Janice Min: 0:00

The Pod News Weekly Review uses chapters, so you can skip the story coming up later about Australia, because who cares about that?

Jingle: 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: 0:15

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

Neal Mohan: 0:20

Having those podcasts hosted on YouTube and having the algorithm find new audiences for you every single day turns out to be really, really powerful, no matter how big of a podcaster you are.

James Cridland: 0:30

YouTube's Neil Mohan on podcasting on the platform Plus. The download is dead and Australia is better than you. This podcast is sponsored by Buzzsprout with the tools, support and community to ensure you keep podcasting, start podcasting, start podcasting, keep podcasting with buzzsproutcom From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly Review.

Sam Sethi: 0:52

Right, james. Look, shock horror this week, james. Yes, the man that runs a video platform says people don't want to just listen. Yes, they want to watch. I wonder why he'd say that who would have thought that?

James Cridland: 1:08

no, who would have thunk it hey zut.

Sam Sethi: 1:10

Alors, as the french say, um youtube ceo. Neil moham was over in can talking to janice min. It was about the platform. Um what did you think?

James Cridland: 1:22

Well, yes, it was a 45-minute or so invite-only meeting. Apparently Did you get yours? I did, funnily enough, but this was the day before. Neil Mohan then went on stage and said more stuff, and I believe he went on stage and was talking about AI and was talking about how they're going to be implementing AI into shorts and all that kind of stuff which I don't, I'm not particularly interested in, but from the point of view of podcasting, it was quite interesting. So Janice Min, if you don't know, is the CEO and editor-in-chief of the Ankler, which is a bridge. You have to be very careful how you say that, very careful how you say that. And this is three minutes of Neil Mohan from where that quote came from, talking about podcasting on YouTube. Let's take a listen.

Neal Mohan: 2:15

Podcasts on YouTube are really like a perfect example of what feels like an overnight success. But it was many years in the making, making really, and we first started to notice podcasts and back then really audio podcasts like as a thing on YouTube, frankly, without us doing anything like no product innovation, so just in spite of ourselves, before COVID, and so that long ago, and we made kind of two or three sort of key bets around podcasts. One was and COVID accelerated this was that people actually don't want to just listen to podcasts, they want to watch podcasts, they want to watch this conversation happening. By the way, is this going to go on YouTube? I hope so there's a camera.

Neal Mohan: 3:01

So, like watching that in some sense, it's sort of like back to the future, right, like in some sense the old news uh interview shows that used to happen Right, and so people really want to watch.

Neal Mohan: 3:12

So video was a really big bet that turned out to be true.

Neal Mohan: 3:16

The other was that podcasting from a podcaster's perspective is not just about sort of reliability of the audience and of course we have that with subscribers and channel subscribers and making sure that the audience always keeps showing up but just as important, if not more important, around the discoverability. You want to keep growing that audience every single day, and so having those podcasts hosted on YouTube and having the algorithm find new audiences for you every single day turns out to be really, really powerful, no matter how big of a podcaster you are. And then the third piece is just like we were talking about earlier is really around monetization. Podcast content is amazing for brands, and so can we find a way to innovate there? How do we get past sort of like the generic table reads to a much more dynamic ad model that really works with brands and brings their creativity to the table. So that's a big bet for me. And so those are the three areas in terms of how I think about the success of podcasts on YouTube.

Janice Min: 4:18

But, Neil, I want to point out that YouTube is bringing a different audience to podcasts. I have the podcast charts and YouTube started to do podcast charts, so this is so interesting to me. On the top podcasts by platform. So the week this was done, number one on Apple good hang with Amy Poehler. Spotify Joe Rogan, YouTube Joe Rogan. But after that it all becomes completely different and there are things I hadn't heard of different and there are things I hadn't heard of. Kill Tony is your number two for you Rotten Mango, which is true crime, and so how do you account for that difference in and so on, and how do you account for that difference of what podcasts are hitting on YouTube versus the other platforms?

Neal Mohan: 4:57

Just, my view is, all of those podcasts, all of those podcast genres, talent et cetera should have a home on YouTube, like my job is to make it so that they're all successful. There's enough of an audience there that all of those podcasters can ultimately be successful. I think the main differentiator is, you know, we're a video first platform, right? So podcasters that really sort of lean into that and what I mean by that is not, you know, highly produced news show style production, but recognizing that having sort of like a familiar look and feel for your audience and finding a way to act you know, so much of communication is nonverbal, right. So really really capturing that those are the podcasts that tend to be successful in our platform.

Neal Mohan: 5:44

So Stephanie, stephanie Sue of Rotten Mango is a good example, right. So she had a podcast. Then she bet on video. She put up her podcast on her YouTube channel and grew her subs by 2 million in a little over a year because of that bet, and it turns out that genre like true crime with video, works really successfully on our platform.

James Cridland: 6:09

Wow. So what do you reckon to all of that, Sam? I heard him talking about a new ad monetization model in the middle of that.

Sam Sethi: 6:19

Yeah, look, at the end of the day they are, as you said, a video first platform and if video first is what you want to do, then please crack on. It's like saying, when TV came along, radio would die. We've seen this analogy before. Right, radio exists, tv exists, podcasting will exist, video podcasting will exist. Never the twain, shall we.

Sam Sethi: 6:46

There is a massive crossover for high-end production companies because over time, I think if we were doing it, let's say you and I, the extra editing that we would have to do through video editing would just, you know, I think, suck the life out of you. James. I think you know it's hard enough when you're trying to put out a podcast, james. I think you know it's hard enough when you're trying to put out a podcast, let alone a video podcast, because of all of the cuts and the lip syncs and everything else. And I know the tools are getting better, but I don't think it justifies the additional time and effort. But you know, yes, true crime, new shows the news agents are and the rest is politics two shows I listen and sometimes watch, but I don't really watch, I don't see the value.

James Cridland: 7:30

But good luck to those people that are doing it, having a podcast, and then she bet on video, as if they are two totally different things. But then arguing that podcasts exist on YouTube, um, I mean, I think he should possibly make his mind up is a podcast on YouTube still a podcast or is it a piece of TV? And if it's a piece of TV, well, fine that, that, that's absolutely fine. I don't. I don't have a problem with people making pieces of TV. So you know, and you know, just from that point of view, that must have been a YouTube, you know, filmed for YouTube, and you can tell, because quite a lot of that was off mic, because you know you wouldn't necessarily have mic'd that up for a podcast. You can hear the full interview on the Ankler podcast, by the way, and I think that that probably says everything that if you're making a video show, you don't necessarily, you can't necessarily put audio front and centre. You've got to make audio and video front and centre as well.

James Cridland: 8:40

The other thing that I'm surprised at is that the CEO and editor-in-chief, janice Min, doesn't understand the differences between the podcast charts. Obviously, the Apple chart is going to show very different shows, because the Apple chart is a trending chart, whereas the YouTube chart is a chart based on watch time, so the longest piece of video wins. So obviously they're going to be different, janice, because that's how it works. But yeah, there's 45 minutes more of that which I'm not going to listen to because I think my blood would boil.

Sam Sethi: 9:17

But he was talking about. You said, new forms of advertising as well. What did you think he meant?

James Cridland: 9:22

Yes, and he sort of decries the table, read as he called it, and said you know, we can do better than that. We can do dynamic. You know stuff, but I'm not quite sure what he means. He said how do we get?

Sam Sethi: 9:41

Is it going to be like TV break ad ad section back to the TV.

James Cridland: 9:46

I mean it could be, couldn't it? I mean that's how I mean you could do that on a YouTube video anyway if you wanted to. You know quite a lot of YouTube videos break for for commercials if you don't pay to get rid of them. But yeah, I mean his actual words there rid of them. But yeah, I mean his actual words there. How do we get past the generic table reads to a much more dynamic ad model that really works with brands and brings their creativity to the table. I think you'll find that that's exactly how YouTubers are already monetizing their content and that's doing sponsorships and sitting down and working with some of the brands. So I'm not quite sure what he means other than dynamic ad model. What does dynamic ad model mean? Does it mean, yeah, I don't know.

Sam Sethi: 10:34

I mean, this is where my brain's just gone to TV commercials, right, literally. Will they stop the podcast? Have a break. Will they stop the podcast? Have a break. Show you a visual ad rather than a host read ad or a textual based table, and then move back to the podcast after.

James Cridland: 10:56

I think that's where he is thinking of going. Yeah, who knows? It's really interesting, really interesting to hear. That was obviously a tiny amount of the full chat which you can hear full on the Ankler podcast, and obviously podcasting is a tiny part of YouTube and I think that's one of the things that worries me about podcasting on YouTube is that it is a tiny little part of YouTube. Um, and they have no interest or care whether podcasting succeeds or fails on the on the platform. Why should they? They didn't care about it actually starting, Um, so you know what I mean.

James Cridland: 11:36

So I'm, I'm, I'm kind of there thinking, you know, well, great, if podcasting is a success on YouTube, well, fantastic, um for YouTube, but if it's not a success, well, they don't care much. So, yeah, it's content. It's content to sell ads. It is indeed it's content to sell ads and at the end of the day, they've got plenty of other people making cheap TV for them, and that's not to decry what YouTubers are doing. There's some YouTube shows that I watch which are really really good, but clearly made on an iPhone, but that's absolutely fine. So, you know, but that's a different bit of content than podcasting. So, anyway, well, there we are.

Sam Sethi: 12:20

I would say one thing, okay, just to balance it up. We've talked in the past about parasocial relationships. This is where the listener knows more about the host through the osmosis of listening over time to an episode or episodes, and so they will know that you live in Australia, james, I live in Marlow, we do X, y or Z, so the listeners know more about us than we perceive. And that parasocial relationship, I guess goes one stage further when you add video. I think Neil mentioned it. You know a lot of communication is non-verbal and so video adds a non-verbal interface where, again, that parasocial relationship I guess could be seen as a stronger relationship. So there is that element, because why would you tune in to watch um rory, uh, uh stewart and um, the rest is politics? Yeah, just to see two talking heads.

James Cridland: 13:26

No, I agree, I agree, yeah, absolutely. And you know, I mean Neil is right in saying well, you know, you do get to see people's facial expressions and that sort of thing, and yes, you do. But yes, it is a parasocial thing. It's why webcams existed on radio station websites all those years ago, because people just want to be closer to the voices that they hear. So, yeah, so I guess there is that kind of side to it.

Sam Sethi: 13:59

And to prove Neil right, there is a new podcast launching with Zoe Ball and Joe Wiley. Persephoneca are launching it in. It's going to be a twice weekly show, they say, which will be fully visualised on YouTube. I love that expression. I was like, oh, fully visualised.

James Cridland: 14:15

It's a very British phrase, that visualisation. It comes from the BBC where they were doing visualised radio in 2005. And so Zoe Ball in case you don't know, zoe Ball and Joe Wiley, two of the biggest radio DJs in the UK. They both worked for a long time on BBC Radio 2, which is the most listened to radio station in Europe, and so they're doing a lifestyle show with Persephonica, starting in the middle of July there's no name for it yet and I'm imagining twice weekly they'll be copying the Restiz plan of having a full episode followed by Q&A, because that's the easiest way to make a twice weekly show, because you can record all of that at the same time, but, yes, being fully visualised on YouTube. I thought it was interesting that they would come out with that from the get go, but obviously, from Persephoneca's point of view, they need to go out and sell the ads that go around. That I guess.

Sam Sethi: 15:19

Now, Australia, where you reside, is better than the UK. I have here as a title how come, I don't know. Well, sometimes I do. I think the weather might be better, but do tell.

James Cridland: 15:31

Yes, absolutely correct. Yes, well better than the UK in terms of podcast listening. It turns out. The Infinite Dial Australia 2025 came out yesterday. Edison Research and CRA Came out yesterday. Edison Research and CRA and podcasting now mainstream media in Australia, in the UK it's 51% of the British population listens to… it's always 51% James …listens to a podcast every month. 51% yes.

Neal Mohan: 16:00

Yes, 48, 52.

James Cridland: 16:02

Yes, yes, too soon. Whereas here in Australia it's 52%. Yay, we've beaten the old country and we're approaching the US, which is 55%. Really good to see the infinite dial. We only have the top level results so far, so we don't have all of the detail quite yet, but some good numbers coming out of that. There was another number, which I'm just going to remind myself of by opening another window, which is the top audio sources in cars.

James Cridland: 16:33

The Infinite Dial asked do you use the following in cars? 84% say that they listen to the radio in the car. 36% say they listen to podcasts in a car, with 50% listening to music via streaming apps 36%. So that's a third, over a third of people consuming podcasts in cars, which is pretty good. Hello to you if you're driving. So, yeah, I just thought. Interesting data from the Infinite Dial.

James Cridland: 17:05

Also, by the way, interesting data from the Digital News Report, which has we'll talk about it in a global fashion in just a second, but the Australian version of that came out. It's put together by the University of Canberra. Down here they have a chapter on podcasting and there's a couple of very interesting stats in there. One of those stats is that, well, 9% of Australians say they use podcasts for news in the past week. That probably tells you that there are many other places of getting news, but the number that I thought was very interesting 59% of Australians are willing to pay for news podcasts 59%. So here we are. You know, sam, one day we will talk about payment of podcasts.

James Cridland: 18:01

We will one day. We also talked to Oscar, I believe from Fountain, but 59% of podcast listeners news podcast listeners are willing to pay for them in some way, shape or form, which I thought was really interesting. It's the highest number in the world the US is at 46%, but even that is still really high. So, yeah, I thought that was interesting really high.

Sam Sethi: 18:27

So, yeah, I thought that was interesting.

Sam Sethi: 18:28

I think it goes back to I think it's a trend, I think when we look back over 2025, I think we'll see more and more quality content going behind paywalls, more and more people willing to pay. We've got trained through, I don't know, Netflix through Prime, through Apple TV, of paying for content and I think people are saying, okay, going back to that point about video, it's not quick, it's not easy, it is expensive if you do it right and no one wants to throw that out the front door for free. Or if they are throwing out the front door, they want to ensure they've got a strong ad monetization behind it to continue doing it. Otherwise, you're just going to have pod fade or what would be the equivalent video fade. I don't know what would that be, but I think you know it's great to see that trend being, I suppose, validated Right, which is something that was in my gut that that's where the trend is going and it's good to see that now there's some validation in the data as well. But that's the way it's going as well.

James Cridland: 19:31

No, it's good to end up seeing that there's one other piece of data here from Australia, which was the Australian Podcast Ranker, which has come out. Average weekly listenership is the highest ever. It's the same number as in March, but the highest ever, which is 7 million. And if you ever hear people saying that you can't launch a new show in this day and age, then they're wrong, Because Mushroom Case Daily from the ABC, although it's actually been going for a year, it hit number five last month, up from 180 something or other, with more than 3.3 million downloads in the month it's covering.

James Cridland: 20:14

There's a case going on at the moment which, because for rather complicated technical reasons, this podcast is an Australian podcast I have to be very careful what I say, but it's a continuing case of somebody called Erin Patterson who says she's innocent of killing family members with poisonous mushrooms and that's all that I can really say on that. But Mushroom Case Daily is really interesting and that's a real hit all of a sudden because the court case has actually started and is going on. So, yeah, so I just thought you know, interesting seeing a successful show coming from essentially nowhere. Yes, it's got a bit of promotion on the telly and on the radio, and that, by the way, is audio only you mentioned the Digital News Report.

Sam Sethi: 21:00

They've got some other data as well. What have they said?

James Cridland: 21:03

Yes, so the Digital News Report is actually a piece of global work, global with a small g. It's from the Reuters Institute. One part of the data looks at the changing landscape for news podcasts. It's all about news, you know, obviously, and there's a particular segment which looks specifically at the US, UK and Norway, for some reason which I've not yet fully understood. But in terms of what it says, in the US, the data suggests that YouTube is the main access point for news podcasts in the US. In the country, 15% say that they access a news podcast weekly. But the really interesting numbers were Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson. Joe Rogan reached in the week after the inauguration. Just that week, Joe Rogan reached 22%, so that's over one in five of everybody in the US, according to their sample at least, which is massive, isn't it? I mean that is a massive, massive podcast, or is it a massive, massive YouTube video? Discuss Receipt earlier. Yes, indeed, so that was interesting, but also interesting what's going on in your neck of the woods in the UK, Although the percentage of weekly news podcast listeners in the UK is half that of the US.

James Cridland: 22:28

Interestingly, the BBC, which has been going for over 100 years and is the place where you go to find news in the UK. They are at number four and number five in terms of podcasting. Americast is at number four, Newscast is at number five. Those should surely be the other way around, you would argue. But there are three independent shows at the top Goldhangers. The rest is politics number one, Globals, the news agents I know you're a big fan at number two and Politics Joe at number three. They are all all, by the way, available in video as well as in audio, which I think says quite a lot. Um, but uh, I find it fascinating that the BBC is underperforming so badly when it comes to UK podcasting. Um, overseas it's a little bit more different, but in the UK, yeah, really interesting.

Sam Sethi: 23:22

I think the BBC has got a massive problem in its balanced broadcasting that it has to do right. I think it can't make opinion and I think it sits on the fence too often, whereas the podcast shows like, the rest is politics, and news agents can take a stance, they can take a position. You might not agree with it, but they can be much more un unbiased in this, or maybe should I say more biased in their positioning. Yes, yes, less less unbiased, more biased in their positioning, but I think you know again, one of the other things is you and I, when we were growing up, there would have been the david dimplebees of the day. There would have been um other shows that were weekend shows, that were interview-based on politics. You hardly see those anymore and yet you know the news agents are knocking one out every day, maybe two a day, you know, depending on the news cycle.

Sam Sethi: 24:15

The BBC can't cope with that. They can't compete with that and I just don't think that mainstream media, even in the USA, can. I just saw Tucker Carlson interviewed Ted Cruz Great interview. I don't think you would have seen that on any mainstream media. Fox would have made him go right, cnn would have made him go left and he actually took a really strong position against Ted Cruz and it made it a really good interview. How many people live?

Tucker and Ted: 24:42

around. By the way, I don't know the population At all. No, I don't know the population. You don't know the population of the country you seek to topple. How many people live around? 92 million. Okay, how could you not know that? I don't sit around memorizing population tables? Well, it's kind of relevant because you're calling for the overthrow of the government. Why is it relevant? Whether it's 90 million or 80 million, or 100 million.

Neal Mohan: 25:09

Why is that relevant?

Tucker and Ted: 25:09

Because, if you, don't know anything about the country. I didn't say I don't know anything about the country. Okay, what's the ethnic mix of Iran? They are Persians and predominantly Shia.

Neal Mohan: 25:20

Okay, this is Iran. So okay, I am not the Tucker Carlson expert on Iran. You're a senator who's calling for the overthrow of the government. You're the one who claims.

Tucker and Ted: 25:29

You don't know anything about the country. No, you don't know anything about the country. You're the one who claims they're not trying to murder Donald Trump.

Neal Mohan: 25:35

No, I'm not saying that You're the one who can't figure out if it was a good idea to kill General Soleimani, and it doesn't mean they're trying to murder Trump.

Tucker and Ted: 25:41

Yes, I do. It says you're not calling for military strikes against them in retaliation.

Neal Mohan: 25:45

If you really believe that we're carrying out military strikes.

Sam Sethi: 25:47

today you said Israel was Right With our help, and so I think mainstream media's got a big problem and I think we've said in the past, youtube could be the new TV, as in everyone has a channel.

James Cridland: 26:02

Well heavens, what does that mean, I wonder? We should wait and see. Newscast is a great listen from the BBC, but I think it's still a bit BBC when you're listening to it. It's a very relaxed listen and blah, blah, blah. It suffers from the tyranny of video in that it's filmed now for the TV, it's visualised, I should say, for the TV. So yeah, it'd be interesting. There is definitely a paper from somebody on why the BBC has failed so badly in terms of news podcasting in the UK, and I would love to, I'd love to find find somebody to put that together at least one day. But still. But there we are, and I know that quite senior people at the BBC do tune into this very podcast. So so, who knows, we might, we might even get them on. That would be nice.

Sam Sethi: 27:05

Yes, could they be unbiased in their opinion of the BBC?

James Cridland: 27:10

No, of course they can't Right. Let's move on and talk downloads.

Sam Sethi: 27:14

Yes, is the download finally dead, james? Using downloads for measurement is a business liability, says Bumper. What do they mean?

James Cridland: 27:24

Yeah, I think they are bang on the money here. So they say that downloads are decreasing for many podcasts, which is correct they are. They're going down, but downloads are largely disconnected from actual podcast consumption. So Bumper says and again, that's absolutely correct Two things that have happened over the last couple of years which has really proved what Bumper is saying.

James Cridland: 27:46

One of them is you remember the big Apple iOS 17 automatic podcast download thing in mid 2023, which wiped millions of dollars off the balance sheets of podcasters? That was an incredible risk for podcasters. But there's, of course, another one going on right now, which is all of a sudden, podcasters are seeing far less downloads from Spotify Because, of course, if you upload video to Spotify, it wipes your RSS audio. So, all of a sudden, actually lots of people are seeing far fewer podcast downloads because of YouTube and because of Spotify video. So I think they're absolutely right in saying that downloads are decreasing. We need a better you know, a better way of measuring how podcasts work. Of course, they're recommending the bumper dashboard, which is very good, but, yeah, I think they are absolutely right. The longer that we stick with downloads, which is an inherently messy number, then the more the liability is going to be, I think. What do you think?

Sam Sethi: 29:02

Yeah, look, it's first-party data. I think we've put this one through the ringer several times. It's listen time, percent completed, value paid. Right, and value paid may not be the one that anyone uses today, but I think it will be in the future, but listen time or watch time are certainly the metrics that I think people should be now looking at.

Sam Sethi: 29:23

The problem comes back to, as certainly the metrics that I think people should be now looking at, the problem comes back to, as we've said on numerous occasions, that that data isn't available to hosts. So hosts are reliant on downloads as their analytics dashboard, and so they're promoting that still as a metric. If they could get first party data, then I assume that they would deprecate the download, but they can't right, so and we know that John Spurlock's put forward a proposal there are many other ways of doing it. So I think you know, right now, the big behemoths Apple, spotify and YouTube have first party data. They have volumes of it. I'm pretty sure they're sharing that with advertisers directly, which is, you know, again, one of their competitive advantages that they have right now.

James Cridland: 30:08

Yeah, indeed, I find it really, really interesting, and you know, one of the things that I'm sort of slightly nervous about in terms of the industry's requirements for data is, firstly, looking at downloads, is firstly looking at downloads and secondly and I know that we've just been talking about it the amount of people who listen to podcasts, because that's a 51 or 53% number. It's a lovely number, but that number is going to plateau soon, and what we want is we want a number that we can still see going up, and it's not going to be reach total people, because that is inevitably going to slow down and stop. What we need to be focusing on is time spent listening. First and foremost, what's the overall time spent listening of podcasts? And I'm really interested in seeing whether there's any data out there which has been measuring that over the last 10, 15 years or so, because wouldn't that be great if you could actually see that hopefully going up? Maybe it's not going up, in which case that would be a slight concern, wouldn't it?

Sam Sethi: 31:18

But yeah, I think every report that we you know you just mentioned the rankers and you mentioned all of the infinite dials everything seems to be going in the right direction. Well, look, I say it may not be factually correct, but I say podcasting is a new radio and YouTube is a new TV. I mean, it doesn't mean that I think radio is gone. I just think radio distribution can be done through live podcasting mechanisms like Lit, and I think we'll see more of that, because I think DAB and FM is becoming much more expensive and we're seeing I think we've talked about this, you know radio stations in the US, the UK and Western Europe certainly are, you know, merging the local radio station into the national one, for cost-saving purposes more than anything else, but also for advertising reach.

Sam Sethi: 32:08

And so as those local radio stations become extinct I guess is the best way of putting it they will repopulate, I think personally, in a web-based format and then they will distribute over digital mechanisms rather than the traditional transmitters. And so I think what we are seeing is a shift in change in people's listening behaviors. We're going much more to getting our news from we just said it from podcasts or from video. We're getting our information, our sports, from those. I think the traditional radio and TV transmitter networks are going to be suffering. I wonder whether there's data around that You're the radio man. Is radio seeing a decline in the listenership?

James Cridland: 32:57

I mean radio. Interestingly, radio really isn't. I mean, the figures came out again from Australian commercial radio this week and guess what? More people listening to commercial radio than ever before in Australia. That may be because there are more people in Australia than ever before, which is probably the reason, but I think I mean interestingly, and this again makes the point very well the number of people listening to the radio is not actually going down particularly fast. It really isn't. The number of people is staying relatively still, but the time spent listening is going down and is falling off a cliff for many people, particularly younger audiences. So it's the time spent listening again comes back to that rather than overall.

James Cridland: 33:46

People is fine, but actually you sell advertising based on time spent listening. Because you sell advertising based on we've got nine minutes or 12 minutes of ads an hour and that's how you earn your money. And podcasting, frankly, is not too different. And so, therefore, time spent listening turns into money, and that's where radio is having trouble. And, frankly, where broadcast TV is also having trouble is that people are still watching it, but they're watching it far, far less than they ever used to. So, yeah, I think it is all fascinating in terms of where the future is going, but I do think that we should stop looking at total amounts of people. We've proved the point now. It's mainstream, it's over 50%. Let's move on and start talking about time spent, because that's the important thing that really matters.

Sam Sethi: 34:39

Let's whiz around the world. James Over to the Nordics, Weirdly. I know that the Digital Report included Norway, First time ever that I've seen something like that. But let's go back to the Nordics. They saw a record high amount of household spending on audio. So this is money spent on audio media.

James Cridland: 34:58

Yes, and it's grown 20% year on year. It's the average monthly spend on music, audiobooks and podcasts, and it's up to 172, which is about $18 per household. Now, that's an average, obviously, in terms of monthly. There are plenty of households who aren't spending anything. There are plenty of households who, like this household, are spending rather more than that on audio. But, yeah, $18 per household. But I think the point there is it's grown 20% year on year and it's something that you know. Assuming that there's nothing particularly weird about people in Sweden and I've been there there isn't really. That should be the same in quite a lot of other countries as well.

Sam Sethi: 35:44

Yeah, Again, I think we've hinted at it in the past ourselves that, you know, quality content is moving behind paywalls. We've said that already. But also, I think people are beginning to say well, this is Spotify's you know overall strategy. If you look at it, you know. If you look at it, you know we're going to have music, audio books, concert tickets, podcasts, subscriber based podcasts, and I think that is the only way actually, I think Spotify will get out of the hole that they're building or digging themselves into. There was a report we talked about a few months ago which said that the price elasticity that Spotify has is about five more dollars. So if they increase the price of their premium subscription by around $5, I think it was some crazy high number about 60% of people would stop subscribing to Spotify, and so if they know that and I'm sure they do then they're going.

Sam Sethi: 36:44

Well, how can we? It's called bill shock. The BT, british Telecom, used to use that term. Quite often.

Sam Sethi: 36:52

They would break up your bill into multiple smaller chunks so that you didn't feel that it was one big number that you got hit with, and I think bill shock is what Spotify is trying to avoid, which is oh my God, my bill is now $30 a month, or $35 a month for my subscription.

Sam Sethi: 37:10

Can I break it into smaller components where, oh, I've just bought an audio book, but that's not part of your subscription. Oh, I've just bought this ticket no, not still part of your subscription. It's not the overall bill from Spotify, and I think, if we are seeing households, you know, willing to pay more for digital content, what does this mean for advertising? You're the one who observed this with Mayor Prohovnik which is, if people are paying to subscribe and have no ads and I hardly see ads, by the way then who are the advertisers actually reaching? Are they reaching the people who can't afford or do not wish to have a subscription, and are those people the ones they really want to reach? And therefore it seems like a weird dichotomy I'm paying for not to have ads, but you're paying for your ad to reach people who may not be able to afford your product.

James Cridland: 38:05

Yeah yeah, it is a weird one and, by the way, if you look at Amazon Prime in the US, which has a ad funded option, I think they're all ad funded now, aren't they? Amazon Prime? I think you have to have ads on all of that.

Sam Sethi: 38:19

No, you pay extra to now not get ads have to have ads on all of that.

James Cridland: 38:24

No, you pay extra to now not get ads. Oh, you pay extra to get rid of the ads. Oh well, there you go. So the version with the ads launched with not very many ads at all, and, very quietly, over the last couple of months, they've doubled the amount of ads that are on there, which I think says quite a lot. But yeah, I mean, from my point of view, just seeing the amount of money spent on audio is good. It should be good data for true fans to show that people will spend money in that way, and good data for those of us who ask for money as well. If you're a fan of this show, you should become one of our power supporters. We've got 19 at the moment. Weeklypodnewsnet is where to go, armed with your credit card. The internet's money.

Sam Sethi: 39:09

So we know there's a ceiling to your subscription. We know that the household purses are going to not be infinitely stretched. I mean, okay, if you're super rich, $20 or $30 or $50 makes no difference, but we're looking at the average. So I think there is a point and I've seen the trend with my own children where they will do a pay-as-you-go. So if I watch the behavior of my 20-year-olds, they will subscribe to Netflix for a series and then unsubscribe. They will subscribe to Paramount and then unsubscribe, so that subscribe to Paramount and then unsubscribe, so that what they're doing is they're they're fundamentally trying to build a pay as you watch model rather than a pay, and then when I there's nothing to watch, I'm still paying and my subscriptions rolling over. So they're learning because they have limited funds.

Sam Sethi: 40:00

The best way of doing it is a pay-as-you-go model and I think the way that podcasting 2.0 is trying to build a new monetization model which is streaming based. So I want to stream an episode and I only want to pay for what I consume, which goes back to listen time as well. I think they all conflate together how much did I listen? That's what I'm willing to pay for and that's what I want to actually show as my consumption, as opposed to I pay in advance for everything or I pay for the full episode. I think we're seeing a slight change again, I think because the window or the ceiling sorry, I should say for payments will come to a point where people say I can't afford it anymore, so I'll just pay for what I consume.

James Cridland: 40:49

Yeah, no, indeed, indeed. I find it fascinating and, interestingly, youtube put up their money. We use YouTube for music in this household and they have just put up their bill and it says I think from memory it says $29, which is Australian dollars $29 a month now, but it didn't say how much we were paying. So I had to go back and find out how much we were paying and I thought, well, that's a bit of a cheeky thing anyway, but yeah, but I did look at that and I thought, well, I'm not really going to cancel it because we use it so much. We use both the music thing so much, but also YouTube itself. So, yeah, so it was an interesting one. Anyway, let's move on to the UK. You must be very excited. You're a big fan of the News Agents a big news show from Global. There's another agents show coming from them, isn't there?

Sam Sethi: 41:53

Yeah, but I'm not so excited. The Crime Agents the real stories of a career investigating the criminal underworld and from a life at the top of policing and working at the heart of the security services. The Crime Agents Listen on Global Player or wherever you get your podcasts. Yeah, I won't be subscribing to this one, I'm sad to say, but I also think you know this is the fourth Agents podcast. Yes, it feels like the guys over at Global global have gone. Everything's going to be called something, agent and and the gold hanger guys have gone. Yes, everything's going to be called.

James Cridland: 42:30

The rest is, it feels so is persiphonica going to come up with their moniker for every show um, well, yeah, I, because I'm surprised that persiphonica haven't done that, because it's obvious brand extension stuff to link the news agents, the sports agents, the news agents USA actually the news agents Investigates, which is one that I forgot about and the crime agents all together. I think it's genius. Actually, I think it's a very clever thing to do. Similarly, the rest is, as you so rightly say, I think short term it's very clever.

Sam Sethi: 43:06

I think long term, you will have blindness to the name because you'll be going oh, which one of those agents was it? I can't remember. I know it's an agent show, I can't remember which one. And I think you'll lose the value of the uniqueness of the brand. Um, once you get 20 shows right. Um, one of the things that you know. Uh, you were not shocked I think that's the wrong word but surprised when I said I'm changing pod fans to true fans, and it was because I was listening to Adam Curry and Dave Jones talk about oh, it's on Podfriend, podcast, guru, podverse, Podfans, podthis, oh my God, no, no, no, no, no, because the listeners tuned out. All they heard was Pod, something. They can't remember us from the others, and I thought Fountain just stood out as a you know, oh, and there's Fountain, oh, okay.

James Cridland: 44:07

I'll remember Fountain, because that sounds different to all the others.

Neal Mohan: 44:10

Yes, correct, correct.

James Cridland: 44:12

No, I think that makes uh, I think that makes a bit of sense. I mean, you could have always changed your name to fansley, no, okay. One other thing going on around the world is canada. Um, I I never really fully understand Canada, but Just above North America, 51st state, yes, just so you know. Yes, I'm looking forward to going there. I can't say anything bad about either the US or indeed Canada until You've left September, yes, and then I'll let rip.

James Cridland: 44:43

But there is a moment going on in Canada, so Canadian broadcasting and Canadian music gets a lot of funding from the Canadian government like loads and loads and loads from the federal government in Canada. Podcasting has never got any of that and there is a point now where many of the big Canadian podcasters have gone. You know what? We deserve some of that money, and right now we are a bit concerned that all you'll get on podcast platforms is going to be US stuff, because that's what is really driving that particular market. There's a lot of US content and all of the Canadian content is going to go away.

James Cridland: 45:24

So please could we have some of that money, and I think that they've certainly got an argument. If there is money going into broadcasting and is going into the music industry, I think that there should be money going into the podcast industry. You can argue whether or not there should be money from the government going into those industries, but if there is, then I think that podcasting should certainly exist there as well. So you can read the open letter and if you are a Canadian podcaster, you can even sign that open letter in the story that we covered yesterday in the Pod News newsletter the story that we covered yesterday in the pod news newsletter.

Sam Sethi: 46:09

Well, look, we had Chloe Straw on from UK Audio talking about how she lobbies the UK government for more money, right, and gets a few pennies here or there. That was contrasted when I interviewed her with the Indian government. That put $1 billion, not 1 billion rupees, $1 billion into podcasting. And I think you look at something like Canada, you know it's. It's, yes, predominantly English speaking. I know there'll be a lot of French speaking as well, but predominantly English speaking podcasts. If they don't invest into it, they will get the Americanization of their culture, which I think is one thing that they should worry about. I think they need to invest like they would in film, tv. I mean, I found out this weird, fascinating fact the other day that the cia has a budget for no, the pentagon has a budget for films in the usa. So top gun was paid for mainly by the USA. So Top Gun was paid for mainly by the US Pentagon.

James Cridland: 47:03

Ah, there you go.

Sam Sethi: 47:05

And it's that what it is. It's cultural appropriation, right. What you're seeing there is investment into the mediums that they want that will support their own culture. I think you're going to see Canada lose out if they don't start putting more money into this sector.

James Cridland: 47:24

No, I agree. So you know numbers in that. In that stats are things like Canadian podcasts make up just 43% of listening to podcasts in Canada and that number has stagnated in recent years, and you know. So from that point of view it's you know, it's bad. On the other side you can obviously turn around and say government really has no business in investing in the creative arts at all, does it really? So you know there's definitely a conversation to have. But certainly if they're spending money on lots of other parts of the cultural and creative industries, then podcasting should be part of that. So you can certainly see that.

Sam Sethi: 48:11

Let's whiz on Jobs. James who's?

James Cridland: 48:12

moving and grooving Jobs. Yes, there's lots of movement at Realm, who have appointed Sarah Van Mosel as the newest member of its board of directors, have appointed Sarah Van Mosel as the newest member of its board of directors. She, of course, has been at SiriusXM and they've got some more advisors as well. We were talking about Goldhanger a little bit ago. Goldhanger now has a chief revenue officer. It's never had one of those before. Interestingly, it is someone who joins from Warner Music Group, universal Pictures and his own company called Instrumental. It's a man called Conrad Withy, not a podcast person, but he is joining as chief revenue officer and really sort of pushing that. So that's, that's an interesting thing, pushing that, so that's an interesting thing.

James Cridland: 49:07

Also interesting maybe is Kamal Ahmed, who used to work at the BBC as their economics correspondent, then, after a little quiet time, went to work at the Daily Telegraph, which is a right-leaning newspaper in the UK, newspaper in the UK, where he was director of audio and hosted the Daily Tea, which is their daily show. Anyway, he has lasted in that job for exactly a year and he has now left that position. He's still going to write a column. He's still going to quote land big interviews, going to write a column. He's still going to quote land big interviews, but he's stepping aside in terms of that. So interesting moves and grooves in terms of the job market.

Sam Sethi: 49:51

Now another week passes, you haven't got another award, have you? Or what other awards are?

James Cridland: 49:56

out there. Well, there have been a few. For example, the winners of the 2025 Women Podcasters Awards were announced Really smart. If you want to see a very slickly edited video of a virtual awards ceremony, then you should definitely take a peek at this. You'll find it linked from the Pod News newsletter. You'll find it linked from the Pod News newsletter. The event's coming back in November. I very much enjoyed getting up at half past five in the morning to give out two of the awards, so that was fun. Other awards are the New Zealand Podcast Awards, back for a fifth year, which is being sponsored by Acast, who are giving free advertising to the podcasts that win the Podcast Awards. 2025 Listener's Choice Award is now open for public voting. You could vote for this show if you wanted to, although I'm not entirely convinced that we will get anywhere, but anyway. Last year's winner was Help. I Sexted my Boss from Audio Always, so congratulations to them. But who knows who's going to win this time? Who says sex doesn't sell right? Who says? Who says that exactly? And JAR Audio has announced the winner of its 2025 Emerging Women in Podcasting Pilot Competition.

James Cridland: 51:13

Libby Lybird is her name. She did a stage show about 10 years or so ago called Motherhood, which takes a look at the stigma surrounding single mothers, and she will be doing that in podcast form in the coming months. Jar Audio's chief creative officer, jen Moss, who we should have on. She says that Libby is a proud single mum with a story to tell. What's not to like, indeed. And of course, events coming up Podcast Movement 2025 in August in Dallas. Radio Days Asia in September in Indonesia. Pod Summit YYC in Calgary in Alberta in September. And there is one more as well. It's a Mark Ronick podcast conference. It's called the Empowered Podcasting Conference and that is late September at the Hyatt Centric Hotel in Uptown Charlotte, north Carolina. What's the difference between Uptown and Downtown?

Sam Sethi: 52:20

Downtown's where the main place is. Isn't it Generally where the centre is and uptown is outside? I don't know.

James Cridland: 52:29

Ask.

Sam Sethi: 52:29

Billy Joel. He knows uptown girl, he'll know what it means.

James Cridland: 52:32

Yeah, she's been living in a downtown world Anyway. Yes, so that's happening as well. There are various ways of saving money for that if you are a PodNews newsletter subscriber.

Sam Sethi: 52:45

Now just a couple of stories that I saw on PodNews Daily. That don't sort of fit into a story as such, but I thought they were interesting as something that people might want to go and look at themselves. Local podcasting could be the next big leap for the industry, says Matthew Passy. He was writing, actually, an article for Pod News Daily. What does he mean? That local podcasting could be the next big leap?

James Cridland: 53:11

Well, one of the things he says is your neighbourhood pizza shop isn't sponsoring the daily, but they would support a show with listeners in their delivery zone, which is absolutely right, although I think, arguably, you could say that they could still advertise in the daily thanks to the magic of dynamically inserted audio.

James Cridland: 53:29

But yes, he very much sees, as indeed Adam Curry does, local being a very important community to serve for podcasting. I mean, all of podcasting is community based, all of podcasting is broadcasting to a community, but in this particular case, he sees that local podcasting is certainly something which isn't being properly utilised as yet. Part of that might be the podcast location tag, who knows? But yeah, so it's a good article to read from that, and I think it's notable that he's talking about the podcast location tag, and he is also, I think he's chief evangelist for Lebsyn, isn't he? So it'd be interesting to marry both of those things up. I mean, you've been there, done that and got the t-shirts, haven't you? Both of those things up, I mean, you've been there, done that and got the t-shirts, haven't you?

Sam Sethi: 54:22

Well, been there, done that, failed and got the t-shirt. Yeah, because you know. Yes, when I had River Radio, the goal was for hyperlocal radio. The live item tag didn't exist, so we couldn't do podcast apps as a means of distribution, which is why I go back to saying that I think podcasting is the new radio, because the content is irrelevant of the distribution right. So if I produce content and how I distribute it, whether it's over DAB FM or through the live item tag or an Alexa or web, that's the distribution. People didn't quite get it. I was a bit too early. We're talking five years ago.

Sam Sethi: 55:05

I think it's the right thing to do. I think radio and or local podcasting, whatever you want to call it, is the way that local businesses should reach a hyper-local community and people are looking for it. It poses the trend that we said earlier of national radio stations merging local radio in, and I think that leaves a vacuum for someone to go into it, which is what I think Adam Curry is trying to do now with the Godcaster, but I think others can also do that. I think hyperlocal radio, podcasting, whatever is the best way, and I think if we can get advertising, this is the other thing that you will have more knowledge than I will, James. The cost of producing a quality ad that you could slide in to that local podcast is going to be the issue, because if you're doing a local podcast and you're post-reading it, great, no problem at all. But if you're being asked to produce a voiceovered slickish radio style ad, then the cost of a person, the time to edit etc is just going to be too high. I wished wondercraft had been around when I was doing river radio, because I think we could have done yeah, absolutely, and the ads that way is the answer there?

James Cridland: 56:21

ai help write them. Ai can certainly help record them as well. There's a bunch of different tools out there. One of them is called Spec AI, which you know essentially. You write in the name of the product and you know roughly what it is that you'd like it to say about that particular thing, and it will go off and make an ad for you. So yeah, absolutely. If you can bring the cost of that right down and make that scalable, then that certainly works.

Sam Sethi: 56:56

Now, the other story that was floating around was our friend Justin Jackson, the co-founder of Transistor. He was on a video from the Nathan Barry Show talking about open standards. Did you see it?

James Cridland: 57:08

I haven't had a chance yet using my own personal brand. Justin is a very clever man. He's very, you know, switched on in terms of a lot of things and does a very good interview. It's worth watching the entire thing, but halfway through this he talks about the fact that, for creators and for independent businesses, open standards are the thing that actually makes those businesses work, the fact that we have open standards. We have open standards in terms of video encoding, obviously, we have open standards in terms of RSS feeds. We have open standards in terms of so much of this stuff, and the open standards are the things that make everything work. Um, he says, and I I think he he is absolutely right. So it's a good, um, it's good very long uh interview, uh, which I believe he did in um, uh, in chicago, uh, while podcast movement evolutions was going on, um, so there's a thing, but anyway, it's uh certainly worthwhile having a watch. It came out over the weekend.

Sam Sethi: 58:26

And the last thing I just wanted to get your thoughts really. Friend of the show, russell Harraway, ceo of Pod2, came up with an idea which was do we need a Shazam for podcasting? The background to that is he's building a music app as well, which would then be his way of ensuring that he could then find whether people were illegally using the music content that he was helping distribute. But I actually said to Russell what would be smarter instead of tracking music, because Shazam does that already. So why? Why create? You know, why reinvent the wheel. But um, we talk about discovery now.

Sam Sethi: 59:08

I think six months ago we had this idea of using the transcript to go and say oh, it mentioned James Cridland in that transcript. He was a guest. Okay, tag that as guest guest. Then he was a host on this show. Okay, tag him as host. And now somehow, through some sort of podcast graph, we could see James's collective voice, his hosted shows and his guest shows. Great, if I like James Cridland, I can now click on this list and I can get him on x show or y show.

Sam Sethi: 59:40

That that seemed like a lot of work, certainly a lot of cost and a lot of time to do that, because not everyone can afford to transcribe every episode. So one other idea was and I don't know if it'll ever work was to find a way to fingerprint the voice in the audio. So Buzzsprout, our host and sponsor they allow us to transcribe this show and then they pop up a screen which says here's a sample of the voices we hear in this audio. Can you tell us who they are? Because AI can't quite do that yet. So we then, as humans, can detect that voice quickly, label it with the name and then that's how you get the names and the transcript. But if we could fingerprint that through some AI I don't know if Wondercraft could do that or others like Eleven Labs Could you then be listening to a show and then suddenly I hear I don't know you, james.

Sam Sethi: 1:00:36

Let's say you're on the BBC's media show, and suddenly I go oh, he said something really smart, shazam that. Who was that guest? Oh, that's James Gridland. Oh great, he sounded very intelligent. Wonder what else he does? Click bang and I now get a full list of everything else you do.

James Cridland: 1:00:55

I don't know, that was the thought process. Yeah, it's a good thought process. I've been playing with a podcast app called Metacast which is essentially built to do quite a lot of that, in terms of doing transcripts of everything and then producing summaries of everything and then working out exactly. You know the big, you know the big points that each guest was making and all of that, so you could see that there might be some of that in there as well. I mean, you know, on the other side, I suppose you know, we're always looking at this stuff and going, well, what could we do with technology? But on the other side, well, what could we do if people just did their transcripts properly?

James Cridland: 1:01:40

Because if people did their transcripts properly, then we would already have this kind of information. It's very clear who is talking at one particular time. You know, it's very clear who is talking at one particular time. But yeah, it's an interesting idea, more of which, I'm sure, is to come. The Tech Stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review. Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday in the Pod News newsletter. Here's where Sam talks technology. Oh, I've just talked about Metacast Brilliant you have. Yes, yes.

Sam Sethi: 1:02:12

Well, let's keep talking about them. Yes, I really should get their ceo on this show, but anyway, um, they have come out with private paid feeds as a new feature now. I think this is great. I think, uh, pocketcast does it, um, I'm sure other apps do it as well. It's a way of getting your Patreon or memberful exclusive content into your favourite podcast app. So Metacast have gone and done that. They've taken it a little further. They've also added transcripts, summaries, chapters, bookmarks to private podcasts, just like the ones they do for public. So that seems like a very nice feature.

James Cridland: 1:02:54

Yes, it does look very cool. It does look very smart. He's busy working out, of course, ilya, who runs it, is busy working out, of course, how much he can afford to actually run the AI, of course, because that comes with costs. But, yeah, I've got access to it and it looks quite smart. So, yeah, I think it would be worthwhile having a chat. What I find interesting is that he is not necessarily using very much of the podcasting 2.0 stuff, so he's starting from the other end and seeing what he can build is not necessarily using very much of the podcasting 2.0 stuff, so he's starting from the other end and seeing what he can build. You know essentially, but yeah, you know something that automatically builds chapters and summaries and transcripts and all of that. It's a pretty, pretty smart thing.

Sam Sethi: 1:03:46

But if he's not using podcasting 2.0, is he just not? He's just reinventing the wheel. It's a look. You said it five minutes earlier. Right, in the long run, open wins, right, open standards win. So it's the tortoise versus the hare, right? Yes, he can be the tortoise, sorry, he can be the hare, running off doing his own thing, a bit like Spotify, but eventually the hag gets caught up by the tortoise.

James Cridland: 1:04:10

Yeah, I think there's two sides to it. I think, yes, he is doing his own thing, but partially he's doing his own thing because some of the big shows still don't support their own transcripts yet and so it's easier for him just to produce a transcript that he knows is going to work and blah, blah, blah and you know, and that should all work for every single show rather than for having a look at the small percentage of shows which are producing a transcript and you know sticking those in. So I guess he is doing it. You know the way of OK, I'm going to do this for every single show out there. But what he said to me is that he will start using creator produced transcripts if they're good enough quality, because obviously that is then going to save him money in terms of the transcription. Probably won't save him money, to be honest, in terms of the summaries, in terms of the chapter points. So actually, in terms of an actual saving, it's probably not going to make a big difference to him.

James Cridland: 1:05:15

But yeah, but I, you know it's an interesting way around it. It's one of the reasons why I like the way that Pocket Casts has done Podroll. In that Pocket Casts it's there, if it exists in the feed. But if it doesn't exist in the feed, then there is this very nice graceful fallback to shows that it's going to recommend instead, and I think that that's a really clever way of doing this kind of stuff. So perhaps that's what the Metacast folk are doing. We should get Ilya on. I have emailed his email address to you, Okay excellent.

Sam Sethi: 1:05:55

I do think, though, we are teasing out Come on, oscar, hurry up and get on with it. We are teasing out, jeez, louise. We are teasing out that there is a proposed alternative. It doesn't mean that that's going to be a winning alternative. I mean, look, no one knows right, but there's a technology that we've been muting called Secure RSS, which allows you to have both premium and freemium content in the same feed, and it's my belief, rightly or wrongly, that I think separate paywall sites like Patreon and Memberfulful, etc. Um, add that extra layer of work.

Sam Sethi: 1:06:35

We talked about video adding an extra layer of work. I personally believe that if you, james, had to take this show, let's say, uh, and put it out into buzzsprout, and then take this show and then put it into patreon, yeah, and then. Then we would say to our audience here oh, by the way, you can get us on all the open apps, but, by the way, if you want this episode, please go over here and go and do something else and create another account and log in and pay us. I just think this two split audience paywall strategy has short-term value, not long-term. Um, longevity, uh, I think it. Um, it will be subsumed into a single feed. That's my belief. Yeah, I, and I look forward to talking about it in more detail.

James Cridland: 1:07:20

No, and I certainly agree with that, and I think one of the things interestingly, that buzzbrow, our sponsor, does is it does allow you to do those paid episodes if you want to, in the same Buzzsprout interface that you're used to. But on the other side it still means that a listener has to get the special paid feed. So it's fixed half of it but not the other half. So perhaps this secure RSS, which could work alongside it, might work a little bit better. We will talk more on that, I'm sure, as we move forward. So after we talk about one app which has launched new stuff, another app has closed down and it's the fiction podcast app, apollo.

Sam Sethi: 1:08:09

Another app has closed down and it's the fiction podcast app, apollo. I think you know it was a great idea to focus on a narrow niche, which was well, it's not that narrow, it's actually one of the biggest categories. But clearly people don't want to have multiple apps for vertical content.

James Cridland: 1:08:27

Either that or the amount of listeners to fiction podcasts are quite low in comparison to other shows, so I suppose you could look at it on that side of it as well. I suppose there are two co-founders. One of them is called AJ. I've reached out to AJ because I would love to learn a little bit more of this, but all they said in the email is we're incredibly proud of what we created, because particularly fiction podcasting needs a slightly different interface. You know, in terms of how you listen, we're incredibly proud of what we've created, but we haven't been able to grow the listener base enough to sustain the service long term, to grow the listener base enough to sustain the service long term.

James Cridland: 1:09:13

You could argue, of course, that streaming sats could have fixed all of that, and had streaming sats been a big enough thing for the fiction podcast community by now, then we might be in a position where Apollo didn't have to close down. I wonder what happens to the code base, because it was very nice, and the design and everything else. I wonder what happens to all of that code and whether or not there is something there to actually take that forward again. But yeah, it's a sad day when you see a podcast app. Close down certainly.

Sam Sethi: 1:09:49

So, james, you mentioned Pocket Casts and you mentioned the pod role. It's quite interesting. Now People are starting to look at how many podcasts are including a pod role, and then they're beginning to look at what podcasts are included inside those pod roles as well.

James Cridland: 1:10:08

Yes, I think a pod role is really interesting. It's quite difficult to do the research on who's linking to what, because the only way currently of doing that is to download the entire podcast index and then to check every single RSS feed all four point something million of them to see what pod roles people are linking to, what podcasts people are linking to. So that's quite hard, but at least the PodNews website has a sample of about 1.2 million podcasts. They're mostly the bigger ones, they're the ones that people have searched for and found in there, and so I thought well, wouldn't it be interesting from that sample to find out who the most recommended podcasts by creators are? So I pulled that information out.

James Cridland: 1:11:00

And the number one as I'm sure our sponsor will be delighted to know, the number one most recommended podcast out there is Buzzcast Hurrah, which is the official podcast of Buzzsprout, our sponsor, recommended by all manner of different people, including us, including the late bloomer actor, including podcasting made simple from Alex Sanfilippo and various other shows in there as well. So just an interesting page. If you want to go and see it podnewsnet slash podcasts, slash recommendations and you can see that it's updated. Well, it says continuously updated. It probably is continuous right now. Probably shouldn't be in the future, but still. But that's where we are. But yeah, just some interesting information in there that may or may not be handy as we try and understand how this feature is being used.

Sam Sethi: 1:12:02

Finally, just whizzing up to Scotland, Alitude now supports more podcasting 2.0 features. What are they?

James Cridland: 1:12:08

doing yes, so they are supporting the funding tag. That's the big one that they are supporting, which is excellent to see.

James Cridland: 1:12:16

So, thank you, alitu, for doing that. They're, of course, a podcast maker tool, so if you're making a show, then you can host with Alitu and you can make the entire show with Alitu as well, so that's very cool. They're also supporting the license tag, the text fields tag and the location tag, although it sounds as if they're not doing the location tag correctly, but anyway, we'll get back to that once I've fixed that with them. But yes, really good to see Alitu pushing more Podcasting 2.0 features. The funding tag is the big one and I think that's the one that we should really push for more people to get involved with.

Jingle: 1:12:57

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.

James Cridland: 1:13:11

Inbox yeah, so many different ways to get in touch with us. Fan mail by using the link in our show notes, super comments on True Fans or boosts everywhere else, or email, and we share any money that we make between us. So thank you for all of those. We've got a bunch of boosts and super comments, haven't we Including some from the Ugly Quacking Duck?

Sam Sethi: 1:13:33

Yes, Bruce himself 2222Sats, he says welcome back, sam. Thank you, bruce. How long did the battery last on the electric bike before it needed charging? Well, if I stayed out of turbo mode it would have gone longer, but it lasted as long as I needed, which was the full day, so I didn't have to push um. Those hills around the lakes were pretty high.

James Cridland: 1:13:55

So an electric bike with alcohol, yeah, needed it as much as I could get yes, I mean, obviously it would have been illegal to have driven under the influence, even on an electric bike. So, um, I'm sure I'm sure that you don't mean that.

Sam Sethi: 1:14:11

I was spitting the wine out. It's fine. Yes, yes, Honestly, honestly.

James Cridland: 1:14:16

Ossifer yes, he says thanks for the episode. It's good to be able to listen to you. Both 73s and also another row of ducks fell behind on listening. Got to the episode with John John McDermott, who of course, did it while you were out on your bike. Interesting episode. Thanks for what you do Well. Thank you, Bruce, it's very kind. Every show that I'm listening to right now I hear a row of ducks from the ugly quacking duck. So it's always nice to hear that. And thank you for your support for all of podcasting.

Sam Sethi: 1:14:48

One, two, three, four sats from Claire Waite-Brown, who's one of our power supporters. I won't be matching Silas's mega boost amount, just a part of it. I too, had fun hanging out with him and Elias increasing the bar bill for pod news. Yeah, thanks everyone. And beyond the rest, she spent the rest of the time at the London podcast show with them as well. So, yes, yes, that was a mega boost indeed.

James Cridland: 1:15:10

Yes indeed, and the man himself, silas, on Linux, has sent a bunch of boosts. He sent $130 with SATs instead of a Visa card. He's still very upset about the fact that I say Visa card and MasterCard is the internet's money, because it is Show me where he hurt you on the umbral. But then it sends another one. Massively awkward feeling moment Having just sent another visa joke boost, only to now hear you read and talk about the other boost I sent about lowering fees not being enough. Let me be an idiot about non-big corpo payment systems. And then one final one idiot about non-big corpo payment systems. And then one final one. I was talking about home assistance and saying that it's not really very good. It's a bit of a mess, and I think I said it's just not great. Anyway, silas said it's probably the most infuriating thing James has ever said Wow, wow, okay, there you go.

Sam Sethi: 1:16:14

I'll tell you now over three years no, it's not. Yes.

James Cridland: 1:16:17

Gosh, no, exactly, exactly so. Thank you, silas for that. 3,000 sats in all, which is good of you, and Dave sent us 10 sats. I just thought I'd mention it. I think he's a true fan. I don't think he knows a true fan.

Sam Sethi: 1:16:29

I don't think he knows he did it. I don't think he knows he did it Really Okay. No, I think he's hearted something and of course, we attach a small micro payment to.

James Cridland: 1:16:39

Well, if he's hearted something, it should say something like Dave hearted your show. It did afterwards.

Sam Sethi: 1:16:46

It did afterwards, but I'm not sure he knew that he would do it in the beginning. You know we do explain it, but you know not everyone. I have found out people don't read, no people absolutely don't read.

James Cridland: 1:16:56

Yes, yes, they click things and then ask afterwards why did that happen?

Sam Sethi: 1:17:00

Well, if you read the thing before, we would have told you yes, correct?

James Cridland: 1:17:06

But anyway, dave, thank you for hearting us. That means we get 10 sats, which is, if we get lots of those, then we can afford a beer. So that's kind of you. The power supporters are all excellent. There are 19 of them, the noteworthy 19.

Sam Sethi: 1:17:20

And they include I still think naughty and nice, but anyway.

James Cridland: 1:17:24

And they include Star Tempest, james Burt, jim James and Rachel Corbett. Thank you all so much for your kind support. We really appreciate it If you would like to become a power supporter or indeed support us in any way. If you're getting value from what we do, then weeklypodnewsnet is how you can learn much more about how to do that. So what's happened for you this week, sam?

Sam Sethi: 1:17:52

Well, a little milestone we have successfully submitted our native iOS and Android apps for TrueFans, so they're under review.

James Cridland: 1:18:01

Yes, Under review. I wonder what both Apple and Google are going to think about the wallets and the payments and all of that.

Sam Sethi: 1:18:18

No, that's been fine. So I'll tell you what we had. It was really fun, okay. So the first response was what are SATs? Well, I went back and said they're tokens of micro payments, yada, yada, oh great, no problem at all. Then that disappeared as an issue, okay, the other issue that came I'm so happy, I was thinking shit here we go yeah yeah, keep keep it low level, sam, don't raise the bar.

Sam Sethi: 1:18:39

Um. And then the other one was um, where are you getting all your content from? So I had to explain how apple podcasts worked and what brilliant yes and and rss, and then show links to both directories and how the whole podcasting system works, really. Um, at which point they went yes, that's fine as well. Um, so the only stumbling block is um. There's stupidly a checkbox that I must have hit by mistake or it's defaulted, I don't know that says we require camera access, which we don't. So we've got to remove that and resubmit. So, fingers crossed, I'm hopeful that we will be able to get the app into the App.

James Cridland: 1:19:19

Store this week. Very good. Well, that'll be exciting, won't it? I wonder who will be first. Will it be Google or will it be Apple?

Sam Sethi: 1:19:26

Well, the other thing is, I'll have no excuse now. Um, I can't say, because when we get our app store, we'll be, we'll be doing better. So now, when we have them, I have no excuses anymore, that it's just a pwa. So, yes, now it's back to me if we don't succeed.

James Cridland: 1:19:40

Yes, no, anyway well, I, I have, I have it on my phone, it is working on, uh, I on ios 26 or whatever this thing is, and, yes, and it's all looking very spiffy. So, yes, it'll be nice to see it going live.

Sam Sethi: 1:20:00

We've also submitted for review Apple TV and Fire TV. So we did the Fire TV one a few months ago actually, but we made the changes, so hopefully we'll be on those, given that allegedly YouTube now is where most people consume on a big TV, let's see if that has any. And then you mentioned earlier CarPlay. That's just an extra separate configuration, so we will do CarPlay soon.

James Cridland: 1:20:27

Very nice. You're doing a show with Claire Wake Brown, which I think you used to do a show called Fan Zone. You're now doing a show called something else.

Sam Sethi: 1:20:37

No, so let me try and clarify. Yes, they're both with Claire Wake Brown. Claire has been great. She did the Podcasting 2.0 in Practice show, which helps if you haven't heard that show. If you want to learn about podcasting 2.0, I see most people who listen to our show are pretty savvy, but it's great for newbies. Um fan zone was an internal true fan show about how to use true fans.

Sam Sethi: 1:21:01

It's not it's not designed for anyone else. So you get paid to listen to small three minute episodes. You get sats in your wallet every time you listen. That's it, simple job. But creators was something that Claire and I talked about, which was I love doing this show, but it is sometimes very technical my fault, normally and so it doesn't, you know, reach out to a massive audience. It reaches out to an audience that is more geeky, more interested in the nuts and bolts of podcasting and the business of podcasting. But the independent creators, those people who just want to know, uh, about how to improve their show, and they want to be highlighted and spotlighted. So, yes, the Independent Podcast Awards, people like those podcasts are the type of guests we will have on. So, yeah, creators from True Fans is aimed at independent podcast creators.

James Cridland: 1:22:00

Well, very good, and you can find it wherever you get your podcasts, but probably in True Fans is probably best. And the final thing on the show notes here says I am playing way too much paddle. It's very addictive. What, what, what, what, what is this?

Sam Sethi: 1:22:16

Uh, it hasn't reached you yet it will. It's very addictive. Paddle is a game that came out of somewhere between Spain and Mexico and it's a combination of short form tennis like pickleball, um and squash, and so you've got a, an enclosed court with a back wall, a glass back wall, um, shorter rackets, tennis ball like, but it's not as heavy as a tennis ball, but it is the same size. Um, four of you play on a court. It's like doubles tennis, but with a, and it's very, very addictive. I'm playing, probably too much. According to my wife, I'm playing too much. It's about four times a week at the moment. Gosh, well, that sounds like exercise.

Sam Sethi: 1:23:04

Paddle is worth about $2 billion a year and is growing fast. 25 million active players yeah, the LTA, the Lawn Tennis Association in the UK, are very, very worried. Um, a lovely anecdotal story was um. There's a massive london uh tennis center and it's got 35 tennis courts and they've built 10 paddle courts in the same location. There was a queue to get on the paddle courts and all the tennis courts bar one was empty. Yeah, and that's at the height of Wimbledon and Queens. They just for most social players, tennis is too technical, you know, throwing the ball up, trying to serve, making sure you get it in the court, having a rally. It's just so difficult and you know the numbers are reflective of that, whereas paddle it's such a social game where the technical level doesn't require you to, you know, have to serve overhead, you serve underarm and the court's smaller, and it just generates much more of an addictive game. I think LTA are going to struggle.

James Cridland: 1:24:08

Well, it's all very exciting. That much I can tell you. Yes, there is an Australian Paddle Federation and all kinds of things. It's something that I will keep a close eye on, just in case anybody ever asks me to play and then I can say no, absolutely not.

Sam Sethi: 1:24:26

Hang on, James. Look, you've got your new gym regime. You must be now super fit and ready to go. I don't think so.

James Cridland: 1:24:33

I don't think so. I had to sit down in the gym today. I said do you know what I'm going to have to sit down for a couple of minutes? I was looked on pityingly Anyway.

Sam Sethi: 1:24:46

There was never kick sand in James's face. That's what I'd say. He'll have you. Uh there was never kick sand in James's face. That's what I'd say. He'll have you. He'll have you so.

James Cridland: 1:24:54

James, what's been happening for you this week? Well, so, um, I've done a couple of uh, uh, a couple of entertaining things. I've been working, um, doing a few um additional pages in the podcasting 2.org website, which is now, um, I can, I can, uh, edit stuff in it. It's brilliant, so that's good. So there's a whole page on how Podroll works, and all of that including links on how it works on Buzzsprout, because our sponsor actually works with Podroll I mean, it was their idea, really, and so that all looks very nice. Podcasting2.org is the place to go. What else have I been doing?

James Cridland: 1:25:32

Podnewsnet slash extras is my new thing, which I quietly launched earlier on this week. It's not properly launched yet, but the idea behind it is, if you've got money that you would like to, you know a coupon or something that you would like to give. So, for example, if you want to go to Podcast Movement, you can save $75 at the moment by using the code PODNEWS, and that's lovely, but that does mean that everybody who searches Google will find that code and will use it. So, yes, we'll look very good, but actually, at the end of the day, it's not that useful for the person who is selling stuff. So what we've done is we've put something behind a really simple wall which just basically checks that you're a subscriber and then shows you all of the things that you can get for free or for cheap and it's at podnewsnet slash extras and yeah, it's been interesting building that and interesting just sort of getting a very MVP up of that and seeing what happens. So that's been quite fun to do.

Sam Sethi: 1:26:42

Anything else? How's your experiment with the Mac OS beta coming?

James Cridland: 1:26:45

along, yes, so I rather foolishly press the button to get the new beta on everything On the watch it's great. On the phone, it's fine. It's great on the phone as well. To be fair, on the iPad, yes, gosh, everything's changed on the iPad. It's quite a learning experience because all of a sudden you can window. You know you can do windowing just like you can on a proper computer, and so all of that is very weird on the iPad.

James Cridland: 1:27:18

So, yes, and then you've got the new Mac OS on the Mac and that's been gosh, quite a thing. There are. It works for pretty well everything. So it works for, obviously, it works for CleanFeed and things like that. It works for browsers, it works for Dropbox and all of that kind of stuff. There's one thing that I've learned that it doesn't work with very well, and that's Mac's own preview. You know the thing that reads PDF files and things like that. It seems to crash every third time you open it for some reason. So that's very weird, but it's just. It doesn't look very nice. I think they are nowhere near ready in terms of making it look pretty, and there are bits that look slightly better than other bits, and it's all a bit messy, so it's been interesting playing around with it, but I'm sure it'll get better and better and better as the developer betas goes on, and then the public beta, and then it finally gets released somewhere, in sort of October, november time.

Sam Sethi: 1:28:19

I mean, I've avoided it this time, against. You know my normal inclination for shiny toys. But is there a killer feature that you would say? Oh yeah, of course, but if you upload it or implement this new version, this is what you will get.

James Cridland: 1:28:37

Yeah, there are two killer features really.

James Cridland: 1:28:39

One of them is Spotlight, so that's the thing that you get if you do command in the space bar and helps you launch programs or search for files.

James Cridland: 1:28:48

On current macOS, on the new macOS, it enables so much more stuff because you can run shortcuts through it. You can do lots of other things with the new, improved Spotlight program, so that's definitely a good thing. The other good thing is the shortcuts itself, in that you can do many more things with shortcuts, but one of the things that you can do is it plugs into the Apple Intelligence stuff on your own laptop, so you can basically go take the text that I'm highlighting right now and give me a summary of that and then email that to Sam and you can get a shortcut to do all of that and that will do all of that. So I can imagine that that will be very good for the power users, and I think this is one thing that Apple have done very well, certainly in macOS, is hiding stuff like Spotlight and shortcuts for power users to discover and use, but not to terrify the normal users, who will never find it, and I think that's a pretty clever plan from their point of view.

Sam Sethi: 1:30:12

Still not going to upgrade, then Right.

James Cridland: 1:30:16

Yes, but apart from that, there's nothing much really. I think there's, you know, there's a journaling app, great Woo, and a few other things, but yes, that's sort of about where we are.

Sam Sethi: 1:30:27

So no signs of really Apple intelligence, then?

James Cridland: 1:30:30

I mean, you know the Apple intelligence stuff in it is. You know there is clearly more of it. It's available now to any app out there, not just Apple's apps, so that's quite nice. One of the things I'm surprised by is Apple Podcasts, which does have a few additional features, but what they've not done is they've not put Apple Podcasts behind the iCloud private relay. I was kind of expecting that for this time, but they've not actually done that. I mean it would, it would be significant for podcasting, but yeah, so with all of the discussion about privacy, which Apple is actually pretty good at, still not seeing Apple using, or even having an option for using, private relay for podcasting is, I think, quite, quite interesting really.

Sam Sethi: 1:31:31

Well, you know, one developer a year, one feature a year. You can't expect everything.

James Cridland: 1:31:41

It's more than one developer.

Sam Sethi: 1:31:43

Maybe they have a part-time one as well. I wonder what you did with your spare time. No, I know, that's probably where it is.

James Cridland: 1:31:49

Anyway, and that's it for this week. I am away in two weeks, so here next week, away the week after. So Sam is going to find somebody potentially to co-host with. I bet it'll be Clare Waight-Brown that would be the most sensible, but anyway, we will see. She's not feeling any pressure at all now and you'll be, and you'll be editing as well. So, um, we all look forward to that. Um, for this week, all of our podcast stories taken from the pod news daily newsletter at podnewsnet you can support this show by streaming sats.

Sam Sethi: 1:32:25

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 noteworthy 19. Oh, I see the edit's been put in.

James Cridland: 1:32:36

Yes, at weeklypodnewsnet yes, our music is from tm studios. Our voiceover is sheila d, our audio is recorded using clean feed. We edit with hindenburg. All of those things work, by the way, on the new Mac OS, and we're hosted and sponsored by Buzzsprout. Start podcasting, keep podcasting. Get updated every day. Subscribe to our newsletter at podnewsnet.

Neal Mohan: 1:33:02

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