , or I'm looking for podcasts about , for example , or find podcasts similar to a certain show or a certain brand , and so on and so forth . So we're kind of guiding the user in these early stages and also on the back of that , we also provide you with all the past recommendations that you've run as well . So you have that full history of what you've done . You can run some side-by-side comparisons by changing the prompt and I think over time , as we build out what we're calling here Acast Intelligence Suite , over time we want to make that more proactive as well , kind of less reliant on the user to kind of engineer those prompts but be more proactive , making proactive recommendations for the user based on their past recommendations that they've had where they've purchased certain shows , where they've worked with certain creators in the past and how we can help them really more proactively build those prompts that's going to find those perfect shows for them .

Sam Sethi 13:27

So if I wanted to come and play with it , try it , get my hands on it and see the results of what it might be before I commit , could I go anywhere on the Acast website to play with it now ?

John Burgess 13:37

Absolutely so . From today it's available on the Acast ad platform . You can go into creating a sponsorship campaign campaign and you can play around with it . That would be great .

Sam Sethi 13:47

Is this a free add-on to customers who are already using the Acast platform , or is this an additional function and feature ?

John Burgess 13:57

It's included within the Acast ad platform Nice .

Sam Sethi 14:00

So I don't have to get my wallet out more , John , thank you so much . Remind everyone again very quickly if they want to find out more . Where would I go and find some videos ? Where would I go and find some more info ?

John Burgess 14:11

You can head over to selfserveaircastcom . You can start playing around and you can head to aircastcom to find out more information about smart recommendations .

James Cridland 14:21

Perfect . See you soon , John .

John Burgess 14:22

Thank you , Sam .

James Cridland 14:25

John Burg smart recommendations . Perfect , see you soon , john . Thank you , sam john burgess . Uh , who you met up with at uh the podcast show in london , um , uh , talking about , um acast's new thing , but that wasn't the only thing that happened , uh , at the podcast show , of course

Apple Podcasts at The Podcast Show

James Cridland 14:36

well , some of us got an invite and some of us didn't , so you went to the swanky apple party whatever whatever it may be where they painted the town purple .

Sam Sethi 14:46

So , as I wasn't there , tell me more , james . Well .

James Cridland 14:50

I went to go and see the folks at Apple . Now , that is something that I'm actually not allowed to tell you . Rather bizarrely , they're the men in black . They really are the men in black . But down in Battersea , in South London , in it south of the river , they may or may not have had a little shindig as well , which I was invited to , but in the end I didn't go to because my voice was going . In the end , I didn't go to because my voice was going and also I wanted to make sure that you didn't spend all of the PodNews money on the drinks which I failed on that one , but anyway , yeah , you failed on that one desperately .

James Cridland 15:39

I wish you'd turned up about 20 hours earlier , but anyway , there is a beautiful picture in Pod News from last week showing Battersea Power Station , which is , of course , where Apple's UK operations are based , turning Apple Podcasts purple because they managed to convince the landlords to end up doing that . All I can tell you is that their offices are very nice , as you would expect , but Apple ended up speaking . Jake Shapiro and Susie Warhurst from Apple Podcasts ended up speaking at the podcast show . It was the first time that Apple have officially spoken at a podcasting event , so quite a coup for the London podcast show to have got . Susie Warhurst , of course , is in charge of Apple in the UK , ireland and other places . Jake Shapiro , ex of Radio Public , has been involved in podcasting since the year Dot and works out of Boston , but they ended up sharing a ton of information , including data from one of Girl Hangers shows .

James Cridland 16:42

The Rest Is History , which has 45,000 paying subscribers using Apple Podcasts , most of them 57% of them paying the annual plan , which is 60 quid , 99 Australian dollars . I don't know how many US dollars that is , but it's quite a lot of money and that's quite nice . They say helpful for retention . Absolutely it is , but you can very clearly see that that is some nice income coming in , for the rest is history . So at least . Well , what's that ? At least 2.7 million . Would that be right ? That can't be right . 45,000 paying subscribers times 60 . Yes , I suppose it is , isn't it ? 2.7 million , yeah , minus apple's 30 , of course .

Sam Sethi 17:32

Um , but uh , yeah , quite a thing , I thought yes , well , I thought it was even funny , because jack davenport and max cutler on on stage , uh talking about fandom and monetization , and they both agreed that the best way forward was to move to Substack . So we'll see what happens next .

James Cridland 17:49

Yes , well , that's a little bit of a strange thing . I mean , I look at it and I go . You know , apple Podcasts works fantastically , of course , within Apple Podcasts , but , you know , moving to Substack is a different conversation to also using Substack , because I'm sure that all of these tools would end up using a bunch of those other things .

Sam Sethi 18:13

I don't think it would be exclusive .

James Cridland 18:14

Yeah , indeed , that makes no sense at all . But yeah , so that was good . They also pointed out how good UK podcasting is , because of course they would , and they announced the latest addition to the Creators we Love programme , which includes five of the UK's most established podcasters . Now I am unaware that Apple have ever mentioned Creators we Love from any other country other than the United States of America Shire . So interesting to see Apple Podcasts all of a sudden jumping in and going .

James Cridland 18:46

You know what . We're actually going to support some creators from other countries as well now , so that's certainly a very good thing . Does that mean that the podcast of the year this year is going to be from the UK ? Probably not , but certainly nice to see them ending up doing that . But yeah , I thought it was a really good thing for Apple to have . I know that it was an awful lot of hard work for the team to get it agreed and accepted and everything else , but really good to see them speaking at the podcast show in London , connecting with the podcast community in that way , and I think that was a pretty good thing .

Sam Sethi 19:29

Yeah , no , congratulations to Jason Carter and the team there for getting them there . I do think Apple , hopefully , are now going to embrace more of the podcast community . There was a big discussion with Apple around them embracing more podcasting 2.0 tags . They had connected with the podcast standards group , which we'll talk about later , about what they want from the industry and there's a list going back to Apple about what the industry wants from them and I think one of the big ones is will they support HLS , their own technology that they invented themselves in 2009 ? And you know they do support video , but they don't tell anyone about it . And , weirdly , I think you wrote about somebody called John Murdoch who reminded us that back in 2017 , apple actually had an audio chart and a video chart .

James Cridland 20:25

Yes , so I must have missed when they pulled the video podcasts chart . Maybe it's still available in the API , who knows ? That would be something that Dan Meisner could look into . But yes , I mean I think you know , as I've been going on and on and on about video , just raw video files in OpenRSS does not work , and there are lots of reasons why it doesn't work . Just do a search for video podcast RSS , james Cridland in your favourite podcast in your favourite internet search engine to find out all of the reasons . So HLS would be a perfect use of that and using open video , and there's probably no reason why someone like Apple , if they shared the stats , couldn't cash some of that as well , couldn't cash some of that as well . So I think there's quite a lot of interesting things that Apple could do with video podcasts , but just bunging a massive two gigabyte file in an RSS feed is not going to be the way that you end up doing that .

Sam Sethi 21:38

No , I agree 100% .

James Cridland 21:40

I mean and certainly and certainly you know all of the indications are is that you know Apple are very keen to continue looking at open standards where they can , where it fits with what they want to end up doing , but open standards where they can to help promote shows and to help link to shows and everything else . I think , particularly when you start having a look at things like Podroll the recommendations from podcast creators that's something that could very easily be put into the Apple Podcasts app as well , to the Apple Podcasts app as well , and that would certainly answer some of the criticism that Apple have in that . You know , many people say they only support the big shows . They don't only support the big shows . There's plenty of places in the Apple Podcasts app where smaller shows are given quite a lot of push . But even so , I think recommendations from creators is a really good and easy way to actually approve that as well , do you ?

Sam Sethi 22:49

think it'll happen .

James Cridland 22:51

I think it could . I mean , you could end up having Apple's requirement for the pod roll tag to include the Apple ID , but I don't think that anybody would turn around and say that that's an awful idea . So you know , I think you know . Apple is big enough for them to turn around and say yes , we would love to support that . We don't use this podcast GUID , whatever that is , and we would rather not do an RSS lookup . Can we have our own ID in there ? And I'm sure that most people would jump on that , because we all know the Apple IDs anyway . So you know , so why not ?

Sam Sethi 23:30

Yeah , no . Well , let's see . Let's see , I'm not holding my breath is all I'd say .

James Cridland 23:36

No , but I think you know Apple are very aware . I mean , you know it was interesting . On one side they said how much OpenRSS is important , how much you know Apple has been working with OpenRSS . It's nearly 20 years since podcasts went into iTunes and all of that kind of stuff . On the second , you know , basically the second thing that they announced was working together with Canva to produce the very Apple-centric extra graphics that Apple require for their app . I mean , if I were Apple , I would be turning around and saying you know what that should be open as well . You know , you can't say that you have been doing all of this wonderful stuff for OpenRSS and then in the next breath say , oh , and , by the way , our proprietary graphics that we'd like podcasters to make , we're making it slightly easier for you to send those proprietary graphics instantly to us . Hmm , it's not necessarily the answer , so we will see quite what happens there .

Edison's Infinite Dial UK report

Sam Sethi 24:44

Now , one of the other things that was announced at the London Podcast Show was the Infinite Dial UK report . At least some of it was announced , and yesterday , if you wanted to , you could have gone on to the webinar and seen the full report . What's in the report , james ?

James Cridland 25:01

Yeah , so in the report it's much like Infinite Dial US and in fact it asks the same questions , but just to a UK audience , and that's helpful because that allows us to compare US versus UK . You know and understand where the similarities are , where the differences are . Understand where the similarities are where the differences are . I mean , the main headline story was that the data gives a new high in the UK for monthly listening for podcasts at 51% . It's 53% , if you remember , in the US . So and I think this has been the story of the infinite dial the last one was done , I think , in 2022 , I'd like to say so a few years ago , maybe even 2021 . But the story has always been that the UK is a couple of years behind where the US is in terms of consumption and this is certainly showing that . I think part of that is the BBC , the BBC's radio player or iPlayer or whatever it's called . Bbc sounds these days , isn't it , and I think that that rather makes things a little bit more complicated . But anyway , really useful data . It's also coming out here in Australia relatively soon and coming out in New Zealand later on in the year , so we'll have four countries to be able to , you know , check and look at , and it'd be great to see more countries taking part in that as well .

James Cridland 26:34

Also released in London the top 25 podcasts in the UK for quarter one 25 from Edison podcast metrics . They measure pretty well every podcast which is available out there by asking people what podcasts they've been listening to . And no change in the top three Joe Rogan at number one , the rest is politics at two . Diary of a CEO at three . Goldhanger has four shows in the top 10 , which is fairly impressive .

Sam Sethi 27:00

Well , you know now that Gary's not at the BBC . He needs the money .

James Cridland 27:12

Well , I don't know if you notice , but walking to the podcast show from Angel Tube , there were a lot of those electronic billboards . And all of those electronic billboards every second ad was for a Goldhanger show . So if I was Goldhanger I would have bought those specifically for people going to the show because that would make perfect sense . But even so , it was a pretty impressive sight walking up Islington High Street you know , seeing all of these ads for those big Goldhanger shows . So well done them . I think that that was a very clever thing to do .

Sam Sethi 27:47

Yeah , I wasn't joking , though , that the BBC have dropped . The Rest Is Football . The first of the goal hanger podcasts already .

James Cridland 27:50

Have they really what they've taken it off ?

Sam Sethi 27:53

BBC Sounds already Completely yeah , so I would expect that the others will go soon as well .

James Cridland 27:59

Gosh . Well , there we are . Yeah , I think the rest is football was the only one that was there . The rest is history . I think was the other one , actually , but you've reminded me . Yeah , the rest is politics . They couldn't touch the BBC because it's not necessarily quite how the BBC would have liked , but , interesting , I will take a peek at that .

Sam Sethi 28:25

Now

New UK data from Ofcom too

Sam Sethi 28:26

also Ofcom released some information , james . What have they said ?

James Cridland 28:30

Yes . So Ofcom is the UK's media regulator . They released two sets of data a podcast survey and an audio survey for 2025 . Now what Ofcom do , quite helpfully , is that they just publish all of the data . For the podcast stuff , the audio survey , they've done quite a lot of work , you know , making it look nice , explaining what the data says . With the podcast survey , you're on your own , and so , thank heavens for veteran radio analyst Adam Bowie I'm sure he likes being called that . Anyway , he's crunched the numbers to find out more from the data .

James Cridland 29:08

Now , three things that I thought was really interesting from there . Firstly , the average number of podcasts Brits listen to is five , which is always interesting . Seeing that number , men are more likely to listen regularly to podcasts than women . Probably something to do with the subject matter , maybe something to do with the tech , who knows and the biggest reason people give for stopping listening to podcasts is that they can't find any podcasts that interest them , and again , I'm just going to say pod roll , because that could certainly fix quite a lot of that . So just something to bear in mind .

James Cridland 29:47

There were some other things , in fact , one of the things that I noticed for the radio newsletter that I write , which is called Radioland , which I stole your idea for a name there . One of the things that I did spot from that is that it gives quite a lot of information about radio , obviously , and radio listening and all of that . Music radio 62% listen each week . Speech radio 36% listen each week , which I thought was interesting , although that doesn't necessarily say that listeners want music rather than speech . But the one thing that it did say , which I have underlined and written in big coloured writing three in five smart speaker users say their devices played the wrong thing when asked to play a particular radio station .

James Cridland 30:40

Three in five , not surprised , that's a data point to be worried about . I'm not surprised either , but isn't it brilliant that Ofcom are actually asking that question ? So yeah , really good . And total radio listening in cars higher in 2024 than it has ever been in history . So lots of people talking about Apple CarPlay , lots of people talking about Android Auto as adding podcasts into cars , and nobody's listening to the radio anymore . No , total radio listening in cars higher last year than ever , which I thought was very , very . I'd love to see how that's measured . Very , very interesting . There you go , you see , it's always the Very , very interesting . There you go , you see , it's always the way , isn't it ? As soon as you see some data which says what you don't believe . I'd love to see how that was measured .

Sam Sethi 31:28

Well , isn't that the case ? Okay , if it disagrees with my point of opinion , I'd like to know how they've come to it .

James Cridland 31:36

Correct , but yes . So some useful data in there , and you'll find that linked from the Pod News newsletter this week

Around the world

James Cridland 31:44

. Let's whiz around the world quickly , james , back in your country . Basically , arn will sell ads into Global's shows and ARN's shows will be available within the Global player in the UK , which , to me , does not read that Global is going to sell any of the ads inside ARN's shows , which I thought was interesting , but nevertheless . Good news , I'm sure , for Global , because they'll get a little bit more money .

James Cridland 32:23

Bad news for me because I listened to a number of shows from Global which have been blissfully ad-free , which will no longer be ad-free , and I listened to the best of the Chris Morales Breakfast Show on Radio X , which , my goodness , I downloaded an episode of that in the UK while I was over there and I've been having a listen to it over the last couple of days . It's chock full of ads . Every 10 minutes there's another ad break , so I'm going to have to get used to that fairly quickly . But good news for ARN anyway .

James Cridland 32:57

Spanish language podcast platform iVoox , or iVoox , has published a monetization guide , so they are doing private RSS feeds , but also paid RSS feeds within their own app , and they say that they have so far shared over 4 million euro in income for creators . That's about US$4.2 million , so they seem to be doing quite nicely in terms of that . There's a company that you might want to have a chat with about L402 , something that we will cover next week . And in Germany , some figures from MA Podcast , which is one of these podcast rankers Total downloads down 5% from March . The true crime show Mordlust made it to number one 6.8 million downloads for that as well , so always good to see other rankers and other data showing us what's listened to

People news

James Cridland 34:00

in other countries People .

Announcer 34:00

News on the Pod News Weekly Review to see other rankers and other data showing us what's listened to in other countries .

Sam Sethi 34:04

People News on the Pod News Weekly Review . Anyone moving and grooving this week , James .

James Cridland 34:08

Yes , a few people . Somebody called Hugh Ormond is the first head of podcasting for RTE in Ireland . Rte is the big public broadcaster there and it doesn't weirdly doesn't seem to have a podcasting background to be their first head of podcasting . He's been a producer , he's produced radio and TV shows for 18 years within RTE and is now their head of podcasting . So best of luck , hugh . Looking forward to seeing a bit more stuff coming out of that broadcaster because it does produce some very good things .

James Cridland 34:45

Rte Radio 1 is the big sort of full service radio station , a bit like Radio 4 or kind of NPR in Ireland , and has some very good shows . So it should lend itself very nicely to podcasts , one would have thought , and a couple of other people . Podimo has appointed a chief content officer called Georgia Brown . Now what was interesting in that report wasn't necessarily that they've got a chief content officer , but that she's English and there is in that press release talk of an expansion into English language content . Now you might remember that Podimo is one of these companies that charges for access to its shows . Again , l402 , sam , just write that one down on your list .

Sam Sethi 35:37

I just told you . You know , we'll have this great discussion in two weeks' time .

James Cridland 35:41

There you go forward and um , so interesting to see ponemo um diving into english , uh language stuff . And the bbc has finally got a head of sales for podcasts in north america . Um , somebody that should know a thing or two , because he was the VP and the Chief Revenue Officer of Barometer , john Sardellis , who will be working for the BBC there . So clearly some money to be made there , you would have thought .

Events - The Podcast Show recap

Sam Sethi 36:16

Now we touched on the fact that the London podcast show was really good this year and everyone , I think , if my LinkedIn notifications is anything to go by , I love the show . I mean , my God , it went off the Richter scale with the number of people being mentioned and then the number of times . But congratulations to Jason Carter and to Ferger and the whole team there . How many people went through the doors eventually , James ?

James Cridland 36:43

Yes . So just for the show itself , 6,100 over the two days of conferences and exhibition . That makes it by far the biggest podcast show in the world . Podcast movement sometimes does around 2,000 , 2,500 . Now , even if you were to suggest that they've double counted , if I went in the doors on the Wednesday and then again on the Thursday , I might have been counted twice . But even if I was counted twice , that is still significantly bigger than podcast movements . So congratulations to them .

James Cridland 37:28

But that wasn't everything , because of course the podcast show also had the podcast festival that was around it , with live shows that you could go and pay to go and watch , and so overall , the event had over 10,000 people who ended up taking part in it . So it's a pretty good thing . Now , interestingly , jason Carter said that the aim of the London event isn't to grow , at least in that venue . They may do some more venue stuff elsewhere in North London , but the plan there is to continue to improve and engage with the visitors there rather than cram more people into the venue , which I think makes for a bunch of sense as well . Clearly , lots of people have been talking to them about launching in other countries as well .

James Cridland 38:24

The interesting thing , though , I think for me is if they were going to launch the podcast show New York , for example , which sounds like a very sensible idea off the top of it , it would essentially , from my point of view , kill the UK show Because actually quite a lot of the people coming to that UK show were coming from the US . So I'm kind of looking at that and going , yes , I can see the excitement of you know , let's launch an event in New York , but actually that would probably kill the UK one . So perhaps there are opportunities for a little bit further afield or in other parts of the world , but I'm not so sure that a US move . You know you'd have to be , you'd have to do that quite carefully , wouldn't you ?

Sam Sethi 39:18

Yeah , well , I mean , most of the Americans would say , well , well , we'll go here , but then would the brits go to the american one and then suddenly go well , why are we doing anything in the london one ? What's lovely about the whole show is that you felt everyone was there pretty much yeah , I know there was a few people missing , but generally everybody was there and you .

Sam Sethi 39:37

What I love about it ? Compared to the ones I've gone to in the us , it is very tight , so it feels very buzzy and you can look left , you can look right and there's always somebody you know and you can talk to , whereas when I've been to vegas or I've been to la , I'm generally walking a bazillion miles to go to a , to a seminar , and they're not seeing anyone there because they're a bazillion miles the other way , in another room , and you don't get that sense in America that anyone's actually at the event , even though they are , whereas you do get that sense in London that everybody is there .

James Cridland 40:14

Well , and evolutions being particularly that I mean , you know , it really felt as if there was nobody there and there was . There was quite a lot of people at that event in Chicago , but yes , I thought that that was interesting to end up seeing is that if you look on the Podcast Movement website right now , there is no mention of Podcast Movement Evolutions anymore . Absolutely no mention . There's something to have a look back at this year , but in terms of where it is next year , no mention whatsoever . Not quite sure what that tells you . Well , maybe I am sure what that tells me Looks as if it's not happening anymore , which is interesting to have a look at . It would be fun to find out more information on that when I'm in Dallas in the next couple of months . But yeah , that I thought was , yeah , interesting . Just to just to say .

Sam Sethi 41:23

Well , one other thing that um , it's not , it's not a secret Um , after the interview I did with Jason , jason and I talked about meeting up post the London podcast show to talk about next year . Now , one of the things I wanted to do this year was a pod camp and for multiple reasons that did not happen mainly cost and venue location , which really was annoying for me but annoying for other people as well . So Jason's very keen to get a technical thread going through next year . That's one of the conversation pieces . But Jason's got a very strong track record in music and that's comes from his days in the bbc and he's he wasn't aware until we talked about it but music could be delivered through podcasting .

Sam Sethi 42:09

He's not technical . He doesn't really understand podcasting , if I , if I was honest um , or the mechanism of podcasting . Let's be honest and say it that way . So when I explained how independent music artists are now using rss , he was like , oh , that's really interesting and I think it may be a light touch to begin with . Maybe a panel about music and podcasting next year , nothing more , um , and maybe some technical threads that we can , we can introduce , but he is very open to that . And again , your point about having multiple venues , so not trying to squeeze it into the same venue , which I think is now sort of yeah , bursting at the seams , um , maybe that's the way forward with those type of um , extra , uh sessions that we'd like to introduce I did notice , by the way , that there are , you know , copious meeting rooms in the hilton next door which I don't think were being used , but I did notice that .

James Cridland 43:08

But there are also plenty of other venues pretty close to that particular one , so you could certainly see that there might be a way of growing that event without overpowering it in terms of additional people .

Other events

Sam Sethi 43:25

Other events . James , what's going on ?

James Cridland 43:27

The winners of the 2025 Quill Podcast Awards were announced , which you can see a full list of on the Pod News website . Podcast of the Year went to Well , I Laughed , or maybe it's Well I Laughed , or maybe it's Well I Laughed . Anyway , it's a podcast for listeners who find themselves in search of a good laugh and their next strange story to tell at parties Organised by Quill and co-host , and I noticed that there were only three winners who host with co-hosts , so it's a proper awards , not just patting themselves on the back . So well done to them . Talking about Canada , because many of Quill's folks are in Canada , here's another thing going on in Canada .

James Cridland 44:12

Pod Summit YYC , which is in Calgary in Alberta , is happening in September . You can now buy tickets for that . You can see Jesse Lipscomb I will be there as well doing a keynote . There are live podcast shows from the CBC's Crime Story and also from Sick Boy and plenty of other things as well . Super , looking forward to that . That should be fun . I've not been to calgary um before , apart from the airport which I've been to , which is very boring , uh .

Sam Sethi 44:44

So , um , I gather that calgary is less boring do you have to buy a stetson hat when you get there ?

James Cridland 44:51

uh , a stetson hat ? I don't think , so what ?

Sam Sethi 44:54

what would be a I suppose it's candor ? Would you have to wear a Mountie hat , or ?

James Cridland 44:58

something . Yeah , no , I mean , it would be a beanie .

James Cridland 45:00

A beanie , and yeah , and you'd have to be drinking . You'd have to go out and have a hot , steaming coffee , either at Tim Hortons oh no , thank you or at the curiously named Second Cup , which is something that you are very unlikely to ever have , having had a First Cup , but which is something that you are very unlikely to ever have , having had a first cup . But yes , so no , I'm looking forward to it . It should be great fun .

James Cridland 45:28

One of the things that they have done very well I should say the organisers is that they have done a very good deal with both Air Canada , who I'm not flying , but a hotel which is very close to the venue . It's a very good deal . It's a very cheap place to stay in comparison to what you would normally pay for that hotel . So I've no idea how they've done that , but that's a very good thing . So , yeah , looking forward to that which is in September . A couple of other things just to tell you about are the Podcast Day Asia , which is at the beginning of September , that is , in Jakarta , in Indonesia . This year no , she went to Verona Court and I'm looking forward to being there .

Sam Sethi 46:13

That's why you're the keynote speaker of the year . I get it Now . I understand .

James Cridland 46:17

Yes , that's clearly it , so I'm looking forward to being there and taking part . There is also something going on in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia . It's the ABU , the Asia-Pacific Broadcast Union . They're running their Confest conference and there's a very big podcaster there , mark Fennell , who interestingly hosted a show , a podcast called Stuff , the British Stole , which is a great show . You would enjoy it , sam , I do Particularly . There you go , but it's then been turned into a TV show as well , and the TV show is brilliant and he did that very , very well . If you are , you know perhaps you're doing a podcast and you wonder , well , how can I make great video out of that ? Well , that's one of the ways , I think . So , taking a look at that , it's just $50 if you're not working for an ABU member , if you can get to KL . So that is a lovely thing which is all going on .

Sam Sethi 47:22

There's also a couple other ones , because I actually read your events section on the Pod News Daily . So you do , I do , yes , someone has to , and it is very good . So a couple of the other events that grabbed my attention were the Web Summit Rio on June the 8th in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil , and also the Web Summit Rio on June the 8th in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil , and also the Web Summit in Qatar . I think that's how you say it . You just have to sort of sound like a camel . I don't know that . Everyone I've heard recently Racist .

James Cridland 47:53

Well , I used to say Qatar .

Sam Sethi 47:54

But now you've got to go Qatar . I think it's Qatar these days ?

James Cridland 47:59

Is it Qatar ? It could be , I don't know . We will move on . Anyway , we will ask ChachiBT In Doha . Yes , the reason that those are in there , by the way , is the Web Summit , which I'm sure that you will have been to in the past , because it's a big , big , big old event , and the main one is in , I think , lisbon , in Portugal . Yeah , it used to be in Ireland , it's now moved over to Portugal , yeah , yeah , and so that is a pretty big event .

James Cridland 48:24

They are leaning into podcasting , so I've been told , with a bunch of different shows that are being recorded on stage . Let's hope that their recording works and we'll find out . You know what's going on there , but , yes , so worth taking a look at . I think there's one that is literally taking place at this moment . It might be the Lisbon one , actually , but yes , the Web Summit in Rio is on June , the 8th . The February one is Qatar , doha , in Qatar . So if you can get to those , then that's a good thing in Qatar . So if you can get to those , then that's a good thing . And , in fact , I think that the Web Summit in Qatar this year was the one where iHeart announced that they were launching a podcast studio in the Middle East , so I think that that's where it was actually announced . So you can see that there's definitely some podcasting stuff going on there .

The Podosphere

Sam Sethi 49:20

Now a little section that I wanted to introduce .

Sam Sethi 49:23

Um , I haven't cleared it with the boss , um , but here we go , um I . I find that you know , and I'm sure that you probably do as well , james , because we listen to a lot of podcasts during the week ourselves and , um , there's often some great stories . I know that you have a section in pod news daily that covers some of the links out to them , but there's things that sort of grabbed my attention during the week and I thought where do we stick those ? They're not really stories , they're not really big enough to be tech or main stories , but things that grabbed my attention . So the first one that I saw in Pod News Daily was

Netflix Podcasts

Sam Sethi 50:00

Netflix is publishing the Big Pitch with Jimmy Carr , a podcast and YouTube series which stands up , which the stand-up star gets comedians to suggest movie ideas , which was done with BBC Studios , and it suddenly the bit that jumped out was Netflix , and again they were at the London podcast show . So can we officially say now that Netflix is a podcasting production company and they're going to get bigger ?

James Cridland 50:27

Well , they've been making podcasts for some time . I think they've been making podcasts for a couple of years . The question that I have is they are making this in video , yet it's not available on Netflix . Duh , that's weird . So surely , if you've signed up , jimmy Carr , to make a show and , by the way , I mean the entire show is a very naked promotion of Netflix , it's basically , you know , looking at some of the really weird genres that Netflix has made Surely you would , yes , stick it on YouTube so that everybody can watch it for free , but stick it on Netflix as well . Surely you would have thought but anyway , yeah .

Sam Sethi 51:07

Is that the thing that's coming , though ? That's the point .

James Cridland 51:10

Well , maybe that is the thing that's coming . Yeah , I mean , who knows ? But yeah , that to me sort of stood out . They have been making shows for quite some time , and you know so , wang , chris , mccausland , you know very , very UK focused , and of course Romesh Ranganathan is there , because Romesh Ranganathan is in everything . So you know , so we'll find out , you know quite what the deal is there . But I mean , so , you know , so we'll find out , you know quite what the deal is there . But I mean , surely you would expect that to be on the Netflix site itself as well . You'd have thought .

Sam Sethi 52:07

So the other thing I wanted to find out then was who's running their podcast strategy , and I did a hunt round and I did a hunt round . Najeri , eaton and Abizuma St John , who used to be at Netflix , have both left , so they're not in charge and it's not obvious who is in charge of their podcast strategy . So do you know , by any chance ?

James Cridland 52:28

That's a good question and the quick answer is no , I'm not sure . I do know . I mean there's a bunch of people who are clearly working at Netflix on their podcasting stuff , but the only communication that I've had has been the BBC Studios press release , which doesn't mention anybody at the Netflix podcast itself . Interestingly , even Netflix have sent me the BBC press release , so not quite sure what that says , but anyway . So yeah , so not quite sure who's in charge at the moment .

James Cridland 53:11

I do know that the big boss of Netflix recently has been sounding increasingly rattled about YouTube . Netflix have basically turned around and said we are rattled about YouTube , um . Netflix have basically turned around and said we are not going to . You know , we've stopped fighting people like Disney plus and HBO max and all of these people because we're so much bigger . So it's kind of not really a fair fight . But the fight that they want now is YouTube Um and so , um , they'd be making some very clear noises about how Netflix is a significantly better experience than YouTube . Youtube have clearly been making some changes , although YouTube has , of course , a very different business model . But yes , it'll be fascinating to see what happens there and , of course , you would expect that Netflix would quite like to grab as much cheap TV programming as they possibly could , and part of that is visualised podcasts , whatever they are .

Sam Sethi 54:11

Spotflix . You heard it here first . Keep saying it , it's coming soon . Spotify acquires no . Netflix acquires Spotify .

James Cridland 54:19

Yes , one day I might be right , one day you'll be able to sell that domain name .

Sam Sethi 54:24

Yeah , Now the other one that I thought was interesting . I'm not going to go into it too much . There's a great podcast called Uncensored CMO . They've got some great guests on it , run by John Evans . They actually had Angela Zepeda , who's the new CMO for X . Now , normally wouldn't listen to it , but actually it was a good listen . They talk about the Everything app , they talk about how they're using Grok and they talk about bringing back video and payments , and so , again , if you want to see from who their CMO thinks is what they're going to do next , that's a really good listen as well .

James Cridland 55:01

Yeah , nick Quire also had a chat with Tim Katz , who is as close to the person at YouTube who is in charge of podcasting as anybody else is . He ended up talking about a podcast on the platform as being listenable content . So content , that's video optional , which I suppose is one way of putting it and also says a very curious thing . He says if you look at the top podcasts in the US , almost all of them are on YouTube . Yet if you have a look at data from PodTrack , only half of them are on YouTube . They can't both be right . So not quite sure what's going on there , tim Katz , but let's find Bill Gates . He's had some really big guests and I was like , well , why is ?

Sam Sethi 56:03

Neil Mohan talking to this guy how's he got this guest ? And it turns out this guy is a 34 year old multi-billionaire . That helps , yeah , um , uh . He's like the Joe Rogan of India , uh and . But what really annoyed me was he calls this a podcast . So I thought , great , no problem , I'll go and see for true fans . I'll go and find the RSS feed , but make sure we've got it there . We'll link the YouTube channel to it , cause we can boom and I thought that'd be brilliant . Can't find an RSS feed for it anywhere . It doesn't exist not in the podcast index , not in Apple Podcasts , not in Spotify , nowhere . And yet this is called a podcast . And that really riled me , because this is YouTube now taking the word podcast and literally saying screw you the industry . We don't need to support anything outside of our walled garden . We're going to use the word podcast , and I was just a little bit annoyed with that one .

James Cridland 56:58

Well , it's always been the way YouTube just thinking that they have a monopoly on everything , and indeed Google . But yes , well , I mean , you know , it is interesting actually looking at the P word , the podcast word , looking at the P word , the podcast word , because both Jack from Goalhanger and also Max Cutler from Pave Studios I mean you heard him in the video here last week saying that he uses the word show and not podcast and he , you know Max basically thinks that the term podcasting has out-served its purpose , which is , you know , always interesting to end up seeing .

Sam Sethi 57:44

Well , we saw the same with Spotify . If you remember from their financial reports , they didn't talk about podcasting particularly . They talked about shows in their financial reports as well , yeah , yeah . Now , the last one that grabbed my attention this week was a friend of the show , Stephen Goldstein . It was lovely to see him in London .

James Cridland 58:00

And let me tell you he will be delighted that you've added a new feature to make this show even longer . He will be absolutely delighted .

Sam Sethi 58:08

Well , he will , because his show's mentioned in it . So , yes , there you go , I bet you won't skip this section . So , yes , there you go , I bet you won't skip this section Again . One of the things he did was he writes a newsletter and he wrote five things from London . I think you have to read the whole newsletter .

Sam Sethi 58:27

But things that stood out for me he said podcasting is not just about creators anymore , it's about building multi-platform content machines , podcast , yes , but newsletters , videos , books , social influence , even live events . We've moved well past podcasting's quaint beginnings . So even Stephen's beginning to say is the word podcasting very limiting . He also went on to say that the lines between media formats is converging and blurring fast , and I think that's true . Is a video a podcast ? Is a podcast , just audio ?

Sam Sethi 58:59

Youtube recently introduced a podcast chart . We talked about that in the past , but goal hanger revealed that 25% of their 63 million monthly downloads comes from YouTube . And that's a significant signal , says Steven , and flight studio , which is Stevenven bartlett , have started to talk about knocking down podcasting's artificial walls and going after the 400 billion dollar opportunity . And again they're talking about video , audio , social newsletters , books , and this is the thing I've been sort of trying to bang on about that . I think one of the biggest platforms now to look at is Patreon , substack all of these that are multifunctional platforms . I think single podcast platforms are going to seem quaint in a year's time .

James Cridland 59:46

So what's the name of our industry now , then ?

Sam Sethi 59:50

I don't know Podland , I don't know . I mean , I have no idea , james .

James Cridland 59:57

Because I think the difference , the difficulty is . So I was moderating a panel about video monetisation and Georgie was there from Flight Studio and I asked the question you know , what is a podcast now , particularly when we're having a look at monetization for video ? And Georgie said I don't think it's very helpful to have a conversation about what a podcast is anymore . And I was there thinking well , how can we show how big podcasting is as an industry ? Do we really want to be a bit player in the whole YouTube ecosystem ? Because that's all that we'll be . If we're not podcasting , if we're not self-identifying as podcasting and podcasters , then you know , our entire industry is just another YouTube content creation tool . Well , that's exciting , isn't it ? You know , I'll pack up and go home if we start doing that .

Sam Sethi 1:00:57

Yeah , but look at our sponsors , buzzsprout , for example . Okay , so we did a show , we have a transcript , but now through co-host AI , they also provide a blog post . So now I use that in TrueFans and I upload that blog post into the TrueFans for this show . Now that's content that people can either use for SEO , for reading , for looking at a different version of the transcript . Fundamentally , again , we talk about podcasting , have live events monetization strategies . So I can see that the narrow focus on podcasting as an audio medium is moving beyond what the creator economy wants and therefore wide max uh , cutler at Pave calls them shows . Why people like um , you know Spotify call them shows .

James Cridland 1:01:50

I mean , we know . So how are we going to , how are we going to convince people that podcasting is growing , that podcasting is in great shape , when we can't even say what a podcast is anymore ? How can we even turn around and say , well , podcasting is a $2.4 billion industry if we don't know what podcasting is ? We're just a small bit of the YouTube machine where we're making crappy television shows and that's our future . I just don't get it . I don't get why we would take our entire industry and go you know what ? Yeah , we're actually nothing to do with audio anymore . We're just another set of people making crap television shows and sticking them onto YouTube . What's the long-term future in that ?

Sam Sethi 1:02:40

for anybody . Well , there's two things I'd say . What do you call a live show that is from a podcast like the Rest Is Politics on a stage . Is that a podcast ?

James Cridland 1:02:49

Well , no , that's not a podcast , no .

Sam Sethi 1:02:51

But it's part of the podcast revenue stream .

James Cridland 1:02:54

It's only part of Hanan's podcast revenue stream . It's only part of Hanan's podcast revenue stream .

Sam Sethi 1:02:58

It's not part of that 2.4 billion . Well , it's part of goal hangers , I'm sure . I'm sure they don't break out that they are earning from live events .

Sam Sethi 1:03:05

I'm sure they say our podcasting revenue is yeah , maybe maybe I'm not a person who has an answer to the question . I think the question is being posed , but the worry I have is it's being posed by many people in the industry , which seems to suggest that we either need to use podcasting as the umbrella term for all of this . So YouTube calling it a podcast , although it's not RSS , but it is a conversational item , that's video generated in this case , and we say everything's a podcast and then we just claim it , which is what I think Anand Lopez was saying . I think that's what Stephen B is saying that narrow , focusing it just on audio , but podcasting is all of it . It's audio books . Is an independent music artist who puts art through RSS ? Is that called a podcast or a music ?

James Cridland 1:03:57

I don't know Well , I think it's called a music album , but anyway , yes , I don't know , I just thought it was interesting .

Sam Sethi 1:04:04

Anyway , if you're interested in reading that , that's again from Stephen Goldstein's newsletter , and that's why I wanted to have this section . James , I think there's some really interesting people writing and talking about stuff that we talk about weekly , but I also think it's good to hear from other people's voices

The tech stuff

Sam Sethi 1:04:20

as well . The Tech Stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review .

James Cridland 1:04:24

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 here , sam Well ?

Sam Sethi 1:04:32

Adam Currie , the podfather , just put out a post on Macedon saying just a quick reminder after five years . We built the podcastindexorg to be an open resource and API to build on and innovate to protect podcasting's open nature from gatekeepers . So time to say that Mission accomplished . Over 70 apps and services rely on it and actively support with it . Value for value , mainly financially . Everything else is whatever it and actively support with it . Value for value mainly financially . Everything else is whatever you want to do with it . Yeah , so you know . Congratulations to adam and dave .

James Cridland 1:05:02

So five years yes , except it's not five years , because five years is in september . So why is he posting this now ? Is he posting this now because he's he's now wanting to step back from the podcast index ? He , he , you know he thinks that , thinks that it's achieved its goal . Why would you post mission accomplished like that ? What's the thinking behind this particular post , sam ?

Sam Sethi 1:05:26

I'm not really sure . I mean you might have more insight than I do , but I think if your goal was to get a open ecosystem of apps and um using this one index , compared to the apple index , for example , I think one of the goals was , you know , to to protect people from being deplatformed , and maybe adam feels that they've achieved . He's got his other project , which is , you know , godcaster um , which does use the podcast index as well . I don't know . I mean it'll be a good question to adam . I hope he's going to . I think he says he's going to go on the jason calacanis show to promote podcasting 2.0 . Um , I do actually feel , weirdly , that all the stuff we've been talking about for the last three or four years is coming to fruition . I don't know how you feel , but I feel all the micropainting stuff is becoming much more mainstream as a conversation video . I don't know .

James Cridland 1:06:21

Yeah , indeed , no , I think that there's definitely , um , that does feel as if there is momentum in certain things and it's great , you know , obviously seeing Apple being more interested in um , the open , um , you know , more interested in the open , you know , in the new podcast namespace and all of that stuff . So yeah , but yeah , no , I was just sort of curious as to why Adam would post this sort of rather final sounding post yeah exactly , you know .

James Cridland 1:06:50

But I mean saying mission accomplished , which is , you know , I love Adam to bits , but whenever you see mission accomplished , you see that you think of George W Bush with that big banner saying mission accomplished when it palpably wasn't . So I'm there thinking I don't really understand what he's trying to do and he's three months early . Understand what he's trying to do and he's three months early . But congratulations the podcast index , because it is a very useful , very useful tool .

James Cridland 1:07:23

Talking about Adam's new thing , Godcaster , I found it interesting to note that Transistor has just added a new theme specifically based for their podcast web pages and websites , called Beacon , which is specifically built for churches and faith-based organisations , which I thought was interesting . You can give it a play , if you want , for your very own podcast at freepodcastwebsitescom and fiddle around with that . But yeah , I thought that that was interesting , that Justin feels that there is a good reason to be involved in not just that part of the industry but to actually , you know , focus on that from a point of view of churches and faith-based groups and things like that .

Video, HLS, and the future

Sam Sethi 1:08:18

Now , one of the things that happened at the London Podcast Show was the podcast standards met twice not once , but twice and the topic of conversation twice was video podcasting , but using HLS .

James Cridland 1:08:35

Yes , and I think that this certainly looks interesting .

James Cridland 1:08:39

So the Podcast Standards Project saying in a post in LinkedIn that it's been talking about a better solution for supporting video in RSS and it pretty well overcomes all of the issues that I wrote about last year Could even allow dynamically inserted video advertising too , which might be interesting , because you can do all of that sort of thing in HLS if you like .

James Cridland 1:09:03

And , of course , since it's a stream rather than a download or at least it can be a stream rather than a download it means that you could even get really good consumption data and information around that . Plus , it's cheaper to serve as well , because you're not having to deliver the entire massive file to somebody that might never watch it or that might only watch half of it . So I think that quite a lot of that is very good news , and there was certainly in that post from the Podcast Standards Project , some really good sounding information about support already existing from Pocket Casts and support to come from some other large organisations as well , particularly if they're having conversations with Apple . So , yeah , all of that looked pretty good in terms of making sure that OpenRSS is capable of offering a really good solution for video as well as for audio . Yeah , yeah .

Sam Sethi 1:10:12

So Ellie Rubenstein was there from Pocket Casts and she basically piped up and said look , we don't have to wait for Apple , because one of the conversation pieces was well , we won't implement this until Apple implement this . And there we got back to the chicken meat egg conversation . So Ellie said look , we support it . And then I piped up and said , well , all the podcasting 2.0 apps actually support it , because we did that for ANC Costello when RSS Blue used HLS for broadcasting that live . So all the apps went through the exercise of getting that to work . So we know we all support it . So there is a momentum there .

Sam Sethi 1:10:50

And then , you know , one of the things I you may recall was pushing very hard for was the use of the alternative enclosure for this . So the primary enclosure could stay MP3 , mp4 , but the secondary enclosure , the alternative enclosure , would contain HLS as an example to try and move this forward , again , not breaking the feed for Apple because they don't support it yet , but still allowing newer apps and things like Pocket Casts to use HLS as a fallback and get people to understand the difference . Now Todd Cochran and I spoke quite a lot last year . Todd Cochran at Blueberry does support it as a host . Hubhopper supports it , pod2 now supports it , so there are hosts out there that do it . I think Podhome does as well . I know RSS Blue does for certain , so it's not isolated . So we could as an industry move forward quite quickly with this .

James Cridland 1:11:48

Yeah , it's all very interesting in terms of that and certainly good news , I think , personally , for Open RSS for us to be able to properly deliver video in a way that works for everybody .

Interview: Gautam Raj Anand from Hubhopper

Sam Sethi 1:12:02

There's a number of hosts that already support HLS . We've got Blueberry , obviously . We've just talked about Todd , but you've got Pod2 looking to support it , and over in India , gautam Rajanand . Hubhopper has been supporting HLS about three years ago . He also supports YouTube video and I remember from our interview it'd be worthwhile talking to him again about his experience of HLS and why they dropped it and also what's been happening with the latest updates on YouTube video . Now , last time time we spoke , we were talking about Hubhopper enabling YouTube video , so hosting and distributing to YouTube . How's that going ?

Gautam Raj Anand 1:12:43

It's going really well , and the way that I would recognize that it's going well is in the fact that creators are requesting for distribution outside of just YouTube . So they're asking us for more platforms . And then they're also asking us for added tools within the product which can further support their foraying into YouTube , which is clips , video editing , et cetera . Now I don't know what the timeline is for us to be able to provide them all of these additional tools , but the very fact that we start getting a barrage of requests from folks asking for more stuff , I think those are good indicators that market is receiving it but want more and I think one of the things you also mentioned was so there was a downside which was you're getting less audio podcasts but more video podcasts if you look at pure play data , it's not that we're getting more video podcasts and audio podcasts .

Gautam Raj Anand 1:13:36

I would say the growth rate of the video podcasts have been higher than the growth rate of the audio podcasts , but in terms of absolute numbers we're still getting more audio podcasts and video podcasts by a very large amount . So one clarification if I sort of misspoken earlier , maybe this will clarify that . If I sort of misspoken earlier , maybe this will clarify that . The second I would say point is that on the consumption side , it's not that we're seeing massive dips in consumption on audio . I just feel that there's a large amount of chatter with video podcasts . So top of funnel , awareness about video podcasts is at an all time high . People are excited about it , People feel that they need to do it to make their podcast cycle complete . But it's not as though consumption on audio has taken a massive hit and I think that that also is in line with what's happening with the rest of the world . But the growth rate of people uploading video podcasts is at a higher rate than the growth rate of people uploading audio podcasts . I hope that sort of clarifies my statement .

Sam Sethi 1:14:36

Yeah , now you're delivering the video using standard MP4 . You've got your own CDN and generally the belief is that storage is not the biggest cost burden to host , but it's the delivery over the content network to the edge that is the bigger cost . So you're delivering over MP4 , is that correct ?

Gautam Raj Anand 1:15:01

That is correct , yes .

Sam Sethi 1:15:02

So the last time we spoke , I was going well , why aren't you using HLS ? And you turned around and said to me I actually was using HLS , the Hypertext live server which Apple invented . And I went oh my God , why aren't you using it still ? So what happened ? Tell me more .

Gautam Raj Anand 1:15:21

So it was really interesting . It came out of necessity a little bit . So what had basically happened was we had a partner , an exclusive partner of ours , that we integrated with and they were making a very large number of requests to us a DSP , a consumption site platform . Now , this was a little bit of a burden at that point for us . I mean , it was a good thing , but it was also a little bit of a burden for us . So we wanted to come up with a solution that basically worked for both parties , because they were also making requests , like abnormal number of requests to us , you know , at a system level , not just at a user level . So what we basically did was we started to search for solutions around this and we happened upon HLS at that time and we took this to them and at that time it was basically a cost saving strategy from our perspective at that time . It was basically a cost-saving strategy from our perspective with this one specific partner . What we did was , when people were uploading a podcast onto hub hopper in , you know , let's just say , mp3 we were taking the mp3 and we were converting it to m3u8 into small chunks , ts chunks and this was basically allowing us to continue to let them make the large number of requests that they were making , but except they were making those requests in small chunks at that period in time . And now for us , this was great , because an automatic benefit that happened was , of course , there was a cost benefit to us , but then the secondary benefit to us was we suddenly started seeing patterns of consumption in terms of how long people are consuming for , and this felt like a goldmine , not just in terms of retention metric , but also in terms of what it could mean for the advertising space .

Gautam Raj Anand 1:17:04

Hls was also moved a lot forward in the last three years . Now there's low latency HLS and a few other technologies , but this basically begs the question of why did we abandon it if everything seemed to be going right ? Yeah , so we basically had a problem statement , which is that these platforms , which are very large in their own right and have a large number of users in their own right , they still want to follow the blueprint of the western or global leader in the space . So they will take the global leader , whether , in this circumstances , an Apple or a Spotify , and whatever the blueprint is that is being followed by them . They would basically want to ape that blueprint , whether it makes feasible sense for them from a latency of content perspective or not . They just believe that , okay , the research has been done there . We don't necessarily want to go through the Rnd , and I understand their perspective as well .

Gautam Raj Anand 1:18:04

So there was a lot of internal pressure on the dev team in this specific organization saying that what you guys have done is working phenomenally well , but we should just follow what is right . And that unfortunately caused a little bit of a pushback on us trying to be innovative in the dissemination of content and we had to revert back to the old ways and the old guard . But it was a good experiment Nonetheless . We enjoyed it , we went through the ringer with it and , yeah , we saw the utilities of it .

Gautam Raj Anand 1:18:34

Like I said three years ago , it's just that this is a tendency of something that does happen in eastern markets . In eastern markets , there is the general notion that what has been built in the West is the right way of having to build it . Let's not question it , because they've been doing this for 20 years , so rightfully so they do know exactly how this needs to be done , so let's not cross question it . And so you comply and you basically build according to those protocols , and that's exactly what happened . So it wasn't us that abandoned it , it was market forces that made us put it on the back burner . That's basically a better example .

Sam Sethi 1:19:13

I would say that the West doesn't always know what it's doing .

Sam Sethi 1:19:16

I'll give you a good example In Africa they bypassed fixed-line broadband and had micropayments , called M-PASA , way , way before the West mobile-to-mobile communication payments , because necessity required it and I think , where you are , in India , I think bandwidth costs and data delivery and the ability for HLS to do now , with low latency HLS , one second chunking , so the immediacy for the user experience to have streaming audio or video without having to do the full download , and the cost model of course associated to having to do the full download , even if the of course associated having to do the full download , even if the user then only listens to 10 .

Sam Sethi 1:20:00

I think you'll find from the meeting in london at the podcast standards group that there is a strong leaning back now into hls and there's a heavy push that we want as an industry group to put on Apple , who invented HLS , to say look , adopt it now . Come on , apple , get your one developer that you have for your one year annual feature , make that one feature , please . Support for HLS and hopefully Apple will comply . But you know let's not hold our breath on this one . But again , for you to re-enable .

Gautam Raj Anand 1:20:40

HLS . What would it take ? Exactly that , and I'll tell you why Because the second that that happens , it creates a trickle-down effect of the fact that a behemoth and a megalith like Apple has done this . So it must be right , and so we will follow this protocol . The alternative for us is very hard , we've done it , we've even succeeded at it but trying to go to the platforms that a hub hopper distributes to that is basically only get their podcast from us and then trying to go to them and tell them that all the biggest folks in the industry are doing it this way . But let's do it this way because this is the right way to do it or maybe not the right way , but it can benefit you . In abc I don't want to speak in black and white terms or like binary terms .

Sam Sethi 1:21:28

You know , unfortunately , that conversation won't go too far one thing that was said by ellie rubenstein , who heads up Pocket Casts , was that they support HLS . Fountain , true Fans , podverse , podcast , guru all support HLS . So actually what would be useful is for hosts to now support HLS Again . Maybe add it to the alternative enclosure to begin with , which means your feed doesn't get broken when you serve it to Apple or Spotify , who don't support it , but in the alternative enclosure , which , again , all these apps support , the user could then switch to that feed and to that distribution , which would then again start to see the market in knowledge and learning and capability . Oh look , if I switch to this HLS version , it loads faster or it's quicker or you can promote it better . So I think it's a two-step focus . One is can we as an industry get hosts to support HLS ? Can we get apps to support HLS ? Can we get apps and hosts to put it in the alternative enclosure and then can we apply pressure to Apple and Spotify and others to then actually support it at the mainstream as well ?

Gautam Raj Anand 1:22:46

I couldn't agree more with you , and I definitely do believe that the best and least path of resistance on this would be Apple , given that it is their invention , and I think it could be beneficial for the industry . Something as small as HLS could help in creating a foundation that is a good breeding ground for innovation , but it does constantly beg the question of the fact we do need one of the biggies to support it , and a staggered approach , like you mentioned , is one way to do it for sure , and yeah , I think that causes a ripple effect , and that domino is what we're all sort of hoping for .

Sam Sethi 1:23:23

Gautam Rajanand , ceo of Hop Hopper . Thank you so much , thank you , my friend .

Announcer 1:23:29

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

James Cridland 1:23:38

Are you doing anything specifically ? You were talking

Truefans to become a podcast host

James Cridland 1:23:44

when we were doing our live version of this show last week , which , of course , didn't make it to this feed , but you were talking about true fans becoming a podcast host last week , um , which is exciting , which might bear repeating because I'm guessing that you are also going to be doing hls for video as well , will you ?

Sam Sethi 1:24:08

yes , so , uh , announcement here on this show . It's not uh , final . I haven't put out a press release , but obviously , james , you'll get that when it comes out . Um , we've signed a deal with our partner , soundstack . We are going to be using them as our content delivery network . Um , we're going to be taking the most popular shows to begin with and putting those into hls . Um , but we will be supporting audio video and live um , and I'll be coming out very , very shortly with a timeline of when we'll deliver that as well as the pricing .

Sam Sethi 1:24:41

But we already support video upload into TrueFans . We do audio upload . We have done that for a while . We've just added private feeds , so we needed that CDNn . We didn't have that delivery if we were going to do the hosting part ourselves . So , yeah , and why did I do it ? Because I've been battering my head against a brick wall to try and get hosts to provide live services , to provide video capability and , apart from this show , it felt like I was talking to a brick wall and so I thought you know , if you can't beat them , join them , you know , and become a host . I think I'm not the only one . I think you know the room around the show is that RSS , blue and Fountain are going to combine forces . So , again , I think you know hosts have all of this within their realm . Um , it doesn't mean that they can't do it themselves as well , but yes , we are . And , um , yeah , watch this space .

James Cridland 1:25:43

We will be announcing um more about this in the coming weeks very exciting uh elsewhere going on , pocket casts is um now supporting um pod role , except they're not calling it that because they're intelligent and they're calling it Recommended Shows by the Creator . Hooray , good for them . And that is now available in the App Store . You can just make sure that you're running the latest version of Pocket Casts and it appears in there , which is a nice thing and looks very pretty . Of course , podroll is supported by our sponsor , buzzsprout , as well as by Transistor , rsscom and plenty of other podcast apps . I think this really helps with discovery of new shows and I think it makes perfect sense for any podcast app to implement um uh , particularly podcast apps that get told off , because you only support the big ones , don't you ? Uh ? Well , no , you can support uh as many different um as many different uh shows that creators want to promote as uh as possible in this way . So I think it's a good thing .

Sam Sethi 1:26:53

It's a great thing and I think more more apps should do it . Um , the other one that I would like apps to support is the publisher feed . I know again , true fans is the only one that does it right now . It was an idea from Oscar and Dovidas that we implemented . Um , they work really well . They're like uh , pod roles , but from publishers to show all the shows that they create . So , if I liked the rest is politics I can click on Goalhanger , see the publisher feed and then see all the other shows from that , and it just makes sense . It's a great discovery tool , but so far not a lot of adoption .

James Cridland 1:27:32

No , well , you know , I mean partially . Adoption is being driven by people that see the value in those particular feeds and I think you know it's a conversation to have in terms of whether or not it's . You know . The benefit for the audience is totally clear in terms of that . But yeah , you know , certainly it's always a good thing to add more data in there to make it easier to recommend other shows to people .

James Cridland 1:28:07

Two podcast apps doing some interesting things with AI . Firstly , podsqueeze . It's a tool which has just been launched which uses AI to automatically find great clips from your podcast to share on social media . If this sounds familiar , it's because Headliner does a similar job and many others as well , but it's nice to see that appearing . Also , the podcast app Metacast has added AI generated podcast summaries , which is quite cool . So they're little short .

James Cridland 1:28:40

You know one paragraph summaries of what is talked about in a particular show . But what I thought was quite nice is that those summaries are also used in search , are also used in search . So , and we linked to one of these in Thursday's Pod News newsletter where you can very clearly see , you know , for this show it's delved into all of the things that we have talked about , and that means that even if we haven't put anything in our you know show description or whatever , it will still appear in search in that particular app , which I thought was quite nice , so worth a peek . That app also plans support for private RSS feeds in future L4 . And are you going to talk to me about Bitcoin ?

Sam Sethi 1:29:31

Yeah , you can go make a coffee while I do this , if you want . It's not a big thing , but but again , it's the arrow of direction which gets me excited , square , which is the payment from Jack Dorsey . It's that little box you can have , you know . You see , vendors have it in shops or at fairs and events they have . At the Bitcoin show in Vegas next um , they're going to allow merchants to use the lightning network to make payments and so they've added it to the um square I don't know device or platform so that you can do real-time bitcoin payments from your wallet to buy t-shirts , hoodies and hats , and they're going to have a , a pop-up store where you can do that .

Sam Sethi 1:30:17

And I think again , all this is , you know they call it everyday money , they also call it Bitcoin as an internet's native currency , and I think you know we've been trying to push this rock up a hill quite a lot . You know micro payments , bitcoin sats , and they're like at the end of the tunnel . I mean Square doing this is great . I think you know , for example , as much as I dislike X . They are talking about providing a micropayment service . We are seeing gamers now beginning to provide micropayments within games .

James Cridland 1:30:57

But buying a hat or a t-shirt is not a micropayment . So what is the benefit for a normal human being to use Bitcoin instead of just getting their MasterCard out of their pocket ?

Sam Sethi 1:31:09

I guess , if you've got Cash App as your wallet and you're using this and you've got a combination of , you've earned something and you want to use it as your mechanism again , is it the goal of trying to have micropayments or Bitcoin sats as the internet's native currency ? And if that's the case , then this is what they're trying to do . They're trying to bring it to the masses . I think that there is an alternative way of paying .

James Cridland 1:31:36

But the 25 cents cost for a MasterCard payment is tiny when you're buying a $20 t-shirt .

Sam Sethi 1:31:48

I understand that yeah .

James Cridland 1:31:49

Yeah . So I'm not quite sure what they're trying to achieve here . And the internet's money ? Well , the internet's money is Visa and MasterCard overwhelmingly . It's only when we start talking about micropayments , and the whole micropayment thing can be fixed very easily by Visa and MasterCard dropping their you know , dropping their fee . If Visa and MasterCard said , if you're spending less than 50 cents , then we're not going to charge you any payment fees whatsoever , then that would be interesting , wouldn't it ? Any payment fees whatsoever ?

Sam Sethi 1:32:25

then that would be interesting , wouldn't it ? Oh , no , completely . I mean hello , yeah . I mean imagine Apple says you know , we will make Apple Pay , a micropayment system , right and we won't charge you for doing that quick transaction . I mean again , I fully agree . I think what you're seeing here is somebody trying to show that the Lightning Network isn't just for micropayments , but it can be used for coffee and T-shirts and whatever . But and is this the way forward ? Maybe it is , but you know , I agree with you , it could be all killed very quickly if Visa and MasterCard or Apple suddenly remove that fee structure and everyone will then go well , yeah , do I really want to jump through these micropayment hoops with Bitcoin and SaaS ? Not really , I'll stick to pound-to-pence .

James Cridland 1:33:12

It would be really interesting if they were to drop the if for any 50 cent payments , and obviously you'd have to be , you know , sort of relatively careful . You know , not to accept 20 , 50 cent payments , obviously . But if you were to say that for every 50 cent payment it will cost you one cent or half a cent or something , rather than the 25 cents or whatever it is that it currently is , then they've pretty well fixed the . You know the issue here . I suppose you know the issue here . I suppose you know the only thing that they need to be careful of is the amount of additional stress that that will put on the Visa and MasterCard payment systems . But you know , with that , you know there's no technical reason why they have to charge the money that they're actually charging . I suppose .

Sam Sethi 1:34:03

Yeah , no , again it could be historical . I hope they do it and then it makes everyone's life simpler .

James Cridland 1:34:09

That would be interesting , wouldn't it ? Yeah , wouldn't that be fun .

Sam Sethi 1:34:17

Well , I also think you've got to also look at payment structures in other countries , like Swish in Sweden or UPI in India . I think they bypass the Visa and Masterard systems and allow micropayments , so there are other ways that this could happen . I think there's a whole flux going on around digital currencies and you know , we even haven't talked about where does stablecoin fit in this and where does the so-called sterling digital coin and the eagle American digital coin fit in ?

James Cridland 1:34:44

There are so many ways yeah , I , you know , I do wonder how much of this is driven by america , which has a banking system from the 1970s still , um , and actually how much of this if , if the world was slightly different and europe was leading things rather than the folks in Silicon Valley , I wonder whether or not we would actually see any of these weird small money currency things going on . You know what I mean ?

Sam Sethi 1:35:22

Yeah , I mean , look , we've seen this before . Twitter came about because they had a crappy non-SMS system in America , whereas Europe had it fixed . I think Uber is because they've got a poor transport excuse me , because they've got a poor public transport system in America . They don't have a good network rail network , and they don't have a good tube network , so let's have Uber everywhere . I mean , when I was in LA , it was like I said to my cousin I'll take , I'll take the I don't know what they call the tube there . Um , he went no , you won't go there . There's just druggies and murderers on there , right ? And it was like so everyone jumps in a car . But the system to fix it was then create Uber , whereas we fixed it by creating a better rail network . So you know , there's different ways

The Podnews inbox

Sam Sethi 1:36:05

of doing it .

Announcer 1:36:05

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

James Cridland 1:36:20

Yes , there are so many different ways to get in touch with us Fan mail by using the link in our show notes , or super comments on True Fans , or boosts everywhere else , or email weekly at podnewsnet for that , if you like , and we share any money that we make as well . Yes , we've got some boosts , haven't we , sam ?

Sam Sethi 1:36:35

We have indeed , it's a row of ducks 2222 , from the ugly quacking duck aka Bruce . He says thanks for taking us with you to the podcast show 7-3 .

James Cridland 1:36:47

Yes , indeed yes , it was fun last week to wander around the podcast show relatively early on the first day and say how did you find the podcast show ? And everybody lying . So that was fun , I guess , because they'd only been in there for an hour . It wasn't as if anybody knew how the show was going to be , but actually such a positive vibe coming from that . So , yes , thank you , bruce , it was fun to do . And also another row of ducks from you .

James Cridland 1:37:16

I enjoy podcasts and podcasting because it's like talking with your group at work . You know the ones that enjoy the same things . I really like you two and the podcast . Great episode . Thanks , 73s . Well , thank you , bruce . That's very good of you . Silas on Linux Now , he was in our audience last week and we got him to read out some of his grumpy . We didn't because he wouldn't . Well , yes , he didn't and he wouldn't in the end of it . But yes , and he then said thanks to the audio gods for destroying the tape . Now no one is going to hear how much of a failure I was . You know you come to a recording of a podcast . What do you expect ? So many people on LinkedIn have said oh , yeah , and we really enjoyed going to the live recording of the Bond News Weekly Review which was quite a thing , it was quite fun .

James Cridland 1:38:07

Yeah , it's a shame . It's a shame that the audio didn't work and Matt Cundall sent us a boost actually at the event , watching us , watching you live now in London . Great job , there you go 5,150 sats . Thank you , matt . Had we noticed , we would have given you a shout out from the stage , but I hadn't actually noticed . But , matt , thank you . Yes , it was a great . It was a great , great fun to do all of that . Also great to meet Elias Strand , who is our newest supporter , one of the noteworthy 19 , with loads of other people on there , including who else was there as we were recording . Matt Medeiros wasn't Dave . Jackson wasn't Dave . You should come over to the Great British Podcast Show . Rocky Thomas was there , wasn't she ? So that was fun to see .

Sam Sethi 1:39:06

Rocky Clairway Brown was there .

James Cridland 1:39:08

Clairway Brown was there , and plenty of other people that we should be thanking as well , including Star Tempest , brian Entsminger and David John Clark . If you would like to join and become our 20th supporter , then that would be a wonderful thing . Weeklypodnewsnet is where to go , and Sam can pay off some of the bar bill with that Weeklypodnewsnet .

Sam Sethi 1:39:33

Not really . No , it might take a whole year for that to happen .

James Cridland 1:39:36

Well , yes , so there we go , but yes , so that would be

Sam and James's week

James Cridland 1:39:42

a wonderful thing . So what else has happened for you this week , sam Well ?

Sam Sethi 1:39:45

apart from recovering from the podcast show , I decided to walk 25 kilometres of the Thames again . So we went from Goring to Cullum . We passed George Michael's millhouse in Goring , agatha Christie's graveyard at Chelsea and George Orwell's grave at Cullum . I didn't really know this . His real name was Eric Arthur Blair . Oh yes . Well , there you go . Pop quiz or pub quiz here you go . And we ended up drinking and you'll be glad it wasn't wine , james , it was a dark stout in a 13th century pub in Cullum . It's called the Barley Moe .

James Cridland 1:40:21

Ah , very good .

Sam Sethi 1:40:23

So that was part of what I did to recover . I'm not here next week , hooray , says somebody else , not me . I will miss it , but I'm off cycling in France and Switzerland , I'm going to Strasbourg and Basel and I'm wine tasting all the way around .

James Cridland 1:40:40

So , yes , oh , very nice too . Basel is a fun place to go , if only because if you know where to go , then you can actually walk around a flagpole and you can walk into three countries in less than 10 seconds , I seem to remember . It's a bit of a lie , because the flagpole isn't actually quite where the three countries coexist , but that would be in the middle of the river that you're next to , so that will be quite hard , but um yeah it's a fun thing to do .

James Cridland 1:41:09

Now you did . You did say that you have an app coming out for true fans . Yes , How's that ? How's that ?

Sam Sethi 1:41:15

going then it's getting one step closer , god . It feels like slow , um , but we are trying to get there as fast as we can . We are submitting the first version , uh , hopefully today or tomorrow . Um and uh , again , the wwc is coming up , so they've announced a new solarium ui design that's going to be for all apps . So I don't know where we sit between whether we'll get it approved before that or after . I don't know what's going on so that's what ?

Sam Sethi 1:41:44

apple , yes , apple that's the apple solarium , their new ui design um , and they've changed the name . There was no ios 20 , james , do you know this ?

James Cridland 1:41:55

well , yes , so they say that they are moving , uh , the names of ios to the year , which is the dumbest , stupidest thing that they could possibly do , but apparently they're doing that , so that's going to be exciting , isn't it ?

Sam Sethi 1:42:09

Yes , so again , we are submitting Now . This first version is 0.01 . It's a totally stripped back version . It's bare roots , right . So it's podcast page search , episode page , user settings . It doesn't have things like charts , super fans , any of that feature or function . We'll build those over the coming weeks , but we haven't got those in as we speak . So , yeah , that's where we are , but we just need to get that going really .

James Cridland 1:42:36

Very good . Well , I'm looking forward to at least two months of Sam in this bit of this podcast moaning about the Apple and indeed the Google Play review process and how dreadful it all is and how unfair everything is .

Sam Sethi 1:42:54

Yes , the other thing . I'm hoping , and it looks like it's happening . It came out yesterday . We talked about the US case where Apple's getting fined for the Epic court case . So they're opening up in the US where you can put a link out of your app to a website . Well , the EU has just fined them again , or has given them notice that they will fine them again in the next 30 days unless they comply in the next 30 days , unless they comply . So they're under a time limit to actually open up in the same way now the App Store with external links to a website for payments .

James Cridland 1:43:31

Well , there you go , watch this space , as they say , but that should all be fun . In two weeks' time , because you are not here next week , in two weeks' time , we will be talking all about L402 Secure RSS . You'll be talking to Oscar Mary as well , who is doing something similar , and so that should be definitely something to look forward to . If you want to go diving deep into all of this tech which should be good , and , I should say , if you want to co-host this show next week , then you've got until Sunday to email us weeklypodnewsnet .

Sam Sethi 1:44:10

No weekly and podnewsnet .

James Cridland 1:44:13

If you want to co-host this show next week . Otherwise I'll have a think about how we do it and what we do . We only need do 50 shows a year , sam .

Sam Sethi 1:44:25

Oh right .

James Cridland 1:44:26

I am thinking to myself maybe we have a week off next week . No , because we only need do 50 shows a week a year . Anyway , we'll see how all of that works .

Sam Sethi 1:44:39

Okay . So what's happened for you , James , since you got back from the London podcast show ?

James Cridland 1:44:43

Well , yes , so obviously made my way all the way back . Now here's a customer support story . On my way back I was still in economy , although in premium economy . I used some of my points to go back on the long flight back home and I was woken up after 14 hours of flight . I was woken up by one of the flight attendants coming to me with a flat white , which is the coffee that I order from the business section . Because you don't get flat white if you're an economy . You just get whatever it is that comes out of that urn . So they came to me with a flat white and a Qantas key ring and a little card saying I hope you've enjoyed your flight with likes is flat white . That's a pretty impressive thing . So it just goes to show just those little things you know are quite smart . Prior to going all the way back home , I actually went up to Wellin in Hertfordshire to see a friend of mine , which was very good fun .

Sam Sethi 1:46:04

Is it still called Garden City ? Is it Welling Garden City ? It's now been shortened to Welling .

James Cridland 1:46:08

No , I think there's Welling Garden City . I went up to Welling North , which is , I believe , a different place , but yes , we went to the local pub and the local pub was this sort of farm , you know , in a farmyard , and I was expecting Jeremy Clarkson to appear any minute now and , you know , with some sheep or something , but it was . It was all very , very country . So it was all , it was all nice . So , yes , that was a nice ending to a week in London and a week running around and doing and doing things . So , yes , that was a very enjoyable thing . And for the last three or four days I've been waking up at three o'clock in the morning , brilliant . I'm looking forward to everything going back to normal . My next flight apart from a holiday in Darwin , my next flight is um August to podcast movement in Dallas . So , um , we'll see if , uh , we'll see what happens uh , closer to that point .

Sam Sethi 1:47:14

I think so time for you to get in that swimming pool and do your lengths .

James Cridland 1:47:18

Great , uh , yes , except of course it's winter here . So no , there'll be no swimming pool . Yes , I'm in my gym wear today because Thursdays is gym day , but I'm quite chilly now , so I think I should probably work out . I mean , it's only 18 Celsius , so I think I should work out some way .

Sam Sethi 1:47:41

It's warmer than where we are I know .

James Cridland 1:47:43

So yeah , but unfortunately our houses are made out of sticks here , so 18 Celsius outside is 18 Celsius inside , but yeah . So what I need to properly do is to , yes , get some workout quite what I should be wearing after gym day . I've not done any of this gym stuff . I don't really understand what I'm doing . Anyway , that's it for this week . All of our podcast stories , of course , taken from the Pod News daily newsletter at podnewsnet .

Sam Sethi 1:48:12

You can support this show by streaming sats . You can give us feedback using the Buzzsprout fan mail link in our show notes . You can send us a super comment or become a power supporter , like the naughty but nice 19 . I don't know if that's the expression , I think . What do we call them ?

James Cridland 1:48:27

they're not naughty , but nice , we call them the . The noteworthy 19 is , I think , what we called them .

Sam Sethi 1:48:33

But yes , that's right . I don't know why I've put naughty but nice . I think it sounds better .

James Cridland 1:48:37

Anyway , uh , at weeklypodnewsnet 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 .

Sam Sethi 1:48:54

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