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The Pod News Weekly Review uses chapters, and so can you. The last word in podcasting news. This is the Pod News Weekly Review with James Cridlin and Sam Sethy.

James Cridland: 0:12

I'm James Critlin, the editor of Pod News. And I'm Sam Sethy, the CEO of True Fans. This podcast is sponsored by Buzz Sprout with the tools, support, and community to ensure you keep podcasting. Start podcasting, keep podcasting with BuzzSprout.com.

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From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly Review.

Sam Sethi: 0:32

I predict a bright future for Edison. No reason. I see what you've done there. There he goes. Thank you very much. Yes, we have to get that one in early. Yes. But are we going to predict a bright future? You know, a couple of years ago, Tom Webster left. We interviewed Edison Research recently, and they were telling us how difficult it is to get the funding for things like the Infinite DAL, funding sponsorship more.

James Cridland: 0:55

Yeah.

Sam Sethi: 0:56

Is this a good acquisition for uh well, first of all, who's acquired them and is it a good acquisition?

James Cridland: 1:02

Yeah, I think it is a good acquisition. They've been acquired by a company called SSRS, who no one will have heard of, but they're a marketing and survey research firm. And they are, well, Larry Rosin, who's the president of uh Edison, describes SSRS as a great and extremely like-minded research company which shares Edison's commitment to research rigor and great people. Larry is one of those people who will normally email me if I've ever carried any news story about uh research. And he will normally email me and say, You got that bit wrong, or why are you promoting this nonsense research? And uh and quite rightly too. So I think that it does sound like a good match. The most interesting and most helpful part of that is that Edison is retaining all of its people. So as they move over to SSRS, and they've done it already, they've got uh SSRS.com email addresses and everything. So they've they've done it all properly. But as they move over, nobody is being left behind, which is a great thing. So that's very good news for for Edison, who you know really do the gold standard research for the industry in a number of different ways. So it's good that they have a long and assured future.

Sam Sethi: 2:21

So if they've got SSRS emails, will the brand Edison retain the value? Will it be the value brand that they put out, or will that retain a new name?

James Cridland: 2:32

I'm sure that Edison Research will be used for a long, long time. They've got a great name. I mean, it's a weird company, Edison Research, because they do two sets of research. They do media research, so that's research about radio as well as about podcasting, and they actually do quite a lot of audiobook research. And then they do the election numbers in the US. So whenever you see the election night, and there they are with, you know, CBS News or NBC News or whoever it might be, or CNN, whoever it might be, turning around and saying, we predict that, you know, Donald Trump is is in, or we predict it's too close to call and all that kind of stuff. That is Edison Research Numbers. So, you know, they're a fascinating company because they do two things which are kind of the same but not. So it's interesting, you know, looking at that and seeing that SSRS thought this is a company that we want to get hold of. And you know, and I think it's um yeah, I think it's good news for them as they go forward.

Sam Sethi: 3:32

Well, we wish them luck. Now, talking of Edison Research, they've released their top 50 podcasts for the US in Q3. Anything good?

James Cridland: 3:40

Joe Rogan's in there, Crime Junkie is in there. So this is the top 50. The most uh important thing about this ranker is that it is the only one that measures everyone, and they measure everybody by talking to thousands and thousands of people continuously right through the quarter. So it's pretty good research from that point of view, and you can see how good it is because the figures don't change that much. So no change in the top four, Call Her Daddy at four, the daily at three, Crime Junkie at two, and the Joe Rogan experience at one. As you might guess, the Charlie Kirk show was a tremendous riser given that um much of uh September was talking about him and his legacy. And so that has gone up an awful long way. Interestingly, though, the Midas Touch podcast, which I think is a left-leaning podcast, isn't it? It is, has also entered the top 20 for the first time as well. So they're really good data, and you know, it's a really good snapshot in terms of the most popular in terms of people, not in terms of downloads, but in terms of people, the most popular podcasts that happen in the in the US. They also put a UK list out as well.

Sam Sethi: 4:54

Moving on then, James, we talked about Spotify Netflix, you know, doing a deal. Seems that they're they're keen to do more deals. Who have they done another deal with?

James Cridland: 5:03

Yes, so uh Spotify has done another deal with Samsung TV Plus. So you will be able to tune into particular channels for some of the Ringers shows. I mean, it says only on Samsung TV Plus, but it's not only on Samsung TV Plus, although I guess you could claim that the Fast Channel, so it'll appear as if it's a TV channel. So the Fast Channel will be only on Samsung TV Plus, I suppose. But yeah, so and my understanding is, you know, talking to a few people at South by Southwest last week, my understanding is that there will be more deals to be announced relatively shortly. So Spotify doing a lot of distribution deals with their own shows, let's let's not forget, but with their own shows doing an all an awful lot of these deals to get onto as many different platforms as they possibly can.

Sam Sethi: 5:52

Now, is there any issues with video podcasts coming to Netflix? Is it, you know, a nice simple deal?

James Cridland: 5:59

Yeah, I mean it's a it's a nice simple deal. I mean, again, it's all of Spotify's shows that they own the rights for, and that's it. But there's a newsletter actually comes out from down here in Australia called Always Be Watching, which is a really interesting newsletter all about TV and media and all of that, uh, written by Dan Barrett. And he has said that Netflix has a functionality problem in that you can't play the audio on Netflix without the screen being unlocked and the video being visible. And that that's a pretty big deal if you want to consume podcasts the way that quite a lot of people consume podcasts, which is, you know, with the screen off, the phone in your pocket, and away you go. Now, uh Spotify, in terms of their numbers, it looks as if 30% of people don't watch the video while they are listening to a video podcast, if you see what I mean. It also looks as if uh two-thirds of people switch between watching and listening at different times. So there's that big button at the top of uh Spotify that lets you turn on or off the video. None of that exists on Netflix, and so always be watching was very dubious that Netflix will be a good podcast platform. And then, of course, I thought, well, actually, YouTube works in exactly the same way. If you if you're not paying for YouTube, if you don't have a YouTube premium account, then you can't play the audio in the background at all with YouTube. And so, you know, there's an issue there, I suppose, as well. And YouTube is apparently the number one, as we are so often told. I'm still a bit dubious about that, but nevertheless, so perhaps it won't hurt Netflix particularly much, but it does go to show that the user experience that you need for audio isn't necessarily the same as the user experience you need for video, is it?

Sam Sethi: 7:47

I I I find you can't use YouTube without premium. I it's just impossible. It's about, you know, every 10 seconds it feels like an ad will pop up, or you put it in your pocket and it it will just move on to the next video. It's totally useless without a premium account. Yes. The other thing I was gonna say was that there's no CarPlay, is there? There's no options for Netflix or YouTube. That would be bad driving and watching videos, I get it. Yes, but there's no audio capability to put it into the background.

James Cridland: 8:16

No, so there's no car play, there's no Android Auto on Netflix. Of course, there isn't on YouTube either, but there is, of course, on YouTube Music. So if you're gonna listen on YouTube Music, I I was listening to that, yeah uh using Apple CarPlay only a couple of hours ago. And so that bit works quite nicely. So again, you know, it's not necessarily going to be the user experience that you would expect from a podcast consumption vehicle. So it'll be interesting to see how they perform, but of course we won't know how they perform, will we? So there is always that too.

Sam Sethi: 8:48

Now, related to video, it seems everyone else is jumping on the bandwagon. The latest one is our good friend Harry Morton at Lower Street. They've started their video production service, James.

James Cridland: 8:58

Yes, they have very entertaining video. Founder and CEO Harry Morton announcing the company's approach to producing video in a field with three cows, seemingly in the pursuit of a metaphor about yogurt. Here is that metaphor about yogurt.

Harry Morton: 9:14

You can't milk a cow and expect yogurt.

James Cridland: 9:18

Very good. Not sure. Uh, it's yogurt in in America, isn't it? So I don't suppose that'll have that'll have translated very well. But anyway, Lower Street have a philosophy that a video podcast shouldn't just be a repurposed audio recording. So, you know, you can certainly agree with that. So it's a it's a fun video, it's quite funny, and yeah, I think you know they they seem to be saying please don't just do you know crappy Zoom interviews and release that as a video because that's not really going to do anything. So uh I think they're probably right there.

Sam Sethi: 9:50

Well, wait, that's what 80% of the uh political podcasts are. The rest is politics, the rest is entertainment, the USA, news agent. I mean, the list goes on.

James Cridland: 10:01

I think his argument is they will work much better if they aren't like that. And I think and I think I would probably agree.

Sam Sethi: 10:08

But this feels like the arrow of direction, doesn't it, for me? We've interviewed recently Audio Always, ACAS, Fresh Air, they're all doing video now. And, you know, obviously with flight cars posting to video as a hosting first video company. I think can we predict, James, that those hosting companies or production companies that don't support video are probably going to see their market share shrink?

James Cridland: 10:32

Well, I think we can probably predict that there will be people interested in video, but on the other side, I mean, this is branded podcasting. Branded podcasting is different. A lot of branded podcasting is driven by ego. It's driven by, you know, oh, we've got to pay a lot of money to get some a decent podcast out there. The likes of you and me, you know, it's very different. And I have no interest in doing any video for this show. Doubtless I'll get I'll I'll have to get bullied into it at one stage, but I don't really want to do anything that I don't. Oh, I don't know. I don't know.

Sam Sethi: 11:07

Who knows? Um I mean, if your wife says that you have to do video, that's your not my fault.

James Cridland: 11:13

But uh yeah, so you know, I I think I do think it's the uh it's the weird nature of the podcast industry where you have one part of the podcast industry which is very much driven by whatever the client wants. And let's not forget, if you're making a video podcast, you can charge more than if you're making an audio podcast. So the likes of Lower Street, of course, want to promote video because they'll get more money. So we we shouldn't forget that sort of side of it as well. But I think um I think that you know audio only podcast hosts are probably going to be, you know, quite happy for many years to come, to be honest. But I I I I'm not not sure that you necessarily share that.

Sam Sethi: 11:54

Uh no, I I think the long tail will always not go to video. I think it's too expensive. I think the production costs, the editing costs, etc., etc. I do think at the top of the curve, the head, I think that is just now a natural process now because you're getting algorithmic discovery, you're getting parasocial, deeper relationships, um, all of those things we've talked about in the past. I think video becomes pretty much a given. And going back to what you just said a few minutes ago about, you know, you can put it on in the background, Spotify seeing people switching between audio and video. I see my own children doing that with YouTube. I just don't see, I don't see why people wouldn't do it if they can afford to do it.

James Cridland: 12:38

Yeah, no, I can I can see a little bit of that as well. So it'll be fascinating to see how it all works out. I mean, in the WhatsApp group that you and I are in, the s the super secret WhatsApp group, I I do occasionally see, you know, at least one voice going, well, it's it's the way the podcasting is going. And I I'm I'm just I'm not I'm I'm still not sure. It's definitely the way that some podcasts are going, but I don't think it's necessarily the total way. And actually, the BBC has just released a bunch of figures for BBC Sounds, and but they've released another figure which is pan BBC Audio, which includes the visualized podcast that you might see on the iPlayer. So things like The Traitors Uncloaked and all of that kind of thing. It looks as if 4.8 million people are listening to audio every week through BBC Sounds, but 5.1 million, so that's only another 300,000 people, consuming audio in both audio and video, if you see what I mean. So that's an o only another 300,000 people who don't currently listen to audio only shows. And iPlayer is massive. So I suppose you can look at that and suggest that yes, video is a useful thing to add more audience, but it doesn't necessarily add a whole heap of more audience either. So, you know, so who knows?

Sam Sethi: 14:05

Well, it's happening, and I think we just have to observe it and watch what happens at the end of the year and our prediction show.

James Cridland: 14:11

Now I think that's right, Sam.

Sam Sethi: 14:15

We should have him on soon. Right. Now, low orbit. This is Oxford Road are suggesting that uh advertising works. Now, I am that's how I read it. Yes, that's how I read it. Okay, I think there's more to it than that. Um I I obviously stood on stage with uh Rob Walsh and said that I don't think it does work, but anyway, but there you go. What do I know? But Dan Granger, the CEO of Oxford Road, has come out with something called Orbit, the first podcast ranker measured by ad performance. Okay, you need to tell me more because I've got an opinion here. Go for it, James.

James Cridland: 14:57

Well, so they have looked at $1.6 billion worth of podcast advertising. They know what it's done to product sales, they know what it's done to awareness and all of that kind of stuff. They've got the data. So what they can do from this data is to turn around and go, which are the ads which work the best? And I think this is a really clever plan. So instead of measuring podcasts by the total number of people listening or by downloads, they're measuring it by how good were the ads in terms of performance. And the weird thing about this this chart is well, the top five, Lenny's podcast at five, the Monday morning podcast at four, which I think is with Bill Burr, the Megan Kelly show at three, the David Pacman Show at two, and Critical Role at number one. Those aren't big shows, with the exception of the Megan Kelly show. So I find that that's quite interesting in terms of just seeing the podcasts that really actually work in terms of advertising. Now you're going to turn around and say that all of this money that that people spend on advertising is totally wasted because no advertising works, aren't you?

Sam Sethi: 16:12

No, not quite, but it's non-men non-measurable. I mean, they're it they're inferring that because there's a spend related to advertising, they don't know about the awareness. They have no trackability in it at all. You know, I I'm sorry. I I still think we as an industry don't provide the tools. I've heard about the vast tag, I've heard about DAI. I'm sorry. There is a lot of Emperor's New Clothes in this. This is a belief system that it works. And while there's a belief system, people are putting money in. And I've seen how corporate companies work. There'll be a spreadsheet that says you have to spend so much, and they will then go to the top five or ten podcasts because that's safe, and they'll go and put their money there, and then they'll go back to their boss and report, yes, we put our money there, and it worked. And they have no measurement to prove it worked, but they will continue to believe it.

James Cridland: 17:04

They've got plenty of measurement, they've got measurement in terms of in terms of sales.

Sam Sethi: 17:07

How long do they listen to the ad for?

James Cridland: 17:09

Which you nobody knows. Well, but that bit actually doesn't matter. Really? The thing that matters is how many people are buying the widget, or if if I was going to buy a widget tomorrow, has have I changed which brand I'm going to buy? Those are the two things. And those are infinitely measurable. You ask you ask a set of people before the ad runs, you ask a set of people after the ad runs. If there's a if there's a big difference, of course it's a sample. But you but but that's that's the way that everything works.

Sam Sethi: 17:36

Well we were promised No, we were promised in the digital age when the web was born that you know, online trackability, because it's digital, we will know everything about what's been done. It's never been proved and never happened.

James Cridland: 17:48

No, but uh but on the same way, there's plenty of money spent on radio these days, there's plenty of money spent on TV, there's plenty of money spent in the same belief system. So you're basically saying that no advertising works.

Sam Sethi: 17:59

No, advertising works, but okay, here's a here's a good example, right? I went into London the other day, went up on the tube, uh, passed numerous buses, past billboards, got to the theatre. Could I recall any single ad? No.

James Cridland: 18:14

No, that that that's got nothing to do with that's got nothing to do with with whether advertising works. That's just that that that's just got something to do with A, how observant you are, and also B, are you are you actually Are you actually in the market for any of these things at the moment? Well what is weird is if you start being interested in, I don't know, buying a new car, because you know that your lease is up and you and you're gonna buy a new car. Yeah, what's weird is all of a sudden you start being interested in the car ads that you see on television and you and you start noticing the car ads in the papers. Yes, because all of a sudden you're in the market, and and the same goes, this is this is why nobody could change cigarette brand back when people smoked. Nobody would change cigarette brand because you have to hit people three times or more in their buying cycle. And a buying cycle for a moderate smoker is buying a pack a day. Well, buying a pack a day, you're never going to hit people three times in three different different places, which is the one which is why nobody really switched switched to brand of cigarettes. And the same thing, you know, happens for pretty well anything else. You you you have to be in the you know, in the mind frame to be, you know, to be going in. But there's so much data out there showing that, you know, if you advertise on X Podcast or on X TV show or you sponsor X TV show, then your brand lift, you the amount of people that will consider your brand the next time they want to buy whatever it is that you sell goes up. There's loads of research showing that.

Sam Sethi: 19:53

I'm sure there is. And I know I I'll say my wife watches Great British Bake Off, and there's a sponsor for that show. Can't recall it, no idea, can't remember it. You are the one whom interviewed Maya Prohovnik from Spotify and asked her the awkward question, which was if people are paying for premium Spotify and not getting ads, then what is the advertiser getting, right? So you and I pay for YouTube Premium, I pay for Spotify, I pay for so many other services to get rid of ads. So where are ads appearing within our workflow or our listening paper?

James Cridland: 20:28

Well, I mean, ads are I I'm I'm still seeing ads. I'm not seeing as many ads these days, but I'm still seeing ads in various in various areas. By the way, Waitrose sponsors the Great British Bake Off.

Sam Sethi: 20:39

Thank you very much.

James Cridland: 20:41

I just thought I'd let you know.

Sam Sethi: 20:43

In the UK I go there every week, but I can't recall seeing the seeing the sponsorship of the ad, yeah. Okay.

James Cridland: 20:49

Yes. And if you're in Great America, Great America Shire, then what we're talking about here is the Great British Cooking Show. Right. Because apparently, because apparently Bake Off is a registered trademark in in the US. And there was a lot of very complicated CGI stuff. When they hand over the trophies at the end of the at the end of the show, there's a lot of very complicated CGI stuff to hide the words bake off and to replace it with something else. Because yeah, bless them. Anyway, uh, yes.

Sam Sethi: 21:20

Anyway, nevertheless I agree.

James Cridland: 21:22

I mean, only only because you're wrong.

Sam Sethi: 21:24

We'll see.

James Cridland: 21:27

And on that subject, Spangellin AI has released its uh list of top podcast companies for September 2025. Would you like to hear the number one company, Sam setting?

Harry Morton: 21:39

Can I guess? Can I guess? Blue Apron. It is not Blue Apron. Better Health. It is not Better Health.

Sam Sethi: 21:46

Okay, I give up because that's the only two I go to.

Announcement: 21:49

Tired of spills and stains on your sofa? Washablesofas.com has your back. Featuring the anime collection.

James Cridland: 21:56

Yes, washable sofas.com. I'm told I'm not allowed to make a JD Vance joke here.

Sam Sethi: 22:03

I was about to say, he's got to be he's got to sell that.

James Cridland: 22:08

Oh no, washable sofas. That's $7.2 million. What are the Americans doing? Selling Americans washable. What are the Americans doing with their sofas? And would they please stop?

Sam Sethi: 22:23

There we go. That would be that would be the best ad ever with JD Vance doing that.

James Cridland: 22:31

Let's go around the world, shall we?

Sam Sethi: 22:33

I just proved my point. Right. In the UK, over 400 podcasting and audio businesses have signed an open letter to the UK government. What have they signed it for, James?

James Cridland: 22:48

Well, they are wanting legal recognition as part of the creative industries strategy. I know, I know, it's really boring. Well, actually, it's kind of not, because if they get recognition in the creative industries strategy, then that means that they get a bunch of quite useful things. They get a bunch of tax breaks, they get a bunch of consultation into what the future is. Uh, the government is on their back, the government recognizes that they are part of the creative industries. Right now, nothing to do with audio, including podcasting, is part of that creative industries. So Audio UK doing a really good job of basically needling the UK government to say, hey, we exist, by the way, and you need to be recognizing us. Actually, uh, news also this week of the International Podcast Alliance, which is Audio UK plus similar people in France, Belgium, Quebec, and Sweden. Slightly weird list. But the International Podcast Alliance is essentially the alliance of companies like Audio UK, so that they're all working for legal recognition, fair platform practices, which is interesting, not quite sure what that means, access to public funding and a fragmented ecosystem is what they're trying to fix. But yeah, so a lot of working together, both in the UK and internationally, in terms of that.

Sam Sethi: 24:11

We interviewed Chloe Straw probably six months ago. I think she was pushing for that as well. I can see the reason to do it. Other countries are spending a lot of money. The Middle East, India are spending a ton of money. I think India put one billion US dollars into podcasting last year. So I think, you know, come on, UK government, let's get this done, really.

James Cridland: 24:34

Yeah, no, indeed. Indeed.

Sam Sethi: 24:36

Now, global, we mentioned them briefly. They've got global studios now, but they've put a bit of a meat on their announcement. What have they said?

James Cridland: 24:46

Yeah, they have. They ran their first ever upfronts, which is weird because they are a large, large company, and for them not to have run upfronts in the past to advertisers probably says things are changing in terms of the of the advertising industry, which of course, according to you, Sam, doesn't exist. But um Maybe they just don't value them, you know, maybe up launching a new sports entertainment division, which is called Sports by Global. They've launched a new podcast from Emily Maitless. She's talking about the blood. No, she's talking about the blood scandal. There was an infected blood scandal in the UK, which I'm sure that you know all about, and I don't really. And the company's also launched a thing called Global IQ, which is what pretty well every single broadcaster is launching, a data and effectiveness platform to bring together first-party data, advanced analytics, and AI-driven creative optimization tools. But yeah, it looked very smart from the from the images that I have seen of that particular of that particular event. Curious that they ran it literally a day before the latest radio figures. Because surely you would have turned around and gone, and you know what? The new radio figures are out today, and we've got some good news, because there's always good news in radio figures. So I was um a little bit curious by that. They do have good news by the way, Radio X now has its biggest numbers, although Hart has slipped a bit. But anyway, they seem to be doing very well and talking about numbers, BBC Sounds, I mentioned their quarter three, 25 audience figures. Their total plays in the UK up to 675 million a year. So that's up 8.5% for the BBC Sounds app. So they seem to be doing very well there. But since they've closed BBC Sounds internationally and they've made a bit of a balls up of the whole thing, total international podcast downloads are actually down from 213 million to 212 million, so not down very much, but nevertheless not up 8.5%. So the BBC, in terms of their podcast strategy, still don't really understand it. What I find bizarre is six months after, nearly six months after BBC Sounds was closed, I'm still hearing promos in international podcasts promoting the fact that I can listen in the BBC Sounds app, which I can't. It's not complicated to fix that. So I really don't understand what they're doing, but I mean they don't listen to me anymore.

Sam Sethi: 27:15

Nobody hears the ads, nobody actions the ads, it's okay. Just spend the money. What the hell? There's no tractability.

James Cridland: 27:23

Just give the money to me.

Sam Sethi: 27:24

Yeah, well, that's what I'm saying. No one knows. Anyway, advertising works.

James Cridland: 27:30

Yes. Anyway, thank you to our sponsor, Buzz Sprout. Yes.

Sam Sethi: 27:34

Um sponsorship works because it's you and I mentioning direct recall. We talk about product and people understand, they trust us, it's parasocial.

James Cridland: 27:46

Well, talking about talking about sponsors, I am currently reading out all about supporting cast being a Swiss Army knife for podcast subscriptions. You can publish blog posts and videos, you can send newsletters, you can build a members-only community and deliver exclusive audio all in one place. You'll find more information about Supporting Cast on the Pod News website. Why have I mentioned that? Because the Verge's podcasts are now available ad-free for its subscribers. So if you pay to read The Verge, then I spent 15 minutes trying to work out who was doing this, and it turned out to be Supporting Cast. No, nobody sent me a press release or anything, but still, there we are. So uh yeah, so I think that that is pretty good. And this is where you think that all all advertising money should be going.

Sam Sethi: 28:36

Not all advertising money, but I do think it's a again, the arrow of direction. I think Patreon, I think supporting cast, I think memberful, I think these types of community-driven sites where you can brand it with your own URLs, you can put merch, you can put blogs. I think that's, in my humble opinion, the way that people are going to go forward. They want to own their online presence, but not just podcasting and video, but all of it, live events, ticketing. And I think these companies, supporting cast being one, are doing a great job. And that's where I think you build fandom and brand community.

James Cridland: 29:14

Yeah, no, I think I think so. And I think, you know, I mean, the the difference, the big difference, of course, between supporting cast and say Apple is that supporting cast, you can actually see who your subscribers are. You've got their email addresses, you know, all of that sort of thing. So that's all that's all quite helpful.

Sam Sethi: 29:33

And of course, it's the same, it's the same, James, with Spotify and YouTube, right? YouTube, you can't really build community in there. There's no blog, there's no there is a bit of merch, there is I mean, there's elements of it, but you are in very clearly a YouTube world, same as Spotify. Whereas you can go into these sites, these memberful sites, sporting cast, etc., and you can customize them. They don't look like you know the standard. Cut and paste from let's say a YouTube. You land on a YouTube page and another YouTube page, you're all very clearly in the YouTube world. And that's where I think the difference is. YouTube's great for discovery, algorithmic discovery. I think same with TikTok, same with you know many other shorts and reels. But I don't think that's where you want to build, you know, your community because it can be just removed from you.

James Cridland: 30:23

Yeah. No, indeed. Indeed. It's uh always the scary thing. So always build your own. It's always a good plan. Anyone moving in grooving, James? Well, ACAST has appointed a new CFO. His first name is Anders, his last name is H, and then A with an umlaut, and then G G. How do you pronounce that, I wonder? Hag. As in Hagendas. You think? Yeah, but Hagendas is just made up, though, isn't it? Hagendas isn't isn't real.

Sam Sethi: 30:51

Well, I wouldn't tell Anders that.

James Cridland: 30:54

Here's a website called Forvo and a man called Anton Pedersen, who's from Sweden, who's going to tell us how to pronounce it.

HÄGG: 31:02

Haig.

James Cridland: 31:02

Hague.

HÄGG: 31:03

Hague. Hague. Haig. Hague. Okay.

James Cridland: 31:06

All right. Anders Haig will join the company early next year. Now, where has Anders moved from? I'm sure you'd love to know. Well, he's moved from McDonald's, because of course he has. So he was CFO of Food Folk, which is McDonald's in the Nordics. He's also worked at Arla Foods, which makes all kinds of things, Unilever and Scandy Standard. So he will be changing to a very different industry. The current CFO, Emily Villat, who I once uh who I once dared to use the the Swedish word smorgasboard in a financial report, and she did, which I thought was brilliant. She is she is going. So yeah, so new and exciting things going on in in uh ACAST with Anders.

Sam Sethi: 31:51

Hey.

James Cridland: 31:53

I'm a fan of that.

Sam Sethi: 31:54

Now sadden you, so chalk and blade is to close, James.

James Cridland: 31:58

Yes, they are a well radio and podcast production company. Chalk and Blade, of course, is uh how you used to edit uh audio with a blade and with chalk on magnetic tape. That's a skill that I can still do. Totally useless skill.

Sam Sethi: 32:13

But still I was gonna say you've not been asked to do that for how many decades?

James Cridland: 32:18

I have not. I have not. Now, if you uh if you if you're there with your with your blades, with your razor blades, playing around with uh chalk, you'd you you'd uh you you'd be taken to the to be uh told off anyway. Chalk and blade, yes, sad news for them. The 10-year-old production company is winding down. Now they've still got some launches still to come, and we will see some of those, but they are closing gradually and dignifiedly by the end of March. So good luck to everybody who is uh currently working there. Awards and events, the Black Podcasting Awards, celebrating its 2025 winners, a first ever in-person ceremony, which is quite a thing. Anna DeShaun winning four honours, including the prestigious Legend Award. There's an award that I want. And fellow indie podcaster Lisa. But you trump.

Sam Sethi: 33:12

I want a Nobel Prize, give me one.

James Cridland: 33:14

Yes, I'll have that. And uh Lisa Woolfork from Stitch Please got three awards in essentially all three of her categories as a full list on the Pod News uh website. So many congratulations to the Black Podcasting Awards.

Sam Sethi: 33:29

Yeah, I liked looking at what the awards were, and I did a little bit of research into how it all started. It was great. It started in a tweet on February the 15th, 2020, where it went, F it. Let's start our own Black Podcasting Award. Nobody sees us till it benefits them. So hell with them, which was Tracy Clayton. Yeah, you know, if you can't beat them, start your own one. So yeah, it's good to see that the awards have developed. We were hoping to have somebody on from the awards to talk about it this week. Shh, sadly, they're not going to be available this week. So yeah. But uh, congratulations to all the winners.

James Cridland: 34:05

Yeah, no, indeed. I think that that's a fine thing. And it must have been great to have actually been there with a bunch of, you know, with a with a bunch of other people actually doing that um in real life instead of on the end of a Zoom call. So that's a good thing. Talking about awards, if you want to win a Golden Globe Award for your podcast, then my goodness me, this sounds like a racket. I'm sure it isn't, he says, being very legally careful. But there's a report by a company called Status. They have a uh they've got hold of a deck from a company called Penske Media. Now, Penske Media runs the Golden Globes, it runs Variety Magazine and a bunch of other magazines. And what it wants to do is it is selling a Variety Creative Impact Award. It's only 75 grand, Sam, if you want to get our name in front of the judges. Yeah, only 75 grand. But we, I mean, it's a guaranteed award because you're paying for it. So that so you can buy coverage in a Penske Media magazine in order for you to perhaps be chosen as an award winner in a Penske Media Run award ceremony. I don't know. I'm I'm not too convinced about this, particularly given that the eligibility list is a list of all kinds of people from Joe Rogan and Megan Kelly to people that perhaps would really appreciate a creative impact award. People like Tucker Carlson, people like Ben Shapiro. So I'm not quite sure what's going on there. I mean, obviously, you know, it's uh Status's story and not mine, but yeah, that very much looks as if that is an award which is up for sale. And it's not good news for awards in general if if award organizations do that sort of thing.

Sam Sethi: 35:56

No. Now look, we were just talking about the uh black podcast awards. Stephen Bartlett, he's a busy boy, isn't he? He's started something called Legacy Black. It's set to become the world's leading media brand for black entrepreneurship, business, and wealth. The goal is to drive over $100 billion of economic impact. It was co-founded with Dr. Ralph Safuluk. I don't know him, but he is basically running the UK Black Business Show. This sounds very good. It sounds like an initiative that clearly Stephen wants to get behind recognizing black entrepreneurship, which I think, you know, again is something that sadly gets missed quite a lot. So congratulations to Stephen.

James Cridland: 36:42

Yes, I think this looks really good. I mean, it's typical Stephen Butler, typical flight story, you know, slight over egging of pudding here, talking about uh the bold ambition to drive over 100 billion pounds and all this kind of stuff. But nevertheless, it is something that that that uh clearly needs to be done. So yeah, that looks uh really good.

Sam Sethi: 37:04

And again, related to this, as South Asian female podcasters shine on the Bali. By the way, happy the Bali to you, James. You know, being the world's biggest coconut that I am, I really don't celebrate it. But hey, you know, what can I say? The the whole thing about it though is that there was a lovely shot of six female Indian podcasters who are, you know, doing great work. You've got Veenia, Priti, uh Smith Ajoshi, uh Reshmat Hadnan, and Anjali Siddha, and of course, friend of the show, Sangita Pilal, who they've got together. It's a very cool, if you if you get the luxurist, which I don't, um I'm glad that you clarify that. Yes, just in case anyone thought, there's a lovely photo of all six of them in traditional Indian dress. But really, what they're trying to do is highlight again an underrepresented community. 74% of South Asian or black women in the UK felt underrepresented in in podcasting. That was a Spotify study. And I think you did one as well, which said 57% of multicultural women who listen to podcasts wish there were more shows focusing on women of colour. So I think what they're trying to do again, a bit like Stephen with you know Legacy Black, I think they're trying to raise the awareness of multicultural communities in popularity.

James Cridland: 38:27

Indeed, and a very wise thing to do.

Sam Sethi: 38:29

Events, James, anything going on?

James Cridland: 38:31

Anything going on? Well, if you want to know how to win awards, then City University of London.

Sam Sethi: 38:38

£75,000, yes. You're told.

James Cridland: 38:40

£75,000, yes. No, better awards than that. You can go and see some award winners uh for the from the British Podcast Awards at City University. It's the 11th of November. You'll find more details at podnews.net slash events. Also, the On Air Podcast Business Summit in LA is back. Uh November the 12th is when it is on. Ashley Carmen is looking after much of that. There are speakers from the Midas Touch, speakers from well, there's the manager of Theo Vaughn, which is very exciting. Janine Wright, everybody's favorite AI podcast company CEO. She will be there doing a debate about AI in podcasting. And uh you have very excellently booked Ashley Carmen for after the event, so we can find all of the tea in terms of what happened there. Indeed. And finally, Soundwave's of course also happening in County Limerick in Ireland in November, which is a summit for music, podcasting, and content creation. Go back to episode 35 of season three, and you'll find Dylan Haskins in this very show. And the IAB. Now, interestingly enough, the IAB is making changes next year. So IAB New Fronts is moving a week after South by Southwest in March, and they're pushing the IAB Podcast Upfront in with similar events for gaming and influencers into an event that they're going to be calling IAB Creator Fronts. And that will be held uh in mid-September in New York City, which of course is when Podcast Movement is going to be held in mid-September in New York City. Now, we still don't have any word on a confirmed venue or any dates for that. So not still not very sure what's happening with Podcast Movement in New York, but there's still plenty of time to get all of that stuff sorted out. Podcast Movement, the next podcast movement event, by the way, of course, will be at South by Southwest in uh March. And news on that in the next couple of weeks. So all kinds of uh entertaining things going on in September. It's going to be a busy, busy, busy month.

Sam Sethi: 40:53

And finally, the Ambies submission deadline has been extended to November the 28th. So you can still enter if you want to join the Ambis Awards.

Announcement: 41:02

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

James Cridland: 41:06

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

Sam Sethi: 41:12

Well, we're going to start with you, James. You have been busy, busy, busy. You've been updating the Pod News daily website. What have you been doing?

James Cridland: 41:20

Yes, so we have episode lists on our podcast pages, and we are now supporting the podcast location tag for creators. So if you are posting full version 2025 tags, which have uh open street map IDs and various other things in there, then your your recording locations will appear. Hooray in that episode list. And um, so there are a bunch of podcast hosts that support the version 2025 version of podcast location. Buzzsprout doesn't, but rss.com does. I'm an advisor. Adam Curry likes it when I say that. And there are and there are other organizations which are supporting that as well. So and I'm on the hunt for a podcast which is already supporting the rel equals subject. So that's the this podcast is about thing. And I'm trying to find podcasts that support that so that I can um work on the code for that as well.

Sam Sethi: 42:16

Did you automate the location of recording into your pod news daily? Because you were doing that manually at one point.

James Cridland: 42:24

I was doing it manually, yes. No, I've written all of the code for that. So yeah, so the way that it works in the RSS feed is as per the spec, there is one in the channel, and that is the default, which says Brisbane, Australia. And then if I'm anywhere else, then I just type in the name of the place where I'm in, and it goes off and finds all the information for that and sticks it into the in into the RSS feed. And in fact, over the last couple of days, I've I've I've also been changing all of the location information that I use elsewhere, so that I'll be having the OpenStreetMap IDs in there as well as the you know the geo links and all of that kind of stuff, so that in future I can support that tag all over the place.

Sam Sethi: 43:06

So let's have that discussion again, James. Why OpenStreetMaps versus Google or Apple Maps? Why?

James Cridland: 43:12

Because OpenStreetMaps is open for a start, and uh it's not owned by anyone. I mean it's opened by the OpenStreetMap Foundation, but that's it. Whereas Google or Apple are closed and nobody can really edit them other than Google or Apple. But the other sort of side of it is you can do so much more with something that isn't just a point on a map. So a point on a map is fine, but it doesn't tell you anything about what that point is. Um, just a geo, you know, a latlon point. Whereas if you're using OpenStreetMap IDs, then you can actually go, oh, that is the ID for a cathedral. And there seems to be another five IDs for cathedrals here. So I can put in a page on my website which is find all of the podcasts about cathedrals if I'm running a cathedral website. So you can begin to do some really interesting ways into podcasts by using much more rich information, and all of that comes back to the OpenStreetMap ID. I could have used the Google Places ID, that would have been absolutely fine as well. But you know, again, OpenStreetMap can be, you can download the entire database onto your own machine and and and use all of that if you like. So, yeah, so that's why OpenStreetMap rather than Google or Apple, and why ideally, if you see an OpenStreetMap ID in a podcast location tag, you should be linking to somebody that uses OpenStreetMap because you'll get a much better map out of it. You'll actually get instead of a point, when somebody says I'm recording it in Paris, instead of a point, it'll actually draw all of Paris for you. So that makes much more sense because you know the point will just be wherever the you know, wherever the system thinks that Paris, the the centre of Paris is, it'll be Notre Dame, I'm sure. But actually, you don't want that. You want you want uh, you know, for it to actually show all of Paris because it was recorded there, and that's very different from recording in deliberately in the Notre Dame Cathedral, if you see what I mean. So so yes, OpenStreetMap for the win, or indeed any ID for map objects, but uh preferably one that's uh open. So so that's that.

Sam Sethi: 45:30

Cool. Now, Justin Jackson, friend of the show, he's heading up the podcast standards project. He's suggesting a new process for adopting new features and standards. What's he uh what's he said, James?

James Cridland: 45:41

Yeah, he's basically saying, and I uh you know, I've not spoken to Justin about this recently, but my suspicion is that he's got some pushback from some people about HLS, some piece some pushback about you know various other things to do with the podcast standards project. And he's I think realized that you need a system to get a broad consensus on whether or not you should adopt a new feature. So it's fine turning around and saying, well, I think we should support HLS. Who's with me? But actually, that's not going to be particularly helpful to anybody, really. So so actually having a plan on how you adopt a new feature, how you put one through for, you know, for for consideration, how it gets voted on, all of that kind of stuff. That's a grown-up thing to do. It shouldn't be up to Justin in terms of or Dave Jones or whoever it might be to choose what the next standard is going to be. It should be up to the industry. And I think that all all of this makes a bunch of sense, actually.

Sam Sethi: 46:47

Look, I I I've got a close understanding of how that was all working, because you know, I put my hand up to try and do the evangelistic role. It's a dedicated role, actually. It's not, you know, here's an event, let's all meet up, let's chat about it, and let's not talk about it for six months. It just can't work that way. And it's an education role as well, because you know, the person who's in charge has to go to companies, media production houses, agencies. We still haven't really got any of the big events, podcast movement or the London Podcast Show, to give a dedicated podcasting 2.0 track. I mean, we're trying, we hope it'll happen this year, but it's not happened. You know, so what do you get? You get, oh, let's talk about AI, let's talk about advertising, let's talk about video, rinse and repeat. So I think Justin, you know, I congratulate him for taking on the role. But there's so much more. You know, one of the things that I wanted to propose before the podcast taxonomy was created ages ago, back in 2020. It was done by a totally different group of people who aren't involved in podcasting anymore. The website doesn't even properly work, and we haven't extended the podcast person tag. We don't have access to that taxonomy. That should be under the PSP. The podcasting2.org site that you and Daniel J. Lewis are working on. Again, great resource, but that should also come under that. We won't see HLS video adoption, just there isn't a need, there isn't a bite, people aren't wanting it within the podcast community. It just doesn't feel like that that's gonna go anywhere. And you talked about it last week, you know, there is a podcast font. Where's that? What's what's going on with that? Who owns that? Where is it? I looked it up, and obviously, you know, I was gonna look in and say, well, should should TrueFans switch to it, you know, based on what you were saying? It's half there, half not there. We can't use it fully, so we're not going to. We talked last week about podcast standardization of icons. Again, something the PSP could do. Again, none of this is gonna happen, James, sadly, because no one's dedicated to it. Justin's got his own company to run. It's just, I'm sorry, until this becomes someone's full-time dedicated job, then it won't happen. And there doesn't seem to be an inclination right now for anyone to put any money into a kitty to fund an individual to do this job. And so we'll have lovely conversations and we'll all meet up and we'll go for lunch and we'll talk about what we should do, and I'm afraid nothing will happen.

James Cridland: 49:22

Yeah, I think that that is fair enough to a degree, but I think also, you know, it's not it's not just an evangelist's role, it's it's actually making sure that we are all going in the same direction. And if we're not even going in the same direction within the PSP, then you know, then we've got problems there anyway. So I I think there's a lot of really good there's a lot of really good ideas coming out. Quite a lot of the ideas, we seem to be building stuff ourselves instead of looking around and seeing what some of those ideas are. I don't agree with you in terms of the the person taxonomy. There was a there was a group set up to produce that taxonomy. It existed, it was it was stuff that people had worked on, and there's absolutely no point in us building our own.

Sam Sethi: 50:16

No, but there's no extensibility to it. Right. So I spoke to Julie Costello a little while back, and she wanted, for example, there was no music-related titles within the podcast taxonomy for the person tag, there was no capability of multi-named capabilities. So, for example, I'm a singer and the songwriter, I'm the drummer and the guitarist, I'm the host and organizer. We still don't have multi-person capability. But who who's gonna determine, James, if I want to extend the podcast taxonomy within TrueFans with extra roles, which I've done anyway, and it only works in TrueFans, so it's extra roles. Who who's the arbiter of yes, we're going to add this new title into the podcast taxonomy so that we can all use it as a shared resource? No one. No one's doing that.

James Cridland: 51:10

Well, uh, I mean, nobody's doing that yet. I mean, you know, Podchaser is part of the podcast taxonomy group. They could be, you know, they have 40 other partners from the podcast industry. The other organizer is staff me up. Just reach out to some of these people and say, hey.

Sam Sethi: 51:28

But the website's gone down, James. I tried to get a link to it. It doesn't exist anywhere. Well, support at podchaser.com is where you will be able to get in.

James Cridland: 51:36

I'm not in touch what I'm trying to say.

Sam Sethi: 51:39

All of this should be under the PSP, right? I think we should just grab all this stuff into it.

James Cridland: 51:43

And I don't and I don't agree because I don't think there should be one massive large organization which is in charge of absolutely everything because that's not how podcasting works. And at the end of the day, most of the standards that we have aren't the podcast, aren't the podcast indexes standards, they're not the podcast standards project standards, they're Apples with a little bit of random stuff from Yahoo in there. Um so you know, so I I I you know, I I'm not I'm not sure that it benefits anybody to jump in and go, you know what, we will, you know, we we just want to run everything. I think we just we we just turn around and make sure that we are carrying people with us. We're carrying the podcast taxonomy people. Yes, the the website seems to have fallen over, so we should get Cole involved in that again. But we should chase the the those those people. We should chase, you know, OpenStreetMap. You don't want to build your own map, do you? We should chase a bunch of this stuff so that we're working together with the rest of the web. And there've been unfortunately quite a few missteps in the podcast in podcasting 2.0, where we've built something that actually already existed somewhere else. And we've tried to build, you know, comments and things which already exist in the RSS specification. Um, but we've decided that we're not going to be able to do that.

Sam Sethi: 53:03

I think it's more to do with monetary booster graphs of those where we've got to do that.

James Cridland: 53:06

But you know, we want to build we want to build all kinds of all kinds of this stuff, and we haven't sort of properly considered how to build any of them. So you know, I I'm I'm not sure that centralizing everything is is a plan. I think, but I do think that bringing everybody along with us uh is something that the podcast standards project has failed to do, podcast you know, the podcast index has failed in m many ways to do, and we just need to keep on pushing through. But I mean, I have to also say it's not that easy to do any of this. If you have a look back in uh back to 2017, Sam, 2017 is when Apple launched a thing called episode numbers and season numbers into podcast RSS. So if you're using Apple Podcasts or you're using Pocket Casts or yes, true fans, then you can see season and episode number. If you're using anything else, you won't, because no one else supports it. Here's the weird thing Spotify for creators supports episodes and season numbers in their hosting platform, but the Spotify app doesn't support episode numbers or season numbers. I mean, it's just bizarre. And that has been part of the Innovatic Commerce standard since 2017. And most of the podcast apps haven't even been bothered to put that in place because nobody has been jumping up and down and going, you know what? Actually, episode numbers are really helpful and we should be putting those in. You know. And if we can't manage that in if we can't manage that in the last seven years for something that Apple is doing, then of course we're not going to manage much else. But um, you know, so I don't think it's necessarily as big of an issue as it is, but I just think that I think it's right for Justin to turn around and go, actually, it shouldn't just be me turning around and going, HLS, it's the future. We need to have everyone agreeing and going, you know what? Yes, that is actually actually that is going to help us. That is going to help us compete against YouTube or compete against Spotify, if that's something that we want to end up doing.

Sam Sethi: 55:21

Well, that was the point, wasn't it? That was the that was the argument put forward. How do we compete? And then the argument from most hosts was we can't compete because it's just too expensive. Delivery of one gig or two gig type video files is just not feasible within the pricing, which hadn't increased for 20 years, yeah, of hosting. So it it it was it was always for me this weird chicken and egg, right? Well, just to have a video pro version plan, and those people that want to use your service for video pay the amount that you think's deemed right for that, you know, service. But no one seems to be doing it, and so HLS was seeing as well, maybe we could do it this way, that's another way of doing it. But again, Apple doesn't support their own standard. It there's a lot wrong, we know that. But going back to the PSP, I think Justin's doing a great job, and and so I don't want to be totally negative to what is happening, but I do think that somewhere along the lines we've got to have a grown-up conversation about how we fund the PSP so that it's not just a you know gentle, joy, joyous club of when we get together at events, which I love doing, and it's great seeing everyone, but and then we all get very excited about yes, that's what we're gonna do, and then it dissipates into nothing, and then we wait for the next event. I don't know. I just think something has to change. You you're the one who talked about the the IAB and that there needs to be a podcast advertising standard, right? Yeah. Uh you've talked about who's gonna run that, James. Well, yeah, exactly.

James Cridland: 57:00

I mean, you know, the IAB is a good organization to run that sort of thing if we really want to give the power of the podcast advertising bureau to the IAB, who also sell punch the monkey ad banners. That that's fine, that that's fine. We can we can absolut we can absolutely do that. But but yeah, I mean it's uh it it it it I mean from my from my point of view, the IAB controlling how advertising is is you know sold in this in this industry is just a bit weird. But I do think, you know, and again, it's it's bringing people forward. And actually the IAB has done a pretty good job of bringing people forward, of of taking people, helping them understand how podcasting should should be measured and helping people understand how podcasting should be sold as well. They've done a pretty good job in terms of that. So yeah, I think there's a there's a fair amount of good of good stuff there.

Sam Sethi: 57:57

So related to the podcast standards project, so in my little head, I always see the podcast standards project as the marketing arm, and I saw podcast index as a development arm. Now, phase eight of the podcasting 2.0 is due for I don't know what, actually, James. It started or it was opened on the first of November 2024 by Dave Jones, and here we are fast approaching the first of November 2025, and I can say practically there's nothing been added to phase eight.

James Cridland: 58:30

No, and that's probably a good a good plan. We've got we've got plenty of things that we still need to be working on. But uh yes, if you want more things, then of course, you know, more more things we should uh we should end up pushing for.

Sam Sethi: 58:47

Yeah, look, and again, I I think we've reached the point of with the GitHub and the phase eight of a total slow slowdown. I think podcast follow, which Nathan Gathright's wanted, is going to be part of it. The enhanced location tag that you know you suggested, I think may be part of that.

James Cridland: 59:08

No, the the the I think the location tag has gone through. It's uh it's a standard.

Sam Sethi: 59:11

But but it was is it is it is it part of phase eight or has it just been pulled into the standard and just enhanced?

James Cridland: 59:17

It's it's already pulled into the standard, yeah. I think I think it was in the same way.

Sam Sethi: 59:20

Is that the same with the images tag as as well?

James Cridland: 59:23

Yeah. Yeah. I think the images, the images tag and the the location tag were the last two things to go through.

Sam Sethi: 59:29

So I've talked about pinned episodes of something that Spotify did ages back, and I think it's a great way of allowing creators to not only just say this is the trailer, but this is the episode I think you should jump into if you've never heard my podcast. Super simple to do. Yes, we've done it in true fans. Person tag, multiple roles. We've talked about this forever and a day. I can go back, I've written loads about it. We're not doing it. So I think the problem is are we going to do anything with phase eight as well? And I I I thought. Like you, I would look at what has currently been out there. So we've got transcripts. I think that's a success. I think locked is a failure, funding success, chapters, soundbites I think is a failure. I won't read all of them out, but you just mentioned seasoned episodes, the license tag, God knows what's going on with that, particularly.

James Cridland: 1:00:21

We can go on that well, and the license tag is a great example of a set of well-meaning geeks talking about stuff that they don't understand, which is copyright and licensing. And not a single person involved in this conversation has had any understanding of how copyright works, of how licensing works, of how you need to do a license, how you need to do copyright. But we've just sort of thrown something in there. It's the same as the medium tag of having courses and radio in there. Who is asking in terms of podcast apps? Me, actually. Me.

Harry Morton: 1:00:59

Who is asking for apart apart from true fans?

James Cridland: 1:01:02

I'll I'll put my hand up for true fans.

Sam Sethi: 1:01:05

If I'm in the wrong, I'll stick my hand up. That was me.

James Cridland: 1:01:08

But you know, but you know, and and there may well be the the reason why quite a lot of podcast hosting companies don't want to be involved in video, and indeed why Apple Podcasts might not want to be involved in video, the reason why is they don't want a slew of porn onto the platform. And so they've got to work out well, how are we going to moderate for all of the all of the porn there? It's one thing in terms of audio, it's another thing entirely in terms of video. And then you move from you know from porn to CSAM and goodness knows what happens.

Sam Sethi: 1:01:40

Oh well, open A OpenAI has just announced a new porn generator. So here we go.

James Cridland: 1:01:45

And so and so I think I and so I think, you know, this is this is what I mean by br by by you know everybody h holding hands and moving forward at the same time. If there are if there are good reasons why we shouldn't be doing things, and there may be very good reasons why we shouldn't be doing video, of because as we said earlier, the only people interested in video are the really big shows or or branded shows. If if there are good reasons why we shouldn't be interested in that sort of thing, then we kind of shouldn't be. And we we can all agree, actually, yeah, you know, we'll we'll leave video to YouTube and to Spotify because we don't really care about it, and here are the reasons why. But the conversation has to be had, it it can't just be uh Exactly, which I think is why Justin has put together this blog post which you can find on the Podcast Standards Project website, which is very much laying out here's how we think about new features, here's what we do in order to get those new features moving. Now, none of that gets in the way of podcasting 2.0. Podcasting 2.0 can come up with wild and wacky ideas like a license tag without any conversation with anybody that understands licensing, or a disclosure tag without any understanding of how any of that works in in any in any other business. We we can have that lovely conversations, but I I've always seen the podcast standards project being the grown-ups who who are basically turning around and filtering through some of these tags and going, you know what, that one's a really good idea, and this one we're not going to bother about. And the locked tag seemingly went all the way through. But anyway, another thing there.

Sam Sethi: 1:03:29

My last comment on this one then is the publisher one is part of the standard, and I'm really, really disappointed that no one's adopting it apart from us at TrueFans. I actually had hoped, and I'm gonna get regret what I'm about to say now, because I'll get castigated, but I had hoped that Godcaster would have actually adopted the publisher tag itself. They they don't, they they have a RSS feed on an RSS feed, and it's yeah, I was really hopeful that Adam and Dave would have used the publisher feeds for the radio feeds that they have aggregated together. That's the way it should have happened, they don't do it that way. So, yeah, I think the publisher feed is dead and buried because I don't think anyone is supporting it. We have it, we've got over 150 of them, but we don't get them from hosts, we self-generate them. It's yeah, but they're really good. They're really good, they're like pod rolls, they work really well. We did them for the awards that we just did, right? So we have publisher feeds for the awards, and they work really well, but no one seems to want to jump on board with this one, anyway. James, let's move on to something else. You went down this week.

James Cridland: 1:04:45

I have a I have a feeling that that is going to be one mighty chapter. What do what do we end up calling that? Sam's rant.

Sam Sethi: 1:04:53

What do we call it? Podcasting. Oh, I don't know. We'll we'll come up with something at the end. I don't know. Um who knows? Well, okay, you can call it a rant, but these are the issues that aren't being addressed, and we'll bury them again. My point was, it was the first November 2024 that we opened phase eight. It's first of November 2025 coming, nothing's changed. The podcast starters project. I I put my hand up to do something, I can't do it on the freebie. I walked away. Justin's finding the same problems, nothing's changing, and we're just going to be going round in circles. I'm sorry. If we want to just go around in circles, great, let's keep going. But that's not the way I think we should be going.

James Cridland: 1:05:36

Well, and on that bombshell, let's move on. There was one other piece of tech news really this week, wasn't there?

Sam Sethi: 1:05:42

Well, Amazon Web Services failed. I mean, it affected you, James. It affected many other people. It turned out that US East One, the data center, had some problems. It was to do with DNS. The biggest thing that I saw coming from the UK was that many UK banks and UK companies got affected. And there's been a big hoo-ha over here about hang on a minute, with GDPR, why is our data being held in the US? So why were the UK banks affected by a US East One data center?

James Cridland: 1:06:19

Now I have nothing hosted in US East One yet. Pod News was affected during the AWS fallover. And I think it's because US East One is the master, it's where everything comes from.

Sam Sethi: 1:06:33

It is the biggest one, yeah.

James Cridland: 1:06:34

I mean it's it's by far the biggest one, but that runs a bunch of things like CloudFront, for example, which is the Amazon CDN. And so the only issue that I was getting, everything was working, but the only issue that I was getting is I couldn't flush any of the pages, which is how I normally get a new a new episode onto the front page, is that I I I flush the cache. But I couldn't do that because it wasn't it wasn't flushing. Turned out it was essentially it was a it was about a 20-minute queue and then it eventually got through. So I think it was probably a little bit of that. But yeah, I so I I think the US East One, because it runs so many things, I would imagine as well that Route 53, the DNS stuff, just runs there. I would imagine that's where the you know the main centralized systems are. So that's probably the reason why. But yeah, it was interesting how many things fell over. Signal fell over, and that got a lot of people nervous about the fact that it just takes one company and and and you can get rid of an entire m messaging service, which I suppose is fair enough. But Amazon systems deliver 63% of all podcast episodes, and at some point, I mean I know of many podcast companies that were caught out by this, and so at some point it's going to it's going to hurt them. Yeah.

Announcement: 1:07:58

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

James Cridland: 1:08:11

Yes, so many different ways to get in touch with us. Fan mail by using the link in our show notes, super comments on TrueFans Boosts, everywhere else, or email, and we share any money that we make as well. We have a bunch of boosts. Let's quickly whisk through them the ugly quacking duck, a row of ducks, 2222. Listening to pod news on this cool Sunday morning here in Southern Illinois. Finally, it got rain, and it's a perfect morning for a bit of tea and the podcast. Thanks for a new episode to enjoy. 73. Thank you very much, Bruce. That's very kind of you. I should tell you that it is 34 at the moment in uh Brisbane. It's 7 o'clock at night. 34, and that's in centigrade. So whatever that is in old money, it's it's quite it's quite hot and very humid. So, yes, there we are. But uh thank you for that. That's very kind. 93, by the way, in case you're wondering. Claywait Brown, 2222 sat. Yes, please, to standardize 2.0 icons. Oh, do we have to go back to that? On podcasts you were the one who came up with it last week, not me, remember? On podcasting 2.0 in practice. Well, this is the point, isn't it? On podcasting 2.0 in practice, which is Claywait Brown's very excellent podcast that you should go and listen to, she says, I often have to say, on Fountain, click on the icon that looks like this. On TrueFans, the icon is something else. On podcast guru, the icon is something else. You get the idea. And then sometimes the apps change their icon and sometimes terminology as well. Pod roll to recommendations, Clay Wait Brown says. I would also say boosts versus super comments. And I have to record an update. So okay.

Sam Sethi: 1:09:50

Can I first of all say yes, that's me? Okay, hand on heart. But you, James, were the one who said don't use pod rolls. You said nobody knows what they mean. Use something more English. That's why we went with recommendations. I agree. I agree. Put your hand up for that one. Yes.

James Cridland: 1:10:05

Uh although what we should have done is we should all have agreed what the UX would have said. That would have been more clever. Answer from Vincent Sats from the Late Bloomer Actor. Great, you brought up the super fan fight. Yes. Sorry today to Martin, though. He's been outflanked by two big spenders as Pod News Weekly Superfans. Well, you can carry on playing that game as long as you like, so far as I'm concerned. Exactly. And Lyceum has sent a very confusing, well, he sent three, in fact. Row of Duck saying he likes the idea of a soundbite service. Well, nobody uses it. The next thing is to put these activities into the workflow in a good way. It's a bit overwhelming at times as an indie podcaster. Yes, and I would agree with a lot of that. There is so much to do when you upload an episode if you want to do it properly. And I very rarely want to do it properly. So yes, completely agree with all of that. So thank you for that. He also said, I don't think I will watch or listen to SpotFlix. Good luck with battling the Alphabet Company. Yes, agreed. And finally, sending a symbolic boost. I don't understand any of this. Selling a symbolic boost of 242 sats. Well, it says 222 sats in here. So this this is a good start. But anyway, 242 sats, front 242 electronic body music band from Belgium. Ah, okay. And he's sending it for the news about DJ Target. I have no idea.

Sam Sethi: 1:11:26

I think the spin lofty translation.

James Cridland: 1:11:27

Oh, it's for Pod News Daily, that's why not for Pod News Weekly Review. And I must have mentioned DJ Target in a moderately sarcastic way. That's exactly what I did. So yes. And thank you for that. Very kind of you. And yeah, so it's 242 sats, but I can only see 222 sats of that. I should be able still to see 242 sats, shouldn't I? If that was really 242 sats. Anyway, let's not go there.

Sam Sethi: 1:11:55

Depends what he sent. I can check it.

James Cridland: 1:11:57

It does, doesn't it? And thank you to the big ballers, the people who use the internet's money, Visa Ron MasterCard or American Express. Weekly.podnews.net uh is where to go to become a power supporter. There are 23 of them. The most recent is John Spurlock here of OP3, which didn't uh go down at all during the AWS uh issue, by the way. Also, Will Clark, Ralph Estep Jr., who has sent me a press release uh a week ago, and I still haven't covered it, so I must do that. Brian Ensminger and John McDermott for being power supporters. That's very kind of you. You can join them too, weekly.podnews.net. Uh so what's happened for you this week, Sam?

Sam Sethi: 1:12:35

Well, I just said happy is Bali to you. So that's been going on. Uh annoying people with uh fireworks in the middle of the night. Not a lot of people are happy with that one. Nice. Not where I live with the horses. I completed the Thames Path. So we did from the mouth in Woolwich to the source in Crickdale. So yes, we finished that last weekend on Sunday and had a bottle of champagne to celebrate. Very nice.

James Cridland: 1:12:56

Well, there we are, and there's a lovely picture of you in the rain, in the British rain. Yes, yes, wearing a very impressive hat.

Sam Sethi: 1:13:05

That came from Australia actually while I was over there.

James Cridland: 1:13:08

Well, there you go. There you go. And two very wet dogs. So congratulations.

Sam Sethi: 1:13:14

Thank you. Uh we're going to do the uh Chiltern Way next. No, the Cotswold Way, sorry, Cotswold Way.

James Cridland: 1:13:21

And what and what is the Cotswold Way? It's Stroud's bar. That was uh that was kind of a joke, but okay, Stroud's bar. What is the Cotswold Way? Oh, it's a bit like this.

Sam Sethi: 1:13:32

Yes, I'll be pretty well. I'll be doing a John Cleese March.

James Cridland: 1:13:36

Yes, yes, exactly right. And you've you've mentioned you've you've you've mentioned we switched our first podcast to True Fans for hosting. What's this?

Sam Sethi: 1:13:47

So it's not a secret. We've talked about it briefly that we're going to be getting into the hosting game, and so we have been doing our tests. So we moved our first podcast off another host onto TrueFans. And uh yeah, we can now test it. We're going to be doing some testing the remainder of this week. Today is Wednesday recording, so by Friday Thursday recording, so by Friday it should be ready. But yeah, so fans own our own podcast will be hosted on our own platform.

James Cridland: 1:14:17

There's a very exciting link in your footer on truefans.fm that says pricing on it. Yes.

Sam Sethi: 1:14:24

And you can't click on it yet. No.

James Cridland: 1:14:26

But you can't but you can't click on it. Also, about as well. You can't you can't click on that live.

Sam Sethi: 1:14:30

Those both editors, I'm under a lot of pressure to get those live today, by the way. So yes, no pressure. No pressure. Anyway, before you have to run off, anything that's happened for you, James.

James Cridland: 1:14:41

I know that. I know that well. Anything that's happened for me, no, not really. I have I have mostly been, damn Eugene Bean, I have mostly been trying to get my home assistant to work out when to charge the car. Because I realize that there are certain times in the day when I'm using more, I'm using less power than I'm producing because of the solar panels, uh, particularly right now because it's very hot and sunny here. And so can I automatically turn on the car charging when I am using more using enough, you know, not using enough electricity, if you see what I mean? Yes. So uh yes. Um so the answer is yeah, yes, I can, but it's but it's hurting my head a bit. So uh maybe by next week I'll have I'll have fixed that. But yes, that was a thing. And I was and I was also playing around with a terminal. Are you aware of what a terminal is?

Sam Sethi: 1:15:35

Green green screen with with flashing dot like ping pong.

James Cridland: 1:15:39

No. No. I mean, sounds good, but no. No. No. So a terminal is a little quite a beautiful little else little e-ink screen, and it lets you put information on there automatically, and it sits there, and so you can just hang this screen up somewhere, and it just sits there and and updates. And so I made, because there was no Australian news, I've made an ABC News plugin so you can just get the ABC News on a on a on a picture on the wall.

Sam Sethi: 1:16:09

You mean you didn't do what we used to do at school with the Casio computers and put type in boobless?

James Cridland: 1:16:15

No. No, that would be a very silly thing to do. And that's it for this week. All of our podcast stories taken from the Pod News Daily Newsletter at Podnews.net. You didn't mention your cold either once in this podcast.

Sam Sethi: 1:16:29

I'm sure everyone else can hear it, but no, I didn't mention it.

James Cridland: 1:16:32

No, I think that gets better soon.

Sam Sethi: 1:16:34

Uh yes, so do I. God, you can support this show by streaming Satch. You can give us feedback using the Boss Sprout fan mail link in our show notes. You can send us a super comment or a boost. Better still, become a power supporter like the 23andme and become a power fan or a power supporter at weekly.podnews.net.

James Cridland: 1:16:51

Our music's from TM Studios. Our voiceover is Sheila D. Our audio is recorded using CleanFeed, and we edit with Hindenburg, and we're hosted and sponsored by Buzz Sprout. Start podcasting, keep podcasting. Podcast disclosure tag.

Announcement: 1:17:05

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