Speaker 1: 0:00

The Pod News Weekly Review uses chapters In Spotify. You'll see the chapters in the episode page on the playback screen in the scrub bar, or just scroll up to see them all, or be a grown-up and listen to the whole thing.

Speaker 2: 0:12

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

Sam Sethi: 0:20

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

Dan Granger: 0:25

There were a lot of smart people that made that a real prestige brand in the space.

Sean King: 0:30

Dan Granger from Oxford Road with his thoughts on the Wondery Reorg Plus that restructuring kind of, is a little bit more of a recalibration into more potentially integrated audio ecosystems.

James Cridland: 0:42

Sean King from Veritone on the changing world of podcasting, and Riverside becomes a podcast host. This podcast is sponsored by Buzzsprout with the tools, support and community to ensure you keep podcasting, start podcasting, keep podcasting with buzzsproutcom.

Speaker 2: 1:00

From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly Review.

Sam Sethi: 1:04

James, let's kick this show off. Then Amazon is shutting down its Wondery podcast studio. Well, is it fully shutting it down? It's sort of reorganising it. There's a number of people that have been let go, unfortunately. Come on, what's been happening.

James Cridland: 1:19

Yes, they are definitely not shutting it down. And if we say that we're shutting it down, we will get an email from Amazon saying we are not shutting it down. And if we say that we're shutting it down, we will get an email from Amazon saying we are not shutting it down. So let's be very clear. They're not shutting it down, they are reorganising it, they're breaking up the company's operations. Essentially, the narrative content is going to Audible and all of that is going in there, including the chief content officer, Marshall Louis. He's moving to a new role at Audible. Also, the personality-driven podcast, because, of course, Wondery owns New Heights, for example, Kelsey Brothers and Armchair Expert. They are going to be part of a creator services team, which is all very exciting, and the advertising and sponsorship side of Wondery will be formed into a new team, also working with Amazon Music's advertising unit.

James Cridland: 2:13

Again, let me be very clear those teams are merging together, yes, but they're not merging together. They're both creating an entirely new business unit. Don't go thinking that they're merging together, because if, again, if I say that they are merging together, I will get an angry email from Amazon. That didn't bother to, you know. Send me the internal memo explaining it all until after I asked. But yes, go on. Do you know?

Sam Sethi: 2:35

why, james? Yes, do you know why? Because it messes up the org chart internally.

James Cridland: 2:40

Yes, I think quite a lot of it is. Look at me, I'm very important. I've got another unit answering to me. Yeah, exactly. So anyway, ignoring all of that, hernán López has posted something yesterday saying that he is obviously very sad, but saying that he's not going to say much more until he can get his thoughts in order, and I think that that's probably fair enough. Probably fair enough. It looks, reading the internal memo which we've got, it looks as if Amazon is trying to blame video, and video killed the owl. As I've been saying, I think it's possibly a little bit more than that, but what was interesting is seeing that the revenue was going up, and that's good, but necessarily not quite as much if they have made 110 people lose their jobs, including the CEO, jen Sargent, who, from all accounts, is an excellent person and it's a great shame to see her go.

Sam Sethi: 3:36

I would say Amazon is the only company slower and more disorganised and more disjointed than Apple, and that's saying something, because I've said it on this show in the past Amazon music, which somehow contains podcasts, but it doesn't say it. Wondery Twitch, you can go on. They're all siloed businesses and now they're reorganizing and they still didn't reorganize it to actually bring it together. So that's the other thing that's frustrating. If you're a customer from the outside looking in and now they're reorganising it and they still didn't reorganise it to actually bring it together. Yeah, so that's the other thing that's frustrating. If you're a customer from the outside looking in, I go to Spotify and I go, I pay my subscription, I get music, podcasts, audio books, video, bang, bang, bang. I don't understand the hierarchy or the organisational structure of Spotify because it's not been made obvious to me With Amazon, it is so obvious that there's an organisational structure there.

James Cridland: 4:30

Yeah, it's a mess. It's not just what Amazon has done with Wondery, it's what Amazon has done with everything that they've bought. So they bought podcast hosting company Art19, you might remember Vaguely that never achieved more than a 1% share of total episodes published. If you compare Art19, you might remember Vaguely that never achieved more than a 1% share of total episodes published. If you compare Art19, which is an enterprise podcast host, you compare that with the other enterprise podcast hosts Megaphone, Simplecast or Triton are all four times as large. It's astonishing the difference there. So Art19 has underperformed.

James Cridland: 5:04

Amazon spent $80 million on the Smartless podcast, but that deal only lasted three years, so clearly they must have failed in terms of that, because Smartless have moved on. Amazon spent $100 million for New Heights. In their press release they promised international audio adaptations, which haven't happened, and live events. Well, as soon as Amazon purchased New Heights, they haven't done a live event, so they failed on that as well. And then, of course, you've got Amazon Music, which started slowly adding podcasts in 2020. It's got a 13% market share for music in the US. I find astonishingly 13%, but in the US only gets a 1.6 share of podcast downloads.

Sam Sethi: 5:47

Every single thing that amazon has touched hasn't worked, and I find that quite astonishing well, we could add to that the podcasting integration with the alexa, which is just non-existent, alexa skills, which don't work. The list goes on right, I mean my Alexa now is a brilliant timer for cooking, and that's about the sum of it. We still haven't seen Alexa Plus rolled out, which is meant to be their new super-duper AI, so yeah, look.

James Cridland: 6:18

I don't think this is going to make any difference, basically, but I think I find it most annoying that they turn around and they say, oh well, it's because podcasts are going into video, and that's the thing as just throwing a grenade in the room as they leave. And it's just. You know, it's not true, it's because you've messed it up. You've messed up a number of these individual organisations, a number of these different things that you have purchased, including Wondery, and then you turn around and you have the gall to turn around and say, oh well, it's because video, it's just ridiculous. And the fact that the hapless PR people, of course, are querying about my use of merge into rather than no, merge with rather than merge into. You know, I mean, if that's really the only thing that you can be focused on with my reporting, then heaven knows.

James Cridland: 7:09

And Audible, by the way, such a mess. You can't even link to shows in Audible because the link is different in every single country and you can't actually buy here in the UK, here in Australia, there in the UK. You can't buy from a US Audible link. It just says no, it's not available in this country. It's just a mess and you know. So, amazon having the gall to then turn around and say, oh, but it's because podcasting is going to video, is just more raw, you know, raw blood for the idiots who think that podcasting is only going to work if we move over to video, and it just as you can tell it makes me slightly irritated.

Sam Sethi: 7:48

Yes, now Steve Boom is the guy who heads this all up from every little thiefdom. I wonder if Steve would ever come on the show and talk about what their strategy is, because Not now he won't. Well, look, you know, hey, if he's got his big pants on, he should come on, because you know there's no point hiding behind a PR story. Let's get a Q&A with him and you know I doubt he will, but let's do it very hard to work with them when they were putting podcasts into Amazon Music and got absolutely no traction.

James Cridland: 8:28

So I don't think they care about podcasting, but it frustrates me that they would, you know, fart in the elevator before getting out.

Sam Sethi: 8:37

So okay, given that they threw the grenade in and said video is the thing, what is their video strategy then?

James Cridland: 8:44

in and said video is the thing. What is their video strategy then? Well, yes, I mean, what is their video strategy Exactly? I think Wondery is doing a bit more in terms of video. Interestingly, I mean, wondery is the number one podcast publisher for turning their podcasts into TV. They've done tremendously. They just won a couple of Emmys for one of the shows that they converted into a TV show. The Dying for Sex show recently scored nine Emmy nominations for that show, which went on to FX. Of course, dr Death also ended up on TV as well, and they've got a bunch of other things. So you know, they've got a strategy there in terms of taking their IP and getting the most out of it, or at least they had one, but I'm not quite sure what that strategy is going to be as we move forward.

Sam Sethi: 9:30

Yeah, weird, because you know they've got a channel called Prime which they can push things through, and most people get that with their Prime account.

James Cridland: 9:38

Yeah, well, I mean, having said that, I did talk to the folks at Netflix this week. Netflix have just launched a companion podcast to Wednesday, which is, of course, one of their big hits. They've launched a companion podcast to that, which shows how the thing was made and you know and all of that, and it's available in audio. Everywhere you get podcasts and it's available in video on YouTube. Available in video on YouTube. Okay, hello Netflix. If only Netflix, you owned a video platform that you could put this video podcast on that you've just made. But oh no, it's not available on the.

Sam Sethi: 10:17

Netflix video platform. I do wonder. I mean, these are meant to be senior executives with a brain cell, and this is their strategy? I mean, do they walk into a room and with a brain cell? And this is their strategy? I mean, do they walk into a room and go now we'll put it onto YouTube, I mean, and promote another platform.

James Cridland: 10:32

Yeah, I mean what a strategy that is. Anyway, I've said quite enough, but I did think it was worthwhile having a quick chat with a few other people. Said quite enough, but I did think it was worthwhile having a quick chat with a few other people. So, firstly, I spoke to Sean King from Veritone and asked him what might have gone on at Wondery.

Sean King: 10:50

At the end of the day, all these organisations make strategic decisions about what their priorities are in the organisation and then especially in an organisation as big as Amazon. You know what are those downstream implications. You know broadly speaking across that organisation of those downstream implications. You know broadly speaking across that organization. But you know, in my opinion, I mean it really kind of that restructuring kind of is well, I'll consider a little bit more of a recalibration on their shift potentially for more of that traditional studio models into more potentially integrated audio ecosystems. I mean, obviously, with having Wondery and having Audible and having these different groups, there's a natural opportunity to kind of consolidate those different ecosystems and also, at the same time, kind of set themselves up.

Sean King: 11:33

I mean, more and more podcasts are becoming video orientated and more platform agnostic. Even in those Like even when I go through my social feeds these days, just how many videos I'm watching, that is basically just a recording of a podcast that I would likely listen to as well. And you're just starting to see different ways in which the medium is being consumed and, at the same time, allowing their brands to potentially be able to navigate some more of their kind of what I'll consider platform control, distribution and monetization, and obviously, in an organization that has so many assets in it from Amazon if you just think about it, from their audio divisions, their film divisions, their you know their streaming platforms, across that, you know, having these abilities to be able to consolidate. I mean, it's typically what you would expect to see in these organisations.

James Cridland: 12:22

Yeah, yeah, and I mean it's interesting. We were looking at how Wondery has done. Wondery has done more podcast to TV conversions than any other company has done. They've done particularly well in terms of that. They've obviously released a massive amount of content but, of course, amazon being Amazon, we can't quite see whether or not that was a sustainable business model. What's your gut feel in terms of that?

Sean King: 12:49

Well, I mean, it's a game of numbers and those and look at the end of the day, content is still king. I think a lot of the success that Wondery had in that even dates back to Hernan and the founders and having background in Fox and everything else that's there. So, being able to, you know, make the right bets on what type of content and what content and what things may be able to transcend platforms and transcend, you know, from an audio only, you know medium into you know more storytelling from those. But, again, to that point, what a wonderful opportunity in these areas and why I've always loved the podcasting space from those is the barrier to entry in podcasting and being able to be able to create this and be able to do this, to be entertainment supply chains is, and I think, just looking at Amazon specifically, and knowing that from an audio to potentially a streaming platform, to Twitch, to video, to you know movies and everything else that they do, I mean they have the entire stack, so to speak.

James Cridland: 14:01

Is the revenue for the podcast industry still very much focused around host-read ads? I mean, clearly, when you look at some of the content that Wondery was producing, host-read ads are quite difficult in that sort of narrative experience anyway. But are we still essentially a host-read ad industry or are we moving to something a bit more complex?

Sean King: 14:23

Well, I hope we're going to something that's a healthy medium. Before you know, I always loved about the. What I always still love about the podcasting space is, you know, it reminds me of, you know, driving to work in the nineties and I had my favorite entertainment that I would listen to and it was structured in the timeline that I would listen to it and I would go to those and it's the trusted voices. It's on demand but the accessibility of it is just great and I think the host read ads is a special key component to podcasting. But for podcasting to continue to scale, to continue to evolve, there has to be a healthy balance on being able to create and develop what I'll consider the relationship and the engagement.

Sean King: 15:08

And how do you support that with other ads? I mean, we see this all the time in traditionals. You know you have. You know, let's pick on TV for a second, okay. Well, yeah, you want to have your Super Bowl ad, you want to have that tent pole opportunity, but as a standalone basis, it's really hard to make that tentpole event work if you don't have a supporting cast of advertisements and other medias and other things taking place to make you leverage that the most. And so it's similar here, in my opinion, on the podcasting spaces, you have to leverage that relationship that you have the opportunity to with the host, but you also have to support it with everything there to make sure that you're staying consistent.

James Cridland: 15:49

What's coming? Who's the stranger at the gate that your dog is barking at? What should we be worried about in the future in terms of the podcast industry? How are things changing?

Sean King: 16:03

I mean, I think things are changing so much as we're seeing such acceleration and all of these other different platforms and I do apologize for my, I'm afraid to go down and don't worry about the dog 200 dog downstairs is 200 pound dog but.

Sean King: 16:18

But I think what is changing is being able to find and where and navigate the connections across these multi-platforms. You know what is your core podcasting group that's listening to it. Are you live streaming that and that audience on YouTube? How does that transcend over to the different social networks, either on Instagram or Facebook or TikTok or any of these others? You know your audience just pool, just got much more fragmented, and how do you make sure you're staying connected and, as a brand, how you're making sure that you're trying your best to uniquely be able to serve the target customer that you're trying to see without inundating them all over the place? It's a challenging balance. That's a requirement of you know, smart people and good technology and better data that will allow you to be able to help make the right decisions.

James Cridland: 17:13

Sean, it's been great to chat. Thank you so much for your time.

Sean King: 17:16

My pleasure. Thanks for having me, James.

James Cridland: 17:17

There's more of that in our sister publication listen to me the podcast Business Journal on Friday. You can find that at podcastbusinessjournalcom. And obviously, when I say on Friday, I mean today. Obviously don't. I and Sam. You spoke with Dan Granger from Oxford Road and he gave his reaction.

Dan Granger: 17:37

I'm sad for the beautiful brand that Hernan built with so many others. There were a lot of smart people that made that a real prestige brand in the space. I think that they helped advance a format that is in decline and may resurge in the future, and I'm sorry for the people that lost their jobs. But if we're just looking at the business mechanics of it look, I don't have intelligent views about Amazon as a business. I can tell you on the podcast side of the business and the streaming side of the business, you can tell when there's a lack of focus and you can tell when the priorities go away. From who are we serving? There's audience and there's the other constituency that matters is the brands that fund it. Right, I think that there's fundamentally three major lanes of monetization. When we think about something that is a podcast and if we can expand that beyond even your podcast definition and go toward other shows too.

Dan Granger: 18:49

The first model is impression-based buying, where you're buying audiences, right, and that's increasingly becoming a digital programmatic transaction, highly impersonal, even though they'll try to jam in some endorsements, but at the end of the day it's getting out of the relationship business. On the other side of the spectrum, you have this big splashy personality business where you're selling cover art on a show, where you're selling maybe some appearances or some deeper integrations and maybe there's 360 components and assets that spin out into other channels as well. And those are expensive deals. Those aren't deals where you've got a lot of performance brands that are really living and dying by how many customers they get from the purchase. And what I see happening out of those kind of two worlds is a lot of publishers and platforms believe that those are the only two that should exist and they do it at the peril of the third group, which is the really tried and true endorsement business, and we had 100 years virtually to shape this model.

Dan Granger: 20:11

The podcast business that I got into was an improvement upon the radio business, but the radio business had something good you could buy your impressions, you could do your big splashy brand integrations, but you could also buy a Monday through Friday endorsement on a daily radio show or you could buy a weekly spot on the specialty show and you could become a part of the fabric of that content through the constant reminders, where the ads carry the trust and intimacy of the host who imputes that trust onto the audience. And that transfer of trust is the real oil in this industry. It is the most precious asset that we have, and when you ignore that part of the business, which is the foundation of podcasting and what built the first billion dollars in this industry and delivers both brand and performance, when you leave that out of the party, you miss a key pillar and sometimes the walls end up falling down. And I think it's a potential cautionary tale to everybody else who may be hitting some struggles that it's time not to make this so binary and think about what you want the business to be. But look at the business model that has been the foundation of it.

Dan Granger: 21:34

Look at the history of this model and I'm not saying it's all or nothing, I'm not saying that's the only piece need impression based buying and brands need bigger, more complex deals with different needs to make a splash. But the tried and true is about the relationship between the host and the audience and putting the brand in the middle of that on a recurring basis. And a lot of folks have taken their eye off the ball and I think our business is built to accommodate all three of those execution types. But platforms that aren't are going to continue to have problems and, at the end of the day, I think it comes down to listening to your customers.

Sam Sethi: 22:17

So why is Amazon reorganizing now? What does it think it's going to do by? Is it going to compete with spotify? Is it going to compete with youtube? Because I don't see amazon doing video at the moment. I think live is in twitch, I think audiobooks is in audible. I mean, I can't make a single purchase requirement. So if I went to amazon and I said I want to pay one subscription and get music, books, live video, that doesn't exist, right, it doesn't exist over there. So why or how are they going to compete with the other two platforms? I think Apple, by the way, is another one that needs to wake up a bit more. It's not doing video. So what can Amazon do to get back in the game? Because just getting rid of 110 people.

Sam Sethi: 23:07

I don't think it's going to make any difference.

Dan Granger: 23:09

No, and look, I don't know what their game plan is here.

Dan Granger: 23:13

They've not reached out to us as the largest buyer of podcast media, at least not to me to say here's the plan, here's a view of the future.

Dan Granger: 23:23

But that's when I talk about communicating with your customers that matters and helping the people that you've been transacting with be prepared for the change and to see your vision of the future. I don't know, I wouldn't propose to know. I do know that Amazon knows how to sell advertising at scale and I think they may make the I think they may be half right and half wrong that they can take these content assets and throw them into the other models that are working and that will get some monetization. But again, I feel that that really deals with two of those three pillars, if that it doesn't mean it does it well. But I have faith that Amazon's going to figure that out. What I hope is they don't lose the part that is interesting. When you've got content that is driven by the spoken word is specifically conducive to a host-read model. What they're willing to invest in from a content side, I have no idea.

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James Cridland: 25:03

Right. Well, let's move on to other news outside of Wondery. What else have we got?

Sam Sethi: 25:08

here, sam. Last week we were talking about the UK age verification and how bad an idea that was, and you were talking about in Australia how they are gatekeeping 16 year olds and under away from social media, which has good elements and bad within it, but it depends on the implementation. But on the back of this, spotify surprisingly came out and said they're adding age verification for users in the uk to access mature content. It's using a service called yachty, which I've never heard of, and it's asking you to face, scan or upload an id. Of course, that's never going to be lost or or hacked is it no?

Sam Sethi: 25:52

no, nice and safe now, one of the things that I noticed though let's just assume this does extend to podcasting, james right, so you talked about, you know, spotify with the explicit tag might have to include some of that within it. So, looking at other apps and putting my true fans hat on, or, let's say, fountain or pubverse or any of those other apps, do we have to comply with this yet? Do we have to put age restrictions in? But do we actually because this is my bigger worry do we have to now start to check every podcast for potential harm or any other content? Because we aren't. We're just assuming that the content within the podcast audio is what it says it is and we just have to let it run through.

James Cridland: 26:45

Yeah, I mean, if you read the law, yes, you are absolutely bound by this. Any website of any size is bound by this. I know of small bloggers in the UK who have taken the comments section off their blog because they're concerned about what might get posted there. I mean, that really is as far as we go Now. Ofcom have since turned around and said oh, you know, we won't worry, we'll be looking for big transgressors, and you know, and you know it'll be proportionate because of the harm involved, and blah, blah, blah.

James Cridland: 27:15

But the facts are that the law which has been passed by the UK government is essentially meaning that you know, podcast apps like True, fans and Fountain and everybody else will have to take part in this, and Apple Podcasts, by the way, let's not forget. And then, on the other side, we'll have, you know I mean you know, we'll have to look at even tiny little mastodon instances and everything else. It's a very strange world. Now, I suppose, on the other side, what does that mean for checking whether or not somebody has correctly marked something as explicit? What even does explicit mean? Because we've never really had a clear definition of what explicit means. It's been very self-policed so far and I suspect that we're going to see people all of a sudden prosecuted because we've carried a podcast that you know is outside of this law, and then where do we go from there? But yeah, it's a very strange idea, very strange thing Well there's two thoughts in my head.

Sam Sethi: 28:21

One is it forces us to all have to do transcripts and then check the transcript and then verify against the transcript. That might be one way that we all have to do it. I mean, I hope not, because that's a massive cost. And then the other question was do we need better rating? Do we need to go to the film type rating? So don't label everything as explicit or not explicit, but actually put ratings around it. If we are doing age verification, so 15 plus you know, U ratings?

Sam Sethi: 28:51

I don't know what they are. I think there's R ratings, U ratings, and you know, if you go to Netflix, they don't use those, they use 15 plus, 18 plus. I mean, do we have to go to a deeper granularity in podcasting around what explicit means?

James Cridland: 29:05

Yeah, and who's going to police all of that anyway?

Sam Sethi: 29:08

Those are all of the questions too.

James Cridland: 29:10

But one thing just to bear in mind is that, on average, last month there was a new podcast episode posted every 0.8 seconds. This isn't going to be an easy thing for anybody to manage that.

Sam Sethi: 29:25

The other thing I will say, apart from the robust age checks, the safer algorithms that they're requesting. It says you know the algorithms need to ensure children are not presented with the most harmful content, and you also need to have an effective moderation system. You must have content moderation in place to take swift action against content that's harmful for children, and one of the things that I know we do at True Fans we've had it from day one is a flag moderation system. So any podcast episode that you go to and you think there's something that's wrong, you can flag it and also put a reason why you flagged it, and we will then review that. I looked at all the other apps. I can't see them yet having that. No, there is a little bit in Apple.

James Cridland: 30:13

In Apple Podcasts there is a flag, this episode. There's also one in Spotify, I notice, but I haven't seen it in many other smaller apps, and that is you know. I mean, where do you go with that? I mean, for example, antenapod, which is the Android open source thing that doesn't even have a list for itself, it uses Podcast Index, it uses Apple Podcasts, and so it doesn't even have central servers. So who are you reporting that to?

Sam Sethi: 30:44

Yeah, I mean. We had a support request this week from a woman who says that her ex-husband is bullying her through a podcast. I've now had to listen to that podcast and make a judgment on whether I take that podcast down or leave it up. It's not a pleasant place to sit, I have to say.

James Cridland: 31:02

No, indeed.

Sam Sethi: 31:05

Now a story that's again slightly broke last week but has been rumbling on this week as well, and there's been a lot of chatter on the back channel that you and I are both on. Riverside quietly launched their video hosting service thanks to a hat tip from Justin Jackson, who alerted me to it. What are Riverside doing? I mean, are they really becoming a full-blown host, or is it just hosting the stuff that they have on their own platform?

James Cridland: 31:31

Yeah, I mean, you call it a video hosting service. I think it's a podcast hosting service. It sends the video to YouTube, which is interesting. It only sends audio to everywhere else, including to Spotify, which is fascinating. So Flightcast, which is Stephen Bartlett's video host they, I believe, are the only company who so far can get video directly onto the Spotify platform.

Sam Sethi: 31:59

They will once they launch.

James Cridland: 32:01

Well, once they launch yes, I think that's probably fair enough. I mean even Riverside, who, if you remember, last year, when Anka pulled out all of the editing tools in their app or in the Spotify for Creators app, they basically said, yeah, we're not doing this anymore, and in which case we are going to just recommend that you use the Riverside app. So hurrah, but you know. You would have thought, therefore, that Spotify would have a special relationship with Riverside, but clearly not the only way of putting the video. What they seem to have from their help pages is they seem to have a way to kick the video upload off, but you still have to go to Spotify for creators to complete the video upload, so there's no sort of easy way of working all of that stuff out. So that's interesting.

James Cridland: 32:55

The other interesting thing is that, in terms of Podcasting 2.0, they are declaring the new podcast namespace in there, but they're not using any of the tools in there, including transcripts, which, given that Riverside has transcripts of everything, seems a little bit weird that they wouldn't include the transcripts in the RSS feed. One other sort of weirdness is that they are talking about the audio which is in the feed is all variable bitrate audio which, as anybody that works in podcasting will tell you, is a no-no, because it doesn't help with seeking and with chapters and everything else. It seems to break quite a lot of things, which is why no podcast hosting company is using variable bitrate audio apart from this company. So it almost seems as if they've launched this stuff without really consulting or talking to anybody in the podcasting world, and that seems a little bit strange.

Sam Sethi: 33:52

Consensus generally on the back channel was they're doing this because they want to put themselves on the purchase chopping, purchase chopping block. They've raised so much money from investors that eventually they have to give a return back. I can't see an ipo for riverside, so it's an acquisition, and everyone seemed to point that spotify is the only one who might be able to buy them and seem to have given them a miss. I mean, amazon could buy them?

James Cridland: 34:20

Yeah, they could. I'm obviously saying that as a bit of a joke, but I suppose Amazon could buy them. But yeah, I mean Spotify. You would have thought that Spotify would have bought them a long long time ago. And what do they really offer? They offer video editing, I guess. They offer audio editing and the remote recording, but that's you know. Is that enough for Spotify to buy them? Is this is the actual tool that they have, something that can be relatively easily self-coded so you can actually move quite fast anyway and you know Spotify looking at Riverside or looking at Descript, because you know clearly Descript has much of this stuff. Why would Spotify want a podcast hosting feature when Spotify already has two of those?

Sam Sethi: 35:13

I mean Zach from well, formerly Squadcast, now Descript, did ping me and say when I said that you know, is everyone becoming a host? He said, well, descript's already doing this. And I went actually, you're not. What you do, is you allow me to upload it to a Descript URL that I can make public? But it's really not hosting it for me.

James Cridland: 35:33

Yes, that's not really a podcast.

Sam Sethi: 35:34

No, that I can make public, but it's really not hosting it for me. Yes, that's not really a podcast, no, exactly. And I sort of tried to point out to him as well. But you know, they do allow you to upload directly to your existing host, your original host, let's say like a Buzzsprout or a Transistor. But again, I haven't found that service to be slick enough. It's quicker sometimes just to download it and then upload it manually yourself.

James Cridland: 35:57

still, I love their top apps. In their analytics they have top apps and they have Spotify, apple Podcasts, youtube and other. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's not yes.

Sam Sethi: 36:15

But is everyone now a host, James? I mean we still haven't had the official announcement from Fountain about their merger with RSS Blue to be called Fountain Blue, but we do know it exists. Apple is a host with Apple Premium. You can't send your content to Apple Premium subscriptions without uploading it directly to them, so technically they're a host.

James Cridland: 36:38

I mean Substack's a host, so is Patreon. Yeah, exactly so is everyone a host.

Speaker 1: 36:44

Yeah.

James Cridland: 36:44

I mean I guess so, and I think this probably points to the fact that if you are a podcast host, you need to have more strings in your bow in order to actually offer other things other than just a podcast host, because those are too a penny.

James Cridland: 37:00

And so, you know, that's possibly why we've seen rsscom launch paid monetization tool, which obviously some of these other tools don't have. That's clearly why we've seen, you know, captivate really dive deep into quite a lot of the workflow tools like guest booking and calendars and all that kind of stuff, and why Todd at Blueberry has launched a new thing which we'll get onto as well. I think you know, if you're just a podcast host these days, then your time is probably a little bit numbered in terms of what you have to offer. And I think you know the proof of the pudding there is Libsyn. If you were to ask people now what that company stands for, actually most people will now turn around and say they sell ads, don't they? For podcasts, because that's what they're now focusing very heavily on and the fact that they have a heritage. You know, podcast host is kind of not here or there really.

Sam Sethi: 38:00

Well, we will see whether the Riverside new hosting service is any good, I think so far. I think you pointed out there's 82 podcasts already in the podcast index from Riverside with a strange user agent. But yeah, it is a Riverside agent anyway.

James Cridland: 38:16

Yes, so that was. That was at the end of last week, but it does seem to be growing relatively quickly, as you would expect, because I'm imagining that they have quite a lot of customers who all of a sudden will go oh, hang on a minute, I get free hosting now. Well, great, I'll do that then.

Sam Sethi: 38:31

Moving on then, james, just a slight one that's related to Rumble, which isn't a platform I've ever gone to, because of its politics possibly, but anyway, they've done a deal with Cumulus Media.

James Cridland: 38:42

Yes, they have. So Cumulus will be, I think, helping Rumble with podcast advertising but also doing a little bit of work. I mean, obviously Cumulus will be making shows that obviously also go on to Rumble, but also the Cumulus Podcast Network will be taking some shows from Rumble and turning them into audio podcasts as well. So it's all a little bit of a thing. Cumulus Media has quite a lot of right-wing podcasters and media people anyway, and so it probably fits quite nicely in terms of that.

Sam Sethi: 39:17

Now this story you had in Pod News Daily. You just had a little paragraph, but I thought it was the biggest story you had, personally because of the amounts of money involved. Now Patreon released their new figures, claiming that Patreon creators have now earned over $10 billion since the platform first launched in 2013. That's a sizable chunk of money. The company is now paying creators more than $2 billion annually, which is still the number that we use for the advertising for the total US podcast market, and there are more than 25 million paid memberships on the platform.

Sam Sethi: 39:55

I keep saying this. I think you know content behind a paywall, which is what I see a lot of quality content doing now, whether it's Apple subscriptions or Patreon or Memberful etc. Is outstripping possibly the ad market. If those numbers are correct, and Joe Budden's making $1 million a month and other creators are making tons of money, I think direct-to-fan payments are a longer, more secure, sustainable market for revenue for creators than advertising, where CPM rates go up and down and where you might not get them anyway. I don't know. This seems like a really big story to me.

James Cridland: 40:36

Yes, I mean it was certainly a big number $10 billion that Patreon have shared with creators that was definitely a big number, I mean.

James Cridland: 40:45

I guess I come from all of this just to point to the wider trends going on at the moment, and the wider trends are it's a move away from raw advertising money to a mixed economy of advertising.

James Cridland: 40:59

Then you've got brand partnerships, then you've got membership programs such as Patreon, then you've got merch and live shows, and diversifying those revenue streams is really good for everybody in this industry because we see much more protected revenue. We see the majority of memberships and subscriptions, for example, being purchased yearly, according to Apple, and not monthly. That really helps with cash flow and that helps with production costs, and Patreon is doing much the same sort of thing in there as well, particularly given that we're going into what's clearly going to be a volatile economy as tariffs go up and down and who knows what is going to happen. So a reliance on advertising I think seems a bit unwise, and I think it's nice to see many podcasters looking at diversity of revenue coming in, and Patreon is very much part of that. It's a very well known and trusted brand for supporting creators, which is good.

Sam Sethi: 42:04

I'd love to talk to hosts about secure RSS at any time they want, because we just said a few minutes ago you know, hosting is now a commodity and everyone's doing it, and so it's services that they layer on top of hosting that is actually going to give them either future revenues or differentiation. And again, if patrons making these large numbers, this is the pot of money that hosts could be going after. This is the money I see hosts should be providing. So we've talked in the past about hosts being the analytics dashboard for first party data and how they get to do that, because that's the best place for that type of dashboard. I also think that this is the best place for hosts to go and provide premium content feeds in the hosting, in the single RSS feed, and not allowing companies like Patreon and Memberful to take that revenue away from the hosts. That's the competition I see that 26 is going to be all about. I don't think it's an advertising fight. I think it's a paywall fight.

James Cridland: 43:06

Well, it'll be interesting to see how that pans out. Certainly, if you want to support this show, weeklypodnewsnet is where to go Now. Certainly, if you want to support this show, weeklypodnewsnet is where to go, like Neil Velio or Ms Eileen Smith or Clay Wake Brown, who are all supporting us and very kindly, and I would see that that sort of revenue is going to be a bigger thing for other podcasters to come. Shall we have a look at some awards and events? Sam, yes, and the award that is worth taking a peek at is the 20th Annual People's Choice Podcast Awards.

James Cridland: 43:37

That's announced this year's slate of nominees. There is a final voting pool of 25,000 random weighted listeners, both fat and skinny, I would imagine, and 500 random podcasters. No, and 500 random podcasters. So they will join the voting pool now and we will get the final results of that on International Podcasting Day. I would guess Todd Cochran running that one. And a decent event, of course, is the podcast movement thing going on in Dallas. The podcast movement thing going on in two weeks, that's in Dallas and Texasas. And, by the way, that will be the next time that you hear from us, because we are both having our holiday next week for various reasons, not together I should point out no, no, we're not more going wise.

James Cridland: 44:24

Yes, be more up to date. No, exactly so. So that's all good, but I'm looking forward to to being in in dallas and I'm very much looking forward to being in Dallas and I'm very much looking forward to the fine immigration officers allowing me and very much looking forward to that into their excellent country. Other things going on Radio Days Asia is happening in Jakarta, in Indonesia, September the 1st to the 3rd. There's also Pod Summit YYC, which is September the 19th. That's in Calgary, in Alberta, if you know your airport codes. And CrookedCon. This is an interesting one, Sam. This is a political conference which is being run by Crooked Media, who, of course, run Pod Save America. It's happening in early November in Washington DC. That's a really interesting one. If you're a political podcast, then to be running a political conference is very smart.

Sam Sethi: 45:15

So I'd actually love to go to that. I would love to go to that yeah. I'd love to. I just don't want to go to America Learn a little bit more Yikes about that.

Speaker 2: 45:25

The Tech Stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 45:29

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

Sam Sethi: 45:35

Well, this is an interesting one. Daniel J Lewis has launched canipodcastcom Now, dan and I spoke about this probably a couple of years ago, before podcasting2.org was launched. We were trying to work out what we could do to copy or replicate. Can I use dot com? So again, so dan's basically launches. I have nothing to do with it. So well done, dan. And it's a podcasting list of tags and some granularity around them. So, yeah, well done excellent.

James Cridland: 46:07

Well, looking forward to seeing that when it gets going. Um, you say he's launched it. He's launched a waiting page. Oh, okay, yeah, so when he launches the final version it'll be interesting to see what is there. But many congratulations to a full launch from Todd Cochran and the Blueberry team. Guestmatchpro it says what it does on the tin. It is a tool designed to connect content creators, specialists and agencies for interview opportunities. Hooray, finally something that will do the job instead of getting a ton of pointless emails. It's 100% free for everybody for the first 90 days. It'll always be free for Blueberry customers. You see, that's an example of podcast hosting companies doing more than just hosting. And if you use guestmatchpro, you'll find me there already wanting to be your guest, so feel free to go and take a peek at that. I've given him some product feedback, which Todd is. Probably I'm going to ignore it, but anyway we'll see how that works. But it's a very cool thing anyway, so worth a peek.

Sam Sethi: 47:13

Yeah, I think Podhopper launched theirs as well some time ago works, but it's a very cool thing anyway, so worth a peek. I think Podhopper launched theirs as well some time ago. I think there's a few others in the market, but it's great. It's one of those I think I've signed up in the past of them and then you get random requests for interviews, which you then have to still vet anyway. But good luck. That's what I'd say. When I saw guestmatchpro though it wasn't a podcast hosting or guest matching service that I thought about I'm so far down my paddle world I thought it was another paddle app that I could go and sign up to.

James Cridland: 47:42

Oh good Lord, it's got nothing to do with your little ball game, Sam.

Sam Sethi: 47:48

That's what went through my little brain anyway.

James Cridland: 47:52

Nothing to do with that, wondercrafts. Good news from them. They were about to launch a product called Wunder Fish, called Wunder. Yes, I don't know what this product is, but anyway, they haven't launched it. I do know what it is. Oh, do you? Well, they said that they've got some exciting technical reasons, technical issues, and they're going to be launching it on August the 19th instead, which is the opening day of podcast movement. I can't help but think that there's something going on there. So what is?

Sam Sethi: 48:22

Wanda, then I can't tell you, as long as you cut it out this is a jingle to cover up an edit on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 48:32

Oh, is it so? Well, there you go. Anyway. What else have we got? A new tool called pod2bookai. This is quite clever. It's a tool to help podcasters transform their podcast episodes into books, which seems quite a nice plan, particularly if you've got 200 episodes with 200 interviews in it. That would make quite a nice book. You would have thought, wouldn't it? I'm not doing it.

Speaker 2: 48:58

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

James Cridland: 49:13

Yes, what have we got in our inbox? Well, I'll tell you. Firstly, we've got an umbral node that works again, so that's nice. So I can actually get some messages, although only one. But thank you, bruce, the ugly quacking duck. Of course it had to be him, didn't it? Sending us a row of ducks. Thank you, bruce. Look forward to the new episode every week. However, I am running behind on the episodes lately. Thanks for the new episode. Good luck on the judging, sam73. Excellent, very good to hear from you, bruce, and thank you so much. Yes, as you've probably guessed, the whole boosting thing is up and running again. So if you do want to send us a message with a little boost, then that would be excellent. Just use a new podcast app to do that, like true fans, or fountain, or podcast guru or many other ones which did bruce the ugly quacking duck use, I wonder, pod verse.

Speaker 1: 50:03

No, no, pod podcast guru yeah, there you go play the game so name them all.

James Cridland: 50:11

Yes, go through the whole lot. So thank you so much for that, and thank you also to our 21 power supporters who are spending money with us to keep this show going every month. That includes Brian Entsminger and Dave Jackson, pod pages, dave Jackson and Matt Medeiros and Marshall Brown. Thank you so much for that much appreciated and sam and I share all of the treasure that you share with us every single week. So what's?

Sam Sethi: 50:40

the other 200 staff get a cut of it so what's been happening for you this week, sam?

Sam Sethi: 50:47

we started testing a, a new advertising option for creators called true ads. I mean, whether it stays that name or not, I don't know, but the idea is that if you want to buy space on our homepage in the hero header or you want to buy on the country carousel, you can now do that. So, using your wallet with Sats or paying with Stripe, apple Pay, you can buy a day a month, sorry, a day a week a month. You know, you can set your own requirement. Obviously it's limited by the number of slots available. So version two we will allow you to extend out to categories so you, instead of just being on the country category, you might want to be on a comedy category or a news category.

Sam Sethi: 51:30

And then version three we're playing with now is where we'll add a ad below the audio player. And again, we're going to experiment and see what the feedback is. But one of the ideas is that if, for example, somebody added an ad below the Pod News weekly review page, then we would get a split of that ad revenue. So it's on our page. We've created the attention, we've driven the user to come to the Pod News weekly review page on TrueFans and then they see an ad. Therefore, some of that ad money will go back to us as creators of that page. So that's one of the experiments we're playing with.

James Cridland: 52:15

It sounds very exciting and always worth experimenting and seeing what works and everything else. One of the things that I found when building the system that sells the Pod News classifieds is that when you look at payment, then actually racking the price up depending on demand is really interesting. So, yeah, that's certainly something that I ended up playing with, so very nice. You can see that right now at truefansfm or indeed in the TrueFans app, which you will find in Apple and in Google's app stores.

Sam Sethi: 52:46

Now, one of the other things that I spotted this week and it's one of the reasons that I think Spotify wins most of the time is their integrations. You know, you go to an Alexa that's a Spotify app. You go to your car there's a Spotify app. This week, weirdly and I don't know if it's just brand new, but I've only noticed it lots and lots of more music tracks are appearing in my TikTok feed and suddenly you can just click a little icon at the bottom and it will automatically add it to your Spotify playlist. Not Apple, not Amazon and nowhere else, just Spotify. And it's really weird how Spotify always seem to be the company that does that. I'd love to be able to use their API and have a true fans button when you've got a podcast trailer clip and then it clicks through to True Fans. But Spotify do, again, make it so simple to integrate with them.

James Cridland: 53:40

Yeah, Spotify is very good at that sort of thing and you know, and clearly they've got an awful lot of people working on those forms of integration because they're good at marketing for that particular company as well. So, yes, very smart.

Sam Sethi: 53:53

Now you mentioned we're going to be away next week. I'm at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, actually for the first time ever.

James Cridland: 54:00

Oh, are you. So where can we go and see your show?

Sam Sethi: 54:04

Yeah, that'll be in the Burger King behind whatever. Yeah, I don't think anyone would come and pay to see that. No, I'm going to see Miriam Margolis, nina Conti and a couple of other American artists who are coming over. It's just great. I've never been. I'm looking forward to it. It's a week of comedy and plays. Yeah.

James Cridland: 54:23

Yes, very good. Well, I hope you look forward to it. If you are doing a show at the Edinburgh Fringe, then you should tell Sam all about it. Just drop him an email weekly at pointnewsnet.

Sam Sethi: 54:34

Yeah with two tickets. Please no joking. Joking James. What's happened for you this week, mate?

James Cridland: 54:42

Yes, I bet the hotels are going to be expensive as well.

Sam Sethi: 54:44

No, we're Airbnb-ed it. Yeah, we booked it in January, right in the middle of the town. So it was quite funny. It was a game of whack-a-mole. You, literally on January 1, we booked it and it was like four in the middle of town were left and we're like right, and then we booked one and suddenly all the other ones went as well and now, if you haven't booked, you could be 25 miles out of Edinburgh and having to drive in or bus in or taxi in, whatever you do yes, yes, well, yes, well, there you go, anyway, things that I've done this week.

James Cridland: 55:15

I, rather boringly, have written I'm quite busy on my personal blog. Actually, I've written a very boring piece about how to listen to BBC Radio overseas. I know what a thrill, but it's just that it's become much more complicated. So that is there. Also, what is there is a tribute to a broadcaster called James Whale, who died earlier on in the week. He had been suffering from cancer for some time and he was the person that got me into radio in the first place.

James Cridland: 55:44

Wow, so I wrote a little thing about that, which is also worth a peek. I bought something from AliExpress, you know.

Sam Sethi: 55:53

Well, I'm just reading the word here in the script and going get going. Then what's that? Aliexpress?

James Cridland: 56:00

So I ended up buying because you know I've got a new car right and there's this little electric, my electric chariot, which somebody drove into last week. But you know, park that thing no pun intended.

James Cridland: 56:14

You have to plug in your phone to make it work on the screen. So you plug it in and then all of a sudden Apple CarPlay appears on the screen and everything else. And I was getting a bit bored plugging it in and I thought it'd be nice if I could just leave it in my pocket and it just connects through wireless, like some other cars have. So I had a quick look around and found a little dongle that plugs into the USB port from AliExpress, which is, I guess you know, a Chinese eBay, and it was for sale brand new for $3. That's three Australian dollars, by, by the way. So that's about two us dollars. Right, that includes postage.

James Cridland: 57:01

I have no idea how anybody made any money, but I ordered it last week. It came today. Yeah, I've, I've put it in the car. It's brilliant, it's absolutely, it's absolutely fine, it worked, it worked perfectly. Not just it worked right, it's got over-the-air updates. So one of the first things that I did is I plugged it in, I connected to it. You can program it to say, turn on 30 seconds after the car has started, because you need that little buffer so that it actually wakes up correctly. So that's really clever, and then you can say oh, and, by the way, can I have the latest firmware please? And it goes off and updates. That Unbelievable and you know. $3 or something. It was the. It was what a bargain. I've got no idea how anybody's made any money out of that.

Sam Sethi: 57:50

But yeah, that was astonishing Chinese government's just listening into every one of your conversations. Made any money out of that?

James Cridland: 57:53

but um, chinese government's just listening into every one of your conversations. It's subsidized. Well, I mean, it's a chinese car anyway. So there you go fully a member of the you know the red brigade now not only is it a chinese car, but if you say hello, mg, it goes hi, I'm here and you go.

Speaker 1: 58:07

Oh, no, really really it's very scary, yes really genuinely it's got its own.

James Cridland: 58:11

It's got its own dreadful siri type thing and I noticed it's very scary. Yes, really genuinely, it's got its own. It's got its own dreadful siri type thing and I noticed it's also got so it's got a data connection in there. It's got a sim card and everything else. So it's got. It's always got data connected to it. It's got its own maps thing, which I looked at and I assumed was just google maps under a different skin.

James Cridland: 58:31

It turns out that no, it's a really bad maps thing because the map data isn't updated online. So the way for you to update the map data in the car is you have to go and buy map data and then put it into the car using a usb key. Wow, it's like, it's like 1990 all over again. It's the worst, weirdest thing. And so, of course, I don't use that anyway, because I use, I use the phone, and now I don't even have to plug the phone in. So that's an amazing thing. So hurrah for aliexpress. I've got no idea how much, how they can possibly earn any amount of money from that, but yeah, it was super good.

Sam Sethi: 59:17

And how's your gym membership going?

James Cridland: 59:20

Yes, and the reason why I'm sounding so tired is this time last week I didn't do gym because I was. Can you rearrange that sentence? I didn't go to the gym, yes, I didn't go to the gym because I think they'd broken me the week before right, and I had to go back today and I'm I am, I am quite tired. So, uh, yes, that's probably why. So I will disappear and go and have a lie down.

Sam Sethi: 59:46

That's it for this week well, I was gonna say before you do so, I'm overdoing my paddle, because I'm playing once or twice a day. Oh yes, paddle.

James Cridland: 59:53

Once or twice a day, yeah.

Sam Sethi: 59:55

I know, and I've now got tennis elbow, oh no. So a week in Edinburgh to relax and rest is actually what I need to do. And then the other one that you might find funny is we've bought a little mini convertible.

James Cridland: 1:00:11

Because of course you have.

Sam Sethi: 1:00:12

Yeah, and it's obviously the hairdresser's car. So there you go. So I go with my little hairdresser's car to play paddle.

James Cridland: 1:00:19

So yes, you can see the image already. Why aren't you going in your big Range Rover?

Sam Sethi: 1:00:25

Well, because the wife's nicking that and going on longer distance drives.

James Cridland: 1:00:29

So I get the little one to go locally. That makes sense, but you didn't buy an electric for that.

Sam Sethi: 1:00:34

No, no, I have to say. Anyone who's got a complete, 100% electric, well done you. I have enough fear where my phone's got to 5%, let alone my car getting to 5%, I mean Jesus. It would be like, oh my God, is there a petrol station near enough? Or whatever. It would be the equivalent of yeah, no, couldn't do it, couldn't do it.

James Cridland: 1:00:57

You should hire one for a couple of weeks, see what it's like. See what it's like really.

Sam Sethi: 1:01:02

No, my stress levels aren't high enough as they are. I don't need to add a car into that as well, please.

James Cridland: 1:01:07

Well, there we go. Anyway, that's it for this week. You'll be glad to know all and we're away next week. Yes, so the next time you hear from us, I will be a podcast movement. Uh, sam will not be no, and uh, we'll be doing something. Not quite sure what, to be honest, not quite sure where we'll record, whether or not we'll record live on the show floor, which we did last year, or what else we might do. It might just be a maybe.

James Cridland: 1:01:31

It might just be a quick one who knows, maybe we do our first ever video podcast no no, okay, I'm giving away stickers at Podcast Movement, so if you are going, then you should be grabbing those beautiful stickers from me, and my views about video are quite clear based on those stickers. So that's a lovely thing, but that's it for this week. All of our podcast stories taken from the Pod News daily newsletter, podnewsnet you can support this show by streaming sites.

Sam Sethi: 1:01:58

You can give us feedback using the Buzzsprout fan mail link in our show notes and you can send us a super comment or boost or, better still, become a power supporter like the 21 people at weeklypodnewsnet our music is from TM Studios, our voiceover is Sheila D and a bit of Wondercraft.

James Cridland: 1:02:17

Our audio is recorded using Clean Feed, we edit with Hindenburg and we're hosted and sponsored by Buzzsprout. Start podcasting, keep podcasting.

Speaker 2: 1:02:25

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Speaker 1: 1:02:31

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Speaker 2: 1:02:36

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