Announcer: 0:00

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

James Cridland: 0:12

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

Todd Cochrane: 0:17

And by God, if I can do this and succeed anyone can.

James Cridland: 0:22

Todd Cochran, who died this week. We've a look back at what he gave the world of podcasting, plus the unsavoury world of AI podcasts and a new power supporter. This podcast is sponsored by Buzzsprout, with the tools, support and community to ensure you keep podcasting, start podcasting, keep podcasting with buzzsproutcom. From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly Review.

Sam Sethi: 0:47

James, we start off this show with a very sad bit of news. A friend of the show and we are proud to say, a friend of the show, todd Cochran, passed away this week. James, tell me more.

James Cridland: 1:00

Yeah, he did. He passed away very suddenly. He's very proud of his family. He was on a trip to see his family and, yes, and very suddenly passed away. Obviously, our thoughts are with his family and everybody who knows him, all of his friends, and we've been carrying posts and things from his friends in the Pod News newsletter all week and, of course, on Tuesday. You may have noticed that we essentially cancelled everything and it was just for him and I'm so grateful to people like our advertisers and my sales manager when I basically rang her up and I said I do not want any advertising because I don't think it's right, and all, all of the advertisers said absolutely no, that's, that's absolutely fine. So super grateful to all of that. But, yes, what a, what a shock. And you know, and it just goes to show that you know life is, you know life is fickle and things, things can change.

Sam Sethi: 2:01

Yeah, it is indeed, and we'll be listening, I hope, to a live broadcast of the new media show. It will, of course, be the last one. Sadly it is with Rob Greenlee, with guests Adam Currie, Mike Dell of Blueberry, of course, and Rob Walsh from Libsyn, so you may be able to. I'm sure you will be able to listen back to it if you're listening to this show on Friday. Sure you will be able to listen back to it if you listen to this show on Friday. So I will be tuning into that live show. I think it will be a very moving and fitting memory of Todd.

James Cridland: 2:31

Indeed, and you know, I tell you what Rob Greenlee and I worked on his obituary, which you'll find in the Pod News website, and it was fascinating just telling some of the stories. Rob has since posted more of his own thoughts, of course, but it was really fascinating telling some of the stories and realising, you know, lots of things that we didn't know about him. Rob has actually worked with him since 2005. So it was quite a thing, and I was very aware that, for the majority of people in podcasting, the first that they would have heard about it would be from me, and you know that that it was quite. It was quite a stressy day, I have to say, quite quite apart from, you know, quite apart from keeping it together, you know, which I didn't do a particularly good job of, it was just quite a stressy day just realising how important this would be to everybody and I've had a bunch of really nice emails, which was really good. But yeah, it's quite a week, isn't it?

Sam Sethi: 3:32

Yeah, James, you did it very well. Mate, I'm sure Todd is looking down and thanking you for the kind words that you put together.

James Cridland: 3:39

I'm sure he's looking down and going ah, you got that bit wrong. I'm sure he's looking down and going you got that bit wrong.

Sam Sethi: 3:45

Yeah, I'm sure he is actually. We were lucky enough to interview Todd a few times on this show. One of those interviews was back in 2023, when Todd had just celebrated his 19th year in podcasting, and we thought that would be a poignant and also well-remembered interview, because it gives Todd's life story of how he got into podcasting and the journey he's been on. So I started off by asking Todd what his journey has been like for those 19 years.

Todd Cochrane: 4:14

It's been a fun ride. October 9th 2004, I pulled up a chair to a little desk in a hotel room in Waco, texas, and with a 1495 microphone from a Walmart across the street I recorded the first episode and I introduced it with ACDC back in black, which you can't do that. So episode one and two actually went beyond the nether somewhere because I took them down. I was afraid I was going to get hit with a copyright violation later on. But yeah, that was the thing. It caught the fever early on.

Sam Sethi: 4:48

What a great track. To start with, those about the podcast, we salute you. That's right. So, looking back over the 19 years, I mean I know you said it's a 1499 mic and it's a laptop and the internet, but fundamentally, has anything really changed or is it just the same?

Todd Cochrane: 5:06

Yeah, fundamentally it's changed a lot, because you really had to be a geek in those early days and I was running on a content management system called movable type I remember it well Didn't switch to yeah, didn't switch to WordPress until later, but we really were trying to figure it all out. The biggest challenge really in those early days was hosting, because we all had to do our own thing and by the time or before the first hosting platform came on the market, which was Libsyn the first one, I was shuffling between like nine or 10 shared hosting accounts. I would move the show like every three days because I'd run out of 500 gigs of bandwidth run out of 500 gigs of bandwidth, run out. But you know, if you think about it, those file sizes at the time were small because we were only encoding maybe 32K at the tops in those early days. But you know, things changed pretty rapidly.

Todd Cochrane: 6:00

You know 2005, apple introduced podcast to iTunes and then we were off to the races. Really. So from that perspective, no, things haven't changed that much. But you know, definitely being early was a it helped, you know, from a sense. But also I did a tech show as my Genesis show and I still do. There was a lot of tech shows, so it wasn't like there was. You know, the genre of shows was narrow tech comedy and a few others, but so there was a plethora of tech shows in those early start days. What was your?

Sam Sethi: 6:35

expectation of doing it. I mean, what did you think you were going to get from it? Hey, I've got a mic. I'm going to be the next. You know, howard, you know what was it.

Todd Cochrane: 6:45

I am. I I'm going to be the next. You know Howard, you know what was it. I didn't even know who Howard Stern was. Then it really started. Years before that I did a dial-up bulletin board. I'd had that for many, many years and then when the modern internet came, it ran out of it, laying a closet versus being dial-up. And then, when that kind of phase of the world changed, I had a blog and I was literally a pretty bad blogger. Even to this day, I pay people to write for my website.

Sam Sethi: 7:13

Yeah, well, now you can pay AI and it's much easier.

Todd Cochrane: 7:14

So it's okay. Well, that's true too to an extent, but I think the ultimately what I like to talk. I like to talk about tech. So for me it was just, and I had no idea. I mean, I thought it would be a fun thing to do and my first really indication that this might be reaching some people was when I woke up one morning and had an email from my hosting provider said hey, we've shut your account down because you're out of data. I'm like well, what? And it's like, what do I do now? Well, let me go over and buy another GoDaddy account or let me buy another DreamHost account or whatever it was.

Todd Cochrane: 7:49

I was trying because I had to spread the love around Right, then associated domains to go with it. I mean it was crazy what we had to do in those early days. But then it really there was this, this idea that things could could take off, idea that things could take off. And when I went back to Hawaii and told my wife about the show, she just basically kind of looked at me and she didn't have a clue what I was doing.

Sam Sethi: 8:13

Don't say anything. He's going into the corner to talk to himself again. Leave him alone.

Todd Cochrane: 8:22

And she said how much money? And I kind of sheepishly said how much money. I think we or seven, you know shared hosting accounts by that point and she kind of eyes got big and you know, pointed her finger at me. She says you got two years to figure this out, how to make money. So I was forced into monetization from like episode six, you know, and found monetization about 10 months later. But and was lucky enough to be one of the first to find that.

Todd Cochrane: 8:40

But you know, just a series of things happened the book deal with Wiley then forming a network and then GoDaddy coming to me. And then GoDaddy saying hey, and really, what the genesis of Blueberry podcasting or Raw Voice is, the parent company of Blueberry was from a gal named Chris Rudlinger. She said Todd, do you know anyone else would like to do advertising with GoDaddy? And I was like huh, yeah, there's a business here. So I literally on my podcast, I said I need a lawyer, I need an MBA, I need a graphics guy and I need a programmer. Because I was none of the above. And I had a phone call on free conference call about 10 days later and three of the original five are still with the company. I formed it over the phone. We didn't meet each other for six months, so Raw Voice was literally launched from my audience.

Sam Sethi: 9:32

And GoDaddy is still your sponsor, aren't they?

Todd Cochrane: 9:35

Still today, yeah, 1,698 episodes in. You know there's a break to spend an hour on how that's possible by itself, but really the simple part of it is you. You got to have new butts come in the seat or no new ears coming into the show in order to take maintain that success, cause I get my performance is purely based on new customers.

Sam Sethi: 9:56

Give everyone who doesn't know what are the shows that you do.

Todd Cochrane: 9:59

So I do Geek News Central. It's a tech show twice a week, Monday and Thursday. I record thatek News Central it's a tech show twice a week week, Monday and Thursday. I record that in the evening. On Wednesdays I do the New Media Show at newmediashowcom with Rob Greenlee Him and I've been doing that more than 10 years in itself, and then there's three of us to round robin on the podcast Insider at Blueberry. So we usually run a couple episodes a month of the company podcast. But all told, I think I totaled it up here recently. So more than 2,300 episodes and plus 2,000 plus interviews, some that I have received and some that I have given, Because, well, the majority of those interviews were done, like the Consumer Electronics Show, CES Show, part of adding content to the tech stack for the geek show.

Sam Sethi: 10:44

Now you've got Blueberry and you've got multiple products. You've got WordPress products. You've got other products we're going to talk about shortly. Is the podcast a loss leader to making people aware of Blueberry or is it fundamentally its own separate entity? Where does the podcast sit within the business?

Todd Cochrane: 11:04

its own separate entity. Where does the podcast sit within the business? Yeah, the two shows that I do for Geek News Central and the New Media Show are not, you know, really designed to drive. It's not a funnel for Raw Voice or Blueberry, or Blueberry specifically. But why I do a podcast and I was talking in our Facebook group about it yesterday was if there's very few podcast hosting owners, founders, team members that actually do podcasts. So on my team I have a lot of team members that do podcasts Barry, my CFO and legal officer, he does a travel show. One of the guys that's on our board of directors does a indie music show, and so it's really my philosophy was and has been if I'm going to talk about monetization, if I'm going to talk about growing a show, if I'm going to talk about consistency, if I'm going to talk about all these things that are important, podcasting you better be doing it.

Todd Cochrane: 12:06

Yeah eat your own dog food as they say that's right, you better be doing it, and if you're not and you're talking hypothetically, be quiet. You don't know what you're talking about?

Sam Sethi: 12:16

I agree. Okay, put your hat on Todd and tell me what's five years from now and what's 19 years from now.

Todd Cochrane: 12:24

And tell me what's five years from now and what's 19 years from now. I'll give you 12. Okay, I'll take that, because AI will be part of every podcast hosting platform's offering. Everyone's going to have something. If they don't, they're not going to be in business three years from now. I think that I'm not talking about an AI voice creating content that, no. But here's what will happen. As all this proliferation of AI content written videos, all this stuff people are not going to know who to trust or what to trust. So, people that are doing original content I'll include YouTubers as well, people that are doing original content audio podcasts, video podcasts, youtube channels where there is a voice that you can trust they are going to flock to those voices and personalities, because you're not going to know what you're reading, if it's true or not, if it's biased, if it's how it's been written. Where AI is going to help podcasters is folks that hit a writer's block, or maybe they're having a hard time coming with questions for a host, or maybe they've been horrible at writing summaries of their episodes.

Todd Cochrane: 13:43

That thunking work and I stole that word from Google, by the way that thunking work is what AI is going to do. It's going to help. It's going to assist. It won't be the authority. Here's what's going to end up happening.

Todd Cochrane: 13:55

We're very creative. We're all creators. I consider myself creative but I can't draw. If I asked to draw something, I draw strict things, you and me both. So mid-journey I'm going to have a lot of fun, okay, but I can visualize what I want, right, and I know the kind of things I want to bring out in my shows. So, being a creator, you're not going to give anything up, but the assistance is going to come with that.

Todd Cochrane: 14:19

Thunking is show notes, maybe questions, creative ideas. That's thunking. Work is going to be helped by AI. And then you still have to be the subject matter expert of everything because you're going to do your content. You're going to be the SME, the subject matter expert of your content, and then you're going to have to make sure that you're the subject matter expert of whatever that AI puts out and says this was the summary. You know Todd talked about this, this and this and this. He said oh no, I didn't talk about that, it made it up. Let me delete that from the draft and correct that you do the QA on the output and when you hit publish, it's still your product because you've had to edit this, because these AIs are they're the dumbest they'll ever be right now, exactly. But I think it's good and I think it's going to help the creative types in some of this stuff. But in the playing field it's going to be equal, because everyone's going to be doing the same thing. Everyone's going to have comprehensive notes.

Todd Cochrane: 15:16

But what does that do then? And this is why it's going to change the podcasting space a lot. You don't write for your audience, you write for Google, and now you're going to be writing for language models. So the more in-depth your show notes are when a language model comes by and indexes your page. So Todd talked about podcasting 2.0. Sam talked about podcasting 2.0 or whatever it may be.

Todd Cochrane: 15:49

Then, as these things evolve, then, as search changes, tell me about podcasting 2.0. And there's like well, here's Sam and Todd talking about this, here's Adam, here's Dave, here's the authorities. And this is not going to happen right now because it's pretty dumb right now. It's built on data that doesn't shift very much between models, but over time it will. So the one to three years, the world is going to change completely for knowledge workers and I think that podcast hosts better be. I'm probably. If they're not aware of it, then sorry. So I think that's what's going to happen Now. What's going to happen for listeners? Well, we just want listeners to engage. We want listeners to be. What is the thing that most podcasters care about the most besides growth, growth? Someone's saying I love your show Interactivity.

Sam Sethi: 16:44

Someone's saying I hate you.

Todd Cochrane: 16:46

Someone's saying that sucked or that was great, or my biggest fan that I had years ago was a hater, because he coalesced my audience. I would read every one of his hateful comments he sent to the show and the audience would rally around me and I build a stronger user base just because of one, sal, wherever you're at. Come back to the show, brother. So.

Sam Sethi: 17:09

Sal from Brooklyn, put them on the splits.

Todd Cochrane: 17:14

Exactly so. I think you know we want this listener engagement. What does listener engagement do that keeps us motivated to create content? Because being a content creator, being a podcaster, can be lonely. Thank you on behalf of the industry for the last 19 years of what you've done, because being a content creator, being a podcaster- can be lonely.

Sam Sethi: 17:26

Thank you on behalf of the industry for the last 19 years of what you've done. Speak to you soon.

Announcer: 17:41

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

Sam Sethi: 17:49

James, James, James, James, right Apple. Is Apple turning over a new chapter?

James Cridland: 18:01

I see what you did there. Very good, well done. Yes, because Apple Podcasts, it seems, is getting ready to support the Podcasting 2.0 JSON chapters feature, that's, the podcast chapters tag in RSS. They added documentation to its RSS specification page which was fascinating to watch them do, even more fascinating as soon as somebody noticed I think it was Nathan Gathright. Actually, as soon as somebody noticed, it was very quickly removed, so taken straight off again.

James Cridland: 18:28

But yeah, I was really interested in sort of digging around this. The Apple Podcasts app, at the time of recording at least, isn't supporting the podcast chapters. You know the JSON chapters stuff. But I have definitely checked and the Apple systems are downloading the JSON chapters files. So I can actually see, of course, because I self-host, I can see exactly who's doing what. So last week's show of the Pod News Weekly Review is actually in PodClock as a little bit of a test, with lots of different variants of chapters, and you can see it being grabbed by Apple Podcasts and used. So that's going to be interesting. So, yeah, I'm not quite sure what they're doing here. Sam, have you got any ideas?

Sam Sethi: 19:16

I'm clueless, but actually you wrote a nice little blog post where you surmised what you think they might be doing.

James Cridland: 19:22

Well, yes, and this is just a guess and we'll probably find out soon enough. Obviously, they didn't mention podcasting at all in the big iPhone reveal this week. Of course, and why would they? But perhaps Apple plans, I think, to add chapters for every podcast using its AI technology, Chapters we know are really useful, and there are lots of people out there now who are automatically putting chapters in Buzzsprout our sponsor will do that for you if you want them to.

James Cridland: 19:51

So perhaps what Apple is doing is it wants to offer podcast creators the option of opting out of AI-generated chapters by producing their own, just in exactly the same way as they do transcripts. So perhaps that's why they've made JSON chapters available as well as ID3 chapters, which is the other chapter format that they support, really just to ensure that any podcaster can do that. There are some podcast hosting companies out there, like Acast particularly, who will remove your ID3 chapters altogether. I think Omni Studio does that as well, and that's probably not a very good thing, but it's also probably built into how ads work and everything else, and so I think what's going on here is that Apple Podcasts is adding chapters for everyone, and this is their plan to allow podcast creators the option of producing their own chapters instead. That's my hunch.

Sam Sethi: 20:52

I think it's a good one as well, I think, based on what they did with transcripts. Now I think there is no excuse now for any podcasting 2.0 host not to support chapters and transcripts. Thankfully, I can't think of any one of the important podcasting hosts that don't support it. But you said it just two minutes ago it's optional. Buzzsprout makes it optional, captify makes it optional, rsscom, etc. Blueberry why don't they make it mandatory? Why are we having transcripts and chapters now, not as a mandatory downloadable feature?

James Cridland: 21:27

Well, I mean, I guess the reason for that is that it's difficult. It's another thing for us to think about. You know that, and location and the people tag and the funding tag and everything else. There is a you know, there's obviously an issue in essentially giving podcasters yet more work to do, so. I quite like the idea of AI generated chapters. Buzzsprout's tool does a pretty good job of those, if you want Buzzsprout's tool to do that, and so perhaps that, from a point of view of you know how they work, is probably the plan.

Sam Sethi: 22:03

Well, we'll see in a few weeks. Now I'm going to ask you, because I'm sure you didn't watch the Apple iPhone announcement what do you think they announced? James?

James Cridland: 22:13

Now, not only have I not watched it, I've sat. I was at the gym this morning, I was in the coffee shop afterwards, but I was chatting to some of the regulars in there. I've not actually had time yet. We're recording slightly early on a Wednesday because I'm on a flight tomorrow. I haven't actually had time yet to sit and read up what Apple have announced, so I literally know nothing. So what do I think they've announced? I think they've announced iPhone 17. Yeah, which? What?

Todd Cochrane: 22:47

new feature, because there must be a new feature.

James Cridland: 22:51

I have no, I don't know a more powerful notification buzzer. I don't know, nope, nope.

Sam Sethi: 23:02

So the normal rinse and repeat better camera, better battery and a thinner phone, that's it.

James Cridland: 23:10

Well, because they've made a thinner phone, haven't they? Which I know is separate, the iPhone Air. I know that they've made a cheaper phone and they've, or rather the iPhone 17 and then the iPhone 17 Pro, but that is literally it. There's nothing actually new.

Sam Sethi: 23:26

No, I mean they've nicked the design from the Google Pixel for the camera structure and actually iPhone 16 Pro Max camera telephoto lens is better than the 17 in reviews. But when you've got the new iPhone Air, iphone Air, which is their super thin one, and then you put a battery pack on the back of it because you need one, because it won't last all day, it then becomes a fat phone again.

Todd Cochrane: 23:55

So sort of self-defeating.

Sam Sethi: 23:56

And then they've got an orange phone, but when you put your own case on it you won't see the orange phone. So I'm not quite sure what's going on there.

James Cridland: 24:03

I had an orange phone in 1988.

Sam Sethi: 24:06

Yes, so I'm not quite sure what's going on there. I had an orange phone in 1988. Yes, but that's the company. No, nothing useful, I think. For me the thing that was most exciting was probably the AirPod 3, which has got live translation on it. But again, I don't travel enough you might. Oh, right, yes, yes. But the other person has to have an AirPod 3 if they want to do person-to-person conversation.

James Cridland: 24:28

Really.

Sam Sethi: 24:29

Yeah, well, what it does is it will listen and then use your phone to broadcast your voice. But if you both have AirPod 3s, then you can sit at a dinner table and literally translate in real time between the two of you. I don't know how real time real time is, but yeah.

James Cridland: 24:45

I mean Google's Pixel Buds five years ago had automatic translation, so you could just stick them in and you could listen to somebody else talking to you and it would translate automatically. Of course, an A I never tried it and B I bet it wouldn't work. It was, you know, google and I bet it doesn't work. I bet it doesn't do that anymore. But no well, very nice, very nice. Do you need brand new AirPods for that?

Sam Sethi: 25:10

Yeah, you do yeah.

James Cridland: 25:10

Of course you do. Of course you do.

Sam Sethi: 25:12

Brand new AirPods. You need a brand new phone. You need brand new, brand new, brand new, brand new.

James Cridland: 25:16

I do understand that there's also a new Apple Watch, which literally has slightly better glass and it supports five gigahertz wifi, as if that's going to make any difference to anybody yeah, and it's got a sleep app that you can track which ring did years ago. Yeah, right, well, I mean, but the but, the but the I watch already has one of those, so no, they've updated it or made it a better one, or something.

Sam Sethi: 25:45

I can't remember I was. I tuned out. Yeah, I tuned out a bit. I mean be honest with you. It was like and we have made this thinner and faster and lighter and yes, anyway, there we go apple, um, anyway now, but going back to what they were doing with chapters, although I should.

James Cridland: 26:04

I should just say, for reasons that you and I both know, I love Apple. I think Apple's a brilliant brilliant company.

Sam Sethi: 26:12

Anyway, yes, moving on. Did anyone say shilling Right now, moving fast forward. Daniel J Lewis has last week talked about at the end of last week's his new product that's coming to market. It's in beta, still called pod chapters, which is timely given that apple are doing chapters as well. What are pod chapters, james?

James Cridland: 26:34

well. So pod chapters is a it's ai generated, if you want it to be. It's a smart, fast and easy way to add engaging chapters to your podcast episodes, and it will export all of the chapter formats for you, which is nice. It will produce transcripts as well. It'll add them to the ID3 tags, which is nice, and it'll also obviously produce, you know, a JSON chapter file that you can do nothing with, because if your podcast hosting company doesn't support JSON chapters anyway, then you're not going to be able to upload a JSON chapters file. So I'm not quite sure how that bit is going to work. You can upload Podlove. You know it'll give you the code for Podlove simple chapters but again, unless you're hosting yourself, you won't be able to do much with it. But the nice thing is it will deal with your ID3 tags and perhaps that's the most important thing here and it all works in a browser, which is nice.

James Cridland: 27:31

There are a few programs at the moment which you can download, one from Marco Arment called Forecast, but this is, I believe, one of the only tools that allows you to set chapters in the browser, apart, of course, from the one produced by our sponsor, buzzsproutcom. But yeah, so I think it's a nice tool. I wonder how big the audience is for it. I wonder whether it's a very niche tool that only self-hosters are going to be able to actually use. But it looks like a nice tool. It certainly looks pretty and smart. Daniel seems to have certainly got the UX looking really nice, so yeah.

Sam Sethi: 28:11

Yeah, no, I was wondering whether Daniel was going to produce an API for it so that apps or hosts could hook into it as a service.

James Cridland: 28:21

Ah well, maybe that's an interesting plan. I'm sure that that's something that he will be thinking about.

Sam Sethi: 28:26

Well, we'll try and get him on the show in a couple of weeks, he said, when the product's out of beta. So we'll see whether Daniel's on the show then.

James Cridland: 28:34

Well, I think that makes perfect sense, and maybe when he's actually registered his trademark, daniel Jason Lewis Patreon.

Sam Sethi: 28:45

Now, patreon, as you know, is something that I think is worth watching very closely. You have them on Pod News Daily. I've taken this from your page Patreon earned over $472 million from over 6.7 million paid memberships in the last year alone. So that's something that I lifted directly from Pod News Daily, and they've just updated their creator pages.

Sam Sethi: 29:13

Now, I'm a long time advocate of the belief that we are going back to portals An old term came out of the 1980s, but it's coming back in fashion, I think, and we are moving towards creator portals. Now you see it with Substack, and I think Patreon have now followed suit and decided to push hard. You know you've got things like Podpage, but Podpage is a standalone application on its own. I think Patreon itself has all of the components, which is both freemium and premium content, and now they're giving creators the ability to customize their UI, create customized domains, and I think this is the way forward.

Sam Sethi: 29:56

I think, when people talk to me about YouTube and Spotify and worry about those platforms, I feel like they're they're not the destination, but they're the road bumps on the road to the destination, in the same way that tiktok is. I think they're great and I think you need to be on those platforms if that's what you want to do, audio video because of the algorithms that will highlight your podcast potentially to a new audience. But I think if you want to create community and aggregate people around your content, then I think you need to use sites like Substack or Patreon, because those are the places where, in the words of Todd Cochran, you will own your own dot com.

James Cridland: 30:39

Yeah, no, I think owning your own dot com is a massively important thing. I'm still really surprised why there are so many companies out there that don't Just buyyourowncom and then connect your existing podcast page to it. Buzzsprout will let you do that for free, or you can use something like Podpage, you know, which is a really good tool as well If you're a subscriber to the Pod News newsletter. By the way, you can get some money off Podpage as well if you go to podnewsnet slash extras. But I'm super confused as to why quite a lot of very big podcasts that I see are perfectly happy to link over to you know their page on you know podbean or something, and you're there thinking you're not getting the best out of the podcast that you have yeah, I.

Sam Sethi: 31:28

I mean, I've been watching this, obviously closely for personal reasons, with True Fans, but the thing I've seen is like the newsagents this week from Global created a sub-stack page. I mean, I've talked about Zateocom being another one. There are quite a few people, I think, beginning to wake up to having a merch store, blog, podcast video all aggregated under one brand, under their own domain, and I think that seems to be the path I believe in 2026, most podcasters should be taking. Now one sidestep, just very quickly. It was very funny a couple of weeks ago. Adam Curry was talking about how potentially we could use RSS and I sent him a comment into the podcast index show saying that actually the original concept of RSS was a data transport layer to a podcast, to a portal, and that's what Netscape originally invented RSS for. It was actually slow internet, so they used RSS to aggregate sports news, weather from different sites into one portal page. I think we've come full circle. I just feel RSS is coming back to its original goals.

James Cridland: 32:39

Yeah, and I think you know it's interesting. So Ramanathan Guha published 0.9 of RSS, dan Libby published 0.91, both at Netscape, and then Dave Weiner jumped in and published another version of 0.91, which is very confusing, and has since obviously taken that forward. I find it interesting to see that the only thing that Dave Weiner is currently talking about is that ActivityPub is all wrong and that social media should really work through RSS feeds. I mean, he's not coded anything. He's not shown how it might work. The only thing that he appears to be doing is just throwing stones at ActivityPub and at Blue Sky and at various other people for not supporting RSS. By the way, they both have RSS feeds.

Sam Sethi: 33:33

Does he not understand the history of ActivityPub from RSS? Does he not understand the path that led to?

James Cridland: 33:40

it. I don't think he's interested. I don't think he's interested in working with people, to be honest with you. I think he's more interested in, you know, doing his own thing thing, and you know, and and you know, fair enough, if that's what you want to do, then fine. But you know, throwing throwing stones, and you know, and you know having a grump about things is is probably not the right, the right way, but you know, I mean, you know, up to him if he wants to end up doing that. But yeah, it's a shame to see Dave so fixated on technology over anything else, you know in terms of that. And ActivityPub, you know, for yes, it's complicated. There are good reasons why it's that complicated, but yes, it's complicated. And RSS feeds, yeah, they're nice, but unless you can actually code a fully working social network, which I'm not sure you can actually with, just with flat RSS, then you know, I'm not, I'm not sure where they, you know where, where anybody wins from that conversation.

Sam Sethi: 34:41

Well, the reason that Atom if you remember, atom 1.0, which was an alternative to RSS 2.0, evolved was because Dave Weiner wouldn't work with anyone. He wouldn't allow RSS to be customised. There was no namespace extension at the time. So people said, ok, screw you, dave Weiner, we'll create Atom 1.0. And there was websites all the time that have to have the RSS 2.0 icon and the Atom 1.0 icon. And the Atom 1.0 evolved into activity streams. That evolved into ActivityPub. So that is the history of how we got to ActivityPub because of Dave Weiner's lack of community integration with other people and collaboration. So when Dave Weiner's moaning again about Activity Pub, it has a history of 20 years of Dave Weiner.

James Cridland: 35:34

Well, and on that bombshell, let's move on from that to something that nobody has anything bad to say about YouTube.

Sam Sethi: 35:44

YouTube yes, the lovely YouTube, they're not a sponsor. Now YouTube live video. They've announced that they are going to broadcast their first exclusive NFL game, and they've done that to 17 million global viewers. I'm not sure how global that would have been, but anyway. That's an interesting thing, though, that they've gone down this content route of getting live American football. Amazon's been doing it for a while. They've been averaging 13.2 million. Amazon actually, in the UK, has a lot of the Premier League football. This is all on the back of the fact that Spotify this week claimed that sports is the fastest growing video podcast category. James, why or how do they say that?

James Cridland: 36:32

Well. So Spotify bless them, and I am looking forward to speaking to somebody from Spotify in the next couple of days as well. But Spotify bless them. They are remarkably entertaining with the way that they do some of their talking. So, for example, they didn't send a press release out on this, they just sent an email and one of their emails says sports video podcast consumption on Spotify is up more than four times year on year, with lifts across the ringer titles.

James Cridland: 37:08

And I just like to stop there and go OK, so it's up 4% year on year and the Ringer has seen at least 4% increase in video podcasts. Ah, yes, that was because this time last year the Ringer had zero, zero, none, zero videos on Spotify. If you remember the Ringer, even after the big launch of video on Spotify, the Ringer still wasn't actually doing any video on Spotify. If you remember the Ringer, even after the big launch of video on Spotify, the Ringer still wasn't actually doing any video on Spotify until we kicked up a bit of a fuss about it. So yes, of course it's up more than four times year on year because the Ringer wasn't even doing any. So it's all a little bit of a nonsense. That said, it is up 53% quarter on quarter, which is at least something, so I think we can have a look at that. That said, it is up 53% quarter on quarter, which is at least something, so I think we can have a look at that.

James Cridland: 37:54

But yeah, I mean, you know Spotify very clearly wanting to make a name for themselves in the video space. I'm not sure that they are, but wanting to make a deal for themselves in the video space. I think from YouTube's point of view, youtube is more and more now like a Netflix or like a cable company. They want access to as much content as possible and they are going to buy some of that content. I'm a YouTube premium subscriber and there is content that I can stream that nobody else can, for example. So of course, you're going to see. You know a bunch of that. But yeah, you know, live video is one thing. Is it much to do with podcasting? Well, kind of yes and kind of no, because right now I can imagine, not that you or I would do this, sam, but I would imagine that there will be no shortage of young ladies who will be very keen to stream live in various states of undress, and that's probably a bad thing too.

Sam Sethi: 39:03

Yes, yes, Moving on then, James, from that, One interesting story you wrote about and I found it interesting because of our background in radio was a company called Xenomedia that's launched Xenopass, an AI powered toolkit for radio and podcasting.

James Cridland: 39:20

I thought this was really interesting. They have produced basically lots of different tools that you feed a radio station into and it will automatically split those up into podcasts using AI. It removes ads automatically, it inserts the programmatic ad markers automatically, it'll create transcripts, seo friendly titles, it'll trim interviews, it'll add intros and outros all of that kind of stuff, which is nice. But then you can add AI on-air talent, as they call it so you can add the latest weather or the latest news or sports news, so that when a listener downloads this stuff, then they can actually get a full package along with it. They produce apps for you and everything else, and, of course, they also give you a ton of analytics as well. So I think it looks a very interesting set of tools. Not something that most radio stations haven't built for themselves, but I think that you know. For some of the smaller ones, then Xeno Plus might be for them. But yeah, quite a nice tool, xeno.

James Cridland: 40:27

In case you don't know of them, their main job is in Africa, where they have worked out a very clever way of streaming live radio via a telephone number, because it turns out that in most African countries you get free telephone calls and so, but the data, the cost of data, is massive. And so the way that, for example, you can listen to the BBC World Service in I'd like to say Nigeria, I think it might be is by ringing a number and it's as simple as that and you can listen to that radio station as long as you like. And actually they make money from that. Zeno make money from that because they get some interconnect fees. Costs the listener nothing. It's very good on battery power and everything else. So it's quite a nice idea. So they're quite a clever little, clever little organisation.

Sam Sethi: 41:15

They call themselves the Shopify of radio on their website. Sadly, there's no prices on their website. I couldn't find one. When I did River Radio, we used a similar service from the French company Radio King, which was owned by Usha at one point. Usha then sold it, which I think at the time I did say to them I thought was the weirdest thing. I thought, when the aggregation of podcasting and radio was coming forward, that they were getting rid of that part, but anyway they did. There's a company in Manchester called Radioco that does something similar, but actually when I looked at the services that you described just now from Zeno Plus, if I was starting River Radio again today, I think I'd start to look at using them Again, price determined. But yeah, they've got some really interesting tools.

James Cridland: 42:01

Yeah, no, I think it looks very smart, so well done to them.

Sam Sethi: 42:05

Now going back to YouTube, a story you covered, james. Youtube appears to be having trouble importing RSS feeds. What are they doing?

James Cridland: 42:15

Yes, so earlier on in the week I think they've fixed it now, but earlier on in the week their RSS feed thing broke again, so individual shows weren't being imported into the YouTube platform. If you just use their YouTube RSS ingestion tool, I'm not sure how successful that's being for them. I'll be honest with you I don't necessarily see a ton of success coming from just audio-only shows. Nobody really talks about them and the figures that I see are relatively dismal in terms of the total shows from that shows you know from that so I'm not necessarily sure that it's such a great thing. For example, we upload this show to YouTube. Would you like to take a guess how many views we have had in the last week?

Sam Sethi: 43:06

I'm going for a number between zero and one.

James Cridland: 43:10

No, no, we're quite, we are, we are quite popular, you know. Oh, okay, yeah, five, Okay, retirement plan in place.

James Cridland: 43:20

Yes, that is, that is literally it, and we're not just uploading a static graphic. We're uploading at least a nice sort of bouncy headliner video with some information there and some transcripts and everything else, and even that isn't doing particularly well. My guess is that they don't care about it too much, to be honest. But anyway, if you were having problems earlier on in the week, they fixed it now. So that's all good.

James Cridland: 43:46

But YouTube does appear to be doing something weird, because not only have they been having fun doing that, also there have been a ton of content creators those content creators that would normally talk about this sort of thing saying that quite a lot of their traffic is down, linus Media Group saying that 25% of their views have gone, and a number of other people saying that their numbers are also quite low. So you know, everybody's blaming it on the algorithm for some way shape or you know. I don't know whether that's fair or whether there's something else at play here. Somebody else, I think, claimed that it was something to do with restricted mode, and there are more people using restricted mode these days, and perhaps that's got something to do with it. But anyway, I mean it all comes down to a wise man once saying get your owncom and make sure that your podcasts are as open as you can possibly be, because YouTube can very easily turn things off.

Sam Sethi: 44:48

Yeah, I mean we've seen it with the Google search, when they've changed the algorithm and everyone's scrambled, I mean you know, and people go oh my God, you can't do that, I've lost all my traffic. I mean, Jason Calacanis famously had a website that would do things to aggregate content and then SEO from Google's algorithm changed and this whole business died. But you know, maybe that's what they've done. They've just changed the algorithm and not told anyone about it and the consequence is you've lost traffic.

James Cridland: 45:15

Well, maybe that's how it works. Maybe it's a bit of a push against the amount of people who are now producing AI and talking about that. Oh my goodness. So I got this very.

Sam Sethi: 45:30

Sorry, sorry, can you hold on a sec? I'm just going to grab a cup of tea while you do this bit, go for it.

James Cridland: 45:37

So, oh my goodness, I got this very, very smug email from somebody at a network called Quiet Please. I wish they would. It's from a company called Inception Point AI. It's headed up by former Wondery COO, janine Wright, who I've met and seemed quite nice and pleasant to me. But anyway, what they have worked out is they've worked out that if they get AI to generate a load of podcasts, they're producing 3,000 new episodes per week, which is about 1% of all new podcasts. If they can get AI to just generate all of this stuff and automatically publish it and they can call their shows clever enough titles in terms of SEO, then all they essentially need is about 20 listeners, because about 20 listeners will earn you about a dollar in terms of ad revenue. So if you about manage that 20 or 30 listeners, if you about manage that, then you're making profit. And so this company, inception Point AI, is deeply excited about the fact that they are producing AI-generated content.

James Cridland: 46:51

They say, or rather, janine Wright says, that I think that people who are still referring to all AI-generated content as AI slop are probably lazy Luddites. Well, a, that means that she doesn't understand what Luddites actually means and what they were actually talking about, because they weren't fighting against technology. They were fighting against something completely different. And also, secondly, if that's the case, I'm proudly lazy. So if you would like to listen to some AI slop, go and find Knitting, which is a podcast which has been carefully SEO titled. It's hosted by Lila Crafty Walker, and Lila Crafty Walker is, of course, ai, although you'd never know, because there's no disclosure and it's a six part series on knitting and it says nothing. It literally says nothing, and if this is the future of podcasting, then I think it's time to retire and go off and find something else to do, because my goodness me, maybe some knitting.

Sam Sethi: 47:51

James, you can do some knitting mate.

James Cridland: 47:54

And I know that similar is going on on YouTube as well. So people are throwing shows out on YouTube and making them in terms of AI. But, of course, the downside of being completely open and completely you know, find your podcast, you know wherever you get your podcast and completely you know, find your podcast, you know wherever you get your podcast the downside of that is that it's going to be quite difficult for podcast apps and for podcast platforms to weed some of this crap out and you know. But I mean, is this really our future?

Sam Sethi: 48:25

Yeah, well, yes and no, Okay. So two things here, james. First of all, I need to go and write it, but I, as CEO of TrueFans, we have an AI indicator within our dashboard for creators to say this was the voice or the host is an AI, and we also have in the user settings the ability, like we have with the explicit tag, to then block those out. So that's something that I think apps and hosts can do. We haven't adopted that like. We have the explicit tag in the same way, and I know that people won't have to self-report, so they could just ignore it. But that's the same argument as saying they don't have to self-report explicit, but people do report themselves as an explicit. So that's not an argument I take on board.

Sam Sethi: 49:11

But the second part of this is, while there is a monetary benefit to putting out masses of content which is what Jason Calacanis was doing when Google changed the algorithm so that he couldn't put out post after post after post on websites, that would just generate ad revenue for him. In the same way, this is the same example where you know, you know, be damned with the quality, it's the quantity right, and if he can get enough, as you just said then they will, they have a business. Now it's up to YouTube which I think they are doing to restrict AI content. Spotify need to do the same and I throw it back. How do we in the podcasting world deal with?

James Cridland: 49:56

this? Yeah, how do we? How do we? Because I'm not sure that there's a very easy way of doing that other than companies like Listen Notes automatically marking stuff. As you know, ai generated, I have to say. This company hosts all of their shows on Spreaker, which is probably why we can now understand why Spreaker is doing so well in John Spurlock's charts, because all of a sudden, they're being flooded with AI slot such as this, and so, from that point of view, yes, they spreaker.

Sam Sethi: 50:31

I mean, I don't know do the right.

James Cridland: 50:34

I mean spreaker could turn around, but why?

Sam Sethi: 50:36

no, no, I'm not saying they should stop it. If they want to take it, right, have it. It's their choice, right. But at least if we as an industry created some podcast tag that said you, just as we have the block tag, the location tag and the explicit tag, have an ai tag, and then spreaker could, and the explicit tag have an AI tag, and then Spreaker could mark it. It's then down to me as a listener. Do I want to receive this content? Yeah, I'm happy with AI content. Great. Well, stick it out there then and let me listen to it, or I don't like it.

James Cridland: 51:03

Let me filter it out. Yeah, and I think we need to understand well what are we marking there as AI and you know, and all of that, and I think it's something which has been wholly generated by ai. Apparently, there are spot checks done on some of these podcasts, but you can see that actually, quite a lot of them are just being produced automatically, are being published automatically without any human being involved. It's not not a great. Not a great move. Close them down.

Sam Sethi: 51:31

I say Well, you know it's people choice, but I think we should have the ability to mark them and then allow people to choose them as well. But anyway, we'll see. I'm sure it's not the last time we'll talk about it, that's for certain. Now, whizzing around the world, the New York Times is to close its audio app. Bye, bye.

James Cridland: 51:52

Yes, goodbye. Yes, the app was launched in April 2023 for iPhone users. If you are an Android user, then tough. You never even got one, and instead they're moving the audio into the main news app, which I think makes the most amount of sense. And they have also, of course, the New York Times have made much more of their audio available to everybody, not just to a subscriber. So the New York Times headlines is, I think, one of the ones that I would point to, which seems to do very well. Let's take a look at some jobs Podimo are hiring. Apparently, they're hiring for a VP of people and culture. That's a sign of a company which has grown to a certain size, isn't it? How big do you need to be to have a VP people and culture?

Sam Sethi: 52:38

I don't know, because I guess I don't know. A couple of hundred people, yeah exactly, I would guess.

James Cridland: 52:44

I mean, you wouldn't be doing that if you were only five people, would you? So I think that goes to show everything. So well done for Podimo for your growth. And lots of horror stories, of course, going on in the US following the cuts in federal funding for public media PBS cutting 100 jobs. Houston Public Media eliminating nine staff positions. Ket laying off 36 staff. Kusc reportedly cutting eight staff. See how many different ways I can say people losing their jobs in that particular paragraph. But yes, if you know people working in the public media sphere in the US, it is not fun for them right now, so go and give them a hug.

Sam Sethi: 53:31

Yes, go and give them a hug indeed. Now awards and events. James, you were out in Asia recently. The Asia Podcast Awards were published.

James Cridland: 53:38

You're very British, aren't you the?

Sam Sethi: 53:42

way that you say Asia Says the Indian-born man yes, yes, but you can tell them, the public school got to me. Yes, exactly, asia, okay, but you can tell them, the public school got to me. Yes, exactly, yes, asia, okay. What are you wanting, uncle G? Asian public awards.

James Cridland: 53:55

Go for it. Asia, as Mike Russell calls it yes, the full winners of the Asia podcast awards I'm going to call it have been published. Those were given out in a lavish ceremony with about eight blow-up balloons at Podcast Day Asia. It was great fun. What is always fun with those awards is that it's done in the middle of a conference and still people who are up for the awards just turn up and we've got no idea whether or not they've actually turned up and all of a sudden they pop up on stage and they say, yes, this is mine, and so that was great. There's a full list on the radioinfoasia website. Crimecon in Denver also announced the winners of the 2025 Clue Awards, which is a whole awards about true crime. Hooray to awards for podcasts in there.

James Cridland: 54:47

Events podcast days in Spain is well. It's less than a month away. It's about three weeks away now. The event this year includes Eric Newsom, megan Davies and you, sam Sethi. It's in Madrid in October. In Spain, the Ivux podcast awards have been open for registrations and if you win, you get a nice physical trophy and you also get a year of free visibility on the ivux platform, which is probably worth rather more if you speak spanish. There is more information there and the all ireland podcast awards are happening in ireland, along with a new two-day podcast summit called sound wave. It's in adair I hope I've pronounced that right. Apparently it's Ireland's prettiest village in County Limerick, and we will chat with Dylan Haskins from that event in the next couple of weeks here on the Pod News Weekly Review. What else is going on?

Sam Sethi: 55:42

Well, let's look across the podosphere Buzzcast, which is one of the podcasts I do listen to regularly. They had a really interesting show. I don't know if they've come to the party late or they're just recycling something, but the reality of monetisation in the streaming era is the title of the episode and they begin to talk about the struggles of music artists. This is something that obviously the podcasting 2.0 community has been talking about for a few years now and more and more artists are beginning to, you know, either boycott Spotify, A because Daniel X is investing in AI drones or, B, they're not getting paid enough or, C, they're just looking for other opportunities. But it's a really interesting listen and again it comes back down to, I think, the slight failure of the podcasting community to get value for value right.

Sam Sethi: 56:37

We haven't got the streaming payments completely right. I think artists would benefit from having direct to fan payment from platforms like you know fountain, true fans, podverse, etc. But we haven't sold the message correctly. We haven't got the information across. Wavelake seems to have disappeared off the horizon. Rss Blue is focused on music, but again I'm not hearing much. So the whole jamboree of excitement around music in podcasting, which we had two years ago, seems to have gone flat, but there is a marketplace still and artists are looking for a place to go away from Spotify.

James Cridland: 57:18

Yeah, now I think both that and the whole streaming payments thing. Of course, value for value is something different, but the whole streaming payments thing has gone very, very quiet recently and you know we were only mentioning it on podcastindexsocial a couple of days ago. What's nice is that after a few messages and things from Oscar and from Eric PP and from others, we can actually see that there is now a bit of renewed interest in this and a bit of renewed interest in understanding what Fountain is doing, what is going on with some of the ways that you can get the metadata along with your payment and all of that, and so hopefully there's a bit more interest in that bit coming back again, because it would be really nice to see that you know coming back too.

Sam Sethi: 58:07

Well, albie have just done an update to their hub to support Bolt 12 and added back lightning address payment. Sorry, lightning address to your wallet, so for sub wallets. So again there is movement. It is slow and I think you know we had to take two steps back to go one step forward, but I think it is coming again.

James Cridland: 58:29

No, I think so. One other thing to cover is 1000, not Out. Dave Jackson has published his 1000th episode of the School of Podcasting. Congratulations, dave. The show contains expert tips for launching and growing your podcast, and the topic in episode 1000 was how to grow your podcast. He says that maybe your show isn't growing because it's not very good, which I'm presuming. He's talking about some other show and not this one.

Sam Sethi: 58:59

Hopefully, yeah, we'll get him on the show. If he was talking about us.

James Cridland: 59:08

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

Sam Sethi: 59:13

Sam, this one is a techie one. There is a we talked about it earlier right, we talked about RSS and we talked about the evolution towards activity streams and activity pub, and I don't think people really understand that yet. But there is some work going on, because one of the biggest problems in the social web is that you now have two protocols activity pub and the app protocol and even if you then add Nost as a protocol.

James Cridland: 59:43

Who uses that blue sky? Ah?

Sam Sethi: 59:47

there you go. Uh, I think, if you add into this debate a third protocol, which is the noster protocol. So the social web, or the independent social web, is basically split between three different factions and Never the Twain currently seem to be meeting. In fact, there's quite a heated debate between all of the various different stakeholders about mine's better than yours, so that's causing a lot of angst, but I do believe they're now trying to merge the protocols. I do believe they're now trying to merge the protocols.

Sam Sethi: 1:00:19

Now there is a very interesting company. They originally created something called BridgyFed which was a bridge between the ActivityPub and the At protocol, so Blue Sky and Mastodon, for example and they are now promoting or pushing forward a new protocol. God, we need another one called bounce. It's now open in beta and the idea is that bounce would allow you to bridge seamlessly between all the different protocols so that you have a social graph, your friends graph, that you can migrate. That's the biggest thing that locks out migration between any.

Sam Sethi: 1:00:57

You know, if you wanted to go from Twitter or X to threads, it was oh God, do I have to create my social graph again? Well, now Bounce is a migration tool service that allows you to migrate your social graph, and they're also using Bridgifed to now allow you to also bridge messages between the two platforms as well. The goal is to centralise without centralising. I can't quite get my head around it. It's very early, but if you're interested in all this stuff, then yes, have a look at something called Bounce and there's a really interesting podcast called wedistributeorg. They did an interview with the developers from both sides. Worth a listen if you're interested in that stuff.

James Cridland: 1:01:37

Yes, I would just like, I'd like me to be able to have a handle on Blue Sky and a handle on Mastodon, but I want them to be nice handles, not weird ones at bridgiefedbizarreyou know. Whatever it might be, we're not quite there yet, but I'm imagining that at some point we'll be able to do that bit too. So that would be nice if that's possible.

Sam Sethi: 1:02:04

Yeah, I mean again data portability for social graphs. One thing, a question for you, james if you wanted to move from one podcast app to another and I mean you've got all of your, let's say, playlists on Fountain and maybe you want to go to Podcast Guru how would you do it?

James Cridland: 1:02:26

Well, that's an interesting question, isn't it? The only real way is OPML import and export, assuming that both of your podcast apps deal with OPML and deal with that particular flavor of opml, but there's no way in terms of play or comment activity. There's no way of you know anything else, really, other than here are the podcasts I'm subscribed to, so you, you can't even see which which episodes of that podcast I have listened to exactly, and I I do feel that you know, am I being ignored?

Sam Sethi: 1:03:01

possibly I've talked about activity streams. Yeah, no, I genuinely think I am being ignored by the group in the industry, because I think activity streams have been around from the w3c and they are rooted in rss and they have a history and we are ignoring it. I mean, okay, my own platform supports it, but I don't think any other platform supports it. And that does give you all of that information who I follow, what podcasts I listen to, how long I listen to, what comments are attached to it. All of that is XML data that we can export and we have that feature and function. We can import it as well.

Sam Sethi: 1:03:39

Opml is, I think, a historical data point and it's very good for just very limited movement of podcasts, but it's not about moving your I, I guess, your listen time, your your your social graph of people you follow, all of the other bits that make your podcast app interesting. I don't know when we will get to the point where others start to look at this. Maybe never, but I do worry that we are missing a trick here, because migrating from one podcast app to another, just as migrating from one social web application to another is tricky and I don't think we have an answer, but there is one out there and I think it is called activity streams. Yeah, anyway, moving on, james pod match, who we had on a couple of weeks ago, alex san felipo, has finally released after 17 months of work. He says well, it's not finally released, alex, it's in final beta. It's Well, it's not finally released, alex, it's in final beta. Yeah, technically, it's not released 17 months. This must be brilliant.

James Cridland: 1:04:43

What is it?

Sam Sethi: 1:04:44

It's a podcast booking agency application. There you go.

James Cridland: 1:04:49

Ah, okay, so if you're a podcast booking agency, you can use this as software to help you from doing that.

James Cridland: 1:05:00

That's very smart. It's in beta. If you want to be part of that, if you're a podcast booking agency or an independent podcast booking agent, then you can get in for free right now, and so that's nice, isn't it? You'll doubtless find more information at Podmatch if you go hunting through the latest posts and all that kind of stuff. So well done to Alex Sanfilippo for that. Other quick things going on at the moment Wunder, which is Wundercraft's AI creation tool. Talking about AI creation earlier, anyway, the video version of that will be available on October, the 15th, so see if you can get in on that. That might be nice. Microsoft has a thing called Vibe Voice which, if you could use it, you'd find that it was a thing like Google's Notebook LM. It can generate up to four voices from some text that you upload it, or at least it would have done, but people got it doing naughty things, so they've removed it. Quotes until we are confident that out-of-scope use is no longer possible. Oh dear.

Sam Sethi: 1:06:03

Will they ever learn? They released an AI in Japan and it was pleasant, polite and people asked it sensible questions. They released it on Twitter and it was a Nazi within about 24 hours.

James Cridland: 1:06:17

Yes, I know. Will they ever learn? No is clearly the answer. What else is going on Pocket Casts? Our friend at Pocket Casts? If you use Pocket Casts for free, then you might get ads in the app from here on in. There are certainly ads that are now appearing trying to get you to upgrade to Pocket Casts Premium, but will you get other apps in there as well, who knows? But anyway, the new version of Pocket Casts which is coming out includes that in it. There's a very smart little API from PodEngine which they've just launched. It allows you to grab podcast data like transcripts, social media metrics, youtube data charts, reviews and all kinds of stuff, and the API looks quite decent decent, so maybe worth a peek if you're interested in that sort of thing. Oh, sam sethy, what's podster?

Sam Sethi: 1:07:05

well, don't ask me. I mean, I'm only reporting on it, right? So podster combines podcasting 2.0 and nosta. No, it's not fountain, it's another app. Oh great, yes, you know more the merrier. Does it work the same way? Well, I'm not quite sure. So I looked at it. It's from Heather Larson, who's the marketing director at Soapbox Technology, the people who produce it. It's open source, it's free. They've used it with an AI platform tool that they call MKStack, so you can vibe code your podcast solution to be the app I'm sure that Adam Curry is going to love this one because he likes his vibe coding.

James Cridland: 1:07:46

It's got Adam Curry's name all over this, hasn't it?

Sam Sethi: 1:07:48

Yeah, no, I can see him.

James Cridland: 1:07:50

In fact, it really does, because not only will MKStack help you create custom social platforms and applications with their flexible framework, not only that, you can also build in minutes, edit with Dork AI and deploy instantly what's.

Sam Sethi: 1:08:08

Dork AI, I have no idea and I wasn't going to go down that rabbit hole.

James Cridland: 1:08:12

but that's what they use to edit it.

Sam Sethi: 1:08:14

I mean yes because that's the big problem with vibe coding is debugging it.

James Cridland: 1:08:20

Yes, that's the problem a developer, their developer relations person is called derrick. Nothing against people called derrick, but goodness me so, yes, wow, what a thing it does. Though, say, at the bottom of this blog post, the podcast still goes to all of the podcast apps we're used to I'm not quite sure I understand that bit and the podcasting 2.0 apps run by our friends at fountain and true fans. Well, so so you must have been involved in this no, I had zero involvement.

Sam Sethi: 1:08:50

No, I had nothing to do. The only reason that I got a nice kindly mention was because we support payments and we support all the tags. So it's the podcasting 2.0 part. But actually, nick molster, oscar mary and davidas from fountain did help them a lot and, again, if you're into the world of nosta, this is going to be something.

Sam Sethi: 1:09:12

If you want to roll your own podcast out, then this is probably something you might want to look at. You know, we talked to Barry last week about why did Podhome launch an app, given that they're a host, and he said well, we didn't quite have an app that worked the way that we wanted it to work, so we built our own app, which took them, you know, over a year. Well, in theory, if this works the way that it's been promoted, you could roll your own podcasting out. You know, matt Medeiros, if you remember, did that a little while back. He vibe coded his own podcast app. I don't know where that went to, if he's just had it as a test and then he's binned it. But again, you know, if you're into the world of NOSTA, payments and micropayments and podcasting 2.0 and you want to do your own thing, give it a go, I suppose.

James Cridland: 1:09:59

Well, my word, there we are. What more can you ask for? And you get to use Dork AI, so that's always a benefit. Yes, thank you for bringing that to me, sam.

Sam Sethi: 1:10:15

I can see you after dinner getting your sleeves rolled up. I can just see it now.

Announcer: 1:10:18

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James Cridland: 1:10:33

So many different ways to get in touch with us Fan mail by using the link in our show notes, super comments on True Fans, or boosts everywhere else, or email. We share all of the money that we make, too. A couple of boosts, which is very kind. One from Seth 454 sats. Thank you, seth. Using True Fans Love the coverage of all of the conferences. James, you've got to be exhausted. You have no idea, seth, particularly since I'm off on an aeroplane tomorrow. Oh good. One from Lyceum 1,701 sats. Lyceum, of course, our latest power supporter. I am pushing for taking back the leader position as a true fan on the leaderboard. David John Clark, aka the late bloomer actor, is an avid listener to podcasts. See you in cyberspace. So your, your gamification is working well there, sam. Yeah, so that is so. That is excellent. Thank you to martin for that. Talking actually about him being usurped as the, as the, as the fan of our show in true fans, he's also usurped as the as our latest power supporter because we have another one. Do we not drum roll?

Sam Sethi: 1:11:43

well, it's the famous john spurlock. Yes, he's joined. How exciting. I looked up the bingo call for 23, which is the and me. The and me is, you know I'm not sure that really rings too well with power supporters. But there you go.

James Cridland: 1:12:01

Well, people do wear 23 on their sports jerseys, do they not? I seem to remember David Beckham wearing. I don't remember David Beckham.

Sam Sethi: 1:12:10

I was going to say, really, really, the man who doesn't watch football, it says it in the script that you've just written.

James Cridland: 1:12:16

So I seem to remember David Beckham wearing number 23, and also the cricket bowler Shane Warnes, good Australian. Any other people who have worn number 23?

Sam Sethi: 1:12:24

Well, the most famous of all is Michael Jordan, and then, most recently, is LeBron James. So if you're into your basketball James, of course you know both those people very well.

James Cridland: 1:12:33

John Spurlock, thank you so much. He's the brightest techie in podcasting today, with the possible exception of Dave Jones. John, thank you so much. Really appreciate that. That's very kind of you. Thank you also to Martin Linderskog, or Lyceum as we also call him, and to our many other power supporters Brian Entsminger, star Tempest and Will Clark, to name but three. If you would like to join, john, then please do. You can head to weeklypodnewsnet and that will be an excellent thing. And thank you.

Sam Sethi: 1:13:11

So what's happened for you this week? Sam, I've got the grumps, james, I've got the grumps. Yeah, who's Podglomerate?

James Cridland: 1:13:14

James. Ah, the Podglomerate. Yes, so they produced a list of podcast pros to follow on social media. Such a good list, it was. It links to me on X and if you go onto X my username on X it says I do not use this anymore, go somewhere else. And that was posted a year and a half ago. So it's an excellent list. I get the feeling, though, sam, I'm on it, but I get the feeling, though, sam, you may not be. Is that right?

Sam Sethi: 1:13:44

No, not even a footnote in your section. I mean, come on, you know how do I feel. Let's think the Lone Ranger and Tonto maybe I think maybe you're the horse? Maybe the horse? You're not even going to mention all that. Yeah, yeah, no. I was like, oh great, you know what do I have to do? So I was going to put a picture of me actually dressed as a red Indian in here, but I thought, no, no let's not go that far.

Sam Sethi: 1:14:09

No, I did actually do that idea, but that's another story. But, in all seriousness, congratulations to some people that we know very well Andrea Koskaj, ariel Nissenblatt, ashley Carman, dane Cardiel Elsie Escobar, greg Wasserman, imran Ahmed, lauren Purcell, liam Hefferman and Norm Jean Belengi, who we had on recently. I would follow all those people because they are very good and worth following Excellent, thank you. So, james, did you get a chance you might not have done to listen to last week's Podcast 2.0 board meeting with Adam and Dave?

James Cridland: 1:14:43

I have read the last two podcasts. I was on, I was in a car and I thought it was a little bit rude and also I just, I just like to find out what Adam and Dave have ended up saying. So I read them on on their on their transcripts. So I'd like to correct Adam on one thing he says that my swanky new Rodecaster was sent to me by Rode. That is not the case, adam. I did a swap. I was sent a nice microphone by somebody that I haven't actually used and so I swapped the nice microphone with this version one of the Rode Procaster, the nice microphone with this version one of the Rode of the Rode Procaster. So Rode are still unaware of my existence, but thank you for that. Why? What did they end up saying, sam? Well, dave.

Sam Sethi: 1:15:27

Dave's going to do an experiment today, on Friday, which, if you listen live, he's actually going to video broadcast the show as well, using it. I'm sure that Adam's delighted. Video broadcast the show as well, using it. I'm sure that adam's delighted. Oh, adam was over the moon. Um, yeah, could not. Could not wait, but they're going to be doing a peer tube instance using hls. So alex gates, a few weeks back, actually updated the rss feeds for all of the peer tube feeds with support for hls and, I'm glad to say, we tested it as true fans and it worked. And so Dave is now deciding that he wants to do a video broadcast of the live show using the alternative tag. Wow, what could go wrong? So the alternative tag will have the video feed from a Pe peer tube instance running hls gosh well.

James Cridland: 1:16:22

Good luck to everybody involved in that car crash.

Sam Sethi: 1:16:28

Yes, talk to me about wallet ledgers, sam well, we talked about earlier micro payments and v4v. You know having a slowdown, but actually, on on true fans, I'm V4V. You know having a slowdown, but actually on TrueFans, I'm very pleased to say we aren't having a slowdown. People get a wallet instantly, they can top it up with one click Apple Pay, google Pay, via Stripe and they can withdraw their money in the same way. So money in, money out and on the platform. You know we use activity streams and each of those have a method of micropayment around them, from streaming to boosting, to becoming a fan.

Sam Sethi: 1:17:05

But what we realised was all of those payments were all over the place. You could find them, but you had to sort of hunt in one area or another. So we've just released a wallet ledger, which now is in the creator's dashboard and only visible to you in your profile, which will show you all of the payments in and out that you've received, and when you click on each payment, it will show you where or how or why you received that payment as well. So we thought we'd just aggregate it all in one page. Well, that's very nice.

James Cridland: 1:17:37

Excellent, it looks more smart. Thank you very much, james. What's happened for you? Well, so I have flown back from Jakarta, obviously, so that's nice. I don't know if anybody noticed last week, but I managed to record the entire audio for this show, again on my laptop microphone. The good news is, though, that I shoved it through Orphonic and no one would have noticed. So that was nice, using the proper microphone. Now, and that's good news, isn't it? Next week, I will be in London, and in fact, I should have gone off on a flight tomorrow morning at 11, which my airline has cancelled.

James Cridland: 1:18:14

They sent me a flurry of texts saying we're trying to find you another flight. Then another one texts saying we're trying to find you another flight, then another one saying we're still trying to find you another flight. Then one more saying, yeah, we're having problems finding you another flight. Could you get in touch with us? So I then ring up the airline and I say hi, you've asked me to get in touch, and they said ah, yes, so what happens with this is you just need to wait until we found you another flight? And I said yeah, but you've told me to get in touch with you. Yeah, but you know you'll just get another flight. And I said, yeah, but you've just told me to contact you, so that's what I'm doing. Are you telling me to ignore that bit? And then they went away and they had a thought and then came back and have booked me some alternative flights. So that's nice. So I am finally coming to London anyway is the upshot of all of this, and as a special thing for you, listening this long.

James Cridland: 1:19:05

Dear listener, if you're in London next week and you want a beer, then you're more than welcome to buy Sam and I a beer. That would be absolutely great. We will be at the Yorkshire Grey in Langham Street. Yes, it's a Sam Smith's pub. Yes, I know, we will be there on Tuesday, the 16th of September, between 5 and well, at least 7pm.

James Cridland: 1:19:27

The Yorkshire Grey in Langham Street is just around the corner from Broadcasting Heist and, yes, if you would like to pop by then, that would be excellent. I'll be the jet-lagged bloke in the corner, so that would be good. The benefit of the Yorkshire Grey is that we can spill out onto the street if we need to. The downside of the Yorkshire Grey is that it's Sam Smith's pub and therefore only sells Sam Smith's. If you want KP Peanuts? No. If you want Jack Daniels and Coke, then oh no, you don't get Jack Daniels and Coke, sam. You get Sam Smith's Scintilla Cola and Sam Smith's Bourbon. Why does that sound like so disturbing? Yeah, it's a peculiar one, but it's quite fun. So if you fancy a pint of man in the box, you'll understand what I mean when you get there. Then the Yorkshire Grey in Langham Street is where I'll be next Tuesday from five till seven. Yes, and see you there.

Sam Sethi: 1:20:25

Yes, we'll raise a glass to Todd and if you feel like it, it's also my 59th birthday On that day. No, well, two days after the 18th. Oh, that week, yes. That week, yes, excellent. Well, two days after the 18th.

James Cridland: 1:20:37

Oh, that week, yes, that week. Excellent, well, very nice. Your birthday's on the 18th of September, my birthday's on the 18th of March. There we go. It's like a marriage made in heaven, except we're not married, except we are both married, obviously no, I'm not actually.

Sam Sethi: 1:20:51

No, what? No, I'm not married.

Todd Cochrane: 1:20:54

No, why I'm not married. No, why? Why have?

Sam Sethi: 1:21:01

you not been together? Been together 31 years? No, not, not really, that's what everyone keeps saying, but no, I like to try it. Try it. So you know the current girlfriend current girlfriend yeah anyway, uh, I got, I got away until she never listens to this podcast.

James Cridland: 1:21:14

So I'm okay, I got away with that for 10 years and that was about as much as I've managed.

Sam Sethi: 1:21:19

Just tell them that you're going to take them up the temple. That'll be fine. They'll never marry you. I've got no idea what you're talking about now.

James Cridland: 1:21:26

Anyway, let's move on. That's it for this week. All of our podcast stories taken from the Pod News Daily newsletter at podnewsnet.

Sam Sethi: 1:21:33

You can support this show by streaming so that you can give us feedback using the Buzzsprout fun mail link in our show notes. You can send us a super comment or a boost and become even more important by becoming a power supporter Like the 20,. What are we now? Three Gosh, update the script. Mr Seffi, 23 people at weeklypodnewsnet.

James Cridland: 1:21:55

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

Todd Cochrane: 1:22:12

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