Speaker 1: 0:01

The Pod News Weekly Review uses chapters, so you can skip the 400 stories about Spotify this week.

Speaker 2: 0:07

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

Speaker 4: 0:15

I'm James.

Speaker 5: 0:15

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

Speaker 1: 0:20

So we're really putting an appeal out to anyone interested in investing in the creator economy wanting to support John Savage, with an appeal for to anyone interested in investing in the creator economy wanting to support John Savage with an appeal for you to help podcasting in South Africa.

Speaker 4: 0:29

Plus Apple's anniversary, patreon's payouts, podcast marketing. And now we know why Spotify sees higher consumption on video podcasts because they pay to promote them. This podcast is sponsored by Buzzsprout, with a tool supporting community to ensure you keep podcasting, start podcasting, keep podcasting with Buzzsprout with the tools support and community to ensure you keep podcasting.

Speaker 2: 0:50

Start podcasting, keep podcasting with Buzzsproutcom From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly.

Speaker 5: 0:53

Review Well, James, now it seems that there's a celebration due.

Speaker 4: 1:01

Our friends at Apple are 20. What's going on? Yes, it's almost 20 years since podcasts were added into iTunes. In fact, it's 20 years tomorrow, but they're celebrating today and indeed celebrated parts of yesterday as well. Don't get me started about embargoes, but 20 years ago Apple added podcasts to iTunes and, they say, helped take the emerging medium of podcasting mainstream, which I think is probably fair enough.

Speaker 1: 1:33

I think, that's true.

Speaker 4: 1:34

Yeah. So I think you know there's obviously quite a lot of patting themselves on the back, and quite rightly so. And they've launched this thing called 20 Years, 20 Podcasts we Love. And when I was going through the list, very excitedly I saw two from the UK in there. That doesn't normally happen. So good to see two UK shows in that list as well as, obviously, things like Serial, as you might guess what else was in there this American Life, as you might guess. In fact, I've just been looking at old screenshots of the Apple Podcasts app and this American Life is there being pushed in there, which is quite fun, pushed in there, which is, you know, which is quite fun, but, yes, so good to see. You know a number of those sorts of things and you know, and obviously Apple still planning on additional changes with the new iOS and all of that.

Speaker 5: 2:39

I mean, look, they have been the guardians, custodians, which is the right word. I'm not sure of podcasting in the downtime. The directory is something that they kept going and they have added new features, as you said, in the new iOS 26,. They've started adding a few more features. I'm frustrated with Apple that's my position with them because I think they go too slow and they could go much faster and make much more effect. I think you know they talk about how Apple, you know, made the emerging medium of podcasting. Yes, they did, and imagine what they could do today if they really embrace podcasting today, if they actually made apple pay a micro payment system where you could because it's all digital just do one p or one cent or one euro. Right, yeah, they can do it, they have the ability, they. There is nothing that they are doing other than slowing down the progress, because I don't know why they can do everything and they choose not to, and that's the frustration I have.

Speaker 4: 3:49

Yeah, I think my overwhelming view, coming back to Apple from Android, is that Google is the company that you want Apple to be. They move fast, they launch lots of new and exciting things. My overwhelming view is that Apple are a set of companies that do things very, very slowly, but once they do something then they commit for a long, long time. You know they don't close apps. You know very, very often, if at all, you know they commit to keeping their um, their hardware, you know, up and running for as long as they possibly can. I think it's a pretty good company from that point of view, um, but very different and very, you know, certainly not fleet of foot in the same way that, um, you know android is, but, um, yeah, I can certainly see that.

Speaker 5: 4:41

Yeah, and look, I congratulate Apple on reaching their 20th milestone. I think you know that's an amazing point. But where will they be in five years, James? I mean, should we leave that to our prediction show, or do you want to give a guess now?

Speaker 4: 4:57

Well, where will they be in five years? I mean, it's very clearly the case that the amount of consumption through Apple Podcasts is going down in terms of share. What we don't know is total consumption. We don't actually know whether or not that is. You know that is actually still increasing. I seem to remember and I need to be careful because I've had background briefings which you're not allowed to quote from. Careful because I've had background briefings which you're not allowed to quote from but I seem to remember that at the podcast show they were saying things like last year was our best ever year in terms of consumption through the app. So they are still growing. It's just that they're growing less than potentially, spotify or YouTube is. So you know. So people are just seeing that and seeing, well, it's a slowdown in Apple. It's not really. It's just that the others are growing a little bit faster. Um, but uh, yeah, you know where. Where are they going to go?

Speaker 4: 5:55

I found it interesting. Um, you know the, the, the whole video, audio, um discussion. Um. I found it interesting because not only is it the 20th year of podcasts being in iTunes, it is also the 13th anniversary of the launch of the Apple Podcasts iOS app which was launched this week in 2012. And I went to have a look at some.

Speaker 4: 6:23

There are some YouTube videos that are reviewing that back from 2012, which are really old fashioned looking and it was interesting. They had Sam. They had a feature called Top Stations probably the wrong name, but it was a discovery feature. So you went in there and you said I'm interested in shows about sports and it would play you five different sports shows in a playlist and I thought, well, that's an interesting plan. Do you know the other interesting plan in there? They had an audio video switch right at the top of the screen so if you wanted to could go, go in there and you could say play five tech um video podcasts and it would play five tech video podcasts back to back how would have been happy, todd would have been so happy.

Speaker 5: 7:16

Uh, yes, but we talked about a few weeks back about the there being an audio and a video chart as well. Again, this is one of the things. You know this. Again, my frustration with Apple is more to do with I want them to do really well. I love Apple. I know I come across as an Apple basher, but that's because I'm an Apple fan boy and I'm frustrated with the lack of progress. So HLS is a Apple standard. Come on, apple, you know, add it. You know it's not like you're going to a Google standard or a third party standard from YouTube that you're applying. It's your own standard. So apply it, use it, make it the best app for it and then allow the industry to grow around it.

Speaker 4: 8:02

But no, you won't do that and then allow the industry to grow around it. But no, you won't do that. Yeah, it's a bit of a shame, but certainly as a steward of the maybe steward is the right word as a steward of the industry, I think that they've done a pretty good job in ensuring that open RSS is still a thing. They could have completely closed that and turned that off, of course, and the fact that they are still using that is, I think, a very good thing. From that point of view, the interesting thing that I did spot in the original Apple Podcasts iOS app was that you couldn't add third-party RSS feeds in there. You could only add a show if it was in the iTunes directory, which I thought was interesting. It's not not, you know. So you know. Clearly things have changed there.

Speaker 4: 8:57

The other thing about the app when it first launched back in 2012 is that it was all. It was all. What was the phrase Neomorphism? It was all these sort of things. You know, the Notes app looked as if it was an old legal pad on a desk and all of this, and so, yeah, and so the Apple Podcasts app had a reel-to-reel tape deck in it when you pressed the play button Beautiful old reel-to-reel tape deck, and so I did some research earlier this week to discover that it was the Braun TG-60 tape recorder by Dieter Rams, which was a beautiful piece of design from the 60s, and Apple essentially, you know, we probably shouldn't say copied, but certainly gave a nod to that.

Speaker 4: 9:52

Yeah, gave a nod. We can't say plagiarised either, gave a nod to that, which is interesting because also, if you have a look at the calculator app, that was also based on a Dita Rams Braun calculator, so there are clearly some fans of Dita Rams within Apple. But yeah, some smart things going on there.

Speaker 5: 10:20

I mean, the last thing I'll say on this whole note is one thing I'm glad Apple didn't do, because they could have killed the industry as well. That's the other thing. You know, if they do apply all these things, sometimes you could imagine they could kill the ecosystem of podcasting. You have to upload your podcast directly to Apple to be in Apple subscriptions, which in effect makes Apple a host. And again, had they bought a host let's say they bought Libsyn from the early days could they have killed the ecosystem of hosting instantly, but they didn't choose to do that.

Speaker 4: 11:00

No, they didn't. And of course, actually that's the way that it launched, where you had to upload the audio straight to Apple. Now they have a API into that system, so you can just use the Buzzsprout service if you want to, or you can use Captivate or OmniStudio or whoever can use Captivate or Omni Studio or whoever anybody that has. I think they called it delegated delivery for a time and then they stopped calling it that. But yeah, no, you're right, I mean, they could have done a Spotify with Anchor bought a big hosting company and caused significant pain to the rest of the hosting industry, but they didn't, you know, and again, so I think that that's a good you know, a good thing that we should, you know, always keep in the back of our minds when we're talking about Apple. Now let's move on. It's time for a jingle.

Speaker 2: 11:58

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

Speaker 4: 12:12

what have we got first?

Speaker 5: 12:13

Well, what have we got? First, spotify is wooing potential video creators with free ad money. Sorry, have we not had this story before? I mean, it feels like they were doing that back in the beginning and they've done that every month since.

Speaker 4: 12:26

Well, I think here. So this is a story from the Ankler, natalie Jarvie, and she published a leaked Spotify deck that they have been showing to creators. It's behind a paywall. One of the slides I mean most of it shows numbers which the Ankler was very excited about but actually have been public and visible and everything else. But there was one slide where they basically said, if you move to Spotify not necessarily move, but add your show onto Spotify in video then we will give you $5,000 of free ad credits within Spotify Ads Manager so that you can promote their shows.

Speaker 4: 13:10

And I looked at that and I thought, oh, that is news, because we've not seen that number, we've not seen what they've been doing. But also, if you remember, all of the big numbers, are Spotify saying creators have seen a massive growth in consumption after they've added video to their show Growth in consumption by 20%, 30%, doubling and all this kind of stuff. But Spotify don't say but we gave them five grand of free ads to drive that consumption increase anyway. So to me it seems a little bit I don't want to use the word dishonest, but it seems a little bit odd that you would really lean onto the increase in consumption but not actually say oh, but we do actually give new creators five grand's worth of advertising and that has to have an effect, right?

Speaker 5: 14:04

James, that's cool marketing. Everyone does it. I mean, literally, they're feeding the pipe from one end, which is basically free credits. Is no value lost to them at all? Right? No, exactly, it's zero cost to the bottom line. So they're feeding in the pipe. And guess what? By feeding the pipe, oh look, the result is you've got an increase in awareness. Not very hard. That's called marketing. No, well, indeed, the only bit they're not doing is the PR part, which is revealing behind the curtain how they did it.

Speaker 4: 14:35

That's all around and you say isn't Spotify video brilliant? Because, look, your consumption goes up 30%. Then, without actually saying, but actually, we gave these people five grand's worth of free advertising, so of course the consumption is going to go up by 30%. That puts a very different spin on that number. So I looked at that and I thought, mean, I looked at that and I thought you know, yes, you know, there's a ton of numbers in there and the numbers all look nice. But just that one thing. And, by the way, I would absolutely do that if I was Spotify. Absolutely, of course I would, because you're giving away free ads that you're not, that you haven't sold anyway. Those are going to be bottom of the pile when it comes to availability. So of course you're going to do that. But yeah, I was just there thinking, all of a sudden, the story about Spotify video really adding consumption isn't necessarily a story anymore, is it?

Speaker 5: 15:40

Well, we'll see, when they stop giving away the free ads, what happens next. Because they're taking a bet, you know, and the bet is that they can grow enough the market awareness and get enough momentum behind podcast and video so that people don't need to be incentivized. And if they then take away that incentivize, will the trajectory still be upward or will it fall off a cliff? That's all we'll find out. That's the bet they're making.

Speaker 4: 16:07

Well, yes, yes indeed, and you know and I find it fascinating because it isn't just podcasting that they are trying to get into this, you know, into this thing they're also clearly going and talking to TV companies and that sort of thing. There was an announcement right at the end of last week that Network 10, which is one of the four free-to-air services here in Australia, they have a new news programme which is called 10 News Plus and that will be available on Spotify. So it's a news show, it's not a podcast, it's a news show and they will be adding that into Spotify so you can watch it there. They are calling it a video podcast, by the way, but I mean it's.

Speaker 5: 17:04

So so YouTube.

Speaker 4: 17:05

I mean, yeah, so does YouTube I mean, so it's so, it's a very so, all of a sudden, Spotify is very definitely trying to be YouTube, trying to be another destination for video of all of all types, and you know, and that's and that's fine, but that's really interesting, isn't it?

Speaker 5: 17:24

I think I think they've got a massive challenge, because when you say video, go and see my video, then the Pavlovian behaviour is to go to YouTube, right?

Speaker 4: 17:34

Yeah, I would never consider watching a video on Spotify, I mean you know, yeah, I would never consider doing that. But clearly, you know, clearly it's a thing that they want us doing.

Speaker 5: 17:46

But I think they've got a bigger problem. I think the UI and the UX experience on Spotify is quite a poor one. I think what you're seeing now is a music app that was specifically designed for music. Yeah, shoehorning in podcasting, shoehorning in video, andhorning in video, and then actually the ui doesn't actually work very well, and so you end up with a sort of well, it isn't youtube, because youtube was a video first app designed for video, and so either they're going to have to do a massive rewrite of the whole ui or they're going to just have this sort of half-hearted video interface, which I don't think is going to support the user experience.

Speaker 4: 18:33

Well, it's going to be interesting seeing what happens there, certainly in terms of I mean, it's six months now since Spotify's video podcast programme started. Interesting article in Digiday this week basically saying that large podcast networks are a bit wary, they're not really doing it, they don't really want to do it, but creators YouTubers, if you like seem very keen indeed. So there's one company called YMH Studios saying that they're earning five times the revenue from Spotify than YouTube. There's another creator called Riff who says that he's earning more than double the amount of revenue from YouTube on Spotify, and I thought that it was interesting that they split it up in that way.

Speaker 4: 19:23

So, basically, if you are a podcaster that earns your money through advertising, then you're not really sold on this whole idea of the Spotify video partner program. But if you are a YouTuber and you're used to getting money from YouTube you don't go out and sell your advertising yourself, you just earn money from YouTube Then Spotify looks very, very good indeed, because Spotify pays out considerably more, and so perhaps that's the difference here. Perhaps what we're seeing is those people who are focused on ad revenue aren't really getting a particular benefit from video, aren't really getting a particular benefit from video, aren't really getting a particular benefit from Spotify, but those people who are much more influence driven, who are much more driven by, just go out and make me some money Spotify, youtube. You can see that they will be absolutely thrilled with what Spotify is doing. So it was an interesting sort of division of the industry, if you like there.

Speaker 5: 20:29

We still haven't found out, and it's still not been revealed, what is the percentage of subscription money that the video podcasts receive.

Speaker 4: 20:38

No, and I would imagine that that's going to change every single month. So you know that's probably how that's going to work. But yeah, no, you're right.

Speaker 5: 20:48

Well, maybe there's another way that they can make money. They've got porn. Yay, spotify has a porn problem. What's this one?

Speaker 4: 20:56

Now, I am fascinated by this. This was a story in the Times in the UK that Spotify has a porn problem, but it turns out that it's porn, but it's audio porn, it's not video porn. So one of the first things that almost any service has when you're allowed to upload video to it is that it's totally filled with porn, but they don't seem to have that. What they do, though, have is they've got I mean, if I can quote from the article everything from lascivious critiques of skin flicks very Times word, isn't it? Lascivious? Lascivious critiques of skin flicks to audio erotica and reels of ASMR sex sounds. I had to look that up. I didn't even know what that meant. You didn't know what ASMR meant, no, All right granddad Gosh.

Speaker 5: 21:54

Well, I'm sorry, I apologise for not having a smutty mind and going after it.

Speaker 4: 22:00

So, yes, so it appears that porn is definitely on the platform, but audio only, which is weird, which I then don't understand how anybody makes any money out of that, because I can't quite work out how you're going to make any money out of audio only porn on Spotify. That doesn't seem to have a revenue share.

Speaker 5: 22:24

But if it's got well again that. I do recall we had a story a couple of years back about a female led network which was delivering audio based pornography and again, a genre and a market space that I didn't realise would be. You know there as a niche, but it exists and again, if you stick ads around it and you stick other things, I'm sure there is a market for it.

Speaker 4: 22:52

Well, I suppose so. I suppose so. There was, by the way, on satellite radio in the US. There was a porn channel on there which fills me with slight concern, all of these one-handed truck drivers in the middle of the night. Anyway, moving on, you spotted this one. So we've been talking about Daniel X selling boatloads of Spotify shares, and you spotted what he has sold, what he has spent all of this new money that he has on.

Speaker 5: 23:26

Yeah, I thought you know, okay, he's taken out, you know, a good half billion plus of money out of Spotify and I thought, ah, he's got this new healthcare business in London that he's opened up and I thought that's what he's put his money into. He's going to grow those out. That's brilliant. Well done, daniel. Or he's basically taken the money and he's personally investing into barcelona football club I don't know why, because spotify sponsor it. But no, sadly, he's investing in a company called helsing, which is an ai driven military drone company. So he's got a fund that actually invests into this german company that's producing drones and physical hardware.

Speaker 5: 24:05

Now for, I guess, the Ukraine war. Now some people say, well, okay, it's on the side of Ukraine, so that makes it okay. It doesn't make it okay with me. I think anyone who's profiteering out of war and what is certainly misery is not okay in my books. Fundamentally, I don't think it's good news that Daniel's doing this. I think there are moral lines right. So my wife was offered to go on to a gambling company in Cyprus many years ago. We just turned it down. It's not something ethically we believe in, that you should profiteer off people's misery from gambling. I wouldn't have joined Wonga, for example. I just think that company with 4,000% interest rates was morally wrong, but the UK VC market couldn't wait to invest into that company. They fell over themselves to do that and again this feels wrong. Daniel, I don't think you should be doing this. I think there's many other places you could put your money that would be better served and, I think, would have better value.

Speaker 4: 25:15

Well, he is quoted in the Financial Times as saying I'm sure people will criticise it and that's okay. So there we are. But yes, so that is what he is doing, which is all a bit disappointing Elsewhere going on in terms of Spotify legal problems. By the looks of things. What's this story about, sam Well?

Speaker 5: 25:41

the FTC in America, which sort of wakes up every now and again and does things, but it seems that two senators have got their knickers in a twist about Spotify.

Speaker 5: 25:51

Converting standard premium subscriptions into higher cost bundle subscription changed the terms which meant they didn't have to pay out as much to songwriters for royalties for music publishers, and by doing this they think they've harmed both the consumer, because they're not funding correctly new artists, and, equally, they're clearly directly affecting the artists. Now the mechanical license collective, which I'd never heard of before, sued Spotify for allegedly undercompensating songwriters and publishers, but they lost that lawsuit in January. And so again, what we have now is a situation where and it's not just an isolated situation you hear it all the time from songwriters and artists that Spotify don't pay, and your counter argument, james, has always been it's not Spotify, it's the music publishers, the distributors, the companies in between that are not paying out the money to the artists. So the perception, therefore, is the artists feel that Spotify aren't paying them and the FTC feel that actually, the change of the compensation paid out by reducing it further is not a good thing, so they're going after Spotify.

Speaker 4: 27:18

Well it's, yeah, it'll be interesting to see quite what happens there. I mean, I think it's. You know, there's lots of people that try to take people to court in the US and it doesn't always seem to go anywhere. But yeah, interesting to take a peek at that. You have a little story underneath here which says that Spotify's SOA, spotify Open Access, is going away. What's all this about?

Speaker 5: 27:49

Well, it's not an official story. This is my perception and I think I should be very careful. Look, I think Spotify, after the Apple lawsuit, are going to sit back and go. How can we make money? We have left money on the table because we couldn't do it before.

Speaker 5: 28:09

So in the Spotify app, the idea was that you would get a Patreon or a memberful account or you'd get a tech career account or whatever right. You'd pay your money on a third-party app or a third-party website and then tokenize it through a Spotify open access, which was an OAuth access, which would verify that you'd paid somewhere else and you could have the playback. Now, if you're on Spotify and you have market pressure for revenue, which they do, and video, as we said, isn't going as good as they thought, then you need to come up with another revenue stream, and I think the revenue stream that they will sit back and say hang on, how much did? Yeah, those guys at Patreon made a ton of money last quarter, and so did Memberful. I think we can take all that money and we can just directly do it, and I think that's where it will go next.

Speaker 4: 29:04

Yes, well, that'll be interesting to end up seeing. I didn't realise that all of the documentation for Spotify Open Access is open itself. It's on GitHub, it turns out, so I'll be reading through all of that. But yes, interesting in the world of Spotify, as ever, which is always good. You were just mentioning Patreon there and we have seen some numbers, haven't we? In terms of how Patreon have been doing.

Speaker 5: 29:37

Yeah, look, patreon is a really interesting company, I think the last couple of weeks my perception of the podcast industry is that quality content is moving behind paywalls, and that's not just Patreon, but we're seeing it with Substack as well, and the numbers that came out really did surprise me. We've learned that the Therapy for Black Girls earned about $2,000 in May Okay, nice number. Wondry's Red Handed earned $59,000 a month and the Yard from the Roost earns $242,000 a month, which again goes back to my point about Spotify. Soa, those numbers are significant. That's just three podcasts, right?

Speaker 4: 30:21

Yeah.

Speaker 5: 30:22

Multiply that by the number of podcasts currently behind Patreons Paywall and I don't think that this is going to be a space that Patreon is going to be able to protect for much longer.

Speaker 4: 30:32

No, it's interesting seeing that and, you know, some of those numbers are incredible as well. I mean, I should probably say that PodNews is closer to therapy for black girls than it is to any of the other two that you mentioned there, but nevertheless, every little helps. Podnewsnet slash Patreon, but yes, the numbers for some of these shows are very large indeed. Only this week, we also saw Joe Budden doing a bad job of hiding the amount of money that he's making from his Patreon. His Patreon app, which he posted onto Instagram for some reason, covered up some of the money, but didn't cover it up quite as much. So if you turned up the brightness then you could see it. That appears to say that his membership earnings $902,000. Now, it's not clear whether that's a month or whether that's 90 days or whatever it is. I would point out that the standard when you go into Patreon is a month, so it might be a month, but that's quite a lot of money. So, yes, interesting seeing that, and also interesting seeing the third biggest news podcast in the UK, politics Joe.

Speaker 4: 31:52

We were talking about video earlier on and how creators are moving, or some creators are moving, from YouTube to Spotify. Politics Joe has moved from YouTube to Patreon, put all of its video podcasts behind a Patreon paywall. They say that their dependence on YouTube is a business risk and that its audio version was earning twice as much revenue anyway, even though it only got half the audience. Again, it comes down to the ad model there, I think. And yeah, in just five days they've got 350 paying subscribers. They're each paying $10.50 per month for access. So you know, just in the first five days they're already making over three and a half grand from that. So you know, I think again, you're right in terms of a lot of these big shows moving into some form of a paywall.

Speaker 5: 32:58

Yeah, and I think people are getting used to it. I don't think the perception that podcasting is a second class digital citizen is true anymore. You know we're used to paying for our netflix, our prime, our apple tv, our spotify. Well, now, guess what? You know I'll pay for my podcast if I can't get it, because I I'm a fan and I want to support the show. This, this is a whole discussion, james, that I'm gagging to do, as you can tell, with oscar um and you and have this out in the open Cause. I think just as much as Spotify will wake up to the idea that there's a lot of money on the table Now. I think Apple subscriptions is also waking up to this idea and I think you know we've talked about it, hinted about it, about secure RSS. Well, I think that's the way that the open podcast community is going to be able to tap into this money, and if you're a host, you should be sitting out front and center, because this is where you will make your money.

Speaker 5: 33:57

Hosting as a revenue generator, I think, is a commodity. I don't think there's enough increase in value that you can make on it. I think you know you get your 1299, you might be able to push it out with extra services to 20 or 25, but you're not going to make 50 or a hundred dollars a month from your hosting for each individual customer, but this enabling a mechanism of securing and hosting um high quality content and our Buzzsprout. Our sponsors are doing some of this, but they've gone halfway. They haven't gone the whole way, because they sort of do it and they give you a private feed. But I think there are more open ways of doing this where the whole open ecosystem can make a lot of money. And the numbers that we're seeing here $902,000, $242,000, they are not chump change and I think this is the money where the industry needs to tap into next.

Speaker 4: 34:55

Yeah, no, I think it should be very interesting, particularly as ad revenue goes down, as it's predicted to do, or at least not to go up so fast. So yes, Anyway, moving on.

Speaker 5: 35:10

Now, yes, now, this is interesting because it relates a little bit to what we just talked about, but it's not about the money, but it's about where people are now spending their time and attention, where their eyeballs and ear balls are going to, because we had the unfortunate situation in the Middle East, and where did people turn for their news, james?

Speaker 4: 35:33

Well, I would argue that they turned to where they normally get their news, which is the BBC and CNN, and blah blah blah. But there were also additional shows like, for example, the Rest Is Politics and the Rest Is Politics US, both of whom jumped onto YouTube. And so, the excited press release says, set new audience records after releasing emergency live episodes 1.1 million video views, another 685,000 audio streams in just one single day, according to the owner Goldhanger at its peak, more than 50,000 people watching live. Now, those look like big numbers, but I'm not sure actually how big those numbers really are if you were to look at the great scheme of things in terms of live streaming news outlets as well in terms of live streaming news outlets as well.

Speaker 5: 36:34

Well, yeah, I guess that the mainstream still is the mainstream, right, but we talked about the US presidential election being the podcast election. Joe Rogan we talked about last week having one fifth of people turning to his podcast, right, so we are seeing a move away. This reminds me of the time at TechCrunch, when you know they would publish a story. It wouldn't be fully validated, and then they'd edit it and re-edit it and republish and republish, and newspapers just couldn't keep up. The mainstream news couldn't republish, and so what tech crunch had learned to do was to put enough of a story out to be first. That was always the goal be first to break the news right and then go back and edit it, and go back and edit it and if you had a correction, put the correction in then.

Speaker 5: 37:26

So I'm seeing with the rest is politics. What they were trying to do was we're going to get online straight away and we're going to make commentary and we're going to bring the attention to us very quickly. You saw the same with the the rest is us, um, and you saw the same with news agents. You saw the same with many of the others. They're all now learning that what they need to do is get online very quickly, bring the news. Meanwhile, the mainstream media is like well, we can't get there till six o'clock for the BBC, or 10 o'clock there's no breaking news interrupting this programme, so they're always going to now be behind the curve. That's what they can't do. They can't break the news at the moment when it's broken.

Speaker 4: 38:10

Well, I think there's a fair amount of um. Obviously you know CNN and Fox news and all of that Um and and those are obviously available in many different places as well. I mean, for example, the gold hanger press release got very excited about the fact that at peak, 50,000 people were watching live. Well, I can tell you, at the moment, a small TV channel in the UK of Sky News has 8.7 thousand people watching their live feed on YouTube, and that's just 8.7 million, james you mean.

Speaker 4: 38:48

No, 8.7 thousand, but 8.7 thousand when there's nothing going on um you know I see okay, you know what I mean, and so and so, actually, in terms of, um, you know, in terms of numbers, it will do significantly better when there is something going on 1.4 000 watching uhN, by the way, the right wing news channel for racists in the UK. That sums it up, my gosh. They've even got something called GBN2 as well, I discover, can you believe it? Or ABC News Australia, which is also available on YouTube streaming, which has got 2000 people, you know, watching it there currently.

Speaker 4: 39:36

So I, you know I love the gold hanger people to bits, but I have a feeling that this press release is look, we've got some numbers that we're going to share, but there's no context in terms of how all of the other news organisations did, and my suspicion is that actually they do pretty highly, particularly when you're having a look at things like CBS News, which has live streams all over the place, and ABC News in the US and all of that. So, yeah, but good to see, you know, good to see plucky podcasting being there. I have to say that wouldn't be my first choice either to go and watch, you know, alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart. Yes, brilliant, but I would much rather be sitting there watching CNN or watching, you know, the bbc world news or whatever I, I don't know, I, I'm the reverse of you actually, james, I don't.

Speaker 5: 40:35

I, I literally was looking for commentary from those podcasts. I well, yeah, I, I I don't find mainstream media is unbiased. I think it's very biased, I think it's it's government run and I think you find that. I mean, certainly, the bbc now is not um neutral. I mean its coverage is awful, genuinely awful, and biased to one party and I wouldn't watch it anymore and I don't watch it. And itv is irrelevant. Um, cnn is goes one way and fox goes the other. They're not neutral either, and so I I don't find those shows worth watching anymore, because the commentary, I don't think, is if you know about the filters that work behind it, you know that they are not neutral anymore, and I think we are. I mean, you know Tony Pastor said it once again we're seeing that in moments of fast-breaking news, audience turn to podcasts for explanation. I think they turned to YouTube. I think we as a podcast industry need to get our act together on the live podcasting. We really do, and we still haven't, in my opinion.

Speaker 4: 41:43

No, I certainly agree with that. One final story before we go around the world the Podcast Marketing Academy released its 2025 Podcast Marketing Trends Report. We linked to this from the Pod News newsletter this week. Really good data in there. It's well worth a peek. One of the interesting things is that most shows saw a smaller listenership this year than last year, this year than last year, so the amount of people listening to most shows seems to have gone down. There's a bit more nuance to that in the report itself, but certainly worth a look. Lots of really interesting data in there. Not a massive sample, but nevertheless some really interesting, you know information in there. Apparently, business shows and shows with an interview format grew the most, and the length of a podcast also grew slightly. The median episode is well. We've already broken through that 36 minutes 42 seconds, apparently 5% longer than last year.

Speaker 5: 42:52

Well, john McDermott has an answer for us on that. James, does he? Yes, he says we should do a daily show.

Speaker 4: 42:59

Yeah, good luck with that. Who's going to edit that? John McDermott.

Speaker 5: 43:06

Yeah, exactly, no, I'm just saying. But I mean, you know, break the show down to two separate shows, and again you've got you know. Then break the show down to two separate shows, and again you've got you know, then we'll hit the median quite happily, my goodness.

Speaker 4: 43:15

My goodness, that's the last thing that we need.

Speaker 5: 43:17

Right.

Speaker 4: 43:18

Anyway, let's go around the world.

Speaker 5: 43:19

Yes, what's first, congratulations to Sports Social, great company that they are up in Manchester. They've signed up some more football clubs. I think it's a great strategy because with those come the community and so often the listenership then, you know, is quite significant for football clubs. They're very loyal to each individual one, so signing up more football clubs is a smart idea.

Speaker 4: 43:48

I think that makes a ton of sense signing up all of these things Three new people, three new teams joining Notts Forest, the Villa and the Foxes oh, look at you.

Speaker 5: 44:00

You sound like you know what soccer is. Now, yeah, I've got no idea. Can I just point out I did dislike their PR release Eight soccer clubs Come on, you're an English company. Well, that wasn't their PR release. Eight soccer clubs Come on, you're an English company, it's football.

Speaker 4: 44:13

Well, that wasn't their press release. That was me writing for an international audience oh you.

Speaker 1: 44:19

Sorry.

Speaker 4: 44:20

Sorry, that's how it goes. I think what I normally try and do is I normally get the word football and the word soccer in to the same story. I think I failed on this particular occasion, but yes, I have to kind of explain it for the hard of thinking. Staying in the UK. This was really interesting and it goes to show that actually, when you do a very niche podcast and you do your research for that very niche podcast, you learn an awful lot of things. There's a very niche podcast. You learn an awful lot of things. There's a very niche podcast called the British Broadcasting Century, which is celebrating a century of its own because it's just reached 100 episodes.

Speaker 4: 45:01

But it has found that well, the history books have always said that the first people to do this and that and the other in terms of radio were all men and they were all based in London. And it turns out who'd have thought it? That? Actually women, lots of women doing things first in UK radio and not getting any recognition whatsoever. Similarly, lots of people outside of London also doing things first. As an example, the first song that was played on the BBC was played in Manchester, not in London. The first radio drama was written by somebody called Phyllis Twigg. Who wrote it? But all of the history books say it was a bloke called Richard Hughes, and so on and so forth. In fact, the first DJ for British radio was somebody called Gertrude Donisthorpe. Imagine the jingle she had.

Speaker 5: 46:05

So are you going to say Sarah Cox or something like that? No, I'm joking.

Speaker 4: 46:09

No, so Gertrude Donisthorpe, it's normally again what a name I know exactly. So, yes, so well worth a peek at in terms of that, if you're interested in the radio side. And I was contacted with this information and I thought, well, I think the Radio Academy ought to know about that. And so thought, well, I think the Radio Academy ought to know about that. And so I contacted them and hopefully the host of this show will be doing a turn at the Radio Festival in late September, because that would be good too, wouldn't it? But still Nice.

Speaker 5: 46:45

Put the record straight. Put the record straight. Okay, let's whiz over down to your way. What's going on down under?

Speaker 4: 46:52

There's a new female-led podcast network here in Australia. It's called Kind Regards. So nice to see those Whisking over to Germany and for the first time there, podcasting is now bigger than radio for young people, 18 to 29-year-olds and once the preserve of men, it's now women who are listening. Are we getting a theme more often? Yes, they're taking over sam. What? What can we do to stop this?

Speaker 5: 47:20

nothing that's what my wife told me, anyway um, so, uh.

Speaker 4: 47:26

yes, women now listen more often to podcasts, with monthly listening more than tripling for them since 29. Well, they can multitask better than we can, so they're good. Yes, correct. If you would like to see the full report, we are the only place where you can get the full report in English, which is nice, and if you are a subscriber to the Pod News newsletter, podnewsnet, slash extras is where to grab that. If you're not a subscriber, tough, you need to be a subscriber, because we've hidden it behind our very, very, very soft registration wall there. But trying something there. Actually, when you download it, it says can we share the domain name of your email so that the company know, firstly, how many downloads, but also, secondly, roughly what kind of companies are downloading it, which, of course, is a slight problem, because my domain name is gridlandnet, so it's very obvious that it's me. But you know we need to think about that. But still. But there we are Two other things. Do you like tequila Sam?

Speaker 5: 48:37

No, I've got some really bad experiences with tequila. Anyone who remembers me from Microsoft at the break for the border Mexican tequila drinking night will know that's the truth, yes, oh my Well, jason Kalkanis, your friend.

Speaker 4: 48:55

he ended up launching his own tequila brand as part of the All In podcast. He launched it on Saturday night. The tequila cost $1,200 a bottle and they've all sold out already. Wow.

Speaker 5: 49:13

Who said grifting in America doesn't work?

Speaker 4: 49:16

Who, indeed, would say that? What should we launch, james? What should we launch? Maybe we should launch Beer mats. Beer mats. Pod News did used to have pod coasters, right. There you go. Yes, um, so they're coasters, obviously, but for podcasting, and uh, the idea there is, they were sort of um, squishy squishy coasters rather than, um, you know, beer mats, um, and so the idea is there that you could, uh, use that to put your your drink on while you're editing, but also put your microphone on while you're recording, and it would make the noises.

Speaker 4: 49:56

Anyway, it turned out it was $25 to send one of those overseas, so I got rid of them all in a New Zealand podcast conference and also in the US. Nielsen says streaming is now bigger in the US than both broadcast TV and cable TV, so streaming is now the number one TV platform, which I thought was interesting.

Speaker 5: 50:19

Do you agree?

Speaker 4: 50:20

Yes, I would have thought so. Yeah, I think you know. In terms of total time spent watching. Yes, I think that probably explains a lot in terms of the malaise that broadcast TV is in, particularly in the US, where broadcast TV is relatively unwatchable in terms of the amount of ads on there. So, yeah, no, I can, doesn't this back up?

Speaker 5: 50:43

Doesn't this back up what Goldhanger are saying, then? Because we've talked about YouTube saying that large TV is their predominant platform now, and now you're saying Nielsen says that streaming is now bigger than the US broadcast TV and then we're saying, on the back of it, live broadcasting to those platforms that stream are getting significant audiences. I think we can see a trend there.

Speaker 4: 51:10

James, yes, I think we can, although I would also say that this is technology, not content. And, of course, you can watch live TV news from a large broadcaster on your streaming platform. Youtube, for example, is the biggest streaming platform in the US, with 12.5% of all streaming, which is actually not that much if you consider that there are all of those other streamers out there. But yeah, so that was interesting. And two other things One from China. You can do one from South Africa. There you go. How's that?

Speaker 4: 51:49

One from China that I've got is that podcasts from luxury brands. They've tried to do branded podcasting in China and it's not going so well. Apparently, according to a report in Jing Daily, people really aren't getting the numbers that they were expecting out of branded content in China. And, of course, chinese podcasting very, very different to podcasting everywhere else. There's no YouTube in the country and also this podcast isn't available in China. Everything has to be allow listed in China. So we wrote a big, long article about this a few months or so ago. But yes, interesting times in China, certainly.

Speaker 5: 52:33

Not surprising when, after the tariffs that the Chinese were putting out, their warehouses were making all the luxury branded goods in the same warehouse production and just sticking a label on it and then charging 20x or 30x more.

Speaker 5: 52:48

Yeah, not surprising, luxury brands podcasts don't do well over there when they know that it's basically smoke and mirrors anyway. Um, zipping over to south africa, friend of the show, john savage. He's been on the show before he pinged us to say that he basically needs our help. The uh production studios that he's been co-founding for the last six years is called Amped. It's a really good podcast hub with 15,000 independent podcast creators. They've got mentors. It's free for people to use. So if you're, you know, in Cape Town or wherever you can rock up there, the equipment's available. They will take you through how to do the whole podcast. They even do the editing part. Um, they've had a brand drop out and now they have a short-term money issue which they need to solve. They're looking to the south african government, but you know they could also do with uh sponsorship help anyway. Uh, I had a little chat with john and I started off by asking him well, you know what is Amped? First of all, let me know from your mouth and what's currently happening with it, john.

Speaker 1: 53:58

Amped is my baby right A few lifetimes ago I was a rock star and I was in a band that toured the world for six years and one of the things I really saw in first world countries is the amount of infrastructure and support you get in the creative space. But back home in Africa it's really different and it's hardcore, like being a creator, being a music artist, being a podcaster. So we had this idea to see if we could build an ecosystem for essentially musicians and we built this huge space. It's got like world-class recording studios. It's got live huge space. It's got like world-class recording studios, got live event space. It's got all this stuff and it's free.

Speaker 1: 54:37

But very shortly like a year in, it moved into a podcasting space very, very quickly and we've been in for six years. We've never applied for funding, we've never needed any help. We have a community of 15,000. We record over 200 episodes there a month of podcasters. We have five podcasting studios and a music studio and a YouTubing studios, video and audio, both cameras in every room, full crew and it's completely free for the creator economy.

Speaker 1: 55:05

And what's happened over these last years is we've created the biggest podcasters. I mean part of where the Africa Podcast Network came from was through the community we were building at Amped. The biggest podcasters, the smallest podcasters and people have just walked off the street saying I don't know what a podcast is, but I want to make one. They all have a home at Amped. We have masterclasses every single week with the biggest stars. We do networking sessions between corporates and podcasters and really it's a very rich, amazing environment. We have hot desk space in there, free internet. Like whenever I go in there, I never know what's happening. It's just an incredible community that we've been spending over the last six years.

Speaker 5: 55:43

So, given the enormity 15,000, that's pretty amazing and given the fact that you've set this up it's free for everybody what's the current state of play then?

Speaker 1: 55:58

We're in trouble. Like I said, we're doing the government's work here. It's impact work and it's building a community. But we've never applied for any funding, we've never been given anything, but we've just, from day one, we've had brands come to us and support because they want to support the creator industry in Africa and support what we're doing and do little deals with us and sometimes two-year deals and three-year deals, and so we've never really worried as long as the overheads were covered and the community has been thriving.

Speaker 1: 56:21

We've hit a snag because the overheads for the space, as you can imagine, is quite high. The building is big, the gear is amazing, there's 13 staff and our latest client we're actually two years into a three-year partnership deal. They restructured at the last minute and the funding just got pulled immediately. And even though we've actually got a line of brands who want to work with us, we all know that brands don't move quickly. So we've got like this three to four month window where we're going to be forced to close down very, very shortly if we can't actually just get through the next few months.

Speaker 1: 56:53

So we're really putting an appeal out to anyone interested investing in the creator economy, wanting to support. We've just launched a backer buddy crowdfunding site, anyone who wants to just help get us through these next three, four months and keep the longevity of AMP running. And so this is why, like I reached out to you, this is a real call to really help a lot of people, a lot of people really rely on AMP. We forgot to mention we also have post-production facilities all over and there's this natural ecosystem where young guys have come and built a business doing post-production for the podcasters who are at AMP using our ecosystem. So the government should really come along and play ball here, but we're in a country where that doesn't happen always.

Speaker 5: 57:34

So that's one thing that we've seen starting to happen in other countries. So let me give you some examples. India has invested 1 billion US dollars into the podcast community. We interviewed Chloe from Audio UK, the CEO, and she's knocking on the door of number 10 Downing Street begging them to invest into the podcast ecosystem, because we have tax breaks for films and we have an amazing music industry within the UK, but the creative arts around podcasting is not supported in the UK. And then, only last week, canada now has started to look at investing into podcasting because, again, without them investing into their own native podcasting community, guess what? Donald Trump's 51st state will just have American podcasting. Yeah, so again with something like South Africa, with something like you've already created. It's not like you're going to the government and saying could we have some money to create? You know AMPT. Ampt is already here, built and functional. You're looking now for some support to keep this going. Is there no opportunity that the government will come in and help you at all?

Speaker 1: 58:50

No, there is because I've been in conversations with them. The problem we have is time this contract that got NFT rug pulled from us. It would be an absolute tragedy to close down AMP because of time. The reality is if they had given us normal three to four months notice, there wouldn't be a problem.

Speaker 1: 59:07

But the whole media environment is in a bit of a shaky space globally. No one is spending money quickly. We have been inundated with love, with support, with brands saying we want in, with a bidding war to work with the studio, but those things take real time. We are out of time and also the government who have come and said this is an incredible platform. We're definitely going to support this. Apply for this fund and in six months you'll be eligible for it.

Speaker 1: 59:35

So we're kind of in this funnel where we really are stuck and it takes a lot for me to reach out and ask for the type of help that I am. But this is such a. You know it's hard to explain if you're not from here, but the rung of the ladder is way below. Anywhere else, like when you're in the UK or in America, it's very easy to get to that first rung and then it's harder to keep climbing, but the gap from beginning is so huge and that's what Amped has really done. It's had an impact on culture because it's given people knowledge and information and access to stuff they would never get, and there's nothing else doing that. Here we are impacting the creator economy and teaching people how to monetize their art.

Speaker 1: 1:00:16

This is not like my core business. I'm running my podcast network, but my heart is like this is a total tragedy if we can't get support and we're willing to sell shares in Amt. If someone wants to invest, it is profitable. It's made a profit since day one for six years. It's a good business If you're a record label or a podcast network, if you want to know where all the talent is, it's here. So there's a lot of commercial value for it as well. But also if you just want to help, then that's Afrikaans for throw like throw some money into the funding bucket because it's for a really good cause.

Speaker 5: 1:00:50

So dare I ask what are you looking for to keep things going?

Speaker 1: 1:00:54

We're looking for $100,000. That'll keep us going for three and a half months to four months. That'll be plenty.

Speaker 5: 1:01:01

So if I want to help, first of all, where would I go for the funding? Give me the URL.

Speaker 1: 1:01:08

Okay, the URL is backerbuddy. So I had to try find one of these crowdfundings that actually worked in South Africa, and there are very few of them, but the most reliable one is called backabuddycoza and I'll send you the link. It's forward slash campaign, forward slash, save dash dash, amped dash studios, but I'll send you the link because it's not very memorable. Okay, and then what I'll also give you, sam, if you want, is just a link to that video that I sent you. People can actually see what goes on at Amped and I think that's quite special as well.

Speaker 5: 1:01:38

If somebody wants to directly connect with you, John, what would they do?

Speaker 1: 1:01:41

I think the best thing to do is email me at my personal email address, which is john J-O-N, not H at the I, t-h-e-e-y-e dot C-O dot Z-A. They can call me. I'll give you my phone number. If someone wants to buy shares in Amt, I'm open to that as well. Whatever it takes to keep this baby alive, we're willing to do.

Speaker 5: 1:02:03

John, I wish you all the best in the world, mate.

Speaker 1: 1:02:05

Sam, you are the best and we really appreciate you and Pod News. Thank you. Podcast events on the Pod News Weekly Review.

Speaker 4: 1:02:13

Yes, the APA is. The Audio Production Awards from Audio UK are now open for entry and Audible is returning as a sponsor. You've got until mid-September to enter those. There are very good, well-thought-of awards in the UK. If you're eligible to enter, then please do.

Speaker 4: 1:02:35

Spotify has also been around for some of these large events. There was a big event at VidCon last week and guess what? Lots of podcasters were there, thanks to Spotify, that were hawking their wares over in wherever VidCon was. So. Good to see that. But also good to see Spotify at Cannes Lions, at the big advertising conference going on in the south of France. They ended up giving a fancy award to Michael Barbaro, and the award was the Gold Creator Milestone Award. They hit 500 million all-time streams on Spotify, so he's now got a fancy award. Spotify said that the Daily was the fifth podcast to reach 500 million streams, because they're actually the seventh because there are two German language podcasts that have also reached that milestone as well. But anyway, congratulations to the Daily for winning that fancy award. When do you suppose that we'll get that award 500 million all-time streams on Spotify, sam.

Speaker 5: 1:03:56

Oh, once we do the daily show, yeah right, which john wants us to do we'll be there next year and video obviously, and in video we'll be there at can next year, not a problem. Well, you choose. James, would you like to go to vidcon or can? You can't be a both right, so do we do video or do a daily? I mean I you choose.

Speaker 4: 1:04:15

I think we can do both, can't we? I'm sure we can. Other events you should be thinking about going to Podcast Movement 2025. Hooray, you should be going to the Empowered Podcast Conference September 26th to 28th in Charlotte. How about Radio Days Asia? That's good too. That's in Jakarta at the beginning of September. I'll be there. And Pod Summit at YYC in Calgary in Alberta. For most of those, you can get money off. Podnewsnet slash extras is the place to go for your fancy code in there.

Speaker 5: 1:04:51

Now a couple of stories that just grabbed my attention. Smart podcasters take breaks. This was a story in the newsletter Weirdly James, are you taking a break?

Speaker 4: 1:05:03

I'm taking a break next week, but only from this show, not from the Pod News Daily, sadly.

Speaker 5: 1:05:11

I'd love to know what would happen if you took a break from Pod News Daily as well.

Speaker 4: 1:05:15

Well, I'll tell you what would happen. Nothing would happen, because there is no way that anybody else could publish that newsletter, given that there is no. Given that there's no you know back what was the phrase? Back office? There's no fancy little buttons to easily send yes, there's none of that. So that's what would happen there. But yes, I will be in Darwin next week on a family holiday, but I'm still going to keep the Pod News Daily up and running in some way, shape or form, so that will be fun.

Speaker 5: 1:05:52

The other story that you talked about in Pod News Daily was a new podcast called Internet Changemakers, and I was listening to you and then you suddenly mentioned somebody who I have great admiration for, which was Vince Cerf, and so I thought gosh, I must jump on and listen to that podcast. So yeah, it's called Internet Changemakers.

Speaker 4: 1:06:13

Yes, it's all about the history of the internet and is worth a listen. And also, if you think you know what you're doing in terms of podcasting, well, why not apply for the Stony Brook Podcast Incubator? They are looking for their next cohort and it's a two semester programme. It provides hands on editorial, technical and professional training for audio creators at all levels. Now they've got some amazing guest speakers. Some of those guest speakers Valerie Geller, Lauren Purcell, ira Glass some really, really big names. I did notice when I went and looked at the guest speakers that they are all from the United States of America. So clearly nobody else in the rest of the world has anything to teach the Americans when it comes to making audio. So I'm delighted to learn that and I am hoping that they change that for next year, but nevertheless, I'll submit to us.

Speaker 5: 1:07:12

You know, maybe we should go onto that incubator. You know, we can learn something.

Speaker 4: 1:07:17

Yeah, yeah, that'll be an entertainment.

Speaker 5: 1:07:19

I'd love us to do that and rock up. That'd be so funny. The Tech. Stuff, tech Stuff On the Pod News Weekly Review.

Speaker 4: 1:07:26

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

Speaker 5: 1:07:36

Well, actually more likely you're going to talk about this section than me. It's the apple showcase hero. What is the apple showcase hero, james?

Speaker 4: 1:07:42

yes, so the apple showcase hero is some art, um, that apple would like. If they are going to promote your podcast, then you have to now give them um different piece of artwork, not just your square podcast thumbnail, but also something called showcase hero art, which is very wide and not very high, and those make the buttons that you see in the Apple podcasts app. So, and they're basically saying, if you don't have Showcase Hero art, then we're not going to consider you anymore. So that's interesting. What is also interesting is that they're specifically asking about trailers. So I think we can probably guess what might be happening next there. So nothing for you to worry about if you're not doing Apple Podcasts promotion, if you're not filling out that exciting form to get more push in the Apple Podcasts app. But yeah, you will have to produce this new artwork and, currently at least upload it to Apple, which you have to do through a fancy form.

Speaker 5: 1:08:57

Yeah, and they give you a graphic to show what it might look like as well.

Speaker 4: 1:09:01

So now taking this further and, by the way, they require it as a PSD file, as a layered PSD file, which is a Photoshop file. I don't have Photoshop, so when I made the graphics for the Pod News Daily, which I did do a couple of years ago, I actually had to pay somebody, because I don't have Photoshop and so, therefore, I had to pay somebody that did so. I think it's a bit grumpy, but I suppose what can you do?

Speaker 5: 1:09:31

Well, look, the lovely term showcase hero sounds great. Fundamentally, it's a banner right, nothing more, nothing less when you look at it, and they can then slice and dice it based on screen size. So we have, within the podcasting 2.0 community, had a banner tag proposed. Russell Harrowworth from Pod 2 proposed it back in May 2023. And Dave Jones, the Podsage, has also been updating the images tag to include the support for the Apple Hero as well. So really, james, without sounding trite, isn't it just a banner that gets placed into the RSS feed that Apple can then just ingest if they want to?

Speaker 4: 1:10:15

Well, wouldn't that be good. So just to correct you, the podcast images tag is going away. It will be the first tag to be deprecated. The podcast images tag will no longer exist. There is a new tag which is coming, called the podcast image tag.

Speaker 5: 1:10:33

Oh yes, because that clears it up for me.

Speaker 4: 1:10:37

And there's a reason why Dave is doing that. And firstly, brilliant that Podcasting 2.0 is now grown up enough to go. You know what, when we make a mistake, we should actually say now we've made a mistake, we're not going to support that tag going forward. I think that this is a brilliant move and I'm very, very pleased to see that the podcast image tag is very different, so it couldn't be made backwards compatible with the images tag. But what that has in it is it's got a thing called a purpose field and the purpose field.

Speaker 4: 1:11:12

You can say that this is a banner for Russell, you can say that this is a, you know, a small thumbnail, if you like, or you can say that this is an Apple showcase hero purpose, and then whatever is looking at your RSS feed, the theory is can go OK, I know what to do with that image and I know what that image is for, and so all of that, I think, makes perfect sense. I would be very keen to see as I'm sure, frankly, that Apple would to see these special images just embedded in the RSS feed. That makes them available to all apps and also makes them available so that Apple doesn't have to deal with all of this uploading and downloading and very, very manual work in terms of sticking those images into their app.

Speaker 4: 1:12:12

I just noticed that the actual demo example can't be right, because it has today explained jpg, but you just said they have to be PSD. Suggestion for the documentation has been that that width is taken out. But this is the beauty of working on this standard in an open way. It just means that everybody can actually do that, so yeah, so I think it's a nice piece of work. Now, hopefully, we're not going to get to a stage where we've done this without Apple having any input whatsoever. Apple can always, of course, turn around and say we're not going to use this yet, but if we were going to use it, these are the things that we would like changed, please. That would be a brilliant thing if Apple were to do that comes around to giving some feedback into this spec so that maybe at some point in the future they actually turn around and start ingesting all of this stuff.

Speaker 5: 1:13:23

Yeah, Now moving on very quickly, then. Pocket Cast has added transcripts to its web player. What's it doing?

Speaker 4: 1:13:31

Yes, so if you have your own transcript using the Podcasting 2.0 transcript tag, then that's cool and it'll appear in there. If you don't have your own transcript, then one will get made for the listener if they are a plus or patron subscriber, which I think makes sense because it costs money to get these things done. I think makes sense because it costs money to get these things done. It looks very cool. It's got named voices in there as well. So if you're producing your own transcript, then you can make it look very smart and you should see a transcript for this show appear in the web player of Pocket Cast. It's been, of course, available in the app for the last couple of months as well.

Speaker 5: 1:14:16

Congratulations to Ellie Podrolls. Pocket Casts, along with True Fans, are one of the apps that support podrolls. You've been doing some work, james I assume because it's on your website with Daniel J Lewis to improve the number of examples that people can see for how to do a pod role.

Speaker 4: 1:14:35

Yeah, so on the podcasting2.org website we are just doing a bit more documentation and a bit more sort of examples of how things work and pod role which stupid name. Let's call them creator recommendations. That is something that you know I've added a bunch of artwork for, so you can actually see what it looks like in Pocket Casts and in various other places. So there's a full guide to that. Anybody can edit it, not just me. So if anybody else wants to add their website True Fans to that, then they would be more than welcome. Just podcasting2.org, find the page in the documentation section and hit that button marked Edit this page. And it couldn't be easier. I might do that later.

Speaker 5: 1:15:29

Yes, wonder where that came from. Now, moving on the search engines, there's a new one around James, called POSUMA. What is POSUMA?

Speaker 4: 1:15:40

Yes, it is a. Now it's in German language for a start, and so therefore it's quite difficult to use unless you speak German. But the idea behind it is that it focuses on content filters rather than on algorithms. So you can basically say I would like a business podcast, I would like it to be 12 minutes long. Go and it will find a business podcast like that for you. So they're calling it more diverse and fairer. Not so sure They've got some funding from a university, but you know it's worth giving it a play anyway. There's more details of that in the Pod News newsletter. I think I take their press release in German, but then there's a link to get that translated automatically. So it's worth a peek. And talking about Germans, are we? We are Orphonic. Didn't know Orphonic, I didn't know that's wild yes.

Speaker 4: 1:16:39

The good folks at Orphonic. So they make some very, very clever audio treatment tools which we use every single week. If you're listening to this show on Buzzsprout, you will. You know as you are then this show goes through Orphonic Buzzsprout. Call it magic mastering, but it's actually Orphonic under the hood. But Orphonic have added a new feature if you use them directly, which removes coughs, throat clearing, sneezing and similar sounds sniffs as well, I guess just in time for hay fever season or flu season. So they are so bright, so clever. I ended up having I think I ended up seeing them at the last podcast movement in Washington and we went out for a nice Mexican lunch, I seem to remember, and that was great fun. But yeah, they are so, so clever working with audio, so it's well worth taking a peek at that.

Speaker 5: 1:17:42

Another company that's been doing audio enhancement is a company called Hans. Who are they?

Speaker 4: 1:17:48

They are a company, I think, based somewhere in the Scandinavian countries, or maybe in Germany actually as well, in fact. But anyway, it turns out that quite a lot of new Intel laptops have specific chips in them that can deal with quite a lot of the AI. Now that you need to do things like noise removal or things like stem separation so getting rid of the vocal from a track, for example you can do that directly on your laptop if you've got a particular chip in there from Intel, and so this company called Hance has done that. That looks to me really interesting, because you can imagine in a couple of years, you can imagine something like Descript or something like Hindenburg, actually using AI generated tools to do what we're currently doing with Adobe Podcast or with Studio Sound or with whatever else is going on. So very, very smart is that, yeah.

Speaker 5: 1:18:54

And just worked out their name. Why? Because they've got enhancement company.

Speaker 4: 1:18:59

Hans, oh nice, hans. Yes, very good, very good, that's nice. And talking about AI, iheart is using AI translated, is using AI translations to produce 10 of its popular podcasts in lots of different languages. So, on Purpose with Jay Shetty, your friend will be translated into all manner of other languages. I think they're starting with Spanish and then moving on to French, arabic, portuguese, hindi and Mandarin, with plans to expand even more in the future. There's a long article which I linked through to, where they basically say they've been trying to do this for a while. They haven't found a good enough tool, but they've now found one. It's a tool which is run by a company called Speech Lab, which I've never heard of, but yes, so all of that looks quite interesting and quite smart.

Speaker 5: 1:19:54

Yeah, they're doing quite a few shows they're doing, you know. I wonder why they picked those. I mean, we've talked about it in the past. Uh, there was an interview, uh with mr beast about how he is reliant on the youtube translation, which is critical to his business, because I think he said something like 85 of his audience is outside of the english-speaking language. Um, so I, iheart, are picking up on that as well, that they can actually get a massive audience outside the US for English speaking languages. It'll be interesting to see what the uptake in that is after they've done it.

Speaker 4: 1:20:31

Yes, it will be, and I think they've chosen these quite carefully in terms of the types of shows, because there seems to be one of each show. You know, basically in here there's shows about things that you can learn, there's shows about history, there's shows about sort of lifestyles, things about true crime, just so they can find out what works in different markets. So, yeah, I think that there's definitely, you know, some interesting work going on there, just to find out what you know, how you could actually use this particular tool. It turns out that it sounds as if it's not that expensive to do, and so, therefore, they can probably move relatively quickly to just see what happens and then move on.

Speaker 5: 1:21:22

Would this be separate RSS feeds or would they use something like the alternative enclosure? I doubt they're going to use the alternative enclosure and I think you've said in the past that it's probably better if they do use separate feeds, but I would like to see single feeds with multiple alternative enclosure languages in.

Speaker 4: 1:21:39

But anyway, yes, and I think I err on the side of a separate feed if the language is different. But it would be nice to be able to link between those feeds in some way, shape or form. But of course you need, everything needs to be different if you're in a different language. So if you're, you know so, the title is probably going to be different, the artwork is probably going to be different, the description certainly will be. So I think, once you're at that position, I think you should probably have a separate feed, but wouldn't it be nice to have, in the same way that HTML does, to have oh, if you want this in German, it's over here and to do a language link there, and that would be very nice to end up doing. And you know, that sounds to me like that might be a podcasting 2.0 tag in the making at some point.

Speaker 4: 1:22:50

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, or boosts everywhere else, or email, or, you know, fan mail, for example, as two people have done this week, which is very exciting. You can do that by following the link you'll find in our show notes, and that's something that our sponsor, buzzsprout, puts together, and very clever it is too, and very clever it is too. There is a message here from 7372, which turns out to be Scott, who's host of the Talk With History podcast. Hello Scott, in Alhambra in California I've watched lots of very good pantomimes in the Alhambra, but that was the Alhambra in Bradford which I suspect is something different, the Alhambra in Bradford, which I suspect is something different.

Speaker 4: 1:23:36

Anyway, he says gentlemen, on the topic of video podcasts, I feel like your campaign against video steady on is starting to alienate those of us podcasters that have a video component. I have a small but growing podcast, but I was video first with a YouTube channel. I recently had my first ever podcast sponsor and was able to sell much higher ad rates because I had a video aspect, albeit small, for video. I agree that podcasts should be audio first, but video isn't a bad thing, it's just a different thing. Thanks for the show and for the analysis. Yes, I think that's very interesting feedback, scott. What do you think Sam?

Speaker 5: 1:24:15

Yeah, look, I think we've gone through the video bashing period, We've gone through the AI bashing period. I mean, again, you know well, let's be fair, you know, when anything new comes around, change is not the thing that most people adopt first. I think now that we're beginning to see the word creators used more than we are just the generic podcaster. So I think people are starting to realize that they're multi-channel. We talk about omni-channel all the time. So, yeah, look, I think we just have to get over ourselves, right? Those people that want to do a YouTube video or a Spotify video, crack on, you know, and if you reach a bigger audience because of it and you get more revenue through advertising, well done you. It's the amount of work you put in. I guess that determines it. We don't have anything really against it.

Speaker 5: 1:25:08

I think what's happened is the word podcast has been hijacked. You know we talked about it earlier Spotify podcast and news podcast that you mentioned from Australia. You know they're using the term podcast because it latches onto the user quickly, it frames it for them to what type of content it might be, even though it's not specifically a audio podcast, which is where the word originated from. So, look, let's get over ourselves. If you want to do it, crack on. If you don't, no worries.

Speaker 4: 1:25:38

Yeah, I think we're not necessarily campaigning against video. Certainly I'm not campaigning against video. I'm just urging quite a lot of caution, and I'll give you an example of that caution. This is a clip of the Hot Mess podcast, which has been away for the last couple of weeks and last couple of months in fact but is now coming back. I'm going to play a bit. It starts with the host of Hot Mess telling us what she's doing with her show, and then it goes into something else. So let's have a quick listen to some of this.

Speaker 3: 1:26:15

So Hot Mess is going to be on my Alex Earle YouTube channel and it's also going to be on the Hot Mess channel on Spotify, Because I know that there's so many of you guys, my Earle girls I love you guys dearly who come back and listen to Hot Mess every single week, or you did for the past year and a half. So while it was on pause, I started vlogging on YouTube. Today we're going to see Sally's apartment in New York City. Hey, MTV, welcome to my club. Everyone's trying to decide if we're going to day three. Come with us on a family trip to Disney. Give a warm, loud and a welcome my special chicken. We're about to do our first shot together.

Speaker 4: 1:26:55

It is officially time for our Coachella bidding. Lady Gaga just went back on Now I understood the first half of that. There she is talking about how she's been trying vlogging and things, and then we got that just sort of random. Here's lots of music and here's lots of audio that doesn't necessarily fit together very well lots of audio that doesn't necessarily fit together very well. Anyway, it turns out this is a YouTube video which has been also made available as a piece of audio.

Speaker 4: 1:27:22

None of that bit makes any sense, none of the clips. It was lots of clips of her wearing virtually no clothing, running around doing, you know, whatever it is that influencers do these days, but none of that makes sense for an audio listener. And that's the concern that I've got. If we end up with bad audio which the beginning of that was because it was just on a lav mic in some holiday destination followed by random bits of music and clips that make no sense without video, then I'm just concerned about what that means in terms of what the future of a podcast is.

Speaker 4: 1:28:04

And it's not just me saying that Triton's Sharon Taylor posted something this week saying listen up, your audio audience is watching you, not necessarily your podcast. I'm basically saying that we have to be careful not to break the audio experience in our rush to video, and I think that that audio is a really good example of just breaking the audio experience. What's going on there, and do I feel included in that, or do I feel excluded because I can't see any of the fancy pictures? That's the concern that I've got really with all of this Quite. Apart from what it means for us as an industry, what it means for us as listeners, the concern that I've got is that if we're not careful, we break what makes podcasting great by doing stuff like that.

Speaker 5: 1:28:58

The jury will adjudicate over time. I guess Vote with your ears.

Speaker 4: 1:29:04

Anyway, thank you, scott, for the fan mail. I appreciate it. Also. We've got another piece of fan mail, which is excellent fan mail. What does this one say?

Speaker 5: 1:29:14

another piece of fan mail, which is excellent fan mail. What does this one say? It's from Wilmington, delaware. It says I really enjoy and appreciate your weekly show. It's been really great at helping me build my three shows and my media network, askralphcom. Well, you're very welcome and thank you for listening.

Speaker 4: 1:29:31

Yes, this is excellent. This is our 20th supporter, ralph Estep. Thank you, ralph. I hope I've pronounced your surname correctly. If I was a good presenter, what I would have done is gone to listen to one of your three podcasts and actually heard you say what your name was, but I haven't yet done that. One of those is called Grit and Growth Business, which is all about strategies that grow businesses, also financial information, and also a podcast called the Truth Unveiled, which you can find wherever you get your podcasts. So, ralph, thank you so much for doing that. Really appreciate it, and that goes to both Sam and myself. Much appreciated.

Speaker 5: 1:30:17

Now for some boosts, james. What have we got?

Speaker 4: 1:30:20

Yes, we've got a ton of boosts in here. Seth 979 sats using TrueFans, loving this episode and listening on the beta of the TrueFans app. How's the TrueFans app going, sam Well?

Speaker 5: 1:30:33

it's no longer a beta James, it's now in the actual app store. So I'm very happy about that. In fact, I didn't even know, because apple didn't tell me. Somebody told me that it's gone into the app store, which was even funny. I'm walking my dog and they're going. Oh, by the way, do you know your apps in the app store? No, won't be in the app store. No, I had a. I had a issue to deal with. Oh, it's in the app store. Really excellent, thank you very much. Wow, um, so yes, that was quite funny. Um, but yes, it's great that it's in there. Um, I'll update where we are with the rest of it in the section later below yes, excellent.

Speaker 4: 1:31:05

Well, I'm looking forward, uh, to that. Um, also looking forward to you being in the android app store, uh, which you're not yet by the looks of things, but, uh, every very soon. Yes, a row of ducks from the Ugly Quacking Duck. Thank you, bruce. I think last time we said, well, why don't you do your own podcast? And he said, oh, if only, if only I had great content, then we would be loved. No ads needed, ha, podcasting is still fun. Pod News does another great episode. Thank you both, sam and James. 73s, well, 73s to you too.

Speaker 4: 1:31:38

Thank you Most appreciated. What else have we got here, neil Velio?

Speaker 5: 1:31:44

Yeah, neil Velio said you could get a video version of this show with minimal extra editing in Descript within 15 minutes. I'm not saying you should, but you definitely can, and it would look pretty decent. Underlord might well be taking our souls as payment, though, which is the ai within d script, but yeah, they just want us to hand the keys to our kingdom to them. Reference to the youtube clip at the beginning look um a. We couldn't do a video because we use clean feed and so there is no video element to this. But all the interviews that I do are done with Descript and, yes, I have thought about putting out video clips from it and it's pretty quick to do. But again, it's just the amount of work and time required and I'm not sure that the return would be relevant.

Speaker 4: 1:32:31

Yeah, and I thought it was interesting, Dallas Taylor, who does a podcast called 20,000 Hertz. He has just started a YouTube channel but he's not doing his podcast there. He's doing a separate type of show for YouTube and one of the interesting things that he's done there is he has interviewed people for that particular show and he's still done all of the tidying up of the audio and the de-umming and the de-erring and everything else. So it looks slightly weird because there's quite a lot of jump cuts in there, as people say ums and errs all the way through, but it's a great watch. But again, it's very, very different. I simply don't necessarily have the time in order to edit that whole thing together. If Hindenburg, the editing tool that I used, edited video alongside the audio, then I might consider it, but at the moment it doesn't. So I'm going to steer well clear of that. But thank you, Neil, for the idea.

Speaker 4: 1:33:34

John McDermott, 1887 Sats. You're both right about the rest is and agents. We were talking about these brands that both Goldhanger and Global have put together. I think Goldhanger, he says, is putting out the best shows out there and I discovered a lot because of the name. However, I still get confused between the rest is politics and the rest is history. Really, Also, I see true fans to dollars and I have topped two. What does it say? Also, I see true fans to dollars and I have topped two dollars, and I don't know if that's a lot or I'm cheap. Well, I mean, it's two dollars.

Speaker 5: 1:34:13

I'm wondering whether he's saying what's he talking about? I'm wondering whether he's topped. What's he talking about? Whether he's topped up his wallet or he's supporting this show. I can check for $2, because you can directly support the show for $2 or $3 or $10 or whatever amount, and then, when the episode drops, you get a percentage of that $2 based on the length of the show. So we don't do what Patreon does, which is just this is why the show is always so long. Yes, Seven hours coming soon.

Speaker 4: 1:34:50

Anyway, thank you, john, much appreciated. And yes, I think little sub-brands are a good idea. What else have we got in here? We've got Silas from Linux1234Sats talking about Home Assistant and basically saying it's a thing put together by mostly seemingly random people, a bit like podcasting. Fair enough, and he also says so. We have actually found the one method to make the slowest method of communication even slower by having conversations between different boosters in this show. Nice, yes, I think you're absolutely correct there. So, silas, thank you for that. And finally, mike Dell.

Speaker 4: 1:35:32

Bloober is Mike Dell, 1,701 sats from Castomatic and the message is testing Albi Hub. That was actually sent to the Pod News Daily. Mike, you can test the Albi Hub as much as you like by doing that. That's absolutely fine. So, thank you. It'd be interesting to find out actually, given that that's gone to the Pod News Daily, whether or not I got that in Strike, because Strike, of course, uses an LN address or an LN URL, so I might take a peek at that. Thank you so much to our talented 20, weeklypodnewsnet, including our brand new Ralph Estep Jr, also Brian Brian Ensminger and Neil Velio, for your kind support, and the rest of the talented 20, is that what we're going for?

Speaker 5: 1:36:24

I couldn't think of a preposition, so that's the one I've gone for.

Speaker 4: 1:36:27

yes, oh, preposition, listen to you Went to a grammar school. Somebody went to army school, so did you. So don't knock it I didn't go to army school ah, that's true so what's happened for you this week, sam?

Speaker 5: 1:36:42

otherwise well uh, as I said, true fans everywhere is our strategy. So we're in the app store. We've now submitted the google android play store version just waiting for, and we've also submitted the updated app for Apple TV, apple Watch and CarPlay. So, again, hopefully by next week certainly sooner we'll be on all of those platforms and we're also we submitted our Fire TV because that's really simple, because basically, it's a PWA within a wrap of Chrome, and that's the way they do. It's a pwa within a wrapper chrome and that's the way they do it. That's not us determining that. It's not like you can do it in a native app. So it actually worked out really quick. So, yeah, so we should be on android, fire tv and multiple tvs and in car very, very shortly very nice.

Speaker 4: 1:37:32

I do notice that on the google app store or the google play store, there is an app called true fan, and true fan looks quite fascinating. It's a way of you play quizzes and if you play enough quizzes, you win a personalized video message from your favorite celebrities how. Oh, how dodgy does that sound it's not us. Yes, not you. Not us no gosh Anyway. So, hls, what are you doing here?

Speaker 5: 1:38:10

We're taking some of the most popular shows on our platform and we're testing converting those through FFmpeg into HLS and then we're going to test broadcasting those out just to see what the cost is, what the bandwidth requirement is on the CDN and various other bits and pieces.

Speaker 4: 1:38:25

So yeah, we're just doing some testing very nice, okay, well, that all sounds fun. And then you've got a few things in terms of roadmap and then, and then I think we have to hear about paddle, don't we? So anyway, a few things in your roadmap. Um, blue sky. It says here and verify tag. What are those two things?

Speaker 5: 1:38:43

yeah, so, uh, the way that apple did it with the verify txt tag for um hosts, we're doing the same thing. So we've got a test with pod 2 at the moment where they're going to use the verify tag instead of the email that we currently do to verify or claim a podcast, and that's going to be much better. And then, on the back of that, we gave them an api true fans api to use, which will then allow us to publish the activity stream or that podcast directly to the host. So first party data back to the host via our api very nice.

Speaker 4: 1:39:21

Oh, that all sounds, uh, that all sounds fancy. Uh, so there we are paddle.

Speaker 5: 1:39:28

Go on then yes, I won a little tournament. I won the local village tournament, well, the club tournament. So, yes, I'm quite chuffed.

Speaker 4: 1:39:35

Yes, moving along wow, very good, very good. So what's happening for you, james? Well I'm I'm looking forward to a holiday next week, um, partial holiday. I'll still be doing the pod news daily, but, um, I get this show off, which is nice, um, uh, up in darwin, which is, uh, very hot up there. It's the only place in Australia, on the Australian mainland, to see any action in the war in terms of bombings and things. So that was interesting. The Second World War is the particular war I'm talking about.

Speaker 4: 1:40:12

I've got no idea what might happen between now and 24 hours time.

Speaker 4: 1:40:26

So, yes, so that's all fun, and I've been going through the joys of running a developer beta of the iPhone and the Mac and everything else.

Speaker 4: 1:40:34

I'll tell you one other thing that really annoys me about it is so I've been playing around with, obviously, all of the new features in iOS and iPadOS and MacOS and, by the way, the second developer beta is way, way better than the first one, as you might expect, anyway.

Speaker 4: 1:40:53

And one of the things that is very clear to say as soon as you might expect, anyway, one of the things that he's very clear to say as soon as you download it is this is confidential, you must not post about it. You must not say anything about it. The only thing that you must do is you must use this for yourself. And I'm there like reading, you know, all kinds of people posting about it and doing YouTube videos about it and everything else. And I'm there thinking, you know, either uphold that apple and get very annoyed with those people or not, because I've been playing around with some of the tools and some of the tools are very nice and they will make amazingly good stories, but I don't want to list, you know that yet, so I haven't kind of done that. So, um, yeah, so it's, it's just an odd one really.

Speaker 5: 1:41:46

I did upgrade and I regret it already.

Speaker 4: 1:41:50

I tell you what, um, uh, spotlight from, uh and here I am breaking the rules. But anyway, what Spotlight from? And here I am breaking the rules. But anyway, spotlight in version two is much worse than Spotlight in version one, so that seems to have had a regression. So I'm feeling already bad about upgrading as well, but still, you know, there you go. But anyway, that's it for this week. All of our podcast stories taken from the Pod News daily newsletter at podnewsnet you can support the show by streaming sats.

Speaker 5: 1:42:19

You can give us feedback using the Buzzsprout fan mail, like we have this week in our show notes. You can send us super comments or boosts or become a power supporter like the talented 20 at weeklypodnewsnet.

Speaker 4: 1:42:33

Our music is from TM Studios. Our voiceover is Sheila Dee, our audio is recorded using Clean Feet, we edit with Hindenburg and we're hosted and sponsored by Buzzsprout. Start podcasting, keep podcasting. Get updated every day. Subscribe to our newsletter at podnewsnet.

Speaker 1: 1:42:51

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