Announcement: 0:00

The Pod News Weekly Review uses chapters, so you can skip the boring bits. If there were any, which there aren't. The last word in podcasting news. This is the Pod News Weekly Review with James Cridlin and Sam Sethy.

James Cridland: 0:14

I'm James Kridlin, the editor of Pod News. Tim Watkin from RNZ on a novel use of AI in an investigative podcast. Plus, video on Spotify on the biggest screen in the house. So what took them so long? And the launch of a new podcast host. This podcast is sponsored by BuzzSprout with the tools, support, and community to ensure you keep podcasting. Start podcasting, keep podcasting with BuzzSprout.com.

Announcement: 0:55

From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly Review.

Sam Sethi: 1:00

Well, James, let me first apologize to everybody. I still got the sniffles, and I don't think there is a sniffle removal feature. I know there's an um and er feature, but I don't think there's a sniffle feature yet. So I apologize if you hear a sniffle, but I'll try my best. Now, let's start off with Spotify have updated, well, they've rewritten completely their Apple TV app. What have they done?

James Cridland: 1:26

Well, I I was really surprised by this. So Spotify have an Apple TV app. If you own an Apple TV, I believe that we're supposed to call them Apple TV 4K, because Apple TV is also going to be the brand name of the streaming app that you also use. So if you own a box, an Apple TV box, then you have apps on there, obviously, and you've got Spotify on there. And Spotify, in spite of launching video for podcasters more than 15 months ago, Spotify haven't actually put video onto the Apple TV until now. So so what a bizarre thing. But they have finally got there. Presumably they had to rewrite the entire thing by the looks of things. But uh yes, you can now watch video podcasts as well as music videos, of course, on Spotify on your Apple TV box if you've got one of those.

Sam Sethi: 2:19

Yeah, I I suspect it's more to do with well, you're right, it's probably they had to rewrite it, but I suspect it's more to do with also a lack of content and time to create the content that they needed.

James Cridland: 2:30

Yeah, I mean it could be that. I mean, it could just, you know, frankly be that very few people actually use the Spotify TV OS app, and so therefore it was quite low on their list of uh of uh priorities. And you know, getting video to be done properly on an Apple TV is probably a little bit of a complicated thing. But yeah, I thought that that was really interesting. It's now there. They've also added Spotify DJ, which is a feature which was launched in 2023. So they finally added that onto the surface uh as well. And I think you know they are very proud and excited about the number of surfaces in their in their words, the number of um of devices that have Spotify on it. But I have the feeling that there are only sort of two or three devices which have anything near up-to-date Spotify, and there's quite a lot of sort of very old Spotify that is um probably a lot of tech debt. But interesting seeing the fact that they've finally got to video on the Spotify uh Apple TV app.

Sam Sethi: 3:35

I I've said it before, and I think you know it's one of their I think USPs being everywhere. It's it's the fact, you know, uh every car I've gone into has had it, every every device, generally, whatever it may be, from my funny glasses that you don't like to um you know anything else I find. Generally, there'll be a Spotify app. There won't be an Apple app, there won't be an Amazon app, there won't be a YouTube app, there won't be whatever, but there will be a Spotify app. So I think that's their secret source, I think.

James Cridland: 4:05

Yes, indeed. Although YouTube, you would have thought, is quite closely behind. You would have thought that.

Sam Sethi: 4:12

Now, talking of YouTube, they've made some announcements this week about their upgrade. They've got a new feature, they've added instant shopping tools and visual upgrades for low-resolution videos. What are they doing, James?

James Cridland: 4:26

Well, they're using AI to fiddle around with the videos. If you upload a video that's below 1080p, it will now use AI to bump them up to HD resolution. Apparently, they're going to upscale up to 4K quotes in the near future. The good news is that um both creators and viewers will be able to opt out of that nonsense. Um, so that's pretty good. And they're also making the video thumbnail rather bigger, so it'll actually support 4K images at the moment. You can't really get a 4K image into the 2 meg that they currently support. So that is good. And the other thing that they're doing, which is really interesting, and it's something that connected TVs have tried to do for quite some time, but who knows? Perhaps YouTube might actually get this one right. Soon you will be able to quickly buy whatever catches your eye on a video by using your phone to scan a QR code shown on the TV, which will take you directly to the product page. Now, I watch a fair amount of YouTube, and certainly some of the channels that I watch have merch that you can buy and all of that kind of stuff. And there are buy now buttons that are available below the video. So this will be QR codes that actually appear within the video if you're watching on the TV, which is the number one space for you to watch YouTube as I understand it. So yeah, it's very interesting to see YouTube really digging into making the TV work as well as it possibly can for them.

Sam Sethi: 5:58

No, I like I like the idea. I worry that people are then gonna stuff their videos full of product. That's the only thing I worry about, but hey. Well, yes. But I've got a quick question. Now, let's use your household. You've got a teenage daughter.

James Cridland: 6:13

Not yet. She'll be a teenage daughter on Saturday tomorrow, so but not not quite yet. But not quite.

Sam Sethi: 6:20

Okay. My my question is based on my own children's behaviour. Would she or does she sit in the lounge with you, or does she go to her bedroom and watch YouTube there?

James Cridland: 6:30

She actually watches most of her TV and stuff like that in the lounge with us. Oh, okay. And I think she's not a teenager yet. But I think that's actually because, you know, we will go through shows with her and and watch shows with her. So, you know, so she doesn't watch too much. I mean, she listens to an awful lot of of uh music. My complication for me is that of course they're banning uh YouTube for kids under 16 in this country. The ban comes into force on December the first. So for some reason, I won't be able to use YouTube Music for my daughter anymore, so she will probably have to use Spotify and will probably have to get a family subscription to Spotify or something. And that means that I mean it's totally pointless. So she'll be able to watch exactly the same music videos, exactly the same stuff, but just won't be able to watch it on YouTube Music because the government says so. It's a it's a mad, maddening thing. So so no idea what's going to happen there.

Sam Sethi: 7:32

The reason I ask is because the inference from what we've just said about YouTube is that it's the TV screen that it's fastest growing surface, and the TV screen generally in households is in the lounge, and the TV screen is generally watched by the adults. The children, certainly my children when they were teenagers, wouldn't watch programs whether they go in their bedrooms and just talk to their mates or whatever and watch on their phones. That was the way they consumed content. So the assumption is, and I'm only asking, is it what age demographic does YouTube think it's reaching? Because if it's targeting an TV audience, it's targeting an older audience, not a younger demographic audience.

James Cridland: 8:14

I mean, I think it's trying to target as many different people as possible on as many different devices as possible, as you say. And the fact that you have been able to buy, you know, m MKBHD sweatshirts using the YouTube app on your phone for a while is one thing. For them to then add that onto the TV version of YouTube is another. So I think that they are basically just trying to make sure that no matter what device you are consuming a video on, you can money out of selling stuff as well as earn money out of talking about Surfshark and you know and all of the other all of the other things that YouTubers do. So I think it's just it's just you know YouTube just trying to make sure that it is monetizable on as many platforms as possible. I mean, I remember back in the day you could watch YouTube on your connected TV when it first launched, and there were no ads on there because they hadn't worked out how to put ads onto the TV yet. So it was a great place to watch YouTube because there was no ads on there. I mean, clearly they want to make sure that every single platform is as monetizable as the rest.

Sam Sethi: 9:25

James, let's whiz over to New Zealand. You covered a new podcast from New Zealand called NARC. It's a true crime podcast, but with one big difference. What's that?

James Cridland: 9:34

Yeah, it's it's a great piece of work from the RNZ team, but it was how they used AI that I thought was quite interesting. We hear a lot about generative AI being used as voices by smaller podcast companies. We had Janine Wright from Inception Point AI on a while ago and John from Kalaroga Shark Media a while previous. But this is a really big publisher in New Zealand, and they're doing something a little bit different with AI. And I thought it'd be interesting to find out more.

Tim Watkin: 10:03

So I spoke to Tim Watkin, who is I am what am I called, head of digital audio at RNZ. So I run the podcast team here at New Zealand's National Broadcaster and a bunch of the weekly radio shows and our overall digital strategy.

James Cridland: 10:18

RNZ, is that kind of the same as the BBC or CBC, that sort of thing?

Tim Watkin: 10:23

Exactly right. We we talk a lot to the BBC, ABC, CBC. We're state funded, but obviously independent and at arm's length with that funding. But yes, we're a traditional public broadcaster.

James Cridland: 10:33

And you do a bunch of different podcasts, don't you? And uh and I think you've been podcast first for quite some time.

Tim Watkin: 10:40

Yeah, we have. We've since about 2017, we have about 140 shows on the slate, probably. Um half of those roughly would be repurposed radio shows, but the rest are all podcast originals or various versions thereof, some video, some not. But yes, all digital first, all very much focused on our digital audience and trying to make sure they are the glorious thing that is digital audio as opposed to just hacked up radio.

James Cridland: 11:08

Yes, which is a big difference. So we'll get on to Narc in a minute, but what are some of your biggest shows that we would have heard of?

Tim Watkin: 11:16

Look, people might have um listened to Gone Fishing, which and The Service, which kind of two Prime or Spy ones shows that we have done in the past. Black Sheep is a history show that we do that has got some global renowned. Yeah, that that's the the kind of thing we spent on. Did Titanic Sync has been playing quite a bit in Australia? Our Changing World is our science show that plays weekly on both the CBC and the ABC as well as RNZ. So yeah, we we we like to think we punch up a weight.

James Cridland: 11:44

Now you've just launched a new show called NARC, and it's all to do with the the murder of a prison inmate in 1985. I I'm interested in this show. I mean, firstly, why don't you tell us what Narc is about?

Tim Watkin: 12:01

It's a it's a 17-episode series, so we could we could stay here for weeks discussing it. It really is one of those true crime shows where you just think you couldn't want for anything more. It is a murder in a prison, the first in Mount Eden, New Zealand's biggest prison, No Hay 5. Obviously, the people who were witnesses or around at the time were all convicted criminals. So who do you believe? The man who was ultimately convicted, not once but twice for the crime, and had his conviction quashed by the Governor General twice for this for the same crime, was a guy called Rossa Pelgren, who was a low-like a low-time burglar who was in prison at the time.

Ross Appelgren: 12:40

The police had started talking deals of money even before he made a statement.

Announcer: 12:44

Ultimately, it was evidence from a Nark that got Rossa Pelgren convicted of murder.

Interviewee: 12:49

Perhaps the most dangerous type of witness is the incentivized prison witness.

Announcer: 12:53

So Narc's not only a story about the 1985 murder of Darcy Tejera, it's also the story of Rossa Pelgren, the man twice convicted of the crime.

Tim Watkin: 13:03

He went to his grave in 2013, insisting he was innocent and he did not murder Darcy Tejera on January the 6th, 1985, on a Sunday morning as they were getting breakfast. The key part in that sentence was that Rossa Pelgren has been dead for the best part of 13 years. But his widow is going back to court, and this is part of this news that we just broke with the uh release of the podcast. His widow is going back to court to try and clear his name 13 years after his death, using a precedent that was set by the Peter Alice case here in New Zealand, which people might have heard the conviction podcast that we did about the Peter Ellis case, in which an offender was able to clear his name after he had died. This is unprecedented territory we're getting into legally, but it's a fascinating case of a pelgrin. He he escaped prison at one point and went on talkback radio to insist on his innocence. He has yeah, has a had a remarkable story, as had has the Narc, who is the man who testified to seeing a Pelgrin commit the murder. He has also had a remarkable life since he made that witness statement. And the question is whether we believe him or not.

James Cridland: 14:12

And you say that a pelgrin has been dead for some time, but he's on this new show, isn't he? And he's actually explaining some of the things that went on. You've clearly used AI for this. How have you used AI for this?

Tim Watkin: 14:29

Yes. Well, the first thing to say, I mean, to to be very precise and transparent about these terms, we're careful to say he is not on it. This is AI, but it is not him. It is a we want to be really clear that we're not trying to be cute about this, we're not trying to be in any way deceptive. And so we've spent a bit of time in episode two and then repeated some of it in later episodes, explaining exactly what and why we did it. What we had in the investigation was screeds of written evidence. He had written his memoirs before he died. He had over the years, there were transcripts from court cases, there were affidavits signed, sworn, and signed, there were print articles written about him. So we had his voice in written form in great volumes, but we had very little audio of him. Some we were, you could have claimed through fair dealing, some we could get the rights to, but just generally there was just not a lot, and there was not a lot of him saying the things that he had written down. So how did we meet the medium in that regard? Well, usually we'd use an actor, and that would be it would have been common practice, and was when we started working on the podcast two and a half years ago. But as we walked through the, and this has been a very long investigation, as we worked through the investigation, it became clear that AI was giving us options that we didn't have before. And Mike Wesley Smith, who's the host and lead producer on this podcast who we're working with, said came to us and said, What about using AI? We've, you know, the voice. And our first question of many was, Well, would his family, would his widow be okay with that? What would he think? We had those conversations, his whether it was was Julie was very keen, loved the idea. We got permission from her and his estate to do that. We went through an AI working group here at RNZ to have the ethical discussions, and ultimately got to the place where we thought it was the right thing to do and would really enhance the podcast. And so we we used some of the few radio interviews that he gave and taught an AI cloning voice cloning tool, his voice.

Ross Appelgren: 16:39

Well, he had a fair idea of who was in on it, but I wasn't a hundred percent sure. There was about three or four who I thought were gonna be in on it, with one or two giving him a bash, while one or two kept an eye out. When Tahira came into the kitchen, I was thinking, oh, I don't want to be near this, just in case. You never know what's gonna happen.

James Cridland: 16:56

This is the first time that uh AI has been used by RNZ.

Tim Watkin: 17:00

It is, it is, and as far as we know, the first time that we've heard in a in a podcast or radio show of AI being used by a dead person, a dead criminal to try and clear their name. So it's a very specific use, and and that was part of our consideration as well. We RNZ will treat this on a case-by-case basis, but we thought, you know, if if part of journalism is giving voice to the voiceless, then it's often to people who are the most vulnerable. And if you've been accused of murder, there is no greater stain on your reputation. And if you're insisting that you're innocent, and look, we don't come to conclusions. This is an investigation which raises a lot of questions about the safety of the conviction, but it certainly doesn't take sides as to whether we believe the knack or whether we believe a pelgrin. It is a balanced and fair approach to the story. But we figured that a pelgrin had a right to a voice in there and to make his case declare his name. And I guess the bottom line, James, is how much more powerful to hear a simile of his voice pleading his own case. You know, it just takes the connection with the audience to another level.

James Cridland: 18:05

You you said something right at the beginning of this. Normally we would have used an actor. And I think, you know, it's very easy to turn around and say, oh, you know, AI, this is a this is a dreadful idea. Well, actually, this is a better idea, it seems to me, to have uh the the real person's voice reading his own words rather than having an actor coming in and reading those words for him.

Tim Watkin: 18:31

I mean, how much more powerful, right? The sense that, again, you know, it is a machine ultimately, but it was so moving for his family. And how much more powerful as a listener to actually hear the guy's tones and as he says his words.

Ross Appelgren: 18:49

I was a career criminal. People thought it was strange, but it wasn't.

Tim Watkin: 18:53

We we still, in terms of actors, and how much, you know, so from an audience point of view, we think it's a really good call. Obviously, there are issues around, you know, the use of actors, for example. We still use Crikey, a couple of dozen actors, I think. There is, as I say, in over 17 episodes, there are many parts and things to be read out. So we still use actors um out, and we still use an actor in conjunction with the AI voice. We fed the words we wanted from the memoir and the articles and so forth into the the AI tool. And it very two really interesting things. One, we ended up using only one minute of really high quality audio for to teach the voice. There's a lot of advice out there when we started looking into it saying you'll need 30 minutes of a voice to be able to learn it, we did it with one minute of audio. We tried it with several minutes of lower quality audio and it didn't sound as good or as realistic. So we we found that less audio of a higher quality is is more useful to AI than more audio of a lower quality. But then when we initially fed it in, it was very the accent was hard for AI to get, and it ended up sounding either very American or very English to start with. So we used New Zealand actor to who had listened to Pelgrins Ross and Pelgrin's interviews to try and mimic his intonation and his pace, and also to get the Kiwi accent. And so it was a combination of that AI voice, but also the actor's um ability to mimic Ross. Yeah.

James Cridland: 20:29

Yeah, so you're doing I think 11 Labs calls it parrot mode. Uh which tool did you use? Are you able to say?

Tim Watkin: 20:37

I I I guess not, and given you just mentioned them, we used 11 labs. So right, okay.

James Cridland: 20:43

Well, that's nice and easy. I'm guessing this isn't in video, this is just purely an audio show.

Tim Watkin: 20:49

Purely audio, yep, purely audio. It's 17 episodes, it's and the episodes uh each episode is I don't know, 35 to 65 minutes each. So there is a lot of audio. And this is the point, right? That that it would have been there's a lot of Ross a Pelgrin in there, a lot of him trying to tell his own story. And an actor is great, but over that kind of duration, and when you're trying to, you know, a man's trying to plead for not for his life, we don't have the death sentence in New Zealand, but plead his innocence, it's just that much more of a connection, I think, for the audience to hear him speak himself.

James Cridland: 21:26

Really interesting to hear about AI being used in this way. Narc is available wherever you get your podcasts, I'm assuming.

Tim Watkin: 21:34

It sure is. And it's rolling out between now and the first week of December. Three episodes a week. And I tell you, it's the best true crime story I've heard for a very long time. Tim, thank you so much. Thank you.

Announcement: 21:46

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Sam Sethi: 22:14

James, very exciting news. Fountain, the podcast listening app that is now a host, yes, has just announced. We've been waiting and waiting, and they've announced it's not going to be called RSS Blue or Fountain Blue. It's going to be called Fountain for Podcasters. It's a new podcast hosting service. Tell me more.

James Cridland: 22:32

Well, so Fountain for Podcasters is quite interesting. It is doing all of the podcasting 2.0 like stuff, uh, including things like streaming payments, paid subscriptions, and also doing video to supported apps using the alternate enclosure tag. So the video will work on TrueFans as well as on Fountain, as well as on a bunch of other apps as well. I think the the under the most important thing here is that everything is using, as far as I can see, open standards. Now, they're not necessarily the standards that podcasting 2.0 has gone with, so we should probably have that conversation. But they are using, you know, RSS to deliver video as well as audio. I think there's some HLS in there. They are using Lightning for streaming payments. They're using a lot of all of that stuff. So yeah, I thought it was very interesting. There is there's three different pricing points which are relatively expensive, I think, if you look at the typical prices in comparison to others. But you can do, of course, all of this stuff with it, including including paywalled premium content as well as streaming payments as well. So yeah, I thought it was I thought it was interesting. And I thought, well, Sam, this sounds like something very similar to what TrueFans is uh planning. Would that be about right?

Sam Sethi: 24:00

Yes, yeah, yeah. I mean, my my little ears did prick up a little bit when this came out. I I knew it was coming out. Um it it was one of those I think I've spent more time looking at web pages of hosts and their price points and their feature and function than I I wanted to ever do in my life. But of course I've had to look at this very closely and to see where we sit and where they sit. Now let me first of all start off and congratulate Davidas and Oscar. I think this is brilliant news. I think I went I actually went back to our prediction show to check that I had made the prediction that there would be a listening app that would become a podcast host and app. But I think Pod Home actually got there first. We interviewed Barry a couple of weeks back, if you remember.

James Cridland: 24:46

Yes.

Sam Sethi: 24:47

That's right. And I said that look, hosting is now no longer a differentiator, it's a commodity. I think Alberto from RSS.com said that many years ago that that's not what they are. They are more than just a host. I think this is very interesting, and I think this will put a cat amongst the pigeons. So, unlimited downloads. I think that's great. I think that's if I'm really honest in marketing terms, I think Buzz Prouts said it best when they said that the average number of listeners to their average size show is about 25. So, you know, most companies put unlimited downloads, they know they're pretty safe, that they're not going to get a Joe Rogan. Uh, and in their T's and C's they are all covered. Lightning payments at 2% fees is great, well done. That's a really nice price point, I think. Apps still need to make money. Publishing audio and video, I think that's great. And I think this is what Justin Jackson's been hoping for that a host would actually publish in the alternative enclosure. I know that uh Pod Home does it, uh, but they don't do video, they do audio in the alternative enclosure. So it will be interesting to see what the big boys do, the the likes of Buzzsprout and RSS.com. Will they will they jump on board or will they continue to ignore video? The one that I'm very excited about, and is the one that you know that I think we've talked about or touched on, but not really talked about, is whatever you want to call it. I I'm renaming it to premium RSS on TrueFans, but secure RSS or L402, pick your pick your potion. The thing that they haven't mentioned in their pricing, and I'll be interested to see, is what fee they're going to charge. Now, this is where Patreon and Substack and Memberful really are leading the charge on this. They they are providing hosting and they're providing the ability to have freemium and premium on their platforms. Now, Substack basically happen all in one price, it's $49, so you you know you can't pick and choose. Patreon charge you 10% of all fees. So, again, there's so many different ways of skinning the cat if you want to have premium content as well as freemium. But I love that this is done through RSS. This is what I was hoping that Fountain would do, this is what we're doing, so that call them super feeds, call them what you like. You fundamentally have your freemium and premium within the same feed, and apps that support it will be able to pull out the data and present that to the user in the right way. I'm very keen to find out what their fee, though, is for premium RSS because are they going to split that with the app or they're gonna take all of that and keep it with the content creator? It'll be interesting to see.

James Cridland: 27:35

The last bit I mean I mean it looks it looks as if they're charging a 2% fee for lightning payments and charging an 8% fee for card payments. My assumption is, therefore, that they are essentially earning they're essentially earning sort of 1%-ish for lightning payments after any fees that they have to pay, and they're essentially earning around 5% for the card payments. And frankly, that's gonna be where the you know where the largest amount of payment is made, because of course, you know, MasterCard and Visa is the internet's money.

Sam Sethi: 28:13

Um I would see that the creator has to set a price for the premium content as well. And are they gonna take a percentage of that price?

James Cridland: 28:23

Oh, I see. Well, well, I mean I mean, surely that 8% fee is what is is that percentage, isn't it?

Sam Sethi: 28:30

I I don't know. It's not so they've put a fee next to every item, like the lightning payments and the and credit card, but they didn't put a fee against that. And I I was just curious because look, if you want to charge $20 for your premium in premium episode, right, are they gonna just take 8% of that $20? That's fine. If that's what it is, which is what Patreon does, they take 10% flat fee of any content value that you state. That might be the answer. You know, maybe I'm being a bit naive and thick, but I just wanted to see if that was the case and it wasn't obvious to me.

James Cridland: 29:06

Yeah. No, I think it's um it's all it looks very interesting. I think what I like about it is, and I was a advisor to Fountain the app, but one of the things I said to them is I cannot be an advisor to you in terms of your in terms of your podcast hosting uh platform because I'm an advisor for somebody else. And so therefore I can I really can't advoc advise you. And they went, yeah, no, that's that's all absolutely fine. So I think one of the things that I'm I'm excited about is that this should be totally open in terms of, you know, it should work on TrueFans, it should work on Castomatic, it should work all over the place. And I think that's the exciting thing from my point of view is that you can actually see, okay, you know, so TrueFans, you you you charge a percentage or you keep a percentage of. of all of all payments and so you benefit out of this as well you know and i and i think all of all of it is a good thing so yeah it it just looks it looks nice the fact that everything appears to be open now i believe that there is a bit of fiddling around with nostr versus you're using something else and you know one kind of hopes that secure rss or whatever you're calling it now premium rss you know and all of that is going to be interoperable as well but as as long as that as long as that happens I think that that's a very good thing.

Sam Sethi: 30:32

Yeah the Nosta part's not a big issue because that's fundamentally delivering content out to a social web endpoint so we use ActivityPub and we use threads and we use Blue Sky and they use Nosta that's fine won't make any difference the secure RSS good thing is Oscar and I did chat at the London podcast show about it and we did talk about our different ways of implementing it. Oscar's done a really cool way of doing it which we have adapted to the way he's done it is that the premium content will be within the alternative enclosure as well I tell you that tag's going to be working its uh socks off. The idea was that if you then took the same feed and put it into Spotify or Apple it would break if it was in the primary enclosure. So what Oscar's suggested is that you have a short preview clip in the primary enclosure telling you how to buy it.

James Cridland: 31:32

Yes that that makes perfect sense that makes perfect sense that's exactly how it should be yeah and so it won't break any RSS feed if it goes into non-supporting platforms and all supporting platforms will just be the alternative enclosure find the little macaroon and uh we'll be often running to the races they say yeah yeah and I mean I think you know from my point of view I just wish that everything was called the same and I wish that we could that we could I mean you know we we all understand what HD is we you know we we don't you know some of them I mean the TV companies some of them talked about super definition and some of them talked about you know blah blah blah but now everybody just talks about HD and about 4K and I would hope that we get to a point where all of these features are called the same thing no matter who you who you're actually with but that's uh probably going to be something that takes three or four years to you know to get going I suppose okay I'll give you an insight I I look at what YouTube and Spotify do and I try and copy them okay I don't try and copy what the podcasting tutorial apps do.

Sam Sethi: 32:42

So when you say to me oh why do you use the word super comments well it's because they have super chats and super comments in YouTube right and more people understand that than they will understand the word boost or boostergram.

James Cridland: 32:54

So well so so maybe maybe that's something that we should be pressurising other people if that's the right choice then maybe that's something that we should be pushing other people to end up doing in the same way that when Apple changed subscribe to follow then obviously most of the other podcast apps have followed suit now so that as a podcaster you can actually say one word instead of instead of saying two so perhaps that's something that we can get some form of agreement going forward to but anyway that that that's uh that's an interesting sidebar I guess.

Sam Sethi: 33:31

I mean what I am looking for i in in to your point just now is I'm looking for a feed from Fountain that is hosted on Fountain so that I can test that everything works and at the moment I I'm trying to find one I'm gonna ping Oscar and and ask him if he can let me have a feed that he knows that they're hosting that I can say yep everything worked tick tick tick tick tick.

James Cridland: 33:56

Yep no indeed and I believe that if you go hunting enough for it then you can find a demo with Nick and Oscar showing you how the fountain for podcasting works sorry fountain for podcasters I'm sure they'll change that to fountain for creators relatively shortly. Well yes so yes I mean maybe they've missed a they missed a trick there. Maybe it should be fountain fountain for creators who knows joking but yes I'm sure that you can find that if you want to find out more is there anything that they have missed that that that that that you're going to do that you want to tell us about now Sam they missed.

Sam Sethi: 34:40

Yeah well the one thing that we are going to differ on and I will privately tell you at the end of this show I'm not gonna publicly state it because I don't want it in the public domain yet but we will stream all content uh not just using HLS we've found a method to stream MP3s and everything else to all platforms so we can actually get first party data back from any and all platforms and we are therefore going to aggregate that data. So what makes us different apart from our pricing is slightly better sorry to say that but it is is we don't do traditional downloads so we're not counting download numbers we are counting listen time so our metrics are number of plays and listen time and because of you James percent completed well but we have found the method that allows us to go to when we stream content there is a method that's available that allows us to break any and all data into single packets and when that streaming data stops being requested we know exactly where you got to within that episode or within that video and so we can measure your listen time exactly based on your requirement as a client and then aggregate that. So that's the only difference everything else we're pretty much on a par with and that's brilliant oh and the other one is we have unlimited podcasts very much like captivate data storage is so so so so cheap these days limiting limiting the number of podcasts people have doesn't make a lot of sense I mean yes T's and C's cover us from somebody who's saying we're going to put a thousand podcasts but we we measure so yeah I guess it's really interesting to look at it. So Fountain have said one podcast $25 a month two podcasts $50 a month up to 10 podcasts $200 a month but unlimited downloads we've gone the other way we've said unlimited uploads but we've capped the amount of listen time so we've we we've measured it in number of plays. So we've said 15000 plays as our entry then it goes up to 5000 then 1000 plus we could have said unlimited it came back to something you said to me which is you know people want to know in terms of downloads as a number they want to know how many they get I guess unlimited is another way of saying don't worry about it but we've sort of said look it's a it's at 15,000 plays so yeah people can download or and you know and I know that is not a play but yes we we only measure you when you click play nothing else and the last and that's interesting because if you've if you've worked out how to stream to everything then that also means that if you've worked out who a bot is then you don't have to stream everything to them.

James Cridland: 37:31

You can just go oh you know what actually no we're not gonna we're not gonna stream that so that's uh that's interesting I look forward to learning more about that at some stage in the future and the the last little caveat is if you if the listener is on true fans then we charge you nothing zero yeah yeah you get well you get that play for free. Well there you go there's a thing. Final point on that the wait list will be open on Friday which is today because this is when the show goes out yes it is indeed well how exciting I'm looking forward to a press release. Yes okay I guess I better do that. Yes this time I will deal with it at some point at some point now we uh didn't have a guest on last week we did have a guest on this week with Tim from New Zealand that was my impersonation of a New Zealand accent but it's very difficult to do with the word New Zealand so I'm not quite sure why I bothered but anyway apparently so Ashley Carmen says podcasts are shifting away from interviews in favour of monologues and co-hosts have you read this well I did because I put it in here well yes yeah I mean I'm not sure I agree totally but what she's trying to point out is that more and more YouTube type interview style podcasts have appeared and it's saturated the market and what corporate PR companies after the you know the rogonomics presidential election have said is that oh yes this is the platform you want to be on.

Sam Sethi: 39:04

You want to like Taylor Swift she didn't announce her new album other than on a podcast yes it was her boyfriend's podcast but yes and lots more people are seeing podcasts having better reach than than traditional mediums of radio and TV and so but she's saying that now there's sort of a backlash to this which is that the same people are appearing on the same shows multiple multiple times and that is resulting in I I guess boredom or or oversaturation. Jack Davenport at Goalhanger says it very well he said the rest is history and the rest is politics franchises he said his teams tend to design shows without interviews he says I don't want our pod success to live or die on someone external and the last thing I'll say on it is somebody once told me that when you do a podcast it's not the guest that they come back for each week it's you the host so we place so much emphasis on the guest but actually the fan of the show has a parasocial relationship with the host not a parasocial relationship with the guest the guest adds flavour but it isn't the reason that they would appear not come back the week following they'd still come back to you as the host yeah I I I would agree with that and I think you know I mean you know Todd and Rob's show they would always say that actually their interaction was way way lower when they had a guest.

James Cridland: 40:31

When it was just Todd and Rob then you know it was very clear that uh they would get a ton of interaction as soon as a guest appeared it was it was much harder. So I can I can certainly see that. I mean you know I I guess that the typical person out there listens to somewhere between four and six podcasts a week and so the likelihood of them hearing the same people is going to be quite low but you can certainly see that if you know smartless has the same person as WTF has the same person as you know Conan O'Brien needs a friend has the same person as blah blah blah well it's just going to get very very boring very very quickly. So I can I can understand now that actually you know there are quite a lot of people that just don't want the the same guests as everybody else and certainly you know seeing guests appearing in lots of different shows is probably a bad thing.

Sam Sethi: 41:25

Well you and I get a lot of PR releases saying would you like to interview X or Y and I I often look at them and go well what's the story behind it? Did James cover it in Pod News Daily? How can we make it a unique story? And if it fails any of those criteria I I tend to go no but thank you very much but next time yeah let us know. We've had three guests recently that I've rejected um three of them are are all close friends of the show I and and we love them dearly but the stories were one was they'd done the same interview on two other podcasts and I thought well why why why would we want to cover it again one was where you didn't get a press release and I was like the story's a bit old now anyway it's probably out in the ether so again we've I I tend to be pretty picky now on who we have because I want it to be somebody that the listeners of our show go oh I've not heard about that that's really new or that's interesting.

James Cridland: 42:23

Not oh yeah I remember hearing it on two other shows the other week yeah I'll skip past that and I think well why bother then yeah no indeed I and I mean and some of the some of the PR that we get is ridiculous. I mean my favorite uh I had this wonderful PR that uh I put a little bit of onto Mastodon the other day and it was it was just PR sent to dear name of publication or name of person that's literally what it was sent to and you're there thinking really could you not could you not even bother filling that filling that bit in but we are missing out on a company called Third Hemisphere which is very keen to talk to us about their APAC expansion and we we could we could have somebody on to talk about a closer look at the agency's new Singapore based fintech client that illustrates how its expertise is resonating across the region. So you know I why didn't you tell me I would have been straight on that one yes yes yes uh the agency is applying its experience to blockchain digital banking and energy trading innovations emerging in Singapore sorry can you say one more thing because I've been playing bingo and I nearly got the line yes exactly it's quite a thing so yes we get we get an awful lot of that and you know and I get an awful lot of these of these emails saying uh oh you mentioned you know something of four and a half years ago would you mind adding a link to our websites in that page?

Sam Sethi: 43:58

Yes I would and no I'm not going to so yes anyway let's uh right let's go around the world shall we now this is a really interesting story that hasn't I think reached across here in the West yet I found this yesterday there's a new law in China that's making it compulsory for content creators and influencers to hold a professional qualification in a field i.e a degree about the subject they're talking about so China are trying very hard to lock down or stop spammy type people oh yes let me tell you about global warming do you have any qualifications in global warming no no I just read a book once and they're trying to stop that and social media platforms are being forced to enforce it by actually validating that person before and they will face fines and creators must show in their content what studies or sources they used for their topic of conversation and also state if AI was used as well in any part of it. I think this is really interesting. What's your thoughts James?

James Cridland: 45:08

I think it's really interesting as well I I think it's quite fascinating that the I mean this is a a step by the cyberspace administration of China so already already you're there going oh well okay but no I I think if the law says that anyone creating content on sensitive so on sensitive topics like medicine law education or finance must hold formal qualifications in those fields and I think that I I don't really see a problem with that I'll be honest I don't really see an issue with that it would stop conversations about vaccine misinformation it would stop conversations around financial scams it would stop you know the conversations around you know weird legal advice and all of that kind of thing I've not got too much of a problem with that can you imagine can you imagine somebody like like Adam Curry listening to this right now and and and his his his his brain must be boiling how dare they they what what what what is it that we got we got told off for last week having a having we'll talk about them in a minute having having a British point of view or something or wanting the government to fix everything. But no I I think you know I mean the amount of pseudoscience that is out there the amount of fake cures the amount of you know of anti-vax stuff from people that I don't mind anti-vax stuff if you've got the evidence and you you know what you're talking about that's fine but if if but if you don't have that evidence and you don't have frankly a degree in what you're talking about or at least some form of understanding of what you're talking about I I think that I I I don't see the problem. So I think that's really interesting really interesting.

Sam Sethi: 47:03

Yeah well JFK Jr wouldn't be allowed to make any comments would he now but I think the problem problem in the West we is that 230 section 230 protects social media platforms from any commentary so that protection allows those platforms to exist where anyone can write any crap and they have the option to take it down which gives them that protection but in China it looks like the social media platforms have to pre-inforce it and I think look I I prefer this way as well. I think it will stop all you know the old days you'd have an idiot in the corner of a pub rambling about stuff and you just leave them rambling about stuff in the corner right and you can all call them the idiot and now they're called an influencer and they're on the internet and they're making money. Yeah I I think something's got to be done.

James Cridland: 47:54

And you know by looking at the idiot in the corner of the pub who who is you know smells and and uh hasn't brushed his hair for weeks and everything else you know how untrustworthy that person is online you don't have any of those cues there at all and I think yeah I think that there is definitely something to be said that if you want to talk about serious topics of those particular types you know medicine law education finance health you you must now provide proof of those pr professional credentials. I mean one one newspaper that's been talking about it the Times of India says no degree no discussion and I and I think now I I don't have a degree in anything but I would probably not turn around and try and give too much advice about health because you know I don't really know enough about it. So yeah I think that's uh I think that's really interesting really interesting.

Sam Sethi: 48:53

What's going on in Mexico? How are they doing with their podcast consumption over there?

James Cridland: 48:58

Yes there was some consumption data from Mexico it's a bit uh it's a bit difficult to compare with other podcast consumption data that we've got from other places quite apart from the fact that it doesn't actually talk about podcast consumption data at all but it does talk about audio consumption data like Spotify Amazon Music Apple or YouTube music it says that 77 million people which is 80% of everybody that has access to the internet in Mexico are using are using Spotify Amazon Apple or YouTube music and they're either consuming music podcasts or audiobooks on those I think that the more interesting thing though was how many people are paying because actually quite a lot of people are paying 14.3 million people in Mexico alone are paying for those services two thirds of of the of the Mexicans that have access to Spotify are paying for it. So there's clearly something there in terms of paid subscriptions for these uh services no I mean look I think having Spotify without a paid subscription or YouTube even without a paid subscription is such a poor experience and clearly you know Mexico's not a poor country anymore.

Sam Sethi: 50:17

I mean it has poor parts of it but there are you know extremely wealthy parts yeah I'd pay you pay yeah yeah yeah to see why yeah no I think I think that's really interesting.

James Cridland: 50:27

To the to the US Stroke Stockholm and ACAST uh firstly the US they've opened some brand new studios which are very nice the first person to use them was apparently Ariana Grande I'm not sure I believe that but anyway Ariana Grande I'm not sure did you just say I'm not sure that I necessarily believe that Ariana Grande was the first person to use the studios but I think the first person to be photographed in the studios is probably fine. But anyway it's in the heart of Soho in New York it's very smart. It's available for ACARS creators if you are one of those and there's all kinds of other things in there so that follows the ACARS studios in London which I think you went to uh the opening of those very nice so yeah so that's a smart thing and they have just released their interim financial report for quarter three twenty-five which is interesting the headline of it is strong profitable growth but what I found interesting in the actual numbers were that North America is going gangbusters at the moment up 58% year on year as you would expect from ACAST who are doing really well in North America Europe has always been the difficult one over the last couple of years Europe has either been you know slightly down or relatively steady this time round European growth has gone up by a quarter gone up by 27% so that's looking really good for ACAST they've made a profit which is nice they didn't make a profit this time last year in this quarter but they've made a profit this time of around three quarters of a million dollars and even their average revenue per listen which I think is a wonderful number that I think we should I ideally see from everyone but their average revenue per listen grew by a third to six cents a listen which sounds quite low but actually no that's a pretty big number so yeah so ACAR's doing really well in terms of the finances too now I like that metric.

Sam Sethi: 52:23

No I'm gonna nick that that's a very good one yes do hey why not plagiarism why not we when we interviewed Greg Glendate we talked about there were rumors of them refloating on the US stock market because they did their IPO super super early when they were just out of growth.

James Cridland: 52:47

So yeah I I suspect now that they're in profit and if they can do a couple more quarters of profit I suspect they will do another IPO yeah indeed and apparently we had the New York Studios as uh as an exclusive in this very show which I'm not sure any of us was quite expecting. But anyway uh if you want to go back and listen to the Greg Glenda interview you'll find it in this feed. It's episode 34 of season three or indeed if you prefer it better that way September the 19th you can go back and take a listen to that.

Sam Sethi: 53:17

Yes because we know that most people don't support series and episode numbers.

James Cridland: 53:21

Yes exactly exactly all right yes moving on Mr Balin yes he's moving he's moving where's he off to uh he is he is moving away from Wondery for the last few years he's moving to Sirius XM and it's uh a big deal worth apparently as much as 70 million dollars to Mr Balin or John Allen to give him his real name and yeah Sirius XM seems to be signing up an awful lot of interesting people at the moment and doing quite well from the from the disintegration of Wondery. So there's definitely something interesting going on there. But yeah so well done to the Mr Ballon podcast Strange, Dark and Mysterious 70 million allegedly the deal's worth that's quite a nice number. Yeah and the other uh thing uh which I uh saw which I thought was interesting in that is that Sirius XM have specifically said that they will be selling the advertising for the podcast yes but also for his YouTube channel as well and his YouTube channel is massive and I I didn't think that that was something that Sirius XM you know was was doing but no so very much focused on that side too last bit of weirdness we've talked about it and touched upon this before James Bending spoons the company in Italy that has StreamYard and Evernote weirdly has now confirmed that the AOL deal has gone through for 1.5 billion dollars. Yeah they're uh they're madness once one of the most valuable pieces of internet AOL has uh yes been bought by Bending Spoons the Bending Spoons playbook is buy a company put up the prices threefold because of the amount of of just attrition in terms of change it's very difficult to get people to change a company who they've used for a long long time so buy all of these old brands and just rack up the costs and don't bother investing in them anymore in terms of in terms of code and so here's another one but $2.8 billion for AOL that's quite that's quite a thing isn't it and they've and by the way AOL has eight million daily users eight million I mean that that that's the most amazing thing well my question is are they daily because is this a bit like the automated download in podcasting does does somebody's modem far up by mistake I mean I don't know well yes who knows I mean and that may just be AOL mail it may just be you know it may just be some of the other stuff in there as well but yeah but I I mean I didn't even realize I thought that AOL was still owned by a big US telco but it turned out that that it was sold in 2021 uh what was happening in 2021 we were probably looking the other way or not bothered yeah but yes no it's a a fascinating what a fascinating fascinating thing and of course they also own Vimeo we shouldn't forget they own we transfer as well as uh Evernote as well as Meetup and as well as as well as Squadcast the one with the duck that was Squadcast wasn't it yeah so yeah but I mean quite quite a company people news on the Pod News Weekly Review. Lots of people losing their jobs Amazon cutting 1400 corporate jobs warning of further cuts next year just within podcasting over the last year they have cut 110 jobs at Wandery in August they cut more jobs at Wonder in March they closed all of Wonder in Mexico and Brazil in February and so all of that has gone through apparently AI is going to be replacing some of these uh roles they're going to be lost across the business in terms of corporate jobs so people working in offices doing email jobs as my wife calls them those those are going to be lost of course the uh Amazon share price rose one percent on the news because everybody that works in the stock market is an arse and my favorite of all of this was that the cuts were announced the cuts of 1400 people were announced before they actually told their employees oh bless them imagine to make it worse what they did was they actually then sent a calendar invite and if your invite was 15 minutes long you were leaving and if it was half an hour you were staying oh my word anyway Amazon other stores are are available although I mean I've just bought two things from AliExpress over the last couple of days and um I'm sure AliExpress is no better but um but still but they we anyway there we are also uh in terms of job losses uh Headgun which is a comedy podcast network they've laid off uh a number of staff six staff earlier on in the month including interestingly their head of video Casey Donahue uh the company's 10 years old KCRW in Santa Monica has cut 10% of their staff as well one of the sneaky things that they've done they're a radio station as well as producing podcasts and one of the sneakiest things that they've done is that they looked at all of the DJs who've been with that radio station for the last in some cases 15 years and they have fired them all and then got some nice cheap young ones in instead bless them. That of course is being part partly driven by the lack of funding for public uh radio in the US so it's all cheery isn't it that's all nice uh YouTube also announcing voluntary layoffs and announcing an AI reorganisation and so lots of changes going on there. Accenture in in good news Accenture is cutting over 11,000 jobs.

Sam Sethi: 59:31

So at least that's something well yeah but but what made it worse was actually what they said was it's basically people at the bottom if you haven't got these skills we're not going to reskill you. That's it job done brilliant isn't it Accenture Accenture scary I mean oh you know obviously it's not a podcasting story but what's scary is when you've got a degree and you've just come out of university the first thing you want to do is get your feet into the workforce. And often companies like Accenture or or EY or you know any of those sort of consultancies have been a great training ground for young graduates to get into the workforce. That doesn't look like it's going to happen. They want people hitting the ground with skills.

James Cridland: 1:00:16

Yeah, no, indeed. Indeed. Now it's uh it's an it's uh it's an interesting time right now, isn't it? There is some good news though. There's vacancies at uh the Daily Mail Group in the UK, if you if you really want that. They're looking for an entertainment podcast producer, Jamie East, who isn't who's an excellent person, is looking uh for that. And some promotions going on in Adolycious and Audio Boom. They have uh merged their sales operation and given quite a lot of their team some some bigger jobs. So many congratulations to those folk there. Now, what I've thought was interesting, this is a sidebar, and again, nothing to do with podcasting, but what I thought was interesting is they sent a little sort of montage of the four people that were that were chosen there, and and I thought, isn't that a fascinating thing? If you look at the montage that they sent through, uh then the men have very large faces and the women are all zoomed back so that the women look smaller and less important than the men. And so one of the rather more tedious things that I always try and do is to zoom in, and I didn't quite manage it, but at least I managed it sort of somehow, is to actually zoom in so that all of the four people's faces are the same size, rather than the women looking small and inconspicuous and the and the men looking big and exciting. But I just thought that's a really interesting bit of sort of I mean, I don't want to use the word sexism because it it really isn't sexism. I mean, it's just it's just the way that the way that you take a photograph of a woman is different than you take a photograph of a man. But it does change, doesn't it, how people look in in a montage such as this.

Sam Sethi: 1:02:04

Never thought about that before. Yeah, it's really it's really interesting. So anyway. I'll go and look at people's LinkedIn profiles and see what they look like in a minute.

James Cridland: 1:02:11

Yeah, well, and and there are very Well maybe I'll get alive at the moment. And there are very good reasons why they do that. But yes, but for this sort of thing, no, I don't think it's uh I don't think it's a particularly good good uh plan. But anyway, events, ton of exciting events happening in the beginning of November, including the On Air Business Summit in LA, which is back talking about that on Air Fest itself, which is in Brooklyn in mid-February, has just issued a call for pitches. Uh so if you want to go and speak there, if you want to do a live podcast there, if you want to do some deep listening, that sounds exciting, then you can then you can pitch your stuff. More details in the Pod News newsletter this week as well. So that's a good thing. We're looking forward to hearing from Ashley after the LA Podcast Business Summit. And of course, Soundwaves also happening in November in uh Ireland.

Announcement: 1:03:06

The tech stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 1:03:10

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

Sam Sethi: 1:03:15

Seems that there's a lot of bots around, James. John Spurlock at OP3 has noticed an increased number of automated bots. What's going on?

James Cridland: 1:03:23

Yes, he has, and he's busy removing all of those automated bots, but because OP3 is all open source, you can actually see exactly how he's removing them. Quite a lot of people who are pretending to be browsers that are not browsers. And we've also seen, for example, Libsyn showing a big jump in web browsers downloading its shows. And so, you know, that there's clearly something going on in terms of browsers. Now, what I would say about OP3, and this is something that I didn't really understand or appreciate until only a week or so ago, you can download all of your download numbers from OP3, but you're actually downloading essentially an entire log file. So what you can do with that is you can go, okay, let's take a look at all of my browser traffic, but I want to only see my browser traffic from uh group them by country or group them by continent. And you can do all of that if you understand how pivot tables work, which is actually really easy. So you can just, you know, you can download all of the information, and I suddenly realized how powerful OP3 can be, because you can get so much detail out of it. I was there thinking, okay, all of the browsers that I have downloading my podcast, they're all going to be based in the US, because that's where most of the most of the compute, you know, EC2 systems are and everything else. I know that they're available in other countries, but that's where most of them are. So there must be an outlier there in terms of the US. No, there isn't. There must be an outlier, you know, with some of this data in some of these countries. No, there isn't. But it was really interesting being able to actually do some filters on that with the actual downloadable data in there. So I found that was really interesting. But yeah, web browsers downloading shows. What do you think is going on there, Sam?

Sam Sethi: 1:05:18

Oh, it's it's good old AI, isn't it? It's it's yeah. Yeah, I think it's a good thing. Don't think it's true fans. I'd love to think it was, but it's not.

James Cridland: 1:05:27

No, I think it's very much AI. I mean, you can spot TrueFans because you be because there's a referrer. If there's no referrer, but it's just a browser pretending to be a or or something pretending to be a browser, then I think that that begins to make it pretty obvious what's going on there. So yeah, no, I think it's uh I think it's really interesting.

Sam Sethi: 1:05:48

Now, MasterCard is poised to acquire Chicago-based crypto and stablecoin startup zero hash for nearly two billion dollars. This is on the back of Stripe acquiring Bridge for $1.1 billion earlier this year.

James Cridland: 1:06:03

Why should I care?

Sam Sethi: 1:06:04

Well, because I think we need to get to a model where micropayments can be done successfully and easily. And as much as I love using micropayments with a Lightning Network and all the fun and games around Keysender Ellen address, I think we'll end up moving more to a world of stable coins, digital coins fundamentally, that are government-backed or currency-backed. And again, it's a path to where we're going, I think, when you get MasterCard, one of the biggest online providers. What does the internet's money, I think you call it? So, you know, if they're going to, as a MasterCard company, then offer stablecoin from your MasterCard account, I think that's going to be the way to do it. You know, it's that simplicity of I'm going to get $10 into my MasterCard or my MasterCard account, and but I'm going to pay that in stablecoin because that's one of my options. I don't have to think about converting and uploading and KYC and everything else I have to do. Yeah, I just think it's the way it will go. And it's good to see if that's the way it's going to go, that MasterCard's jumped into the game.

James Cridland: 1:07:12

Indeed. Well, it'll be interesting to see what happens there. I still think that quite a lot of this is being driven by the antiquated US banking system rather than by anything more interesting and exciting. But but let's wait and see what happens there.

Sam Sethi: 1:07:27

Now, Adobe had an announcement or two. They've announced two things that I've seen. Adobe Firefly generates soundtrack, which I think is interesting because one of the things that Adobe's advertising has been focused on is that all of their AI stuff has been licensed. So you're not going to get sued by using their stuff. The implication being you might get sued by using other people's AI stuff because they haven't licensed the content. So generate soundtrack is a way for them to use basically a video where they'll analyze it and give you a soundtrack, or you can put some text in and it'll give you a soundtrack. Quite interesting how it does it, but the key thing is it's trained on fully licensed material to ensure commercial safety and licensing flexibility.

James Cridland: 1:08:14

Yes. And I think, you know, so they're playing around with this, they're playing around with speech generation as well. I believe that they're also doing something that squirts stuff directly into YouTube shorts and things like that. But yeah, more AI text-to-speech tools.

Sam Sethi: 1:08:32

I I'm gonna ping J. LeBeuf, who used to be at DScript, who now runs this all at Adobe. I think we should get him on the show and have a little chat. That would be nice, wouldn't it? Yeah, the thing that I wanted to make a commentary on, though, is you know, we we talk about Inception Point AI and we talk about AI voices, and we talked about the company in New Zealand doing it as well. And we're seeing more and more technology making it easier, simpler, you know, Wondercraft, Riverside, D Script all have it within there, enabling AI cloned voices, most of them using 11 labs, by the way. But is this the way if if if it's easier to do this and use AI voices and it gets better and better and better, what will happen? I mean, we we say we don't want it, you know, each week we say we this is not how we want to see podcasting evolve, and yet we see more tools evolving that will enable it and make it easier. I've been watching some videos, you know, on TikTok and stuff, and they're based on Sora's AI. And I swear, James, I cannot tell the difference now. There was Professor Brian Cox, and I couldn't tell you if it was actually Professor Brian Cox saying those words, or it's Professor Brian Cox being used as a lip sync to a text that was being put out. I couldn't tell you anymore.

James Cridland: 1:09:54

There is going to be a lot of people, certainly in the next five years or so, there's going to be a lot of people not really knowing what's true and what what isn't. And I think it's interesting having a look at, you know, the BBC has this BBC verify thing, which is all a little bit arrogant. The ABC has started doing something very similar here, trying to prove that videos are real, trying to prove that the data that people are sharing is uh real. But I mean, on the other side, we kind of need some of that now. Companies like Snopes and you know and similar are doing pretty well in terms of just being able to highlight some of this stuff is just wrong, and some of this stuff is does have some truth behind it.

Sam Sethi: 1:10:37

I think many people will be fooled, that's my worry, and then that that'll become an urban myth, and people will regurgitate it out in conversation. That's what I'm worried about. I think so. Now, AdSwiz have done something very interesting, James. They've come up with something called Audio Pixel. What's that?

James Cridland: 1:10:53

Well, so Audio Pixel is AdSwiz's measurement tool which matches users who heard the ads to the users who, you know, bought bought the product or visited the website or made a purchase. There are quite a lot of these around. Podscribe has something similar, and there are many more. I think what what the article that I read was basically saying is that sometimes, you know, I mean, in the in the in the past, it used to be the case that advertisers were told, make sure that your audience hears your ad three times. And in fact, I may have mentioned this in previous shows. Make sure that people hear your ad three times at least during the buying cycle, because otherwise your ad is a waste of money. That's not a maximum of three, that's a minimum of three. But ads what ads with is basically saying is look, we've actually got the data here where we can not just guess at that, but we can actually get that correct. We can actually show you with this audio pixel thing. So it's a bit of a it's a bit of a push for their audio pixel product, but I do think it's interesting that there is this data out there, and this data can help advertisers do an awful lot. I mean, again, we've heard from uh Oxford Road, which has claimed that 50% of ad buyers say that that say that they don't have enough data in terms of how well a podcast ad works. But you have a look at things like AudioPixel and Podscribe and others, and you go, well, actually, and Magellan AI, I should mention as well. And you go, well, actually, uh, you know, the these tools do give you quite a lot of data, such as that. So is that really the issue? But that's certainly what people seem to be blaming right now. Moving on, James. There was a there was a silence there. Well, I I was I was half expecting a conversation about about how advertising is all nonsense. No, no, no.

Sam Sethi: 1:13:00

I've been told by multiple people. I wish I wish I could say why I really think it, but I can't yet, because there's something I'm developing. And uh well, there you go. Because I I still fundamentally believe that it's it's an element of it's the way it's always been, so let's always do it. There's a trust element to it, yes, but I don't know if that's the right map method or model. But anyway, I'll keep my powder dry for now.

James Cridland: 1:13:27

Yes, and and and as is very clear, there are a lot of people that depend on the advertising world working the way that it currently does. So we should possibly not forget that.

Announcement: 1:13:38

Boostergram, Boostergram, Booster, Super Comments, Apps, Fan mail, fan mail, super chats, and email. Our favorite time of the week, it's the Pod News Weekly Review inbox.

James Cridland: 1:13:52

Yes, 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 or boosts everywhere else. Yes. Or email, and we share any money that we make as well. I thought we'd got some fan mails this week, but seemingly not. So there we are. But if you want to send us a fan mail, then just click that button in your podcast app. You'll find it in the in the uh show notes for this very show. It says something like send Sam and James a fan mail or send Sam and James a text or something like that. And if you press that, then you can send us a message, and that would be a lovely thing. What boosts stroke super comments have we got?

Sam Sethi: 1:14:32

Um can I just point out bar one? They're all super comments.

James Cridland: 1:14:36

Anyway, moving on. Yes, just thought a lot of true fans in here. Anybody would think that the CEO of True Fans is a co-presenter on this very show. I don't believe that's the reason.

Sam Sethi: 1:14:50

Um anyway, Neil Bellio sent us 596 sats. Uh, I agree with about the self-interest aspect of Low Street's approach. Nothing about Harry himself, but he does strike me as one of those podcasting bros who are trying to create a problem that they can then solve at a large profit. I'm not sure. Uh Harry's a good chap. What problem's he trying to create, James?

James Cridland: 1:15:10

Yeah, I think I mean, I think the point that I was saying is that the the and the self-interest aspects that I was saying is that if you are a branded podcast maker, then clearly you earn more money if you are making video than if you're just making audio. And so, therefore, from all of these companies' points of views, and this may go for Podnos as well from from Neil Vellio's company, but for any one of those companies, they have a vested interest in promoting video because they can earn more money per client from the video. So I think that there is definitely some self-interest there. I think that Harry is one of the good guys, and I think, you know, by and large, and I think that you know he yeah he did a relatively good job there. So nothing against Harry. I think probably more against some of these companies who are, you know, promoting video as the future just purely because they can make more money out of that, and I suppose why not?

Sam Sethi: 1:16:08

We got from RW Nash, a thousand sats, thank you very much on Fountain. Podcasting is better on GMT.

James Cridland: 1:16:14

Yes, Greenwich Meantime, hurrah. Yes, because you have just changed clocks, haven't you? Yes. We we haven't we haven't changed clocks here because Brisbane, we don't change clocks, mate. I will confuse the cows. So so we don't do any of that. And that is fun because it means that Pod News comes out, I think, an hour earlier now in the US and in the UK. And I I just don't have to worry about changing the the time on the on the oven and the you know and and the the timer for the uh for the swimming pool and everything else because we we never we never change any of the clock. No, they're all connected. They're certainly not. The one in well, I mean I'm sure the one in your oven, you know. Yeah, I'm sure that that one is connected. I'm sure it's I'm sure it's the top of the range Aga. Uh no, no, no.

Sam Sethi: 1:17:05

Melee, melee for all the brands, and Auger is the cooker. Yeah, you're right.

James Cridland: 1:17:10

Yeah, actually, it's melee for me as well. Bag of uh well, a row of sticks, apparently. Yes, yes, thank you to uh Lyceum. He was asking from the Pod News Daily, where I quietly got away with playing a little bit of Barbie Girl by Aqua, and he said, um, he said, Is that really it? Is that Barbie Girl by Aqua from Denmark? Yes, it was. Because I was talking about the ridiculous things that Mattel were doing, trying to close down a podcast called Coffee with Ken, uh, which was a finance podcast because the man was called Ken. So goodness me. So there we are. So thank you, Lyceum. And he also pings David John Clark, aka the late bloomer actor, because I think he's just overtaken um him as a super listener or whatever it is that you call it, a captain, a superfan. Super fan. There you go. There you go. So there's thing everybody has to be super, don't they? And another 99 from Lyceum, which is oh no, another 222, which is a row of ducks, a small row of ducks. Could this be a task for the podcast standards project? I see a blog post with the title A Process for Adopting New Podcast Standards. Don't get Sam all riled up again, otherwise, this podcast will never finish. So, Lyceum, thank you for your many, for your many sats. Uh, much uh appreciated. And thank you also to the excellent power supporters, all 23 of you. This is where you can really support us and support us really well. People like James, like uh James Burt, uh, John McDermott, Brian's Ents, and Brian Ensminger, to name but three. Just go along to weekly.podnews.net uh and click on the support button, and that would be a lovely thing. So uh it's been a big week for you this week, hasn't it, Sam?

Sam Sethi: 1:18:57

Hmm. Well, it's getting there. Yeah. We're opening up the wait list now for TrueFans hosting. Yeah, it's yeah, we'll see how it goes. Look, I'm I'm not going to scream and shout, but we've now done the switching. That works really well. We've got it all tested. So fanzone, our own podcast was moved across. You can now upload. We did a podping out, so we did as an app, we had podping in. So it's essential to have podping out. And as I said, we've come up with some secret source about how we can track and stream content rather than download content, and so that has a double whammy one in terms of bandwidth costs, but also in terms of the way that we can measure content from not just true fans but any platform.

James Cridland: 1:19:47

Well, that'll be interesting. Interesting to see how all of that bit works, which I'm sure it's a good thing. So what's happened for you, James? We'll do that. So, what's happened for me? I had so we had a massive great big storm on Sunday with up to 90 kilometres an hour winds, which is which is quite fast, and lots of trees fell over, and the trees fell onto the power lines, and we were without power in this house for 58 hours. Jesus. So it was I think Pod News on Monday was was recorded literally in candlelight. I had a I had a laptop, I had a mobile phone, which was connected to well, the mobile phone was on the window because I think our local our local sales site had fallen over as well. So yeah, that was not fun. But on the plus side, uh on the beginning of the so we lost power on the Sunday night, the beginning of the Monday morning, I actually drove to one of the local car dealers and I picked up a little a little cable which allows me to run the entire house from the car. So so if we lose power again, then I've actually got I've actually now got now got a generator in the form of a car to keep everything going and particularly keeping the you know the fridge and the freezer and all that kind of stuff going, but also some uh some air conditioning because Monday was my goodness, it was hot and incredibly humid. It went up to 37 Celsius, so mid-90s Fahrenheit. It was incredibly hot, and of course, no air conditioning, no fans, nothing like that. So uh yeah, so it's been uh it's been an entertaining start of the week. And as I speak to you now, we are doing some packing, getting ready to go to Sydney for a day, going down to see the popular Asian K-pop group called Twice, and you might be thinking to yourself, is Twice a, you know, is it just uh a two-girl group? And the answer is no, it's nine people. Uh right, and some of them are from Japan, some are from Korea, one of them is from Taiwan, one of them is from India, and I think one of them is from the US. So, yeah, there's a thing. So we're off to watch a K-pop concert. That'll be fun, won't it? Uh, and then coming back on the Sunday.

Sam Sethi: 1:22:08

Oh, tell me you've got a 12-year-old girl without telling me you've got a 12-year-old girl.

James Cridland: 1:22:12

Correct, correct. That is her birthday excitement uh is going down to Sydney for that. So, yes, I'm I'm not quite sure. Don't catch COVID. I know, I'm not quite sure how all of that is going to work. But anyway, that should be fun, shouldn't it? And that is it for this week. All of our podcast stories taken from the Pod News Daily Newsletter at Podnews.net.

Sam Sethi: 1:22:35

You can support this show by streaming stats. You can give us feedback using the Buzzsprout fan mail link in our show notes, and you can send us a super comment or a boost, become a power supporter instead, like the 23andMe and a super fan, if you want, or a power fan. What are we what are we calling them on here? Power fans, no, uh power supporters. Oh supporters. Yes, yes. I'll get that blog post started, Lyceum, on what we should all be calling these things. Correct. Correct, yes. Weekly.podnews.net. James is now editing it.

James Cridland: 1:23:07

Yes, editing it in the Google Doc. Uh, our music is might as well get this right. Our music is from TF Studios, our voiceover is Sheila T. Our audio is recorded using CleanFeed, and we edit with Hindenburg, and we're hosted and sponsored by Buzz Sprout. Start podcasting, keep podcasting.

Announcement: 1:23:23

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