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

James Cridland 0:11

I'm James Cridland, the editor of Pod news, and I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO of Truefans .

Dan Misener 0:16

You open up that Spotify app on the front page. There's an awful lot of autoplaying video. So if you linger just for a few moments over one of those video thumbnails, it'll start to play. And you, Sam, will count as a listener or viewer, and you will count as a play.

James Cridland 0:34

It's ridiculous. Dan Meisner gets Sam all worked up on why a play isn't enough to measure your podcasts. Plus, Patreon becomes the latest to offer free podcast hosting. This podcast is sponsored by Buzz Sprout with a tool supporting community to ensure you keep podcasting. Start podcasting, keep podcasting with BugSprout.com.

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From your daily

Interview: Bumper's Dan Misener

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newsletter, the Pod news Weekly Review.

Sam Sethi 0:59

Let's get on. We've got a bumper edition this week. Ho ho. So let's start off with me asking you a quick question, James. If I asked you what does 263,632 that's a palindrome, nearly. What does that mean to Pod Newsweekly?

James Cridland 1:14

What does it mean to the Pod News Weekly Review? I mean, well, I can see it in the in the show notes. So I could tell you, but why don't you put us out of our misery?

Sam Sethi 1:25

Well, that's the total download number that Pod Newsweekly's had according to Boss Sprouts Analytics, which is great. A quarter of a million. But what we don't have is unique play numbers. What we don't have is our total listen time. What we don't have is our retention number. Now, do you think those are important metrics that we would want?

James Cridland 1:47

Yes, I think they're pretty important because you can see what works, what doesn't in a episode as well, which I always find quite interesting too. So uh yes, definitely.

Sam Sethi 1:57

So last week we talked about Bumper announcing a new metric that they use with their clients called loyalty or retention. And it's basically the number of repeat listeners, not just the number of new listeners or people who just come along once and have a listen to your podcast and never come back again. And that was Dan Meisner from Bumper. And I thought, you know, it'd be lovely to get him on the show to talk about all of these different metrics. What have we got? You know, what is the download? Because he famously came up with the download is not a play. So I started off by asking Dan, who is Bumper?

Dan Misener 2:32

Bumper is a podcast data and growth company, and we focus on both of those pieces. Using better data to make smarter decisions about growth. So we work with publishers, we work with networks, we work with some independents, and we help them increase the reach of their shows, impact the success of their shows.

Sam Sethi 2:55

It's probably about a year and a half ago when you came out famously and said a download is not a play, and set the cat amongst the pigeon in the industry by making people sit up and look at that metric and go, actually, yes, you're right. 10,000 downloads is not the same as a hundred plays. And I think Apple then, with the Apple Apocalypse, when they changed the metrics and everyone's download numbers were given a massive haircut. Since then, of course, you've been developing Bumper much further. So what have you been doing since that point going forward?

Dan Misener 3:26

Yeah, you're right in that our focus has been on numbers other than the download. We tend to look at podcast success through the lens of people, how many actual human beings, real people, spent time with your show. So we talk about people numbers, we talk about playback numbers, which is a human being with intent hitting the play button because they wanted to spend time with a show. And then we look at listen time numbers, time spent numbers. And that is an aggregate number, but also you can use that aggregate number to create averages, average time per listener, average time per listener per episode, average time per listener per episode per week, you know, those kinds of measures. So people, playback, and time spent. And one of the things that we've been really focused on over the past couple of weeks has been a dimension of that people and playback number, which is what we're calling loyalty. So, not just how many people did I reach, but how frequently are they choosing to spend time with me? How frequently are they coming back for more? So I can know how many people hit play on my show in the month of November 2025, but did they all come once and not return? Or did they hit play on every single episode in my back catalog, or somewhere in between? So we've been really interested in this sort of repeat listener number, or what we're framing as kind of a loyalty or a lifetime value number. How many times do people choose to spend time with us? And that's, as we're learning, quite different show to show, depending on things like release cadence, release frequency, volume of output. A daily show gets way more bites at the apple to have people return than a weekly show.

Sam Sethi 5:31

And what does that tell the creator? I mean, once they know that data point, what can they do with it? What's the value of it?

Dan Misener 5:39

I think the main value is understanding when you're trying to grow, do we have a new listener challenge or do we have a returning listener challenge? Those are very different challenges. If you don't have enough new people coming to your show to sample it, to kick the tires, to try it out, to see if it suits their taste or fits a role in their life, well, that's one set of interventions. And those are largely marketing interventions. We need more people, more net new listeners to try our show. The other problem that a lot of shows run into is not that they have a new listener problem, they have a loyalty problem or they have a returning listener problem, which is well, we had a whole lot of one and done listeners who came in, hit play, and chose not to come back a second or third or fifth or tenth or twentieth time. And so the loyalty score that we've built into the bumper dashboard, along with that new listener and returning listener breakdown, is a really powerful way to understand do I have a new listener problem, in which case I might need to do some different things or find some new marketing tactics? Or do I have a returning listener problem, which is lots of people coming in for the first time who don't come back for a second time? And one of the things that we really got interested in when we started digging into this was the impact of various marketing tactics. I'm sure you've seen in Spotify's first party app on mobile. If you open up that Spotify app on the front page, there's an awful lot of video that is presented to users, and quite a lot of it is autoplaying video, right? So if you linger just for a few moments over one of those video thumbnails, it'll come to life, it'll start to play. And you, Sam, will count as a listener or viewer, and you will count as a player. Simply by lingering on that video preview for a short amount of time. And so we work with a number of teams who have benefited from a whole lot of exposure through features like Spotify's front page. You could also say the same thing about any editorial feature: the front page of Apple, the front page of Pocketcasts. Many of these apps have sort of discovery features that put your show in front of a whole lot of net new people. And so we started wondering how valuable is that really? Because of course, you get a nice short-term spike in the number of people or the total number of plays or playback events. But does it last? Do they come back for a second time, for a third time, for a fifth time? And what we've learned is that it's very different tactic to tactic or opportunity to opportunity. Very often, what's good for a short-term spike in net new listeners, getting a whole bunch of people in front of your show who have never seen or played it before, what's good for that net new listener number isn't always great for the returning listener number. And again, the loyalty score, which is a way of understanding how frequently people come back again and again, or how many people fail to come back, that can really help you assess the value of some of those short-term wins that are really excited to, you know, when they happen. It's easy to be excited when you get a big burst of new downloads or new plays or new listeners showing up in any of these provider dashboards. But does it last? That's what we were trying to get at.

Sam Sethi 9:29

So this is the traditional funnel model, isn't it? We spend a lot of money getting in the new listener. And what you're saying is, are they sticking around? Is it sticky? Because everyone I've talked to said, do you want to use the algorithms of TikTok and shorts and reels and to get new people in, and then YouTube and Spotify to get more algorithmic discovery? And then of course, everyone stays around then. And what you're highlighting really is that everyone doesn't stay around. So once you've got that, how can you change the podcast? Do you look at the histogram of it? Do you say, did they stay around for the first quarter? Did they stay around in the second? Was it that first ad that annoyed them? Was it the intro that really annoyed them? Do you have that data as well that goes beyond just the they came, they saw, they left?

Dan Misener 10:16

I love that you're mentioning some of these other measures, minute by minute retention or average time spent per listener, per episode, those kinds of things. All of this, of course, works together. And when Bumper works with a team, we're often looking at many parts of the elephant, trying to touch the whole and understand the whole thing. And yes, these are all very obviously interrelated. Large number of net new listeners come in through a promotion. Most likely your average listen time on the topmost episode in your feed is not going to be as strong as a back catalog episode that didn't have a large number of net new listeners come to it. So, yes, there's absolutely an interrelated nature to these things. But I think what I'm most interested in is what do we do with this data and how do we take action on it? And so when we look at a show and we see that the loyalty number is not where we would like it to be, the question becomes what can we do to encourage people to come back again? What can we do to encourage people to spend more occasions with us to listen to the next episode or to explore the back catalog or to use some of the features that are built into podcast apps for exploring related episodes? And when you look at it through that lens, you know, what are we actually going to change? If we want our loyalty number to go up, the only way you make the loyalty number go up is get more people to come back. And so the question is then what are the tactics that we use to encourage people to come back? And if you're looking at it in that way, you can really easily spot opportunities. So if you're on a production schedule such that you know what's coming up on the next episode, maybe mention that in today's episode. Give people something to look forward to, remind people what's coming up so that they have something to look forward to and to come back and spend time. If you've got a deep back catalog full of episodes that might still be relevant to somebody who is brand new to your show today, what have you done to steer them to those episodes? You could put links to previous related episodes in your show notes or your episode notes. Some of the podcast apps have playlisting features that allow you to put together a collection, you know, a starter pack of episodes for a net new listener that encourage them to explore that back catalog. I've worked on shows where they will specifically call out previous episodes and encourage people to go listen to those, direct them to the show notes, direct them to a playlist. And so there's a lot of really tactical things that if you're looking for opportunities to increase the loyalty score, you're really just asking, how can we get people to spend more time with us? And through that lens, the opportunities kind of present themselves. And when you fail to do those things, you can notice, oh, wait a minute, our loyalty score has stayed flat and we would like it to increase, but we never gave people a reason to come back next week, or we never gave people a reason to dig into the back catalog, or we never reminded people of a really killer episode from five years ago that's highly relevant to today's guest appearance. All those kinds of really classic, almost radio style pitching ahead tactics.

Sam Sethi 13:50

Yeah. In don't go away after the break, we'll be having a really good show. Yes, we remember those tactics.

Dan Misener 13:59

There's a whole playbook from radio, and I come from the world of radio, where it's all about can we get people through the news break? Can we get people to the other side of the ad break? Can we get an extra quarter hour out of somebody? Many of those techniques are very applicable to podcasting, even if what you're pitching ahead to is not the next hour, but it's tomorrow's episode, next week's episode, or the special series that you're launching for the new year.

Sam Sethi 14:30

I think you can still do it within episode, even. Absolutely. Hey, later on we'll be talking about this, but stick around. First of all, we're going to tell you about this, this, this. Yes. Those tactics are still very credible. So who, apart from Bumper, is measuring this? Because nine times out of ten, the lazy answer to any question is how many downloads have you got as a metric? Because that's what advertisers want, that's what every host gives you. It's just a simple default number. And then when you do actually get a play number, most creators don't want that because guess what? That play number is much smaller than the download number and it doesn't sound so good. So, you know, are creators going, Oh, I'd I'd quite like to actually be the blind man still and not know what my metrics are because actually, if I do know what my metrics are, I think I might just pack up and go home because it's too scary.

Dan Misener 15:21

We're really fortunate here at Bumper in that most of the teams we work with are invested for the long term in the health of their shows, their networks, and the relationships that they have with their audiences. And so, yes, if you're looking for quick wins because you need to boost a download number before the end of the quarter in order to hit some target that your sales team has made, loyalty is probably not your primary KPI. Nor is the people number the verified listener number, nor is your retention on average throughout an episode. No, you care about downloads, you care about impressions that are inserted into downloads, you care about those revenue-related metrics. And I'm not trying to downplay the importance of those. We need sales teams, lots of teams need revenue in order to support the people who work on the show, support their families. Like I don't want to discount that. But I will say I'm really fortunate because most of the teams that we're working with want to know about the long-term health of their relationships with their audiences. And something like a loyalty number, whether we're looking at it in the short term. Hey Sam, how many times did people listen to Pod News Weekly Review last month versus the lifetime number? You can actually look at those two different numbers, the short-term number and the long-term number, and you can understand really nuanced things about the trajectory of your growth as a show and the health of your relationships with your audiences. And so if your long-term loyalty, your lifetime value score is going up, and your shorter term last week or last month number is going up, congratulations. You've got really healthy growth because you are sticky among your current audience and you are sticky among the entire audience that's ever hit play on your show. That's what we want. Conversely, if last month's number is down and your lifetime number is down, I'm sorry to say your show is in free fall. And last month's audience, your sort of current audience, your most recent active audience, if they're less sticky, they're coming back less frequently, and your lifetime number is also being pulled down by those people. That's bad news. And then there are, of course, in-betweens that can measure things like, well, we introduced our show to a lot of brand new people, which temporarily depressed our lifetime number, but the current audience is still as sticky as they ever were. Growth dilution, you could call that. You got to get in front of some tire kickers if you want to reach anybody who's likely to come back. And then there's the other really, really scary one, which is coasting on past glory. You are propped up by the long-term habitual listening of your diehard fans, but your more recent audience is not coming back as regularly or not coming back. And so it can be really easy to fool yourself into thinking we're growing when that growth is really just the remnants of a declining audience. My friend Tom Webster, it sounds profitable, is very, very fond of acknowledging the trap that some podcasters find themselves in, which is the trap of super serving a declining audience. If your loyalty number is going up, if your audience as a whole is becoming ever more loyal, that sounds like a good thing. And it usually is. Unless the audience overall is declining. That is a trap that leads to super serving a declining audience. That is a trap that we know the end result of, which is a very small group of very happy people, a very loyal group that is getting ever and ever smaller. And for most shows, they don't want to super serve an ever-declining audience. They're interested in growing, increasing the reach, increasing the impact, increasing the success of their show. And so these loyalty numbers, both the short-term and the longer-term loyalty numbers, when taken together, are a really powerful barometer for are we growing in a healthy way? Are we declining in an unhealthy way? Or are we at risk of fooling ourselves into thinking that our loyal audience is an attribute when in fact that loyal audience is unlikely to be able to tell you how to get new people in front of your show?

Sam Sethi 20:07

Are you going to make the way you calculate the loyalty number a public thing, or is that going to say the secret source within Bumper?

Dan Misener 20:17

There is very little that is secret about it. And if you go to a blog post that I wrote on this subject, specifically about loyalty, we spell out exactly how you can do it by hand. It's a pain in the neck to calculate by hand. This is a number, Sam, that is derived from the verified listener number that we get from Apple and from Spotify. And it's just a very little bit of set theory, like a small amount of arithmetic that you need to do to calculate this. The pain in the neck part is if you want to know if your loyalty score is moving, you've got to calculate it for every single calendar day that your show has ever been in market, which for some shows that have been around for a couple of years is quite a lot of arithmetic, not complicated arithmetic, but the kind of arithmetic that I like our dashboard to do. So if you're a single independent producer and you're working on one show, this is very calculable by yourself. And I've written out how you can do it. But for most enterprise podcasters, if you're dealing with a network, if you're dealing with dozens or hundreds of shows, it's not the sort of thing I would necessarily recommend spending all your time calculating every single day for every show that you are working on. So we've built it kind of as a convenience feature, but there's I mean, it's basic set theory, not complicated.

Sam Sethi 21:36

So let's be clear. The download number is a great number to still have. The unique plays is still a number that we want. The total listen time is a number we want. We want to know how many apps are actually serving your episode. And we want to know also how many new users have come to that episode recently and how many users are retained within that episode as a loyal fan going forward. And then the sort of metrics that we start to pan out. And that's I think what your dashboard offers, right?

Dan Misener 22:11

We're trying to help people understand what the audiences are telling them when audiences vote with their play buttons. I think it's so easy to pay a lot of attention to the kind of feedback that comes in through social, that comes in through comments, that comes in through boosts. There's lots of ways that people can type words into a box and tell a creator what they think of the show. And our very strong belief is that many audience members never write in, never leave a comment, never engage on social, don't send an email, but they're telling us things every time they hit play or choose not to hit play. And if we can pay attention to what the audiences are telling us when they vote with their play buttons, that helps us make better decisions as podcast producers, as podcast hosts or talent. And for people who run podcast businesses, it's worth paying attention to the very silent majority of people who are engaging with a show, but not necessarily the squeaky wheels who write in every week. I love squeaky wheels who write in every week, but they are not the majority.

Sam Sethi 23:19

Will you be extending it beyond getting the data from Spotify and Apple? Will you be looking at YouTube, any other platforms?

Dan Misener 23:26

We would love to do that. And it's really a question of the availability of the data. So I know you've had John Spurlock on the show to talk about SPC, which is his proposed way of having more podcast apps send telemetry back to creators around things like minute by minute, second by second retention throughout an episode or total number of listeners per episode. What we're talking about when we talk about loyalty fits very neatly into John's SPC framework. You can use some of those same numbers to get to where we're at with loyalty. So we'd love to see more of that. You mentioned YouTube specifically. One of the challenges with YouTube is that the data available in YouTube Studio is very rich, but what's available through YouTube's analytics API is a pretty cut-down version of what you can get. And one of the missing ingredients for YouTube that we need in order to calculate loyalty is a people number. You can get it from YouTube Studio, sort of estimated users or estimated viewers is the way they refer to it. And they don't make that available through YouTube's official analytics API. So I would love more data because I would love to be able to extend this beyond Apple and Spotify. But when we look at most of the shows that we're working with, Apple and Spotify is certainly not the totality of the consumption audience, the listening audience, the viewing audience, not the totality, but directionally enough to be useful. And what's fascinating to me is when we look at the loyalty scores between Apple and Spotify, for many shows, they line up really neatly, week to week, month to month. And that to me is validating because Apple system doesn't talk to Spotify's system, Spotify system doesn't talk to Apple system. These are siloed data sets. But when you have audiences in common across those platforms and the common denominator is did we make a good show? Did we make a good episode? Did we give reasons to people to come back again and again? The numbers kind of move together in many cases in lockstep, which I find hugely validating. A good show is a good show, is a good show.

Sam Sethi 25:41

So if anyone wants to find out more about bumper, where would they go?

Dan Misener 25:45

Wearebumper.com is our website and the dashboard product that you've been mentioning, we built all of these loyalty scores into it, features listen time, features the verified listener number, all of these sort of deeper, I would argue, more useful insights that you can pull out of some of the available podcast data. That's available to anybody who wants to sign up. I think we have a trial. You can just click, sign up, connect your shows. And if you want to take a peek at some of what we've been talking about, it's all in there. So wearebumper.com, and that'll get you to the bumper dashboard where you can sign up.

Sam Sethi 26:20

I think James said our loyalty number was looking good. So phew, we're okay. But we better check.

Dan Misener 26:25

I've got it up on my screen right now. I think you should be proud.

Sam Sethi 26:29

Okay, phew. Thank you very much, loyal listeners. Thank you very much as also to Dan Meisner. Thanks a lot. It's always great seeing you, Dan.

Dan Misener 26:36

All right, great to see you, Sam.

James Cridland 26:38

And the scores are in from our retention from last week, uh, because I I went to have a look at it on the BAPA dashboard before we have that. What was really interesting is two little jumps in Spotify. One jump was about 45 minutes in last week's episode, which was a chapter called Two Podcast Hosts to Avoid. And I thought, oh well, they would have been skipping to that. But then of course, what I noticed is that just before then we had Russell being interviewed, and Russell's interview may not have been for everybody. So perhaps people were skipping Russell there. Similarly, audio is still king was another sort of jump in the Spotify retention numbers. But perhaps it was people skipping our thoughts on diversity, because there are some people that don't believe that that's particularly interesting or important. So yeah, I thought I thought, you know, very interesting looking at where people are skipping, where people are staying through the show, always worth a peek.

Sam Sethi 27:39

Now you can, as Dan said, sign up for free to Bumper and go and have a look at it. I think it's a seven-day sign up for free. Dan kindly did say though, James, that our show should be very proud of our retention numbers. So I I I take that as a good thing.

James Cridland 27:55

Excellent. Well, I'm pleased to hear that Dan thinks that we're doing all okay.

Sam Sethi 27:59

Good.

More stats from PodAnalyst

Sam Sethi 28:00

Now, you had a little one-line article in Pod News Daily and it simply said the podcast tech stack, which is a substack blog, interviewed George Legine, founder of Pod Analyst who might fix podcast data. I I sort of click on all the all the links and I go, I wonder if this one's going to be an interesting one. I found the actual blog post super interesting. It's about a guy who I didn't really know, but he was one of the people who engineered the iOS radio broadcasting app, which was sold to radio.co over in Manchester here. And he also did a lot of work for Soundstacks. Okay, he's got some good engineering creds. And then what he started to do was look at the same challenges that Bumper are looking at, which is where should you be putting your time and energy in terms of analytics? And his view is not in downloads, not in vague starts, not in generic retention, but in actual listener behaviour. I don't know, did you follow through the link or did you just put the story up? I don't know how far you read the actual blog post.

James Cridland 29:06

It's a really good product that he has ended up making. It's called Podanalyst.com. And again, lots of detail in there, and as you would expect, Pod News Daily and the Pod News Weekly Review are both plugged into there as well. So we've got all of our data. George was uh excited when I signed up, so that was a good thing. And again, lots and lots and lots of interesting data. What I thought was particularly interesting in Pod Analyst, apart from the fact that it's currently free if you want to sign up while it's still in beta. What I thought was particularly interesting is that it gives us our retention numbers for last week's show, but it also tells us that we are not doing quite as well as other shows on the platform. And that is, I think, really interesting. So you can see here that, for example, 50%. Through for last week's episode. We retained 42% of our audience, which is apparently worse than 81% of everybody. I know.

Sam Sethi 30:11

Who'd have thought it? God, it's going to be awful after this bank holiday then in America.

James Cridland 30:16

I know, exactly. Exactly. After this public holiday, because of course the banks are always on holiday, aren't they? But yes, so some really interesting data. So we're looking forward to speaking to George next week.

Sam Sethi 30:27

Indeed, yes. He was very excited about that as well. So I think one of the things that ended that blog post, and I highly recommend people do read it, is he puts retention, not downloads, is the new game, which mirrors exactly what Bumper is saying as well.

James Cridland 30:43

Yeah, I mean retention and audience as well, obviously. Retention is fine if you've only got one person. But um but uh number of audience is also is also very helpful. But yeah, no, really good. So very much looking forward to learning more about that, and you can sign up to that as well.

Sam Sethi 31:00

Now,

Patreon launches podcast hosting

Sam Sethi 31:01

this week, Patreon launches RSS-based podcast hosting for its users. Tell me more.

James Cridland 31:06

They do, and it's free podcast hosting if you are on Patreon. One of the things, interestingly, that they say is that you can insert previews of your paid episodes in your public RSS feed to help more listeners discover and upgrade to your paid membership, which of course Patreon does. I don't know quite how they do that, but I thought it was interesting, you know, interesting, for example, seeing that the podcast, the podcast namespace is in their feeds, although they're not supporting any podcasting 2.0 features quite yet. Interesting that they're using Cloudflare as their CDN, which is a nice thing. Also interesting, I noticed Evo Terra has spotted that it works well with serialized content as well. So fiction podcasters will be doing pretty well. What have you seen with uh Patreon's uh hosting, Sam?

Sam Sethi 31:56

Well, the first thing I did was I took the sample feed that you put in Pod News Daily and I put it straight into TrueFans and it worked. There was nothing unique about it. What it did have was that clip saying about getting premium content. So I've got a load of questions. First of all, why are they doing this, James? Why are they getting into hosting? What's the benefit to Patreon?

James Cridland 32:20

I guess it's the same benefit as Riverside had of being, you know, a one-stop shop. So it's just easier, you don't have to download a piece of audio and stick it somewhere else and everything else. It's just a one-stop shop. This is where all of my content lives. And what presumably Patreon wants to avoid is for you to use something like Beamly or Supporting Cast and then have a membership over there as well. And so anything that Patreon can do to raise the number of supporters, you know, that that will obviously please everybody. So I'm guessing that that's the the the reason why they're doing it.

Sam Sethi 33:00

Okay, so the feed that I put into TrueFans was an open feed, it could have gone into any app. They also provide private feeds. So the traditional Patreon model is I go there, I pay for some digital content, I get a private feed, and I can put that into my app. Now, TrueFans doesn't support that, but s overcast and and pocket casts do as an example. So you could then use up private content. My question to you, James, is how are they going to combine open RSS with private feeds in the same RSS feed?

James Cridland 33:35

Well, they're not. I think what they're doing is they are promoting the fact that, oh, look, here is here is the audio that you could get if you signed up to the private feed. So it's pretty well the same as everywhere else, the same as supporting cast, the same as you know, as as any other service who supports this sort of thing, supercast. You have a public feed that everybody consumes, and then each listener has a private feed that that uh they get given.

Sam Sethi 34:03

Now, Oscar Merry from Fountain came up with the concept of putting a short clip in the primary enclosure and using the alternative enclosure for the premium RSS, which is what we at TrueFunds are also doing. And the idea is we're combining in the same RSS feed both freemium and premium content, which again is different from what we think Patreon might be doing now. It's going to be interesting to see whether hosts now start to look at premium content in the same way that we have been banging the drum for, or will they continue just to allow private feeds from Patreon and take all the money? What was interesting reading some of the details about this was Patreon has now 25 million paying customers. They celebrated a milestone a couple of months ago of $10 billion they've sent from fans to creators. And what is clear is that you know they are now trying to mop up, I think, the remainder of people, as you said, you know, why why not just host of this? And I suspect this is a lost leader in terms of you know, they're giving it away for free. So much like Spotify, it's uh and Riverside, it's just a case of, yeah, it might cost us a few pennies, but we'll get more members, we'll get more content, we'll get more people. So what will traditional hosts do now? What what what's your thoughts on what they should do?

James Cridland 35:31

Well, I mean, they they will get more money, but uh, you know, uniquely with Patreon, they get money from every user who is selling content, and they also get money from everybody who is buying content as well. You know, so they so they you know grab a a percentage of both of that. Yeah, which is absolutely fair. I think what most podcast hosting companies will be doing is what our sponsor Buzzsprout does, and that's offer a premium RSS feed as well. So you can do exactly the same thing with the Buzzsprout site. You can upload a little clip, you can say, if you want to buy this, then go to weekly.podnews.net and and gain access that way. Uh, we don't have a premium RSS feed, so please don't go and do that. But my guess is that the larger podcast hosting companies will do that because they can see there being revenue there. The smaller podcast hosting companies probably won't be doing that. But but if you you know you take a look at Beamley, you take a look at, you know, other all-in-one services like that, I would guess that you know that that is probably where they're going in terms of that. And the benefit of a premium RSS feed, and I know that you love your L402, but the benefit of a premium RSS feed is that it works everywhere. It works on Apple, it works on Spotify, it works in every single platform. And so therefore, you know, if if you're wanting to do something clever with L402, I think that that's probably an addition on cleverer apps, but people will still need really to sell access to a premium RSS feed as well.

Sam Sethi 37:06

Yeah, no, I'm not I'm not saying that premium RSS is gonna go away. I I've always said that if we are to do something repeating what's been done before and trying to outdo the dominant player in the market is never going to be successful, right? So we can't be Apple, we can't be Spotify, we can't be YouTube, and I don't think we can be Patreon. Yeah. But we can try and do something that's different to those platforms. That means that users come to us, and in the set in that way, they will get different features and functions. And I think what's interesting with RSS.com offering a free hosting now as well, it'll be interesting to see how much more they lean on to things like premium content, not premium RSS, but the same way as private feeds. Because I don't believe RSS.com does private feeds at the moment, do they, James?

James Cridland 37:58

Yeah, I don't know, is the quick answer. I'm I'm I don't think that they do. No. But I I know that you know Captivate, for example, does, I know that Buzzsprout does. It may just be that it's just actually quite small. The amount of people that will be selling this sort of thing is quite is quite small. And so actually, you know, it's worthwhile for Patreon to be having a look at this, but pr but may well not be worthwhile for you know somebody who is relatively small like Podhom or, you know, he says, thinking of another one, Castos, or you know, those sorts of people. But yeah, it's it's you know, I I find this sort of I find this a very interesting thing. It it's you know, as I say, it works with most places. I should correct myself, the the Buzz Sprout Premium RSS doesn't work with Spotify, but it does work with things like Apple, Overcars, Pocket Cars, Podcast Addict, Castro, and various other things. So, and I think you know, the secret really is trying to help people to plug those special RSS feeds into their RSS player, and that's where you know something which is more integrated using L402 will clearly win, you know, in terms of just it just works. And I think it's um quite difficult with you know trying to get somebody, you know, to get that particular feed into Apple Podcasts or whatever it might be. The the way that BuzzProut ends up doing that is that they have a QR code, so it's quite you know, it's relatively easy if you pay your money, it'll give you a QR code for you to scan on your phone and that will subscribe you automatically to your own secret feed. And so maybe that's the way of you know of doing these things.

Sam Sethi 39:39

Yeah, I think I mean look, I'm I'm saying that with my CEO hat for TreeFunds, we have to support private feeds. We don't, and it's a feature on the roadmap, but we also want to do the combined freemium and premium. And I and again, I think we'll see in 26 which way the market goes. I'm sure I'm sure it won't move rapidly, but maybe we'll see by the end of the year. Let's go on,

Podcasting M&A bubble?

Sam Sethi 40:04

James. Going, going, gone. Now, the this is a report from Ashley Carmen from Bloomberg, where she's basically said that podcasts are in the zeitgeist and companies are looking to cash in on the moment. And based on that, it seems Audio Boom are being touted around as a potential MA purchase along with other companies. What are your thoughts on this one, James?

James Cridland 40:29

Yeah, I, you know, I don't know whether Ashley is, you know, Ashley has connected a couple of different companies up for sale to a Zeitgeist moment. I I I don't necessarily see that, but certainly there are people out there who are for sale and there are willing purchases by the looks of things. I do notice that uh the podcast exchange in Canada has been acquired this week by a company called Native Touch. So there's been an acquisition that's gone on there. Now the podcast exchange has been has been under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act for a couple of months or so. So they've been essentially trying to find a purchaser. But what was interesting about that bit is that they got quite a number of offers. They got three where they actually signed the NDAs and talked, you know, shared all of the financial information and uh and everything else. And that is a relatively small podcast advertising sales company based in Canada. So if there are a number of people who are interested in that, you can imagine that there are a number of people who are gonna be interested in in uh audio boom, you know, and and other companies, you know, such as that. So definitely something going on there in terms of trying to sell those individual things.

Sam Sethi 41:52

No, I'm not gonna say a bubble, but you know, like the AI growth, and now many people calling it an AI bubble. We are in good times. I mean, podcasting is in a healthy place. We are seeing more platforms adopting podcasting. We talked about Netflix and TikTok last week. So there is this growth of podcasting and awareness of podcasting amongst users. We always see that in the reports. More people are listening to podcasts. So is it a case of we've we've grown the business for three, four, five years, we're profitable, time to cash out. And I wonder as well whether traditional media companies, which are seeing dwindling audiences on radio and TV, are beginning to look at on-demand. And I know you call it cheap TV, but are they looking for on-demand content, both audio and video, because that's where the younger audience is. Is this where the MA might come from?

James Cridland 42:47

Uh I mean, that may well be the case. Uh, you you can certainly see that it would make sense for large companies to be focusing a little bit more on their video side, if only because that way they can earn some additional money from the video advertising that they sell. But yeah, I you know, it's it's it's always interesting, I think, working out exactly what the deal is uh in terms of what people are interested in buying. I think it also makes sense to have a look at a bit of consolidation. I mean, you you say we're in a good place in terms of podcasting. I'm not I'm not so sure. I think that there are quite a lot of conversations at the moment going on around around ads ad uh revenue and that kind of side. And I'm not necessarily sure that I see that, but you know, who knows?

Sam Sethi 43:37

Yeah, no, I I I only say that because I think we've seen more people talking about podcasting, as I said, Netflix, TikTok recently, YouTube has been over the last couple of years, Spotify certainly growing, looking at their revenue numbers, ACARS certainly did well. So it just feels like everyone's doing quite well in the space, and maybe some people are saying, yeah, now's the time to get out. Take the money while while the going's good.

James Cridland 44:02

Yeah.

Sam Sethi 44:02

Well that's I don't know.

James Cridland 44:03

That always makes a bunch of sense, yeah.

PWR over the Christmas period

Sam Sethi 44:06

Well, of course, just to remind everyone, we will be doing various shows, which James and I will be giving our predictions, but in the next couple of weeks, our friends and supporters of this podcast will be doing their predictions and highlights of 2025. So that'll be on the 12th of December. James and I will be doing our highlights and lowlights on the 18th of December, and we will be doing our prediction show on the 9th of January. So all of these things about what's going to happen in 26, what will happen to hosting, what will be MA. You'll have to wait until the 9th of

Awards and Events

Sam Sethi 44:41

January, I guess.

Announcer 44:42

Podcast events on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland 44:46

Yes, awards. So the Political Podcast Awards in the UK has announced its 2026 shortlist. The award winners will be announced in January in Westminster in a ceremony that will be hosted by Anthony Scaramucci and Giles Brandrethan is jumper. So that should be good fun to go and see. Also. I might do that, actually. Yes. I mean, you know, Giles will certainly put on a good show. It's a good awards from what I seem to remember. The 2026 Women Podcasters Awards are open for entry next week, December the 1st. And this year, if you want to enter early, then do, because the early bird nomination rate for entries is just $10 until January 10 of your American dollars. The award ceremony will be in May. The submission portal for the iHeart Podcast Awards 2026 is now live, and that will close on December the 7th. Good luck for that. And many congratulations to the many winners at the Arcast Podcast Awards, which were announced at the second annual event in Little Rock in Arkansas in the US. And uh specific congratulations to this podcast.

Janet 45:58

Hey, Tiger Talk fam. I'm Janet. I'm the host of Tiger Talk, and I'm in fifth grade.

James Cridland 46:03

Hey, Janet Fam. Tiger Talk, they won the Kids and Family Award. They won the Young Pod Award, and they won the rising star categories as well. And they're hosted with our sponsors, Buzz Brats. Many congratulations, Tiger Talk. And it's uh a pretty good awards list if you want to go to the Pod News website and take a peek. Yes, events and PodFest has published its uh schedule. The event is January the 15th to the 18th. It's in Orlando in Florida, in the Renaissance Hotel in SeaWorld. It's going to be the 11th year. Do you know who's going to be there, Sam?

Sam Sethi 46:39

Not you.

James Cridland 46:39

I am going to be there. Yes, I'm going. Really? Yes, I've pressed the button. I've pressed the button. Not just that, but I will be I will be speaking. But I think I'm speaking only to the fancy people with the pro tickets. So that'll be fun.

Sam Sethi 46:53

Well, of course. I mean, I wouldn't expect anything else.

James Cridland 46:56

But I'm looking forward to that. That should be fun. I've not been to a podfest since 2018. I really enjoyed my time there. It's a very different experience to podcast movement, but that is certainly happening.

Sam Sethi 47:09

Delete your social media. Delete your social media.

James Cridland 47:11

Yeah. Yes, exactly. I'm very good on social media. I don't see anything other than um, well, uh, anything particularly.

Sam Sethi 47:18

Um we can go through Mastodon if you want, but no, let's not do that now.

James Cridland 47:24

I don't think I'm saying particularly much. Anyway, it should be okay. And anyway, it's Mastodon. The Americans won't know what that is. Exactly. The podcast Hall of Fame is going to be looked after PodFest in Orlando as well. The 2026 induction ceremony will be hosted by JLD himself, the host of Entrepreneurs on Fire, which has released more than 4,000 episodes and he earns so much money from that podcast. It's unreal. So that should be uh fun. I'm looking forward to seeing Rob Greenley, who I know will be there, and that should be a good evening. Of course, we've lost a member of the podcast hall of fame recently with uh Todd Cochran, so I'm suspecting that there will be something said on the night as well. But that should be that should be really good fun as well. And the other event, of course, is Podcast Movement Evolutions, which is coming up in March at South by Southwest. Here's a fun thing. The podcast movement team have just announced that they are paying for speakers next year. They're looking for 10-minute talks for the event, and all of those speakers will get a $500 honorarium. There's a long word, in addition to entry to the event. If you want to take part, you just go to the website and find out more you've got until the end of this year to get your pictures in, which is exciting.

The Tech Stuff

Announcer 48:40

The Tech Stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland 48:44

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

Sam Sethi 48:49

Well, let's kick off with some unhappy people. Overcast has launched a new feature, so they're rolling them out as fast as they can, it seems, called Promos and Reruns. First of all, tell me what promos and reruns are then, James, and then we'll talk about why people are not happy.

James Cridland 49:04

What the feature does is it removes any feed drops or trailers that it sees in your feed. So there are quite a lot of people who will either sell or will help another podcaster by putting a trailer in their feed. And Marco Armin, the developer of Overcast, has decided that he doesn't like that very much. And so it will automatically not put those feed drops or trailers into the feed. That's what the promos and reruns feature is all about.

Sam Sethi 49:34

So the rest is science, which was launched this week by Goal Hanger, would not be allowed then because it was put into the Restis Entertainments feed. Is that the example?

James Cridland 49:44

Indeed. So that's one example. Another example is what Libson is doing with a company called Pod Roll, where they where episode number two is a trailer for another show. Yes, all of those sorts of things would be something that Overcast magically gets rid of.

Sam Sethi 50:00

I was gonna say how, but I'm not that bothered, but the how.

James Cridland 50:05

I think it's based on the title of the of the episodes and and a little bit of sort of heuristics in terms of you know where it is. If it's if it suddenly appears in episode number two, then you can probably know that that's not necessarily, you know, a proper, a proper episode.

Sam Sethi 50:24

So John McDonough, friend of the show from Calaroga Shark Media, is not happy. Why is he not happy, James?

James Cridland 50:31

He's not happy because he says, guess what, gang? Those feed drops pay pretty well. And he points out that Overcast itself earns its money from ads in Overcast promoting shows that you may also like, which is exactly the same. So a little bit hypocritical. And I think it's also a little bit hypocritical with Overcast's developer, Marco Arment, who he recently posted a thing on Reddit criticising Podcasting 2.0 for, in his words, not collaborating to get widespread agreement on a set of proposals. But if you ask me, you wouldn't get widespread agreement by for something that removes revenue opportunities for podcast creators. So I think again, a bit hypocritical, he's saying that podcasting 2.0 didn't sit in a room and make sure that everybody was happy with something. Well, in this particular case, nobody's going to be happy with losing some money. So yeah, I I uh I I was all for giving Marco the benefit of the doubt last week. Not so sure this week, to be honest.

Sam Sethi 51:39

Well, you say that you know he should implement the funding tag because it's worthy of support based on his original idea. Again, something that he should do. It'll be interesting to see whether users like it. I think John McDermott said the feed should be the feed as the creator intends. And I think I agree with him on that 100%. And then I think if you want to give users tools that allows them to change that feed because it's their personal experience, equally, I think that's fine. But I think if the app automatically removes stuff, I think that's a no-no.

James Cridland 52:13

Yeah, and I don't know whether or not you opt in or opt out of that particular service or or whatever it is, but you know, it's a slippery slope from there to ad removal from podcasts. And, you know, if Marco Armin wants to do that, well, best of luck. But I think you will be on the on the other end of quite a lot of legal conversations going on there.

Sam Sethi 52:33

Yeah, and John did point out, wasn't there a company we highlighted that was had its whole business model around removing ads from podcasts?

James Cridland 52:41

Yes, there was a company called Audia, which has not quite gone bankrupt, but it's been bought folded into another company, and I don't believe that they're making that product anymore. Right. Probably just as well.

Sam Sethi 52:53

Now, moving on, pocket casts, they've done something quite nice. Well, they've done a couple of things really. The first one is they've added a new feature called playlists. So I always thought they had them, but anyway, that they've basically allowed you to create manual playlists, or you can automate a smart playlist based on a set of rules. Tell me more, James.

James Cridland 53:11

Well, the smart playlist based on a set of rules, here's the secret they've always had that. It's been called filters, and now it's called smart playlists, because the new thing is manual playlists as well. So you can produce a manual playlist. Now, Pocket Casts, as my as my understanding, doesn't support the playback of episodic shows. So if you want your fiction podcast to playback in the right direction, you know, with the earliest episode as the at the top of the list, then this is probably the way of doing it, making a manual playlist rather, rather weirdly. But you can also share those playlists with uh others and so on and so forth. Apple has had that for a while, Spotify's had that for a while. It's nice to see Pocketcasts getting to feature parity in terms of that. The thing that I'm sort of slightly more interested and excited about is that PocketCast has tweaked their search so that their search works much better now. It now includes episodes as well as podcast titles. They've added suggestions as you type. It deals with non-English searches rather better as well. So they've done something quite smart there. That actually rolled out on the first of this month. But uh clearly pocket casts are still, you know, uh going on and developing new features, which is good.

Sam Sethi 54:34

Ellie's gonna be one of the people who is going to give their highlights and predictions in our show. But also, she mentioned a couple of things. One is on December the 8th, they do their playback 2025, which is very similar to what Spotify do as well. So that she's very busy working on that, but she has said in the new year we will have her on the show to talk about all the things that pocket casts are up to. So looking forward to that as well. Yeah, very good for them. Now, not the only people to be playing with playlists. Spotify this week has added AI prompts for playlists. So the idea is that you describe your perfect playlist and Spotify's AI will go off and create it for you.

James Cridland 55:21

Excellent. Well, I'm I'm delighted to see them joining YouTube, which has had that for the last two years. So, but again, it's getting feature parity and that and that sort of thing. Um I think it's I think it's interesting though, the the the big sort of difference here is that you can get it to update every day by six in the morning. So you can actually build some, you know, some interesting shows, you know, playlists based on uh what you have been previously listening to as well. And of course, bring in podcasts in there too.

Sam Sethi 55:57

Yeah, pod news daily, every morning at six in the morning with your coffee.

James Cridland 56:01

Yeah, I think it's a winner.

Sam Sethi 56:03

Now, Spotflix, the Netflix Spotify integration seems to be taking a little step forward. Spotify is a new re-lib the muse behind Stranger Things. It's a mini promo that they've put into the Spotify UI and it shows clips from the Netflix series as well as music videos and has some sort of over-explainers. And then again, is this the first step of that integration between the two platforms, James?

James Cridland 56:28

No, I think it's just a piece of advertising, and it's a piece of really rather boring advertising that Spotify is doing with Netflix. Oh, we'll take the music from the Netflix universe and we'll put it into a playlist. Great. There's nothing particularly exciting about that, and I think actually, what has been interesting this week is that uh a UK radio company of all things has jumped into bed with uh Netflix and has produced a proper radio station for Stranger Things. It's called WSQK The Squawk. It's available anywhere in the world. Not quite sure how they're doing that in terms of music licensing, but let's gloss over that bit and it sounds amazing. It's such a good, good thing. You can find it in the Global Player, it's getting broadcast in London on DAB if you live there. But also you can uh have a listen on the web as well. Just search for Global Player and look for WSQK in there, and it's brilliant. It's a proper 24-hour a day radio station. It play it sounds really good, sounds as if it's from the the 1980s. It plays all of the songs that you would expect it to play. It's got DJs on there, it's got adverts for all of the real DJs. Yeah, real DJs, not AI DJs.

WSQK 57:48

This is WSQK the squad. Think you've got what it takes to dump the leaderboard, then get down to the palace arcade in downtown Hawkins. We've got a dig dug. Yeah, look at that. Dragons later, and the only temperature. Bring your quarters, bring your friends, and bring your A-game. This week's Top of the Leaderboard is Mad Max. Can you unfeed our champion? The Palace Arcade, where Hawkins plays to win.

James Cridland 58:22

And it really shows that, you know, lukewarm things like, ah, we'll put a playlist up that uh Spotify have done, it really doesn't hit when you can actually have a proper sounding, you know, a radio station talking about what's going on in the 80s.

Sam Sethi 58:38

I'm going into London later. I will well have a listen on the way in. Another thing that Spotify is up to, it's raising its prices in the US. It's done this in the rest of the world. And in early 2026, it seems, according to the Financial Times, that they will be rising prices going on at Spotify. Yeah. Yeah. This is what we expected, I suppose.

James Cridland 58:58

Yes, indeed. Going up by, well, who knows, actually, because nobody knows quite yet. But Spotify, from my understanding, is already more expensive than Apple Music. Weirdly, pays music artists less, but is already more expensive than Apple Music. So that will make that disparity a little bit bigger. The other sort of side on that is that my understanding, again, is that you know, YouTube music, well, it's kind of much the same sort of cost, but you also get ad-free YouTube. So, you know, it's going to be interesting to see what happens with Spotify and the amount of users that Spotify has when they start to push the numbers up. They're clearly trying to push some of their other numbers up at the moment. They have a four month free trial offer. Gosh, which is quite a thing. That's going on in the US as well. So, yeah, really interesting. Now, of course, Spotify have put their prices up all over the world. Here in Australia, but also in much of Europe, Latin America, and so on. So I wonder what'll happen now.

Sam Sethi 1:00:07

Are we measuring apples and oranges, though, when you talk about Apple? Because Apple Music is a standalone item to Apple Podcasts, to Apple audiobooks, to so they're three different products. You can say the same with Amazon. And I don't know if YouTube Music and YouTube Normal, and I don't think Apple um YouTube do books. I don't really know that one. Are we comparing the same? Is what I'm trying to say.

James Cridland 1:00:32

Yeah, I mean, I mean, we're we're never comparing the same when you get into that sort of detail, no. But of course, Apple Podcasts is for free. You always get access to Apple Podcasts. Apple Audiobooks, of course, is a paid for thing, as is as is Apple Music as well. So yes, you're not getting quite the same sort of thing. But if you're just looking for a music service, and I'm still fascinated at learning how many people who use Spotify never use it for podcasts or never use it for audiobooks, I would be fascinated at seeing the numbers there, and I'm absolutely convinced that I will never see the numbers there. But yeah, so I'm I'm sure that I'm sure that there is a difference there in terms of the cost.

Sam Sethi 1:01:17

I only mention it because obviously if you combine the price of Apple Audiobooks with Apple Music, you may get the same price as Spotify. That's all. Yeah, well, maybe. Uh finally, James Usha has launched the PSO category benchmark. What is that?

James Cridland 1:01:34

Yes, uh, it's very much part of their push into making them the number one country, the number one company for podcast search optimization or PSO. And it's a really simple, straightforward thing. It compares your show to others in its category. So how long are your show notes in comparison to the rest of the category? How long are your episodes? When are you releasing? And all of that. So you can see, for example, that the Pod News Daily is actually dinged in the numbers because we only release Monday to Friday, we don't release Saturday, Sunday. And so they say, Oh, you're you're releasing less uh episodes than some of the others. So, you know, so that was interesting to see. I'm not quite sure whether or not that's a good or a bad thing. And no, I am not working over the weekend. But uh yeah, and the other thing that it says, uh just just as a hint, is that both of our shows, the Pod News Daily and the Pod News Weekly Review, both have lower numbers of reviews in Apple Podcasts than others. So if you wouldn't mind spending a couple of minutes just giving us, you know, going hard on the five stars, that would be much, much appreciated. That would be a nice thing.

The inbox

Announcer 1:02:48

Boostigram, booster grand, 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 1:03:03

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, boosts everywhere else, or email, and we share any money that we make as well. We did get a fan mail this week, Sam. It was it was an interesting fan mail. So it comes from Alaska, from uh Glenn Allen in Alaska, and I'm not sure if that's the name of the person that sent this through or whether that's where they live. Who knows? Anyway, it says, Wow, it's talking about the Riverside interview that we had last week, and it said, Wow, if that kid from Riverside was supposed to be their appointment on PR, they really missed the bus when they hired them. They really did not make the Riverside hosting service look good. In fact, they made it look pretty pathetic. Gosh, and it goes on and on and on. Kendall is a very good um person. I'm not sure that the Riverside hosting product is ready, I'll be honest with you. I don't think, from the answers that I was getting from her, that that uh service is quite ready for prime time. And I am surprised that Riverside have released it in that form. But perhaps they discovered that Patreon was going to release theirs in the next week, and they thought, well, we will jump in and release ours first. But yeah, I think I think fair enough for you to jump in on that and give that uh feedback. I think that's probably fair enough indeed. Some messages coming in through Boosts. Thank you for that. You can hit the boost button in your app. Currently, I can read the ones coming from TrueFans and the ones coming from Fountain. So that is a lovely thing. What have we got first here, Sam? One from Martin.

Sam Sethi 1:04:48

Yes, Ali2 is a similar tool like Riverside for recording, editing, and post-production, and they have a hosting feature. It's all good with friendly competition. I really look forward to test out TrueFans hosting. Starship Boost with 1701 Satoshis.

James Cridland 1:05:04

Yes, very nice. Thank you, Martin. Seth Goldstein also sent through us talking about uh the RSS.com free podcast hosting. Free for niche and local is good to get more people into podcasting. I do agree with Sam that it seems like a race to the bottom, but glad to see that there's a free version that's better than Spotify's free version. Oh yes. The fact that you have to put a location in on your episodes really makes it for local podcasts, which I think is the best use case for this. I do wonder what's going through Sam's head with all of these hosting options with TrueFans hosting coming online soon. What's going through your head, Sam?

Sam Sethi 1:05:41

Oh my god. No, no one needs to know what's going through my head. Really don't need to know that. Yikes. There's a thing. No, I I'm very happy and very calm about it all. Yes. Excellent. He says. Through gritted teeth.

James Cridland 1:05:55

And one and one to Martin for the Pod News Daily, actually. Good to hear that Spotify's partner program is now available in the Nordic in the Nordics countries. How about starting a podcast in or about Monaco? Yes, well, there are only 38,000 people who live there, so no is the quick answer. And also we've received a message from Fountain, from Silas. Thank you, Silas. AWS is kind of crazy. They managed to be number one despite the fact that the UX is so rubbish that most people use AWS through other interfaces like Vercel, Savalia, Convex, or others. Do you know what? I was unaware that there were other interfaces for AWS. Yes, not that those don't add more functionality themselves, but the basic idea is true. Pod2 Cloud seems look seems like a good idea, he says. So excellent. I'm pleased that you think that. Thank you for sending that through, and thank you to Oscar at Fountain FM for the slightly cryptic but usable way that I can actually see that message. So that's nice. And thank you too to the power supporters, all 22 of you very kindly donating every single month, including John Spurlock, including James Burt, and including Ms. Eileen Smith. You can do that too if you like. Weekly.podnews.net is where you go for that.

Sam and James's week

Sam Sethi 1:07:16

So what's happened for you this week, Sam? Well, we've taken another step forward, so we connect our hosting plans to Stripe and to the TrueFans wallet. So we tested that last night, and that all works well. We think, depending on the work we do this weekend, we'll be able to open the doors next week. We've got about a hundred people on our wait list looking to move over to TrueFans Hosting. So we'll start testing with each one of those. So that's quite nice as well. Yeah, so that's all going good gums. And a quick thank you to Bauer Media, who gave me some VIP tickets to go and see Calvin Harris. So that was very nice. I went with my wife and daughter. Ah, well, very nice. There's a thing. Obviously, obviously, if you were here, they would have given it to you as well, James.

James Cridland 1:08:03

But it's a bit on the thing to come over. It's a long way to come. It's a long way to come, but I hope that you enjoyed it.

Sam Sethi 1:08:09

Yeah, and talking of Oscar from Fountain FM, I saw Oscar and Nick along with Julie Costello and Ashley Costello in London this week. So that was quite good as well.

James Cridland 1:08:20

Ah, very good. Very good.

Sam Sethi 1:08:22

James, what's happened for you?

James Cridland 1:08:25

So very excitingly, if you use uh this is for the two people that might use one of these products, but if you use the Carji search engine, which is the paid-for essential search engine, which is much better than Google, or you use a web browser called Helium, which I'll mention in a minute, then now you can uh search Pod News directly from those services. Just uh start your search with a bang, and that's an exclamation mark, and then the word PodNews, and then it will magically be a search straight into the Pod News website, which is a nice thing. Helium is this web browser that I have found, which is basically Google Chrome, but all of the Google stuff taken out, and all of the stuff that frankly shouldn't be in a web browser taken out. So password managers take it out, which is what they've done. You know, anything that is not to do with a web browser, they have pulled out. And it's it's really good and really fast, works well, works with all of the Chrome extensions and everything else. So it's worth a peek. I do notice that Carji, the search engine I use, has just moved Orion, which is its web browser, into version one this week. I've I've been to give it another go. It's still not quite ready, I don't think. But if you want to use a WebKit browser instead of a Chromium browser, then knock yourself out because uh Orion is a pretty smart thing. So that's all nice. I'm betting you use neither of those things. Yeah, you're right.

Sam Sethi 1:09:52

Congratulations. Well done. Yes.

James Cridland 1:09:55

Carji is very good though, and in fact, I do have some free some free three-month trials for Kaji to give out. And yeah, it's it's just so nice using a search engine where where you don't see adverts. That's uh that's a very good thing.

Sam Sethi 1:10:10

There was a a search engine you mentioned a little while back that you could pay for. Is this Kaji where it yeah, it was a paid for search? Is this what Kaji is?

James Cridland 1:10:22

That's that's exactly it. And so Kaji gives you yeah, and so Kaji has its own search stuff. It's got a podcast tab. Yeah. So that actually works. So uh yes, it's got lots of uh searches. Quite a lot of the searches that it does are via Google or via Bing or via other people, but it's not all, it's not just a big wrapper onto Bing as Duck Duck Go is. It's um it's it's rather better. And it's got AI if you want it, but you you have to ask every single time if you want AI results. So it's uh it's pretty good. Nice. Anything else happened for you? Uh we had a massive great big storm last week. Massive great big storm. So you may remember that we had a massive great big storm a couple of weeks ago and the power went off for days. This time the power didn't go off at all, but there were uh hailstones that were 10 centimetres wide. I don't know how many centimeters, I don't know how big that is in inches, but it's big. That's big. Yeah. And so I'm gonna have to calc 10 cm in inches. Just for the Americans. Hello, Americans! Four inches wide, four inches wide. If you can imagine hailstorms like that. Anyway, it turns out that putting solar panels on the roof and 10 centimeter hailstones don't really work. And yes, and so I am now, I think basically half of my solar panels are now broken. Excellent. Ouch. It's not what you need. And the car, did that survive? The car was fine. Weirdly, I was out driving at the time, and I thought, and I thought, oh, this is scary. And I went to hide in a petrol station. So there I was in an electric car in a petrol station. So that was fun. Didn't and um managed to avoid that being you know being smashed up. My wife's has got a couple of dings in it, so that's not particularly great. But yeah, but it's it's you know, got like great big, great big holes all over the all over the solar panels. Now we're in this. You just pop the picture in and I can see how they still work. They still work, but the issue with them is that they might still work, but there's absolutely no structural integrity whatsoever. So they are they are hanging on. And as soon as the wind blows particularly hard, it's gonna, yeah, it's gonna fall over. So uh yeah, they they're they're it's all over the place. So, yes, so the insurance man is going to arrive at some point and and tell me what I can do with them. I'm rather hoping that I get to replace the whole lot, because that would make sense, wouldn't it? You you don't want to replace half of them and leave the other half.

Sam Sethi 1:13:11

Well, um, so we'll just looking at them, it looks like every panel's been hit anyway.

James Cridland 1:13:16

Yes. Well, we'll see, we'll see what happens. If not, then I hammer out and go up there now quickly. I think four of them have been have been hit. So yeah, it's not not a not a good thing. Not a good thing. But anyway, that was that was a piece of fun to discover. Uh I mean they are also filthy, so uh there is always that too. Yes, but still, and we had another storm uh this afternoon and there was hail again, but thankfully not 10 centimetre hail.

Sam Sethi 1:13:44

And you're having a heat wave in Australia as well, I think.

James Cridland 1:13:47

Yes, we are. So yeah, so at the it yes, it's been particularly hot all all day today. The reason why I'm sounding as if I am half asleep is that it has been so hot. Tomorrow's maximum is 35 Celsius. So, you know, that is that is you know, not not good. That's um 95 Fahrenheit. Yes. So uh yes, it's not not gonna be fun to get out of here.

Sam Sethi 1:14:12

Yeah, my friends are moving back to Australia from the UK. They live there for six months, they live here for six months. They're going from minus two to thirty-five. Great. They they are not gonna toast too much, are they?

James Cridland 1:14:25

No, it's uh yeah, it's the it's the it's the the heat, but also just the humidity here where we are. Right. Particularly the humidity when it pours it down for a day, and then the sun comes out, and of course it boils all of the water away, and so everything is tremendously humid, and then and then it starts all over again. Anyway, there we are. Woe is me. Um but still, but I'm most excited. I've booked my flights to Podfest, flying with American Airlines direct from Brisbane to Dallas Fort Worth, which I've not been able to do before. Uh, they've only started just putting that particular flight on. So I'm quite quite looking forward to that. That should be uh a nice, interesting new way into uh into the US. And I even get Wi-Fi on those flights. So uh yeah, that should be nice.

Sam Sethi 1:15:13

So uh what are we doing the recording from the flight, are we?

James Cridland 1:15:18

Well, that would be fun, wouldn't it? But no. No, okay. That's definitely not gonna happen. Okay. And that's it for this week. All of our podcast stories that were taken, of course, from the Pod News Daily Newsletter at Podnews.net.

Sam Sethi 1:15:31

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James Cridland 1:15:46

Our music is 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 BuzzSprout. Start podcasting, keep podcasting.

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