Announcer 0:00

The Pod News Weekly Review uses chapters. You can use chapters too. The last word in podcasting news. This is the Pod News Weekly Review with James Kridlin and Stan Steffi.

James Cridland 0:13

I'm James Kridlin, the editor of Pod News. Hello, I'm Sam Steffi, the CEO of TrueFans.

SPEAKER_01 0:18

Many have been trapped in the audio medium and haven't had the opportunity to explore the more prominent video channel.

James Cridland 0:25

Dimitri Nicolau from Wondercraft on the company's new AI video studio plus Can Music Work on RSS and all the details behind the new funding for TrueFans. This podcast is sponsored by BuzzSprout with the tools, support, and community to ensure you keep podcasting. Start podcasting, keep podcasting with BuzzSprout.com.

Announcer 0:47

From your daily newsletter, the Part News Weekly Review.

Goalhanger gets investment

SPEAKER_02 0:51

Now, first story up. They score it's Goalhanger. They've raised $40 million. Wow, well done to them. What's going on, James?

James Cridland 1:00

Well, uh, yes, uh, Goalhanger have um done a strategic partnership with the Chernin Group. Now, uh, you say they've raised $40 million. I'm not even allowed to ask them how much they've raised um uh in terms of what the uh what the press people say. Um but uh TCG or the Chernin Group, they own Barstool Sports, they own 60% of Barstool Sports shares. They have invested in AudioCuck, and now they've invested in Goldhanger as well. Um the press release saying that um the Chernin Group is Goldhanger's first external investor. The company has been entirely bootstrapped until now. Um, without mentioning, of course, that Gary Lineker is a multimillionaire and can therefore bootstrap whatever it is that he likes. But fine. Um really good in terms of um the folks at Goldhanger. There's been some pretty obvious um noise from them recently with uh a number of um pretty big hires that they've made for the business. And so, you know, seeing um the Chernin group jumping in, putting some money in, and the idea is that uh they get bigger in the US, but actually they get bigger all over the world. Um really good news to um really good news for British podcasting uh across the world. So uh yeah, I thought that was good.

SPEAKER_02 2:22

Yeah, I think it's really good. I think one of the bits that they also invested in the churning group was Substack, which I think is really interesting because uh it looks like Goalhanger are going to use the money, they say, to build live events, which they've been doing a lot of anyway, and they've got their big show in September uh on the South Bank coming up. Uh but they're transitioning their audio programming for screen. What what would does that mean Netflix screen or you know, lounge big TV, or does that mean just YouTube video? We don't know yet. Uh but the other bit that stood out for me is this isn't about audio ad revenue, it's about live events, merch, TV shows, and 360-degree branding opportunities built around recognizable names and IP. So yeah, I think they're building their community. I mean, we talked about it last week. How much were they making? £1.1 million per month from subscribers signing up to their premium content. Yeah. I mean, they're doing very well.

James Cridland 3:23

Yeah, there's lots of um there's lots of good news coming out of Goldhanger. And um, I mean, what I would say is that they've now significantly increased their wages bill, um, with the amount of new people that are now part of that group. So clearly they need to move quite fast there. But also you might remember um that um they appeared in that global uh ranker that um uh that Podtrack put out last week. Um the rest is history, popped up in there as being one of the biggest podcasts in the world. I think it was a top three. So uh it did very, very well in terms of that. They're a really interesting company, they're well worth a look, and well worth a look just in terms of how they do their deals with talent, although I'm sure that the deals have changed since they did the originals with um uh Alistair Campbell and and uh Rory, um uh, because uh clearly that that's a tremendously good deal for uh for the talents. But even so, um, they're a fascinating company to watch. And um, yeah, I think that there's definitely something going on there.

SPEAKER_02 4:28

Now, one of the things I've been saying for a couple of years, no one's really listened, but I've been saying it, is that you know, we are moving beyond, I think, the Spotify and YouTube uh channels. We're moving to uh much more of a community podcast portal. Um and this again from Goalhanger sort of reinforces that you know when they talk about merch and event. And I think that's where Substack's gonna do very well. And it's interesting to note that Churning Group is an investor into Substack. Um I'd like to see what will happen with Goalhanger. One of my favourite examples of a community-driven uh portal is Zateo. Um Zoteo.com, which is Medihatan, who uh has audio, video, YouTube, books, they have merch, they have all sorts of stuff in there, they have blogs. Um so I think uh this, in my opinion, is where it's going. I think uh Spotify doesn't provide uh community-building tools. I don't think you can really say, I'm gonna put my stuff into Spotify and build a community around my content. Uh yes, they do offer some of those things, but it's always a Spotify look and feel to the environment. You know you're in Spotify, you're not in Goalhanger, you're not in Zatea, you're not in call her daddy. And I think that's where Spotify might be weak now, I think, with the fact that it is non-customisable to the individual who wants to build their community.

James Cridland 5:58

Yeah, no, I would definitely agree with that. And I think certainly if you have a look at um some of the websites for some of the shows um from Goalhanger, then actually they're not doing a very good job there. It is not a very exciting thing. The probably the one that they've spent the most amount of money uh into is uh The Rest is Football, uh which is at therestisfootball.com. Um maybe something to do with the boss being uh part of that particular show, who knows? Um they've put some money in terms of that, but even so, it that there's not much there. There's um uh, you know, there's a newsletter, there's something called the Player's Lounge, which is uh presumably something that you can only really get into uh if you are a member. And um, well, that's it. Um there's really not not an awful lot there, and you can see, I mean, particularly with that show, which is gonna be on Netflix during the World Cup later on in the year, uh, assuming that all three of those people can actually get into the US, uh, that that's gonna be really interesting to see what happens there with the Churning Group, understanding actually, you know, there's a lot of missed opportunity here uh in terms of um in terms of beefing up the other sort of forms of liquid content, if I can use the Stephen Goldstein phrase, um, that um that that uh this company ought to be doing. So um yeah, I um yeah, the churning group know what they're doing, so it'll be uh you know good to watch.

SPEAKER_02 7:33

Yeah. And uh the good news is Tony Pastor is confirmed for the 17th of February. So we will get it from the top about what they are doing going forward in 2026 as well.

Interview: Dimi from Wondercraft AI

SPEAKER_02 7:44

Excellent. Now, uh Wondercraft friends of the show. Um, they have been producing AI voices and audio for some time. James, it looks like they're getting into video. What are they doing?

James Cridland 7:57

It does. Um they have made a blog post, their blog has no RSS, uh, but they've made a blog post uh all about AI video being now finally good enough. You can do lots of exciting things with AI video, but the difficulty is that it's actually really difficult to control. And so the point that Wondercraft are making is that the hard part now is about better workflows, not just better clips, but better workflows and all of that. So they are very much focusing on that. Um, their new AI video studio, which they launched this week, can do things like making video from your podcasts with animations and images, but also making business videos, a social promo. You can get an avatar up there if you really want to, all of that um sort of uh thing. Uh you uh caught up with uh Dimi from uh Wondercraft and you started asking him, who or what is Wondercraft?

SPEAKER_01 8:56

So Wondercraft is a platform that we built a couple of years ago with the aim of making audio content creation a lot easier. I think for most of your listeners, obviously most people will be podcast creators, they're well aware of like the arduous task that it sometimes may be to record properly and edit properly. With the rise of AI voices, we decided to build an application layer that's similar to Canva for anyone that's aware, in the sense that it's a very easy-to-use interface for someone to use AI voices, including their own, and create podcast content. Of course, there's the audience. I have to clarify that by no means this refers to long form, banter style people discussing style podcasts, uh, but rather more so like information dissemination, something very specific. Also kind of opened a new market for businesses to be creating podcasts or to just have an additional touch point for their customers, but also for internal communication purposes. In the past I hadn't seen many podcasts being created inside organizations for internal communications, whereas this has happened quite a lot with WonderCraft for training new people or disseminating information within an organization. So this has been the past of WonderCraft over the past couple of years, ever since we launched.

SPEAKER_02 10:09

I remember when I came to one of your demos, it was also about advertising as well, using voices within advertising.

SPEAKER_01 10:15

Yeah, that's correct. So apart from creating audio content within an application layer on top of AI voices, you can use that application to create podcasts, but you can use it for other purposes as well. One of our main use cases has actually been creating ads. So we've had big customers like Spotify, Amazon, iHeart all creating ads on Wondercraft. They're internal creative teams creating ads on Wondercraft. But also other use cases like meditations and also audiobooks have been a couple of others that we've seen happening at Scale.

SPEAKER_02 10:45

When I had a radio station, I wish Wondercraft was around to do the advertising for me, would have saved me a lot of hours. Now, um, very excitingly, 2026 and you're launching a new product extension to Wondercraft. What is it?

SPEAKER_01 10:57

Yeah, so the extension of the product is evolving into the video space as well. So apart from being able to come into the platform and create audio content by leveraging AI voices, it's very similar. You can come into the platform and create audio and video content, including video podcasts. You can create a video podcast from scratch. Of course, you may be wondering like what does that mean in terms of the visuals? And what that means is it could be anything between you can generate footage with the AI, you can use talk footage if you want, or you can use avatars as part of that flow. We advise usually against just having two avatars speaking the whole time. And basically go end-to-end in creating an engaging way of presenting some information. We've grouping it into podcast category because it's a broad term and you can have a conversational style video. It's not just for podcasts, it's like many other things, like training videos, educational videos, again, like what you mentioned before, ads as well. So moving from the audio ad space to the video ad space. With the idea here being that we want to serve the same audience of like, I don't know where to start, I don't know how to create content, I don't know how to edit. I would love to just use a simple interface to go end-to-end and creating that. So people come to the platform, they describe what they want, and then it's on WonderCraft to figure out what models to use across all of the different AI models between video and audio and images and sound and avatars, and stitch everything together to create a compelling story off of what you're describing. And then the interesting thing is that we present everything to you on simple to use timeline so that you can make edits. It's not just a one-shot that you just can't edit from that point on. So this is what we created. This basically easy-to-use video creation platforms on top of AI models. And there's two more components that may be interesting too. The first one is that apart from creating your podcast on Wondercraft, you can also visualize your podcast. Meaning if you have an audio-first podcast, it's very easy for you to come to WonderCraft and create a video on top of that. The way that you do that is you go through a simple workflow, you upload your podcast, go through a simple workflow by describing what it is that you want in terms of the visuals that you would want on a video. And then we create that video for you. Maybe it has some avatars, maybe it has some generated b-roll that's relevant to what is being spoken about, some captions, some sound waves, whatever you define. And then you get a video version of your podcast so that you can very easily reach YouTube and the other video platforms. That's the first part that may be interesting. And the second part is that we made it very easy to edit existing podcasts, especially video podcasts, but also audio podcasts. You just upload your content, you just chat to the AI agent to help you to perform that editing so that you don't need to do that editing yourself. I brought this last part explicitly last because it's still in alpha mode, so there's still some exploration to be done. And I know that there's other organizations that are doing this last part as well, so your audience may be a little bit more experienced than that. So I primarily focused on the AI generative process, whether it's to create your podcast from scratch or to turn your audio podcast into a V.

SPEAKER_02 14:03

Seeing the demos of this, it's very cool. And again, using AI prompts is very easy to do. I think one of the biggest challenges for anyone who's used any of the video AI generating tools is editing. So having an editor within that, because a lot of the times you create something in, say, Vio and you go back to it and you can't recreate, you can't modify it to the extent you have to start from scratch each time. So I think that's gonna be interesting. Who's your target audience? Is it existing podcasters? Is it brand new YouTubers? Who do you think you're gonna go for first?

SPEAKER_01 14:37

Yeah, so there's a few different types of outputs that you can create for what we're describing, visualizing your podcast, turning your podcast into a video. Yeah, that is existing podcasters that I know personally myself, many, I'm sure that Sam as well, have been trapped in the audio medium and haven't had the opportunity to explore the more prominent video channels, apart from the very easy of just like adding a static image. And obviously that doesn't take you too far. So there is a primary audience there in visualizing audio. But apart from that, there's a couple of other use cases here in that, especially for bigger organizations, turning existing communication material into video, whether that's training new onboarding cohorts, or enabling sales teams by teaching them new information. Video is by far better than PDF in terms of teaching someone new information. And the only reason why people don't have that right now is because there's friction in creating that video. Uh so we've removed that friction and we made it very easy to create video by providing some notes about what you want to convey. And then we're finding that a lot of our users, for example, the World Bank has started doing that and Amazon has started doing that. They are a lot more effective in communicating what they want to communicate instead of doing that over notes and writing. And another very big use case is generally extending that, like I guess it's education, but like it's also education in not just inside organizations, but education generally. We have quite a few educators on the platform that are creating educational material, turning their class notes, turning books, turning other material into videos so that whatever age the students may be, because there's like different aesthetics, different visual styles that you can create your video from, those students can actually engage with the content a little bit easier and make the teaching process more effective.

SPEAKER_02 16:26

The questions regarding future direction of where Wondercraft might go with this. So if I look at something like Riverside or DScript, they have an AI component within it. So I can, like we are now, I can record two people talking, I can edit the transcript, I can create the video, I can edit the video, I can create clips, I have AI. The same is pretty much with Riverside. So they're becoming that start-to-finish type model. I call them the five P's that you can do your preparation, your production, your post-production, your your promotion stuff, and then make some profit in terms of monetization. Do you see Wondercraft getting into the whole sphere of also allowing you to create like we are now and then also create from that? So instead of uploading the audio, instead of uploading something, actually you are the destination, my say. I'm gonna go to Wondercraft, invite a guest, invite two guests, create my audio, and then automatically use the AI in Wondercraft now to create my video and create maybe clips from it and do other things. Where do you see Wondercraft fitting in? Is it gonna be a tool as a component of other workflows, or will you become the primary workflow itself?

SPEAKER_01 17:41

That's a great question. So to answer that question, Sam, I'll take you to like who our primary audience is. It kind of touches on the previous question, which is the teams within organizations that want to create audio and video content. And we're finding that a lot of these teams don't really have the appetite or time or even equipment to go through that recording process, whether it's video or audio. But they do want to convey the message, the story that the organization has. So we primarily focused on the generative side, and we realize that we may be early on that. We're maybe skating where the puck is going with this product. But we are less reliant on screen recordings and what Riverside or D script are doing on capturing that first source. And we're focusing on users making it very easy for users to describe what it is that they want off of their content, and then us using generative media to try and convey that story to the best way possible. Again, we recognize that generative media in many ways is not a hundred percent where it needs to be. And I can understand that some of your listeners may think that what I'm describing is quote unquote swap, but there's a lot that you can do both in terms of improving the storytelling capabilities by leveraging different models and combining everything together, layering music, layering voiceovers rather than just an eight-second like Sora clip. And apart from that, you should of course expect huge improvements on generative models over the next six to twelve months that would allow even better storytelling. And we want to be the platform that leverages that spike that increase that advancement in these models to make it very easy for you to convey your story. So yeah, that's that's kind of like the evolution of WonderCraft in terms of like where we will be from one year from now. Time will tell what the product will look like exactly, but what I can tell you is that it will be less focused on the recording process and more so focused on turning user thoughts into an engaging story by leveraging generative media.

SPEAKER_02 19:45

Okay, I think you've created a version for Pod News Weekly Review that you've sent to James. So hopefully people will be able to come to both our show notes and also to Pod News Daily to go and see a link and see how this all looks. But if I wanted to get on board now and I wanted Try it, what's the best place to go? And is there a trial version or do I have to sign up?

SPEAKER_01 20:06

Yeah. So that's a great question, Sam. You can go to WonderCraft.ai or to go directly to the studio, go to WonderCraft.ai slash studio. It's very easy for you to sign up and try it out. As part of the onboarding flow, we're gonna create a video for you so you can check out what it feels like. And then go ahead. The very first thing that you will see when you sign up is upload your podcast and describe what it is that you want in terms of editing. If you just want to upload your podcast and turn it into a video, very easy. Like one button and a couple of like steps in the workflow. And in terms of trying it out, yes, you can try it out. There will be some limitations. So you will most likely need to uh if you want to use the full features, upgrade. But as a thank you for the invite, Sam, maybe what we can do is for anyone that's listening to this prior to February 20th, you can use the code SAM50. So that's SASAM50, and you will get 50% discount on trying out Wondercraft.

SPEAKER_02 21:01

Nice. Last question is there gonna be an API? I was just thinking to myself, if you wanted to automate the flow, so I I create my podcast that say we boss out our sponsors and I publish it. Can I create WonderCraft as an endpoint destination through an API so that I don't have to manually upload each time?

SPEAKER_01 21:20

Yeah, there is an endpoint, and we already have the endpoint, but it's not public. We are onboarding one by one the users that want to be using the API for video generation. For audio generation, it is public. But I'm guessing you're referring to video here. So whoever does want access to API, I would recommend you guys reach out to support at wondercraft.ai explaining what it is that you're after. I'm guessing the workflow that Sam describes is a compelling one for us, so we'd be happy to enable it for you guys. So yeah, describe what it is that you want off the endpoint and off the API axis, and we'll try to make it happen for you.

SPEAKER_02 21:53

Congratulations. I think everyone should go and try it. Sam50, that's the discount code.

SPEAKER_01 21:58

Amazing. Thank you, Sam, for the invite. Always a pleasure to chat to you, and congrats on the news on your end as well. I'm very happy to be seeing call to the.

SPEAKER_02 22:06

See you soon, mate.

Announcer 22:07

The Pod News Weekly Review with Buzz Sprout with Buzz Sprout. Start podcasting, keep podcasting.

Fountain launches music hosting

SPEAKER_02 22:15

This was a really nice story, I thought. Fountain for Music Artists, the podcast app and host Fountain has launched Fountain for Artists, a specific music hosting service. Now, just to give a bit of backstory, um, a couple of years ago, uh RSS Blue, which was a standalone hosting company at the time with a David As, was supporting live podcasting in uh Nashville. Um, there was uh a lot of noise about micropayments and live events and HLS, and it was all looking really exciting. And one of the companies that was supporting that and doing a great job of it was RSS Blue Fountain, the app at the time, got involved as well. They did a lot of work with the people over there in Nashville. So um Judy Costello and Ashley Costello were you know very excited, and everyone thought this is the future of music, you know, um, licensed not by big, I suppose, music distribution companies, but by individual artists. It all sort of went into a little bit of a sad, damp squib, sadly, but this I think could revive it. So Fountain, which merged with RSS Blue or RSS Blue merged with Fountain, whichever way you want, um, have announced this. Now, uh, I'm very excited because they've gone very aggressive as well on pricing, James. What have they done?

James Cridland 23:38

Yeah, so it is going to cost just one dollar a month, uh, which is very uh impressive. Um, the way that music artists earn revenue is every time a song is played, uh you will get a very small amount of Bitcoin from uh the person who is uh playing that uh music. It's basically the same functionality as uh Streaming Sats that um uh that works uh on a variety of different podcast apps. So everything is open, everything uses um the power of open RSS and all of that. Um but uh in order for you to uh join the service, it's just a dollar a month. So that's pretty cool. Unlimited catalogue, so you can upload all of your songs. Um so presumably they are taking a percentage of the money as well, you would have thought in terms of the street. Yeah, that'd be taking the streaming sats, I would have thought, yeah. Yeah, but it's a pretty good um it's a pretty good tool. It's not something which is very um uh popular in terms of podcasting right now, and I think what's interesting is that Fountain the app appears to have a very different user interface for when you are playing music, and it looks just like Spotify from what I can work out. Um, so that's very cool, that's very smart. Um, and uh yeah, a bunch of um a bunch of really interesting uh things. So um it'll be fascinating to see what happens there. Interestingly, um I was at uh Podfest uh a couple of weeks ago, and one of the things that I was talking about was um the different podcast apps in use in different countries. Fountain is the number one podcast app by a mile in Venezuela, and I was thinking, well, why is that? Is that because just that the data from Venezuela isn't particularly big? Well, that's part of it, but the other part of it is that Venezuela has, of course, really embraced Bitcoin as a payment uh platform, and so you can see that uh quite a lot of people are using Fountain because it's um one way of uh of earning free money. So that might be another way of earning free money is for actually um a bunch of uh music artists from that country and from other parts of Latin America uploading music uh onto the system. So who knows how many people we might see uh on there. But um, yeah, I think it's fascinating to watch.

SPEAKER_02 26:03

Yeah, I'm not sure Jive Bunny will be going on there. But anyway, um World's Biggest Artist, strangely.

James Cridland 26:09

What Jive Bunny, the world's biggest artist. Citation required.

SPEAKER_02 26:18

Oh, what's his bad bunny?

James Cridland 26:19

Bad bunny, yes, not Barnsley's Jive Bunny. Wow. I went to Jive Bunny's uh studios once.

SPEAKER_02 26:28

Oh, did you?

James Cridland 26:28

Okay, when I was a radio DJ in Yorkshire. Uh yes. Bad bunny. Okay. Bad bunny oops, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:36

Come on, Grandad, get with the kids. Yep, yeah. I'm getting C now, getting close to 60. What can you say? What can you say? But no, I think this is really interesting. I think one of the um background conversations that you know um has been had is that Wave Lake sort of has stopped evolving. Um, I think Sam from Wavelake's gone on tour with his band and and things aren't happening there. Maybe they will when he comes back, but right now it seems to have sort of um screeched to a halt. The original fountain pricing for music artists was a lot, lot higher than the $1 amount. And I think um several music publishers who were saying, Well, we've got 30, 40, 50 bands can't afford, you know, the amount you're talking about. And so I think this has been priced to attract them. That's great. And I think Fountain will lead the charge here. Um and that's good. We we will we have a music offering as true fans, but we we we haven't focused on it in the same way at all that the way that Fountain have. So good on them for doing that. Um I given the numbers that I now know about you know what it costs to store content and what it costs to stream content, um, one dollar a month is is not a problem at all because the storage cost of music, which is quite small, um, you know, if you think about a three-minute track uh compared to a 30-minute podcast or whatever it may be. Um so I don't think you know Fountain's not um doing some altruism here. They're not, you know, giving away storage, they are making money still. And and the streaming again is so small. Um, and I think the amount of people who will use it sadly will be quite small to begin with. So it's a very great um introduction to bring artists over, and I wish them all the best with it because it is a very aggressive price point, but it's very welcome.

James Cridland 28:38

I think it looks good. I think it looks good. Uh during uh as you were saying that uh you you got uh you got a loud uh notification now. Uh and I'm and I'm assuming it was about um it was about all of the news coming out of uh your uh company as well.

Truefans gets funding

James Cridland 28:56

So this is probably the last time that we will talk in this segment at least about TrueFans, for we are sponsored by BuzzSprout. Um BuzzSprout is a very good podcast hosting company. Uh and weirdly, one of the things that they've been helping doing over the last three years uh has been actually helping you focus on your TrueFans thing. You closed a funding round as you dropped last week. Yes. Which is very exciting. The company is valued at 13.5 million US dollars. Um you didn't you didn't tell us how much you've actually raised. I don't want to because I know what's gonna happen. But um, but uh at least you didn't send me an email like Goldhanger saying, Do not ask us.

SPEAKER_02 29:43

No, no, you can ask what. I mean, look, I've been very open about it. It's high net worth individuals, friends and people I know who are under EIS, the Enterprise Investment Scheme, who get a tax relief on the investment they make into me. And so they get 30% tax relief um on the investment going in. Um if we are successful as a company, they get no tax on the capital gains coming out, and if I fail completely and do nothing with the money and true fans closures, they get 75% of their money back. So it's a really good scheme.

James Cridland 30:20

It's a really good scheme. Is that the UK government paying for that? Yes. No wonder your country is going bankrupt. I mean, for goodness sake, that's that's astonishing. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 30:31

Well it's it's a really good way for uh entrepreneurs to raise money, and uh crowdfunding is often how it's done, um, or if you know people. Um so yeah, we've just raised it through a lot of people I know who are yeah, looking to get some tax relief, but also want to support me and think we've got a chance.

James Cridland 30:52

Very cool. Um the press release that I covered earlier on this week talked about product development, of course, but also talked about updated mobile apps, um, talked about a um a new hosting service which um was launched uh yesterday. Um what's the exciting thing about your new hosting service?

SPEAKER_02 31:13

Well, we we're not using downloads, we worked a method to stream. So basically, yes, and and before you say nothing is a stream, James, um I I just thought I'd get in there before you did. Um it's downloading in six-second packets, which is fundamentally streaming. And so what happens is when you click play on any app, because it's an RSS feed, we know when that person's click play, and when you click stop, we know when you stop. So we can stream in six-second packets, so we can give you the number of plays that you've actually received across all apps, and also the listen time. So we can give you a listen time as a total listen time for an episode, and we can also and we do break that down in our analytics to the listen time per app as well, so you can see, and we give you a listen time per country, and even then we break that down into city. So we do give you quite a depth of knowledge about what people are doing with your episodes, and then we obviously aggregate that up. Now, the other part that's interesting is we've moved to more of a mobile phone model, that's the nearest analogy I can give you. So we charge per megabyte of streaming, and we thought that would be an interesting, different way of doing it. So initially, when you sign up to TrueFans, yes, we we say it's $20, but then we give you the cost per episode that you've been charged for streaming, and I on average that's looking like uh 30 cents, 40 cents per episode. We aggregate that up in the month for how many episodes you've got and how much data. So what we can't uh calculate is how many people listen to your podcast. So we we we look at the ones that we've got currently hosting, but we don't know for the individual podcast. So what we've said is you'll get um a refund basically from that twenty dollars for the amount that you haven't used of your data. So that's fine, and that can roll over to next month, and then you know you you go again after the third month of $20 and with refunds included, we will know better what your monthly usage looks like as a pattern, and therefore we will reflect that and change the direct debit, the amount that we take each month. So if you're only spending five dollars a month, we'll say, right, it's five dollars. If you go to six dollars in the first month, we'll just let it go. But if it's a consistently six dollars or seven dollars because you're getting more people, then we'll just let you know that we're gonna increase it and you go, yep, I accept that, no problem, and we move forward. That's nice. So, yeah, it's a variable rate um of pricing.

James Cridland 33:55

That's nice. You have also announced um uh a new voice AI agents called Kevin Kelly. What, what, what, what, what?

SPEAKER_02 34:06

It's what I'd like to do this year. I believe there is a uh opportunity for a voice medium, which is what podcasting is, yes, to use voice as well. So you often say something through your ears when your eyes are busy, but I also think when your hands are busy, you're driving, you might be, you know, in the gym. So what if you're listening to a podcast um and you hear something, you could have a you know, a voice agent that says, Stop, tell me more about that point, or take a note here, or it could be just that simple thing when you join and open the app and it says, Hey James, you've got three new podcasts in your queue, you've got two comments on Pod News Daily, and by the way, you've earned another 60 sat, right? Whatever it may be. So I think it's something that I want to experiment with. I think voice agents in the future for you know the way that the industry's going is gonna be the the norm. Um so again, if you're looking for blogs, events, ticketing, merch, can we use that as well? So, yeah, it's the start of an experiment that I want to get into in 26.

James Cridland 35:10

Excellent. It all sounds absolutely fascinating. I think some of the things that we'll really highlight given the pricing model, is uh how many bots there are out there. I have lost count in the last week of the amount of articles that I have been reading where people have been saying, How much are we paying for on all of our websites to for you know open AI or Meta or whoever just to come along and scrape all of our data? Um, all of that is costing us website owners a lot of money. And I can see them coming in and going out. And Dave Jones has posted something similar, and I've seen a number of different um other companies doing that sort of thing. I suspect that we will begin to see, particularly with services like yours, where you will actually be able to show how many bots are downloading shows. Um, I suspect that we'll be able to see quite a lot of bots being used there. So that's gonna be quite fascinating to see.

SPEAKER_02 36:13

Well, I'd like your opinion because I've had multiple opinions on what we should do. So we are seeing, I don't know, in a 36-minute episode, we're seeing 30 odd bots, you know. You're gonna get the Apple automated checks, you're gonna get um various other ones, but we're getting Facebook, Twitter, Claude, OpenAI, chat, you know, it it the list goes on. And uh in the model we have where you're uh being charged per megabyte of data streamed, these bots are costing you money now.

SPEAKER_04 36:46

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 36:47

And so do we we are gonna provide an option which is to turn off the bots and then later on we might get granular and allow you to turn off individual bots. I think that's the only way we're gonna have to go.

SPEAKER_04 36:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:00

But but you asked the question last week, you know, if you turned off the bots, would Apple remove you from the directory? And I'm like, why would they? I mean, if I published to your directory, the only reason you'd turn this off is because you can't keep checking whether the episode's active. But I mean, that's just a nice to have from Apple. Have you checked? I'm talking to Apple, I won't say anymore.

James Cridland 37:24

Let me just leave it on. If you're talking to Apple, you can't say anymore. Yes. Uh I've forgotten completely what they said. Yes. Uh but I think it's going to be fascinating uh uh to see exactly, you know, uh to actually lay bare how many um downloads are actually for bots. Now we should clarify if you are an IAB uh compliant podcast host and our um and our sponsor, Bunsprout, is uh then uh if it's a bot, it doesn't get counted. Um that's part of uh of achieving the IAB compliance. Uh so if you're a bot, it doesn't get counted, and away you go. So most people don't actually see the amount of bot activity which is there, but there is an awful lot of it, and uh I think it would quite shock people how much um bot activity there is, slurping down our audio, slurping down uh you know our websites and everything else. And um I uh play this cat and mouse game with the Pod News directory of um trying to allow as much human beings in there, but trying not to allow um as much um AI bots in there. And actually on one of my websites, not on the Pod News website, but on one of them, um, there is deliberately a honeypot uh that will attract these AI tools and waste their time. Uh, because I am perfectly happy in doing that. Uh so uh yeah, it's um it's really interesting. So um, you know, totally worth um uh taking a watch on. Now we're gonna be uh we're gonna be very careful uh on this podcast uh because uh we will still talk about true fans, obviously, but we'll probably talk about true fans right at the end from here on in. Um yeah, and I I I would like it to be like that.

SPEAKER_02 39:14

I I I tread the line very carefully, and I hope over the years people have noticed that you know I try and stay um out of conversations where I think true fans is going to be involved. Um I have to do that because of the role that I play here with you.

James Cridland 39:30

Indeed, and you've done that very well, and um I I was just gonna highlight that we will carry on doing that. Um so so that is a good plan. Thank you to Buzz Sprout for their continued support, but uh super exciting uh to see what um you are uh current currently working on. So that's um so that's

Stats and data

James Cridland 39:48

very exciting. Talking about stats and things, um uh there's some new research that's come out from co host and quill, um, where if you talk to people that make podcasts. For a living, the podcast agencies, they're all talking about downloads as being their only real numbers, probably because they can be quite nice and large, and everybody understands what a download is, and not everybody yet understands all of the other different ways of measuring things. So some really interesting uh information from uh a new report that they have uh produced. You'll find it linked from the Pod News uh newsletter earlier on in the week. Um, and um also talking about stats, uh the Castro Podcast app. I think this is uh I think this is possibly going slightly overboard. They've launched a new listening stats feature in their app. And the listening stats feature allows you to see not just how much you listened to in any given day, week, month, or year, you can even drill down and see the exact episodes you were listening to at an exact time, and it goes back a number of years as well. And I'm there thinking, gosh, that's a that's a brain old thing. That's a brave old thing. So uh yeah, but um yes, if you're on the hunt for a new podcast app, uh you might want to give Castro um a go. It's very well thought of by the people who use it. It's available for iPhone uh and um yes, and it's uh uh out there.

SPEAKER_02 41:24

Now I I've put in the show notes, James. You can see the graphic. It says total listening time. So we have this dichotomy, don't we, where Spotify, Apple, YouTube, WatchTime, now Castro, I mean I know Fountain ourselves, others have listen time, first party data, and hosts have download data. I think this is the challenge that you know agencies are facing because they can't get to anything other than the download data from the hosting companies. So the first party data. It makes us wonder whether John Spurlock's SPC, you know, the idea of publishing first party data, or at least a slither of that first party data, is worth reinvesting into.

James Cridland 42:11

Yeah, I I think it absolutely is investing uh worth it worth investing time uh into. It's worthwhile diving back into that. The question really is how far um the current uh industry is involved. Because, you know, as we covered in the pod news uh newsletter yesterday, Spotify is really making a mess of this because when you opt into Spotify video, that means that none of your audio actually gets served from your podcast host. So therefore, your podcast host loses all of the information about your um audio version of your podcast if you've got video as well. Um, it also means that people like Buzz like um it means that people like uh Podscribe can't see how well your podcast is doing on Spotify. It means that those Triton rankers that you see uh also don't see any of the downloads that you're getting on Spotify either. So we're actually seeing companies coming out of the ranker because it can't measure you if you add video into uh Spotify, it can't measure the audio. Um, and in fact, you know, I dug up uh as you as you'd notice yesterday, a piece from Sounds Profitable back from April uh last year, which basically says, do not take part in Spotify video. It is going to be bad for you, it's going to make you earn less money in total, it's going to ruin your measurement uh in terms of podcast um uh in terms of um the ads that you have, it's going to ruin that effectiveness measurement, do not take part. And I think it's really interesting that Spotify has basically turned around and broken Open RSS uh uh uh completely um to uh get some video uh out there when it didn't really need to end up doing that. So um, you know, you if you compare that with um iHeart's plans for video, I think there's gonna be quite a lot of conversations around downloads and um just open data because you know Spotify is essentially marking its own homework now uh in terms of its numbers.

SPEAKER_02 44:29

So um well, I've got two points here that I'd like to raise. And first of all, we have constantly said when are we gonna see the numbers, how much of the subscription money is actually going. We're hearing from various people in the industry that actually spam is not working very well for them with video in Spotify, um, and people are reverting back to audio only. So I think it's beholden to Spotify to get some numbers out to prove that it is actually a good product and they are making money for creators, but we haven't seen that. And then the the other thing I'd say is, you know, last week again we announced Fountain are supporting video hosting using the alternative enclosure. Um you know, again, I think they are leading a charge there. I'm I'm hopeful some of the more what I call traditional hosts will start to sit up and take note and begin to support it in the RSS feed as well. Um it doesn't have to be HLS, it could be MP4, it could be, you know, uh other models that they could do. I mean, I I just think we have been, as a podcast uh ecosystem, very remiss on allowing YouTube and Spotify just to take the lead. Um and I'm you know hat tip to Fountain for coming back.

James Cridland 45:51

I I I know I think I think both uh a hat tip to Fountain, but I think also actually, frankly, a hat tip to Podscribe in their emails to their subscribers, basically saying just be careful what you do here, and and a hat tip to sounds sounds profitable. So boldly coming out last year and basically saying no, don't do it, it's a bad idea. Um so yeah, no, I I agree. I think it's um it it that there is a lot of weirdness going on with the video world, which is breaking open podcasting. And it is really up to us as podcasters to turn around and say, you know what, if you want to watch our show in video, then use the iHeart Podcasts app or the iHeart Music app or whatever it's called, the iHeartRadio app. Use that because that will give us the correct data if you want to or use uh you know, true fans or use you know any any other fountain or use fountain. I can mention the app. Oh, right, right. Excellent. But uh you know, so so all of that, all of that stuff. I I think uh I think probably podcasters are gonna have to be a little bit more um uh straightforward in terms of how we talk about the apps that we want people to watch on. And talking of which, Substack now has a video podcasts app. Brilliant. Uh it's available on TV only, um, which is fascinating. It's available on Apple TV and Google TV, and you'll be able to watch um, they're not calling them podcasts, which is nice, um, but you'll be able to watch what other people are calling podcasts on that uh platform. Um so that again is another splinter in terms of um the different ways that you can watch um shows. But uh Spotify have released some uh data as well, haven't they, Sam?

SPEAKER_02 47:50

Yeah, I mean I I didn't really see why they were releasing it, but they released a new set of data that says that the total number of followed shows has doubled in the past three years on Spotify, with more than 34 million shows discovered every week by users. 93% of podcast listeners on Spotify say they expect Spotify to help them find their next favourite show. Um, okay. I don't know. Somebody somebody found a a stat and thought they'd make a press release. I don't know. Um, but good on them. The thing that I did think was interesting, they are rolling out auto-generated chapters. Now that is an interesting part in relation to the fact that Apple did that a few weeks or months ago. Time does fly. Um but yeah.

James Cridland 48:36

Apple are doing that to every single show in the Apple Podcasts directory. Spotify have been doing auto-generated chapters, I think, for the last six months, but they're slowly rolling those out. And that's the difference, I think, again, between Apple and Spotify. It's the uh it's the the old curmudgeon at the BBC story that I tell every so often of me going there and um wanting all kinds of changes, and he says, Yes, yes, yes. But James, you've joined the BBC now, and here at the BBC, we don't do things first, we do them properly. Um and I do think that this is uh the the difference between Apple and Spotify. Apple just took the time to do it properly. Spotify still are just sort of slowly rolling uh these automated chapters out. So um yeah, I think it's um yes. Um I wish that Spotify would, you know, if you're gonna launch something, launch it then, please. Thank you. That would be nice. Launch it for everyone. Uh don't just launch it for your own shows. That's bad. Um, so uh yes, there we go.

SPEAKER_02 49:41

Now um this isn't really a big story, but it just uh annoyed me a little bit. Uh, YouTube are testing whether they will charge for video speeds now. So if you want a 2x or 3x speed on your YouTube video, you might soon find that you have to have a premium subscription. So this looks like what they're starting to do is go, yes, we've got you all to come over here. Now we can start to monetize you, and now we're gonna start to pull free features into subscription-based features so that if you really want those features, tough luck. Pay us some money.

James Cridland 50:16

Yes, and shittification is alive and well. Uh, Instagram have also launched a TV app. Oh, that's exciting. Uh, Netflix um are basically saying that YouTube is competition. Um, and uh Netflix actually showed some pretty good numbers um in some new Nielsen figures that came out uh this week. Netflix going up a little bit, YouTube going down a little bit, but YouTube is still way, way, way bigger um than uh Netflix. YouTube's share of all TV viewing, and they are the number one in the US, they're bigger than CBS and NBC and all of those. 12.7% of all of TV viewing is on YouTube. Netflix is third place with 9%. My guess is that uh Stranger Things had quite a lot to do with that. Um, but interestingly, the measure is of total minutes consumed. It's not individual shows, um, it is total minutes consumed, which is the way that they are measuring that. And interesting to see Edison Research releasing a whole new set of data this week. Uh, and again, using the 773 million figure, which is how many podcasts are consumed every single week in the US, 773 million hours of consumption. Uh, so again, moving away from uh the download, moving into listen and watch time, consumption time, uh, which by the way has been the way that radio has measured itself for a long, long time. So uh yeah, I think that that is uh all uh interesting.

SPEAKER_02 51:53

Um before you go on, I thought there was a lovely term that um back in March, Ted S Sar Sarandos, who's the uh co-CEO, said YouTube was in the killing time business while Netflix was in the business of spending time. And we talked about this a couple of weeks ago, that I don't watch Netflix during the day. Uh I don't find that I can go into the lounge and sit down, it's a working time. But at night I'm quite happy. And conversely, I might have a YouTube video on on the side while doing something in the day. Um do we think that this is going to now, with all the new YouTube uh sorry, with all of the new podcast videos that Netflix are requiring, will Netflix become a daytime app?

James Cridland 52:40

Yeah, well that's clearly the uh the hope um from Netflix that the numbers go up. If if the only thing that they care about, and it uh and it it does come down to the rankers, doesn't it? But if if the only thing that they care about is the Nielsen ranker, which is measured on total minutes consumed, then they will be trying to do anything that they possibly can uh to make sure that they are as high as possible in that ranker. Um and uh, you know, if they if they can manage to move from third to second place and then up to first place, I think Disney Plus is at second place. Um so if they manage to move um from there up to uh first place, then that would be, you know, that would make uh an awful lot of sense uh for them. Uh Disney Plus, by the way, isn't in second place, but the Walt Disney Company is in second place, and of course the Walt Disney Company owns, I think, AB ABC. No, it owns one of those, CBS, I think. Well, what is it? It owns one of those. Uh and ESPN and various other things. Talking about Disney Plus, they've got podcasts now.

SPEAKER_02 53:46

No, they haven't.

James Cridland 53:49

Well, I mean, they have, kind of, haven't they? They've got they've they've got the official podcasts, which you can now listen to on Disney Plus and watch, I think, as well, maybe.

SPEAKER_02 53:59

I don't know. I I don't have Disney Plus. My children are a bit older now.

James Cridland 54:03

But um I've I've got it. Um, and I should probably go and have a look and see whether or not we get uh we get them here in this part of the world. Um the weird thing about all of the Netflix with podcasts conversation is it's only happening in the US. It's not happening anywhere else. They're not serious about this, they're just doing this in the US. In one in one country, one warn I won't say this. Don't go there, don't go there. They're only doing it in one country, and you know, uh, so uh I should uh go and have a play uh uh uh gingerly open the Disney Plus app uh on the telly in the front room and see whether or not we have got uh podcasts there. But you know, there's the only murders in the building official podcast. I'm glad that that's got a podcast, and that would kind of make quite a lot of sense, um, as well as um Percy Jackson and the Olympians. Uh no idea. Uh Tell Me Lies, no idea. So uh yes, uh all of that is uh there as well.

SPEAKER_02 55:06

I think in the you know, if we step back, I think what's really interesting right now is seeing the landscape changing with Warner Brothers being uh you know open for purchase with Paramount and Netflix and now Disney getting into you know podcasting and video podcasting. I think it's a really interesting landscape. I don't know where it's all gonna land and what it all means eventually, but um watch the space, I guess.

James Cridland 55:30

It's a scary time to be in legacy media, as they say. Uh really scary time because literally the world is changing under your feet and you just have to keep on running to uh you know to deal with all of that. But uh yeah,

Audacy removes podcasts

James Cridland 55:45

talking about legacy media actually, um, our final big story uh of the week is Odyssey.

SPEAKER_02 55:52

Boo.

James Cridland 55:54

Boo. Now, why are you saying boo? They've just got rid of us. Tell us more, James. Sorry, I'm gonna boo in the background. They've got rid of this show. Um Odyssey has removed a number of third-party podcasts from its radio and podcast app. Um I think they took me a week to give me a statement. Um, and the statement was we have removed a number of lower engagement third-party podcasts from the app, which accounted for a very small percentage of overall listening. And one of those is this very show, which now gives you a 404 error. Cheers, Odyssey. Thanks so much for that. Um, the company went on and said that the Odyssey app remains the home for a robust slate of podcasts, including all Odyssey originals and time-shifted shows, all podcasts from our premium podcast network, yada yada, yada, yada. Or you could just use Apple Podcasts and Spotify just like everybody else does. That's not what the company said. But uh, yeah, who's going to use the Odyssey app for any of that? Actually, you know, I did go back and see if I could find whether we got any plays from the audio uh from the Odyssey app. And my understanding is that they actually started taking um these shows out in November of last year. Um, our OP3 data, uh, publicly at least only goes back to November. So um so I I can actually tell you that I can't see a single play from the Odyssey app. Now it might be if if John Spurlock is listening, it might be that he's able to go back to some of our earlier uh data and find out whether or not this very show got any plays. Um, but um I'm not sure it did. Can I just say how ungrateful we helped them get out of bankruptcy by being listed on their platform? Oh, yes, yes, that's yeah, that's that's clearly how it worked. Wow. Okay. Uh uh right.

SPEAKER_02 57:55

Anyway, talking about talking about broken

Around the world

SPEAKER_02 57:58

things. Uh let's zip around the world. Um Dan Bon Gino seems to be coming back. Why? Don't do it.

James Cridland 58:03

Now now he's he's he's coming back to podcasting. Uh he starts February the second. Uh he worked at the FBI for the last year. Uh hooray. Um moving on. Uh Roger Davies has been named as interim BBC Director General. Um mate of yours, is he? He what's that? Is he a mate of yours? He is not. He's no report in the BBC. He's not a mate of mine, but he um uh he has been looking after all manner of different bits of the BBC. Now, interim BBC Director General basically means he will be doing that job while Tim Davy has finally gone, all right, I'm leaving. Um, and I'm sure that Tim Davy is delighted uh about leaving. Um, so Roger Talfon Davies, if I can give him his full name, probably pronounced it wrong. He's very Welsh. Um, he will be doing that job for uh a little bit. Uh also in the UK, Bauer Media's Audio XI is um now working with uh the Sports Social Podcast Network, which is a big uh football and sports uh network in the UK. And they're also working with AdSwiz, it says here. Um so that's exciting. Um they are a big um advertising exchange um and uh probably the big competitor to Global's DAX, uh, if you looked at that sort of thing. Um and uh the political podcast of the year uh was uh announced uh in London this week, um, which was uh all very exciting. Um the Persiphonica show Political Currency, uh which is hosted by former UK Chancellor George Osborne and former shadow UK Chancellor Ed Balls was crowned Podcast of the Year. Interestingly, goal hangers, the rest is politics. Nowhere, nowhere in that list.

SPEAKER_02 59:54

Exactly. I was n I was really surprised, absolutely. Nowhere in that list. Okay, did did um Did Tony Pasta not pay his money?

James Cridland 1:00:02

Well, uh and and the weirdest thing is that one of the co-presenters of the event was Anthony Scaramucci, um, who does the rest is politics US. Um, but uh absolutely no mention of any of the goal hanger shows uh there, which I just thought was really weird. Uh other people who um got some gongs include um Sky's Electoral Dysfunction, which won two, and uh the Spectator's Quite Right podcast. Uh the thing was uh sponsored by YouTube, because of course it was. Uh because you can see exactly YouTube's play there, trying to cozy up to the politicians um and give them awards. So well done them. Uh all of those awards were announced uh on uh X uh live uh during the uh show. Time James. I was hit. I was I was wondering whether it was the whether it was the um the uh automated uh automated clothes taker offerer uh or the or or the or the you know Elon Musk that um that these people liked, but uh weirdly they didn't give me a comment. Uh so uh yes, who knows what's going on there. Um anyway, uh and uh in terms of awards and events, the Scottish Podcast Awards have announced uh the awards categories. Um rather bizarrely, you can enter all of them if you are Scottish in some way, shape, or form. Um there's some good eligibility information on their website. Um, although there is an international podcast category where you don't have to be Scottish at all.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:36

So how could you possibly win the Scottish Podcast Awards if you if you I thought I thought the international one would be too you know for the diaspora, you know, the Scots abroad.

James Cridland 1:01:46

No, absolutely not. No, it's uh it's just there. Right, well I mean, you know, if we want to if we want to uh spend 80 80 pounds, uh if we want to waste 80 pounds, then we can we can certainly do that. But uh yes, no, I thought that that was uh interesting. And the British Podcast Awards 2026 are open for entries. Um the ceremony is going to be at the O2 in October. They've not bothered telling me that they're open for entries, um, but um it's a very good uh award ceremony, and you should take part uh in that one, certainly.

Events

James Cridland 1:02:18

Uh James, uh any events going on? Yeah, uh no, no. Uh all of the events have all been cancelled. No, um there are some events going on. Um firstly, I should tell you about Podcast Movement Evolutions, which is at South by Southwest uh in March in Austin, Texas. Um they've unveiled the first wave of speakers. Um, and uh two people I can tell you about, Mr. Ballon, um who does a very big um podcast, uh, does very well on things like Patreon as well. So um worth a peek. Uh and there will also be a keynote from YouTube as well uh at uh the event. You can go to the uh podcast movement website now and sign up for your interest. Not quite sure why they're not um making tickets available quite yet, um, but I think there's uh a few things to dot and cross uh in terms of their um their uh things there. But anyway, podcastmovement.com uh is uh where you go. And I should remind you that Pod News is no longer directly connected to Sounds Profitable or Podcast Movement, it says here. Um what else is going on? There's a thing called Dome Fest, which is very cool. It's in Sydney in New South Wales, in uh Australia. It's um a big, uh, interesting podcast fan festival. I think it's the first podcast fan festival that has existed in Australia, um, which is uh very exciting. It's taking place in uh Sydney. Um, some of the shows you'll be able to uh see there. Well, I've not I've not heard of any of them to be honest, but it's a lot with Abby Chatfield. It's very big. It's just that I've not I've not heard of it. Um so uh a bunch of those uh shows going on in Sydney, which is nice. Uh the podcast show London uh has announced its advisory board. I'm on there as long, uh, alongside uh RF Nurani from uh CBC, uh Vicky Etchels from Global, Steve Ackerman, who is a free agent right now, and Ruth Fitzsimons from Bauer and many other people. Ariel Nissenblatt is there, uh Megan Bradshaw from Amazon, assuming that Megan Bradshaw from Amazon wasn't one of the 16,000, which I hope that she wasn't. Um, I hope not. So um so all of that is going on. Um that uh event is uh taking place in May. It is the highlight, and I'm only saying this as a brit, but it is the highlight of the podcast um uh conference uh or podcast festival uh scene. Um it's uh very much worth going uh for. If you want to save yourself a little bit of money on tickets, then podnews.net slash extras is where to go. Um there you'll need to subscribe to the pod news newsletter, otherwise we're not letting you in. Um two other things to tell you about the BBC's Your Dead to Me podcast has announced a live tour, uh which is very exciting, across Great Britain, I've written, um, rather than the UK, because they're not going to Belfast. Um so so that's get technical with people. We'll get questions. What's the difference? The Americans will have no idea. Why is he ridden Great Britain? Gee, why is he ridden Great Britain there instead of instead of the UK? Uh well, because they're not the same. And um, and uh finally, uh, if you are a podcaster in New Zealand or indeed on the east coast of Australia, then uh firstly, gore blamey, it's hot, isn't it? Uh and secondly, um, you should be going to the New Zealand Podcasting Summit. It's on Saturday, May the 9th in Auckland. They've announced their first set of speakers. Astonishingly, there'll be a session about AI and a session about video at a podcast conference. Who knew? Uh, anyway, you can go and uh sign up with tickets. I spoke there a couple of years ago. It's a great, great event. Uh, it's highly worth going to uh if you're a fan of podcasting in and around Outerroa. Um, so uh do do that. Um, just uh uh do a Google search or or a search on another platform for the NZ Podcasting Summit.

The tech stuff

Announcer 1:06:17

The Tech Stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland 1:06:21

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

SPEAKER_02 1:06:28

It's a story that you've been covering that I think we need to talk about. It's called Earsay. They're a podcast app that uses Apple's on-device AI model, which is very clever, to work out where the ads are, skip them if you choose, and also extract information about the advertisers so you can see them and act on them yourself. Now I'm not quite sure why it's doing that. Is it a you know, we are clever developers and let's show you how you can do this stuff, or is it a genuine business model?

James Cridland 1:06:56

Well, I've seen um that uh I've seen a number of new apps appearing really only in the last couple of weeks that are using Apple's on-device AI. So this is AI that sits on your phone, so therefore, it doesn't cost any podcast developer or um app developer any money to use because it's there on your phone. And so what ESA are using it for is for three things, which I think is fascinating. Firstly, they're using the AI model to do better, faster speed playback. So it'll deal with um, it'll deal with, you know, skip um, you know, skipping silences and all of that sort of thing, and deal with a better way of playing back a podcast at a faster speed than just turning the speed up. Um, that's one thing. The second thing is that they're using voice cleaning um using the AI to make it clearer to hear what um uh a badly recorded show is actually saying. But the third thing, and this is where it gets a little bit controversial, is that um the on-device AI model will firstly give you transcripts of every single show which is available, because you can do that with the um AI, but also secondly, it then works out where the ads are, and you can set it to skip those ads if you want them to, um, which I find fascinating. Now, instead of just skipping the ads, what it does is it puts on a page which isn't too visible in the app, to be fair, but uh it is visible, um, it puts a little piece of information on who all of the advertisers are. So you can click through, find out more information about who the advertisers are. So the advertisers don't totally lose out, the podcast creators don't totally lose out, it's it's the same as just skipping the ads. Um, and of course, it will appear as a normal download uh as well. So I I think it's really interesting. I think it's one of those apps that um I kind of shouldn't be excited about because it's kind of not very good for the industry, but on the other hand, the guy that's coded it has uh done as much as he possibly can to make it as good for the industry as he can. Um I can probably tell you that he is just implementing the podcast funding tag, um, which is nice. So that will be available directly within the app as well. So I think it's a pretty good thing, really, to be honest. I can't think it's very clever. I can't imagine too many people are gonna actually use it, to be honest. Um, at the end of the day, if you do want to skip the ads, well, you skip the ads, that's fine. But um, I do think it's very clever. What do you think?

SPEAKER_02 1:09:47

Well, I think it's very clever in the use of the AI locally to get the transcription at zero cost, and and possibly he could add chapter markers and all the things that Apple are doing. Um I wonder what Apple are doing as in it's their own technology. Oh no, they won't use it like HLS. Okay, we're okay. We're okay.

James Cridland 1:10:07

No, no, no. Apple are using their AI uh tool for that cleaner voice thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:13

Are they using it on the local device?

James Cridland 1:10:15

They are using it on the local device, right? Yes. So they are they are using it there, but I would uh totally agree, and I think that you you know the transcripts and things I find fascinating. The there is there is a there is a downside, and the downside is that it takes about 10 seconds to have a think before it starts playing. Um because it has to start with all of the transcripts and things and everything else. Uh the other downside is that it thinks half of the Pod News Daily is an ad. It's probably just the way I'm reading it. But um, yeah, but I I you know I I do think there's something uh there. Um the business model, by the way, is um you buy the app for $7.99. It's not a subscription, it's not anything else. You're just buying the app for $7.99. So it's no different from any other app out there. Um and I'm kind of feeling bad about talking about it because, you know, um I probably shouldn't be talking about it. And it's it is still a bit rough around the edges. But on the other hand, I think that he's trying to do, the guy that's that's done it is trying to do the right thing. Um, and I think you know, anybody that tries to do the right thing, you can see the ESA uh user agent where when it's it it's it's downloading, you can see how many people are actually using it. It's um it's quite a useful thing, I think. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:42

Now, one of the companies that I used to love um back in its day is StreamYard. I used to think that it was the coolest little product for uh video recording podcasts and then live report recording, because you could just press a button and go, yeah, LinkedIn, Twitter, yep, oh Facebook, yep, great. Click, one click, and you were live on all those platforms. I thought wow. And then it got bought by Hopin, if anyone remembers Hopin, the company that went to seven billion in COVID and then went to zero out of COVID. Um, and that was then bought by some company called Bending Spoons in Italy. Now, what are they doing?

James Cridland 1:12:20

Yes, well, Bending Spoons are basically the company that inshitifies everybody. They are the inchitification company, that's what they are. Um, so they've ended up um buying uh, for example, they bought Vimeo at the end of last year. They bought Vimeo, which is um the YouTube um uh competitor, I guess, uh, the professional place for you to put video of your own. Um, they bought Vimeo at the end of last year. They have now fired pretty well everybody from that team. Um, so it will literally just sit there and earn money. Everything that Bending Spoons buys is in maintenance only mode. They bought uh Evernote and um put the prices up for that. Um they bought uh Meetup a while back. Um, they've now just bought Eventbrite, brilliant. Um so uh, and as you might have already guessed, they've whacked the pricing up for StreamYard. Um there was one company uh one customer of theirs posted on a uh on a Reddit post um last week saying that he's got four team members. He was using a um a service from StreamYard that cost $89 a month. They just sent him an email saying, yeah, your price is actually going up to $417. That's a massive, massive price increase. Um so uh yeah, it's it's just a typical venture capitalist. Um bleed these companies until they're dry, as soon as the owners are bored with them. Um, and so uh yeah, it's um it's everything that's bad about the internet, as far as I'm concerned.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:04

So, what have the Romans ever done for us then, eh? Yes, well, yes, indeed. Now, uh Libsin are doing something a little bit odd. What are they doing?

James Cridland 1:14:16

Yeah, so Libsyn uh from November last year, Libsin haven't been giving proper 301 redirects for all of their customers. So basically, you cannot um cleanly switch away from using Libsin and go and use um, you know, whatever podcast host you want to, BuzzPrat. Um, you can't do any of that. So um and it's a bit complicated. Uh some of them work, some of them don't. Libsyn has been blaming other companies for the issue, but actually that's not fair. And the person that I spoke to at Libsyn says we shouldn't be doing that. Um, that's not the sort of thing that our customer support should be doing. So thank you for letting us know. Um, but it's um it's just another one of those conversations about the Libsin technical debt problem that they have. Um that um, you know, again makes you think uh they really do they really have a large future? And I genuinely don't know now uh in terms of that. But uh yeah, there's a long article about the whole thing in the Pod News uh website this week, uh, which is worthwhile going and taking a peek at.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:33

Yeah, I mean 301's still a messy uh solution. Yeah, anyway. Um I won't go into who said it, but you know, um one one host that was talking about it said that why would I make it easier to for people to leave me?

James Cridland 1:15:54

So yes, well, I and and the answer to that is because you're also making it easier for people to join you. That's the answer.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:03

That's a very good answer, actually, yes.

James Cridland 1:16:05

Yeah, so you know, 301 redirects are a are a good thing. Uh I suppose the question is how long is a 3 i should you have a 301 reader right there? Arguably you could say after the first year it's done its job you can and you can get rid of it. Um, but it costs so little to actually have a 301 redirect there anyway. Um, but it's just the fact that Libsyn have always been doing things in a slightly odd way. They give um specific feeds for um Apple and another one for Spotify and another one for such and such, and then they've got their own internal feeds and everything else. I was always um brought up on the idea that one piece of content has one URL and that's it. Um, and so everything I want to keep hold of has one URL which will never ever change, regardless of what you do to your to your website. Make sure that that URL never never ends up changing. Um and um yeah, and Libsyn appears to have built their product completely differently. Um, and I think that that's coming back to hurt them, I think.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:13

Beamly. Who are Beamly, James? Because I can't remember.

James Cridland 1:17:16

Who are Beamly? Beamly is a podcast hosting company as well as a bit of podpage type stuff. Um it makes podcasting uh websites, and it's also a bit of a Patreon type company, so it makes um membership and stuff like that. They have just started uh supporting analytics prefixes because they're a podcast host. Um, and you can just tick the button and away you go. This might be an idea for a new podcast host as well. Um, you can just tick the button for OP3 uh to turn on PodTrack, to turn on add to the roadmap. Feature request. Um you can turn on Spotify, add analytics, podscribe, and podcorn, apparently, uh, which is uh nice. They've also integrated with Zapia to do various uh stuff as well. Uh it's a smart tool, is uh Beamley. Um uh I was gonna say not enough people know about it, um uh but um they did sponsor the PodMews um newsletter for an entire month in November. So hopefully more people know about it than that. Um but uh you should definitely go and take a peek. B-E-A-M-L-Y.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:25

Now, here's a story I found, which um I'm not sure what's gonna happen, but um, it's a new premium music platform which was launched for podcasters and creators. Now, the new audio platform which recently launched changes how creators uh and podcasters can access music. It's called Sound Market, and it was created by the composer and producer David Crane. Again, I'm not sure if I've ever heard any of his work, along with his colleague Nick Geishon. Um do you think that they are producing royalty-free music or licensed, unlicensed music? What uh what do you think this might be, James?

James Cridland 1:19:05

Yeah, there are actually quite a lot of these um out in the world. So this is another music library where you can buy music from and use um and use music for your uh show. Um there there are a number of these which are launched every so often, and soundmarket.io is the uh newest one there. Um to me that there does seem to be an awful lot of different um music libraries that you can go and buy music from. Um, and that's great, but it's not particularly helpful in terms of finding uh music. What there probably needs to be now is an aggregator for all of the different um, you know, all of these different uh services, you know, as well. So um, but it's you know it's a nice idea being able to download um uh individual. Music tracks. My guess is, and I would hope, that you can download the individual stems as well, so you can actually do some mixing of that sort of thing. I should give a shout out to Studio Dragonfly, who are another company that do a very similar thing. And they, along with their um owning company TM Studios, makes the uh music for this show and for the main Pod News Daily as well. Um, so they're another uh example. You can find them at studio dragonfly.com. Um great to see more of these companies um doing that sort of um music um stuff so that you can gain access to a bunch of um interesting tracks to use in

The inbox

James Cridland 1:20:43

your shows.

Announcer 1:20:43

Boostergram, boostergram, booster grand, 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 1:20:57

Yeah, 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 the money that we make uh as well, uh, which is good. Uh thank you um to whoever it was who boosted us um from uh fountain saying uh the pod news weekly review is always better with a tech segment. Um oh there you go. You've your your your tech segment, Sam, has got has got fans there. Excellent. Um yes, uh, which is nice. Uh confusingly, the boosts that come in from podcast guru um end up coming in with a link that says boosts, even though actually they're not boosts, they're just streaming sats. So that's confusing. But thank you to the ugly quacking duck um who says, thanks for making sense of the numbers. 7-3. Uh, thank you, Bruce. Uh, that's very kind of you. Thank you for listening. Uh, much uh appreciated. Um, what I should um probably do is to see if there's a way to get into the strike API to be able to then pass all of the complicated URLs so that I can actually um uh get uh a replacement for what I used to use, which was Helipad, which I can't use anymore, um, because you know, all everything's broken. Um so so I should probably uh end up seeing if Strike has a um some form of an API there. That would be fun, wouldn't it? Maybe I could turn that into a business. Who would have thought it?

SPEAKER_02 1:22:33

You failed in your pitch at Podfest. Is this the next one for next year then?

James Cridland 1:22:38

Yeah. Oh yes, that wasn't fun. That wasn't fun. Um, but um, we should also say thank you so much to um many of the kind people who have uh supported us. Uh Silas Vogt, uh who is uh our latest um supporter, uh those Seth Goldstein, uh John Spurlock, Martin Lindescog, Will Clark, and Ralph Estep Jr., who I've been calling Ralph Estep Jr. for a long time. And I only heard on a different podcast that he's pronounced Estep. So there we are. Apologies, uh Ralph, uh, for that. But um thank you to you and indeed everybody else. Much appreciated. Uh, it uh helps me, as you might have seen from uh Dave Jackson's blog post recently, it helped me um buy dinner uh for some folks uh while I was at PodFest. So thank you for that. Uh you can join um the uh our list, our 23 um uh supporters list at weekly.podnews.net, and thank

Sam and James's week

James Cridland 1:23:43

you for doing that. So um you've uh had a quite a nice, quiet, quiet week, Sam. Uh no, no big launches, uh no funding announcements, nothing.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:52

No, quite quite quiet week. Um, no, it's been a good week. Um we Yeah, I mean, you know, it's something we've been working hard for uh for a few years, so it's nice to see some uh labour, fruits of our labour. Um yeah. Uh but as I said, you know, somebody said, Oh, you've got your funding, great. I said, Yeah, I now owe money to a lot of people who now I've got to return it to, you know. So um welcome to sleepless nights. Um it was easier when it was self-funded, but you know, it's also the opportunity, so I'm very excited for what we might be able to do next. Yeah.

James Cridland 1:24:26

And does that mean I know that you don't want hordes of people contacting you and saying, give us a job then? Um, but does that mean that you will be able to hire some more people, or I or are you focusing on more on other things?

SPEAKER_02 1:24:40

No, I mean, you know, part of what we've got to do is go from I mean, look, let's be honest, um, there was just two of us building true fans, you know, we we aren't an army of thousands. Um, and as much as we've supported many features and functions, we've got a lot of technical debt to sort out, we've increased our capacity of our servers, that's been the first thing we did straight away. Um you know, so we're a little bit more robust, and yeah, I think we need people, right? We do need people, and I'm gonna be very careful. Um, somebody said hire slow, fire fast. Um, and you know, I I will be very cautious on that because you know it's very nice to suddenly go, oh yes, you're oh you're amazing, oh yes, and then suddenly find that they're not the right fit, and then you've suddenly created a lot of problems. Um and also to be brutally honest, um there are people that I have in mind um who are very specific to what I want to achieve. Um rather than you know, I just need bodies, which I don't, I don't need bodies. We've we've done all right for three years, just the two of us. Um if we didn't get more bodies, we would survive, but with more bodies we might be able to grow quicker.

James Cridland 1:25:54

Yes, yes, and I I totally hear you. Uh it would be lovely to hire people to work with me, um, but the business doesn't make any profit if I do that. Literally makes no money. Um, so you know, we're we're we're sort of um, you know, the the Pod News newsletter runs on a very tight um budget, um, which makes money at the end of the day, but it makes money because, you know, I've ended up doing uh like most of it. So um yeah, and that and and and you know, wouldn't it be lovely to get additional uh help with things? Um but that's not necessarily in there, and so that's why funding is a really important thing, um, because that will actually allow you to um go and get things which are a step change. Um instead of just you know, my my kind of world of plodding on and hoping that what I'm doing is going to you know increase um the value f of of the company and everything else, you can actually make a big, big change very, very quickly if you want to. So uh yeah, no, that that that that must be a very exciting, exciting change. Uh and as you say, both a weight on your shoulders, but also a weight off your shoulders as well, one would imagine.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:12

Yeah, it is. I mean, you know, again, knowing that you've got some monies there to be able to I think we've got money enough now. Yeah, if we wanted to and we were cautious not to have to go back and get any more money, I think we could quite easily. I mean, it's you know, our break-even number is not that high.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:31

Um, as you say, adding more people then changes that break-even number. So I I I'm I'm very happy. Don't don't get me wrong, very, very happy. But I'm also very pragmatic right now and saying to myself, okay, stop. Don't make any rash decisions in the next 24-48 hours that you're gonna come and regret.

James Cridland 1:27:55

So don't go, don't go buying that yacht. Um, not allowed that. So, what's happened for you, James? You'll be you'll be driving a big Land Rover with uh True Fans One as your as your number plate. Yeah, you're probably already doing that, actually.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:14

Sorry, where's that spy camera you've got? Yes.

James Cridland 1:28:19

Yes. Well, uh I'll tell you what I have been doing. Um uh nowhere near as exciting as you. Um, but I ended up spending uh just under a hundred Australian dollars, so about two pounds fifty, on um some new shelves for the office, Sam. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:38

Are they reinforced for the awards?

James Cridland 1:28:41

Come on. Uh funny you should say that, but uh in the show notes now, because you we we don't normally have video. There we go. Uh but in the show notes now you can you can see uh probably Pride of Place uh in in the uh uh with a special light shining on it is the uh is the podcast hall of fame um a big lump of uh scary glass. Um so that's very exciting. And uh uh later today, as we um uh uh as uh as this show goes out, my Ambi will arrive as well. I know, so I've got both of them. Um you've got space, it looks a bit crowded back then. So that'll be so that'll be exciting. Um I've got some um uh so it's all uh obviously cheap IKEA um uh things, but um there's some um there's some pod news red uh drawers which you can't quite see. Um there's some little hidden lights which are lighting up things. Um so I've got uh a pod news red radio uh on the shelves and various other things. So it's all very exciting. Um and I finally got Where's the Webby? I finally got it. Uh the Webby's not mine, the Webby was uh a radio station's so um yes, uh I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:58

Can't you get it like the uh World Cup, you know? Can't you get sort of a fake version of it and just have it there?

James Cridland 1:30:03

Well, actually, no, you can pay extra to get your own personal copies of Webbies. Um I think that is something that the radio station that um uh that the radio station actually offered uh if you wanted a cop a personal copy of that Webby, then to thank you for winning the award, the then the radio station would actually buy another um another copy of the award. Um I wasn't that fussed to be honest, so so I didn't. Um but um yeah, but um no, but yeah, well, yes, now maybe. Um but yeah, so so that's been exciting. Um and also uh Sam, because uh obviously I I've uh you know just spending a hundred dollars on new shelves, um, I'm now gonna go the whole hog and spend even more money because what you can't see in that photograph which I've sent you is the chair that I am sitting on. And the chair that I'm sitting on is a really uncomfortable um IKEA chair that I've owned for 15 years. I rather foolishly even put it on the boats between the UK and Australia. Um, it's a really uncomfortable chair. I've been sitting on it for uh, as I say, forever. Um, and um I I've decided I'm gonna treat myself to a new office chair. I know. Nice. So uh yeah, so I keep on meaning there's a there's a proper company that does proper office chairs, which I keep on meaning to go to because it has a big sign outside.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:37

Something with a back would be nice, James. Something with a nice back on it.

James Cridland 1:31:40

Yes, this this has got a back on it, but it's not got much of a back on it. And frankly, the problem with it is is that you sit on it and it goes down because the the cylinder thing is is is now a bit flabby.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:52

Um so now we know why the Pod News Daily is only three minutes long because James can't sit there much longer.

James Cridland 1:31:59

Yes. So yeah, so that's been so that's been an entertainment. What with that and um a uh I've got a CO2 monitor in this office now. Um yes, I I saw, yes. Yes, and right now the CO2 uh thing has a uh big orange uh um uh light on it, and it says 1400, which is too high. So let's open that. Uh and on that bombshell, uh that's it for this week. Um, all of our podcast stories taken from the Pod News Daily Newsletter at Podnews.net.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:32

Uh you can support this show by streaming, Sats. Good luck, and you can give us feedback using the bus sprout fan mail link in our show notes. You can send us a super comment or a boost, or better still, become a power supporter like the 23andMe. No, 23 uh power supporters at weekly.podnews.net.

James Cridland 1:32:48

Our music is from TM Studios. Our voiceover is Sheila D. I should thank Sheila and Evo for sending a very nice they send a Happy New Year card every single year. And um uh it being the 29th of January, it's only just come. Um, but uh I so I should thank them for that's very kind, yes. Um Kangaroo Post. Uh our audio is recorded using CleanFeed. We edit with Hindenburg, and we're hosted and sponsored by Buzz Sprout. Start Podcasting, keep podcasting.

Announcer 1:33:18

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