Announcer 0:01

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

James Cridland 0:13

I'm James Cridlin, the editor of Pod News.

SPEAKER_01 0:15

And I'm Sam Sethe, the CEO of TrueFacts. I think one of the things that Mercury can do really well is it can give a bit more creative autonomy to independent creators.

James Cridland 0:25

Liam Heffernan from the Mercury Podcast Network on why indie podcasters need a network and their new Hall of Fame indie podcast heroes. Plus, is video the new gateway drug to audio and new voice enhancement too? This podcast is sponsored by BuzzSprout with the tools, support, and community to ensure you keep podcasting. Start podcasting, keep podcasting with BuzzSprout.com.

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From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly Review.

Sam Sethi 0:54

Now,

Sony to add AI podcasts

Sam Sethi 0:55

James, let me ask you, are you a gamer? Not really, no. No, nor am I. But lots and lots of people do game, um, and strangely, Sony now wants to use AI to feed you fake podcasts, you know, the um notebook LM type podcast. Oh yeah. Voiced, though, by their PlayStation characters.

James Cridland 1:15

Brilliant.

Sam Sethi 1:16

Excited? No. No. But they've got a patent for it. That's the issue.

James Cridland 1:23

So you can listen to Sonic the Hedgehog giving you a podcast, can you? Not that Sonic the Hedgehog is a Sony thing, but you know what I mean.

Sam Sethi 1:29

Yeah, it's uh look, we're in a world of characters that I don't even know. Gods of Wars, Kratos, or Ellie from The Last of Us. For those of you who know gaming, that will mean something. But what they're trying to do is take information from both your gaming behaviour and your friend's gaming behaviour. But instead of having a nondescript character, they're using the characters from the actual game. Now, the problem is SAGAFRA are not happy with this because they don't believe that the voices for the original characters have licensed themselves to be used in a podcast. Oh well, yes. But again, in terms of what they're trying to do, I guess, is take information and make it audibly available. Um but is this a good use of AI?

James Cridland 2:17

I mean, you know, uh the is this a good use of AI is something that um is it's a question that I think is going to be asked every single week from here on in. Um, you know, I think quite a lot of uh quite a lot of people are just sort of playing around with AI and seeing what it's capable of. And, you know, I'm sure that there will be pressure on many people to incorporate AI because AI is the future. I mean, heavens, you know, the amount of conversations that I have with radio broadcasters about oh, we've got to use AI, um nobody can really understand or explain why and explain what it can actually do. And so, you know, this is a patent. I think the interesting thing about this patent is that it is from July 2024, that is before the big AI, you know, excitement. That's you know, eight uh that's a watch. It's it's not eight months, is it? It's um it's uh uh older than a year, it's about 18 months away. Um so that's uh that's pretty impressive that they were sort of guessing what they should be doing back then. But it does mean, of course, that uh yeah, if you if you I mean podcast, why they're using the phrase podcast, who only knows, but still there we are.

Video - a gateway drug?

Sam Sethi 3:31

Talking about the other thing that's been bug-bearing most of us in the podcasting world, video podcast now it says, leads to audio consumption, James. So it's a gateway drug, is it?

James Cridland 3:43

Well, yes, according to this is data from Edison Research, and according to that data, then you you you can actually see 72% of first-year listeners, 68% of long time listeners to podcasts, say they've started listening to the audio-only version of a podcast after finding its video version, um, which is I think good news, but I think it does stress the whole thing about video, which is that it's probably good for marketing, uh, but probably not so good for um consumption.

Sam Sethi 4:18

Again, I think we've said in the last couple of weeks, one of the things I've been talking about is that Spotify, TikTok, YouTube are algorithmically good for discovery, but places like Patreon, Substack, and Portals are the place where I think people should basically build their fandom. And and and and that's where I think it's gonna go. But yeah, so um does that mean James, you and I need to start no no, I'm only joking. I'm only joking. What video? No, yes, no, settle down, Mr. Sally.

James Cridland 4:50

Um I remember I remember working with a radio uh uh a program director at a radio station, um, who who, by the way, moved to Australia about 15 years ago. I've seen him twice since. Um and uh so he was a very gruff northerner, and he turned around uh and he was talking about uh voice tracking, which is a way of recording your um your bits on the radio for later play out. Um, and it allowed essentially for you to do an overnight show when you didn't want to pay somebody to do an overnight show. Anyway, he turns around and he says, We'll do voice tracking on this radio station the day that I have two holes in my arse. And um, which was a brilliant quote. And weirdly, he appeared six months later to get two holes in his arse uh because he started doing voice tracking overnight. Bless him. Um, but uh yeah, so I I yeah, I don't know.

Sam Sethi 5:45

And that's why he moved down under. Yes.

The IAB writes some law

Sam Sethi 5:49

Now, uh moving on then. The IAB have got a proposed draft legislation to address AI scraping. It says it needs to protect the ad-supported publishing ecosystem. What's it protecting, James?

James Cridland 6:02

Well, it's protecting those people that put content up on websites that are funded by advertising. Um, but the AI scrapers are just coming helping themselves, and hey presto, you get no uh access to any of the money that the AI companies are making from it. Um and the IAB say if we continue to allow AI companies to take what they want from publishers for free, there will be few ad-supported publishers left of any kind in just a few years. Which do you think they've got a point?

Sam Sethi 6:36

Oh, absolutely. I mean, if you look at, you know, uh Inception AI, 20 listens, and most of those are bots, but then they go back and say you've got 20 listens, and the ad company stumps up the money, while the ad company is going, did we get any CTA call to action? Did anything happen from that? Did we get any revenue? No, no, and no. So um I can see the problem. Um, we go back to what I was saying, I think, last week on the week before as well, which is um I'm seeing 30 bots maybe in each episode now that we're hosting, uh scraping and listening. Um and and again, we've talked about uh it's not the that Apple is the worst, it's what they do. They they say they do it because they want to create chapters and they want to create transcripts, but they're doing 3x, 4x, 5x sometimes listening to an episode more than even people playing the episode itself.

James Cridland 7:36

Yeah, yeah. Well, uh, I mean, I mean, ideally, um uh uh that will grow as you get more and more popular podcasts on your platform, but I think I mean certainly um Apple are doing it for um uh good reasons, one would say, because they are doing it to enhance the user experience, and there's no um doubt that adding uh transcripts, adding chapters, and all of that enhances a user's experience. Where it doesn't enhance the user experience is basically people just stealing uh information. Um so I mean the IEB says that in the next few years the ad-supported publishing industry, as we know it, will be a shell of itself, unless there is immediate legislative action, we'll be left with a few premium publications that survive on subscriptions, while ad-supported publishers will dwindle. And the irony for AI companies is that if that happens, there will be little quality content left to summarize and poorer data to train on. Um, I mean, I think they've got they've got a point, um, and you know, it it isn't necessarily a point that I disagree with, um, although writing a weird American uh piece of law um uh looks a bit weird, and I'm not quite sure that that's necessarily going to work, but um, you know, uh let's watch what the IEB does. Um but it does say it does say um uh unjust enrichment is a straightforward concept. If someone receives a benefit at your expense, it would be unfair for them to keep it without paying for it. This concept is so fundamental that it has literally been around since the Romans. Okay.

Sam Sethi 9:26

What have the Romans ever done for us, eh? Yes, exactly. Exactly. Look, we've seen this problem before with Google, right? Google you used the argument, oh, we're just indexing it. And if you aren't in the index, God, you're gonna lose out, so you better let us index it, right? And and and newspapers then, you know, were like, oh, you've taken all our ad revenue, you've taken all our um listings, you've taken this, you've taken that, we've got nothing left, right? And now you're taking snippets. And then by the time it was too late for some deals. I mean, I do remember Spain, Canada, Australia, we're trying to get Google to pay them now. It was like, you know, shutting the door after the horse had bolted. And I feel we're in the AI scraping game again, you know, open AI is indexing your stuff. And I've got people saying to me, No, no, I want to be indexed, leave it alone, don't block it. And then others going, Oh, take it away, I don't like it. And um see, Apple sits in that very weird middle ground. Um, by scraping the data, they are providing value in terms of transcripts and chapters. But if they downloaded the file, the episode, then we would all moan at them again because they could do that on their own um servers, not have to do it on other people's servers, but then they wouldn't give us pass-through data like Spotify. So it's a double-edged sword.

James Cridland 10:47

I mean, arguably, Apple should only be downloading one copy and not the numbers that you're seeing. That that that's certainly um, I think, fair. Um, and of course, every single one of those downloads is um will contain some ads in there, and those ads aren't being listened to by a human being. So there is that to bear in mind. Um, and they should probably be careful that they don't download more than they absolutely need to. Um, but uh yes, you can you can certainly see that um uh the the there is benefit, uh obviously it benefits Apple and it benefits um the iPhone and the iPhone ecosystem because that's the only place where you can get Apple Podcasts with all of these fancy things built in. Arguably, you could use the AI inside the phone to do quite a lot of this, but actually I think it's probably a better experience if it's done by a big beefy server than it is done by the slightly less beefy AI uh model inside your phone. So yeah.

Sam Sethi 11:48

Yeah, I was talking to a friend of mine about that model inside your phone, and we were talking about whether we could use it as a local method, and he said the problem is the LM is unstable because it will give you different answers to the same question on different results each time. Oh, indeed. So there's no consistency on that one. Um but should Apple be paying for the scraping?

James Cridland 12:12

I mean, you know, again, it's a um it's a benefit to you, the podcaster, so I'm not sure that they should personally. Um should they be should they be pushing people? I I remember I I did a uh a story in uh uh October or November about um Apple only promoting specific shows during one week that they were doing if those shows took off all of the advertising. Um and I think that is wrong, and I think Apple should have paid them to do that. That's what uh Amazon Music have done, that's what other people have done. But in terms of something which is just purely producing a transcript and adding some automated chapters and that sort of thing, I think that's probably you know a quid pro quo. We will make your experience, your users' experience better. Um, and we're only downloading one or two, you know, copies of your show anyway, so it's probably okay, really. So of course, most most most podcast um publishers aren't paying per download, of course, which is the other thing.

Sam Sethi 13:17

Yeah. But the people who are losing out then will be like Buzzsprout, for example. So they will have factored in an element of downloads for Apple and other bots within the fixed pricing that they offer. So it's their profit that's being eroded rather than the user or the podcaster in the case of Buzzsprout or RSS.com or other hosts. Yeah.

James Cridland 13:39

Um Yeah, I think that's fair enough. But I all I would also say, you know, um, in terms of um total uh downloads and things, you know, we're not we're not talking um uh for the Apple stuff, obviously, we're not talking about a massive percentage uh here for most shows. So the Pod News Daily, for example, gets um 32,000 downloads in a month. Um and and you know, the amount of downloads to um to the Apple uh ecosystem is going to be pretty small, given that what's that? That's um 20 episodes, so that's probably a hundred downloads in total out of 32,000. Okay. Um where where it gets where it gets big, of course, is if you have very, very small shows um uh where the majority of their downloads is being done by bots, and that doesn't really help anybody.

Sam Sethi 14:35

Indeed. Right,

Voice Regen launched

Sam Sethi 14:37

moving on then. Um do we need another voice enhancement tool, James? There's one called Voice Regen. What was this one and is it any good?

James Cridland 14:48

Well, it's from uh a company called Waves Audio. Now, Waves Audio is an audio technology company, it's not a random guy with an AI account, it's an audio technology company, not just any old audio technology company, but they've won an Emmy, they've won a technical Grammy. Um, they know what they're doing in terms of audio. And what this does is it gives you um removal of background noise, room echo, it fixes uneven volume as well. Um now pricing um uh it's pretty cheap in terms of um what you might use it for. So 300 minutes a month is five dollars. Um so that that's probably fine. You can buy additional minutes as well, you don't necessarily have to get a subscription. Um, so you can use it a little bit like uh like you would any anything else. Um, and it does video as well. You can drop a video file in and it will clean up the audio for a video file, which is also pretty good. Um, so I have to say, you know, I saw this and I thought, oh great, another voice enhancement tool. But then I used it, and you realize that actually it's a bit different from Adobe. They're not um audio specialists necessarily. Um they're they are you know companies that understand how these things work, how the AI tools work, so you can actually get rid of the um, you know, get rid of background noise and all and all that sort of thing. This was a rather better experience. And um uh listeners to this show would have already heard it. Um so the Pod Newsweekly review, every single one of the um predictions that we got from all over the place, some of them were recorded on AirPods or on laptop microphones in very echoey rooms, all of those tidied up using uh voice regen, which I had as a beta, to test it out. So that worked very well. Yeah, so if you listen to the interview that we did last week with um Dimi Nicolau from Wondercraft, then uh he was actually not on a great um uh microphone as well. Um, and so that um I thought, well, I'll chuck it in and I'll see what happens. And it managed to fix his audio very well and left your audio alone, and it was on the same web file. So I thought, well, that's pretty impressive as well. So it's a pretty good um tool, I have to say. It's worth um it's worth a look at. You get five whole minutes, five uh of uh free uh stuff on that every single day if you want to give it a go.

Sam Sethi 17:21

So Buzz Sprout, our sponsors use uh Ophonic, don't they, for magic mastering?

James Cridland 17:27

Yep.

Sam Sethi 17:28

Um how would you compare it to that then?

James Cridland 17:31

Um so Auphonic does have a few um a few tools that are that have some similarity here, particularly the um the loudness uh tool that makes uh magic mastering so useful in terms of um what you can turn on on BuzzSprout. What BuzzSprout also does is um there's one tool which will sort of fix any background noise and all of that sort of thing, and that has been a lifesaver um uh in a couple of occasions. The other thing that Buzzsprout Magic Mastering does, our sponsor, is that it gets rid of ums and uhs. And this show goes through that system because I'm awful at saying ums and uhs. And so therefore, um if I was to uh uh use that uh system, it just automatically gets rid of the ones that it can do a good job of getting rid of. So you'll still hear some, um, but you won't hear as many as you would have done otherwise. So um so Buzz Spratt's tool does a little bit more, um, but this tool is probably the gold standard in terms of just um cleanup of voice, particularly if you're going to use that in you know in other ways as well.

Sam Sethi 18:46

Right. Well, look,

AI slop news

Sam Sethi 18:48

uh we're going to go back now and look at a bit of a YouTube slop or u-slop as I'm now calling it. Um slop. U-slop. Well, everyone's uh having a go at YouTube Neil Mohan for saying that he wants to stop AI Slop, but he's actually providing tools to enable AI slop. And again, uh there has been Hollywood studios now who are getting very agitated about the whole idea that advertising is being threatened when you've got so much going on. I think they got rid of 19 or 18 channels this week of AI slop. Now, the the problem here is it's a double-edged sword again. I mean, if you provide the tools on the one hand, um, it's gonna affect advertisers. We talked about it a couple of minutes ago, you know, advertisers not being happy um with the IAB trying to do something. So are we just fighting a losing battle, or do you think we can hold back the tide of AI slop here?

James Cridland 19:50

I think it's gonna be harder and harder. I think as more tools appear, as those tools are better and as those tools are less easy to spot, I think it is just going to be much, much harder to end up um uh seeing. So, you know, yes, you know, a bunch of um a bunch of YouTube um uh obvious AI uh stuff coming off, but there will still be plenty more YouTube stuff which has been partially or wholly produced with AI. Um and the issue, you know, is that um advertisers are wanting to basically pull the ads away from um any AI uh content because they don't feel that it's particularly good, um, and they don't feel that it's necessarily being um you know being as good for um their advertisers as as it as it could be. So um you you you can you can see that there's some uh benefit and some opportunity there. I guess the question for us in in podcasting, um, particularly since the there's more and more tools every single day, um uh the question for us is well, what are we going to do about it? Um I find it fascinating that Apple has um guidelines in Apple Podcast Connect which say that you have to mention that your podcast, if your podcast is made with AI, you have to mention it in both the audio and in the episode notes. Inception point AI are still not doing that for some of their shows. And at some point, Apple is going to police its own standard, but right now Apple isn't policing its own standard, and if Apple isn't even bothering to end up doing it, then I'm not quite sure what that says for the rest of us.

Sam Sethi 21:41

Well, sadly, talking of tools, you reported about another AI slot generator called PodPilot. It writes AI uh voices, publishes your entire 30-day podcast schedule automatically. Zero editing, zero technical setup, you just hit publish, it says.

James Cridland 21:57

Yes, great. And there are and there are these that come up every single uh almost every single day. And I wonder whether it's just it's so easy now to produce AI generated podcasts. Uh, it's still harder to produce video, but it's easier to produce AI uh audio podcasts. And so therefore, it's almost being used now as a programming exercise for people that want to start playing around with AI. Um, oh, I'll very quickly vibecode, you know, this pod pilot thing or uh another one of the hundreds of these uh tools because they can do it and because it it kind of feels a bit magical. Yeah. That you can you can just push some information and out and it'll automatically produce some content in a way that weirdly, you know, the the images and the videos that still don't look quite right. That you can still tell, you know, the uncanny valley stuff. You can tell you can still tell that they're wrong. Whereas AI voices on podcasts, well, you know, you can automate the whole thing and even earn money out of um doing that if you're using a podcast hosting company that has those ads on there. So yeah.

Sam Sethi 23:14

Yes, Podpilot, uh, a name that will soon be forgotten. Now, moving on. Um

Apple financial results

Sam Sethi 23:20

Apple, talking of Apple, they released their financial results. Um, they've got a record of $30 billion up 14% year on year. Now, you know, and we're not going to go through their numbers. And in those numbers, the Apple services obviously contains Apple Podcasts. But on the back of that, James, they they acquired an audio AI startup called QAI for $2 billion. Now, Apple don't normally buy a lot of things, really, or if they do, it's not normally mentioned. Um, what do you think they might be doing with QAI, an AI startup? Are they going to start doing AI slot themselves?

James Cridland 24:00

Well, yeah, who knows there. Um, so I'd just say uh Apple's revenue is $143 billion. That 30 billion is just Apple services, which is the money that um uh that that is uh partially Apple Podcasts, although a very small amount of Apple Podcasts, one would assume. Um, so QAI, um QAI is uh a kind of it's it's not very clear what the company does. Um the startups worked on new applications of machine learning to help devices understand whispered speech and to enhance audio in challenging environments. So maybe it's just making Siri better at understanding what it is that you are saying. But probably, I think, what is what this is is it's um buying a bit of technology, but also buying people, because um at least two of the um people are um going to be um working for Apple that are currently working at uh QAI. And we shouldn't forget that Siri itself was an acquisition. Um Apple didn't build Siri, they just acquired that from somebody else. So perhaps that's you know something else there. Uh the Six Colors website says, of course, we shouldn't forget that Apple um has already produced things like translations for the AirPods Pro. Um it'll do different sort of audio modes if you're uh shooting video and so on and so forth. So perhaps there's some sort of you know more stuff going on there, maybe even live captioning in smart glasses. Now that would be a nice thing. So you can actually listen to you can actually listen to somebody, but actually um get little captions on the screen so you can actually understand what it is that they're actually saying. That would be quite useful for the old deaf people like me.

Sam Sethi 25:57

I think it would be good for language translation, actually.

James Cridland 26:01

Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, language translation, of course, um we had pretty well instantaneous language translation um in Google headphones about four years ago. Um, and uh Apple took their time and have now added that as well. So uh yes, I I think that there's definitely something there. But um, as with any of these things, Apple are not really going to say too much about what it is that they're actually doing until they've announced it, of course. Um, but this is uh this isn't a small thing, this is the company's second biggest acquisition. Right. Um, after beats, um, you know, the beats, the headphones and things. Yeah, so it's it's not a small acquisition. Um, so many congratulations to q.ai um because uh they've they've clearly impressed somebody at Apple.

Podcast hosting stats

Sam Sethi 26:52

Now, um, talking about impressing people, you weren't impressed this week, I think. It's fair to say on Mastodon. You said, I don't really understand John Sperlock's live white graphs anymore. Why, James? Why, why, why?

James Cridland 27:06

So, John has been producing and he is a supporter of this very show. So, thank you, John, for your uh support, and I much appreciate that. He's been producing a bunch of these graphs for a long, long time now. They're super useful graphs, and they show how many episodes were released on Spotify last month, and how many were released on BuzzSprout, our sponsor, and how many were released on Spreaker, and so on and so forth. And they're super useful because it helps you understand who the big dogs are in podcasting and who the also rans are in podcasting, and you can point to, you know, Podbean, for example, and see that Podbean's share is going down and down and down. Um, and the same for Libsyn, and you can wonder what's going on there. So they're super useful in terms of understanding what's going on until recently, because what John has started doing now is he's pulling out the AI podcasts from that um uh list. He doesn't appear to be pulling out the AI podcasts and then doing a um a reverse, you know, delete on all of the data back in time. So what you end up now seeing is you end up now seeing massive drops over the last couple of months, as John has found lots of AI podcasts, which he's coyly called TTS podcasts, uh text-to-speech. Um so you see these massive great big drops, which means that it's very difficult to actually now understand what's going on in terms of the trends. And in any case, these podcasts are still appearing in Apple Podcasts, they're still appearing in Spotify, they're still appearing in in in many cases the podcast index. So they're still competition to us podcasters, so they're still probably valid numbers. So I just don't really understand. Now looking at those numbers, I don't really understand how I can report on them because they don't seem to make an awful lot of sense anymore, and they seem to be, you know, uh overly uh affected by removing AI. Um what what what would be more helpful, I think, is to actually have two. Have one, which is all of the shows, and then have another set of graphs going back through years, which is um uh all of the human shows, um, which would need to be continuously re um you know, re-reworked out. But I think that would be much more useful because at least that could help us understand, you know, what the trends are at the moment. All that we're seeing is oh, John's found some more AI podcasts to get rid of. So I'm not sure that that's particularly helpful. I don't know what you I don't know whether you look at these um well I am now photographs.

Sam Sethi 29:53

Yes, I am starting now, obviously it's become much more interesting. Um weirdly, weirdly, yes. Yes, weirdly that's um yeah. Again, they're great for trends, um, but your suggestion is therefore John needs to do too, because obviously they are with and without AI.

James Cridland 30:13

I mean Yeah, I mean my my suggestion is uh I mean my suggestion is that that graph, uh the way that I've been reading it, certainly in the past, has been all podcast episodes released and available to you if you have a podcast app. Um and that's not what those graphs are now anymore. Those graphs are uh an opinion an opinionated list, we don't know what has been taken off, we don't know what is still there. Um, you know, the Kalaroga Shark Media stuff, those are voiced by AI, but they're produced by humans. Is that uh voiced by AI and so it's gone? I really don't know. And I think that's the difficulty is that without knowing what the data is anymore, it's very difficult to report on it. So there are other stats which are very helpful. Transistor has some. Um Libsin used to release some. It'll be interesting to see whether Libsyn continue releasing some of those um uh stats now that Rob Walsh no longer works there. And BuzzSprout, of course, our sponsor, also releases uh uh stats, which you can see at buzzsprout.com slash stats. So those stats are still very helpful, even though those are again a little bit skewed by not having any Spotify uh video in them. Um but as for LiveWire, it's it's just a bit it's just a bit frustrating. And I and I still don't really understand what John's uh plan is there.

Sam Sethi 31:36

Now, talking of uh Buzz Sprout stats, one of the things that stands out is Spotify consumption is down 23% year on year. Why, James?

James Cridland 31:46

Well, or is it? That's the other question. So is Spotify's consumption down 23% year on year, or have a proportion of shows that are hosted on Buzzsprout for audio opted into video on Spotify? And then of course that means that BuzzSprout never sees any of their downloads because if you are listening to a Spotify video enabled episode on Spotify, then all Spotify does is it plays you the audio track of the video from their own servers. So all of those numbers are now invisible to BuzzSprout. So the question I suppose is what does that tell us? Does that tell us that um quite a lot of BuzzSprout customers have now switched to Spotify video, or does it tell us that Spotify's consumption is down 23% year on year, or is there somewhere in the middle? So I'm not quite sure. I'm not quite sure what the answer is, I'll be honest.

Sam Sethi 32:42

Well, the other one was the transistor, we're talking at stats, say that browser um usage is up 56%. Why, James? Why?

James Cridland 32:53

Well, and uh by the way, uh Buzzbrat also um seems to uh show that too. Um why is I think it's AI. I think it's AI scrapers that are um that are scraping shows. The difficulty that we've got as an industry is that there are some podcast apps like Earsay, for example. That's one of these podcast apps that allows you to uh scrape ads um off your uh you know, off uh so it so it downloads the entire show and then it works out where the ads are and we'll skip those for you. Um that has a unique uh user agent. Um so I can see how many downloads I've had from the ESA app. Um now that does mean that I could just block the ESA app if I wanted to, but of course, if I was to do that, then what ESA would probably do is just pretend to be a web browser because we're never gonna block web browsers, are we? No. So I think this is the No, exactly. So I think this is gonna be the issue that we're that we uh go into as an industry. We we possibly don't want um that there are some people that would argue that we don't want uh certainly that podcast ad block, the bad one from a couple of a couple of months ago, we certainly don't want them scraping our our stuff. Um so we can block that. If we block Earsay though, and they just pretend to be um uh uh you know an ordinary uh web browser, then we're stuck because we can't actually block that uh app anymore. So um I think we've got questions to ask ourselves. I mean, you know, the obvious question is stop filling our podcasts with so many ads. That's the most obvious thing. But if we can't manage to do that, then where do we go in terms of this cat and mouse game?

Sam Sethi 34:44

Yeah, well, again, it goes back to do I start blocking the bots on TrueFans as an option?

James Cridland 34:51

Um as a uh and and I I'm thinking And you also need you also frankly need good bot bad bot because there are some good bots and there are some bad bots, and yes.

Sam Sethi 35:01

This is why we're gonna have to go granular and give the user the final say because we will never win. Um the the you know, every user will have a different opinion, and we will if we do a universal block, we'll never win. Yeah, and if we don't do a universal block, we won't win either. So we'll go granular. No, indeed, indeed. Now, uh another analytics tool has appeared on the horizon that unifies your historical data with real-time tracking, which I was questioning. Uh, no matter where you host, it connects to OP3 for real-time insights. Congratulations, that's good, and also imports older data from selected podcast hosts. So I was like curious. Hmm, sounds interesting, I'll go and have a look at this. And uh, it's not what I thought it would be. So you have to export all of the data using CSV and then re-import that data into this new dashboard, um, which I can't imagine is going to be maintained if that's what you have to do each month, right? That will just become a real pain. But did you look at it?

James Cridland 36:06

Yeah, so I've taken a look at it and I've actually plugged in this very show uh into there as well. Um I I think what they're trying to do here is if you were to, for example, switch from um uh from Podbean to Buzzsprout, for example, if you were to do that, which would be a wise choice because BuzzSprout are our sponsor, if you were to do that, then you would end up obviously losing all of the analytics that you have in Podbean because um quite a lot of podcast hosts, I don't know whether Buzzsprout does, but quite a lot of podcast hosts um won't import the old uh analytics data that you've got into your new podcast hosting company. Um so I can see that Podlytic uh that Podlytic fixes that one quite niche issue if you're moving, but you want to keep all of your analytics so you've still got one graph that you can show show people, and you can still turn around at the end of the year and say uh last year our show got X amount of of uh downloads and away you go. So I I can kind of see that um being useful. Um, the reason why they say real-time uh tracking is it's real-time tracking of downloads, it's not it's not there's nothing more than that, and they're using OP3. Um, their uh their integration with OP3 is a bit weird and a bit complicated, and I'm not sure that it needs to be quite as complicated as it is, to be honest. You have to go and get an OP3 API key and all kinds of things. Um I'm not quite sure what uh what the deal is there. But you know, it's okay. It's you know, it offers you comparisons and things. If your origin if your existing podcast host is a bit rubbish, then it offers you comparisons uh for that sort of thing and everything else. But um, you know, it's a it's it it's it's okay, but that's about as far as it goes, really, uh, right now. So um yeah, you know, I'm sure that some people will will want to use it when they're shifting podcast hosts, but I think it's quite a niche, uh a niche game, really.

Are there too many ads in podcasts?

Sam Sethi 38:18

Okay. Now uh you mentioned um uh just a few minutes ago that you know the amount of ads being stuffed into podcasts now. Well, it seems that there is a problem because there's a new website appearing to criticize the increasing amount of advertising in podcasts. It's saying some true crime podcast episodes have hit a 34% ad load, which is one minute of ads for every two minutes of shows. Right. Where's ESA? Get them out and use that. Now I'm joking, but the reality is this is this is going to you know. I mean, I've got, you know, I'll be honest and say I've got an ad blocker in my browser, right? I uh uh and where I where I want to pay for subscriptions, I don't see ads, and where I have, for example, I mean one of the biggest ones was the cookie thing in Europe, right? That just annoyed me. Um so I don't get those. And my VPN now is set to the US, so I just ignore that stuff as well. But um if we are stuffing ads together.

James Cridland 39:18

I'm sure I'm sure it's just to do with cookies and nothing to do with porn.

Sam Sethi 39:21

I bet it not be. Oh I'll check my browser. I'll check my browser. I'll do I'll do a darling, I'll check my browser. I'll do a mantelton. I'll I'll I'll police myself. Um Good lord. Yes. Yeah, but is is this just going to encourage products like ESA um ad ad blockers and ad skippers?

James Cridland 39:46

Well, so this is uh it's a really good website, actually. It's podcast. Podcasts. It's a really good website. Of course, you go all the way through the website, gives you lots and lots of nice numbers. It's one of those nice websites that just sort of has lots of animation and everything else, and it's really good at um displaying the issue. Uh, it uses data from Sounds Profitable from Oxford Road, from Edison Research, from the IAB, and from Magellan AI. Um, so they're really um, you know, quoting their stuff. And right at the bottom it says, Tired of ads ruining your favorite shows, there's a fix for that. And it's a little button that takes you to the ESA website because it's just advertising to ESA. Um and uh, you know, fair enough from that point of view. I have to say, I think that there is a problem with too many ads in podcasts. Um, because I think what we are doing is we are training people to use the skip button. I've said this in this show before. Um, I think that people are perfectly happy. I mean, Adam Curry was saying in the um podcasting 2.0 show last week, uh he was saying that he actually doesn't skip the ads, he finds them quite interesting. And I think there is a, you know, you wouldn't skip one ad, maybe in an ad break. Maybe you wouldn't skip two. But if you're gonna hear seven or eight back to back, quite a lot of the time, just ads for other podcasts, then it drives you mad. And of course you're gonna skip. And that unfortunately is what some of the larger podcast companies are doing. Um, and I think that uh probably that needs to start being called out because I don't think it's very good for the industry as a whole, so um, you know, but uh as I said in the piece when I reported it, I said time will tell whether anybody takes any notice of it. So yeah.

Sam Sethi 41:44

Have we reached radio level ad saturation?

James Cridland 41:47

Um thankfully, no. Um, I mean, radio um in terms of advertising is absolutely unlistenable to in many parts of the US, um, where you get nine minutes of ads in one ad break. Um, so you know that that thankfully we're not there quite yet. But in some cases, we are quite close. And the worry that I've got is you do have some companies, particularly radio broadcasters, saying we can fit more ads into podcasts. Um, I don't know why we're so scared of fitting ads into podcasts, because we fit more ads into the into the radio, and you're there thinking, well, uh yeah, have you have you listened to your radio stations at any point? Because um it's not a great experience. Um, so I don't think that that's particularly good. Um so uh I suppose that there's two sides of that. Will people care enough for them to start paying for something like ESA um to get rid of the ads? And by the way, ESA does not do a great job of getting rid of the ads, I should just say. Um, but also, secondly, are we gonna see um uh, you know, more to the point, are we gonna see advertisers who um are more interested in the amount of sales that they actually make from the ads? And um I suspect that we're going in that direction already. I mean, the Oxford Road um stuff uh uh from their orbit uh study, which gives you how successful the advertising was in certain shows, is I think really, really useful stuff. And I think the more of that sort of thing that we can get, the better. But also it does mean that we should put our put our prices up because at the end of the day, you know, um either we can sell nine minutes of ads in in a show for a grand, or we can sell a 90 second ad in a show for a grand. I know what would work better for the same grand, um, but it's just up to up to us as an industry as to whether or not we really want to end up doing that.

Sam Sethi 43:52

When we have ads in this show, I really hate it by the way. I just thought I'd be honest, um, because the amount of money we we generate from the ad is Not significant and I feel it interrupts the flow of the show. But that's just me. Um but we don't have a premium version of this show either where we we charge for it. But one of my predictions from our show earlier in the year was that I said that I think more people will now be moving to paid subscriptions for podcasting and that potentially we'll see at the end of the year, I think we we will see more money going to premium paid content than will be for generated by ad-supported content.

James Cridland 44:32

Yeah, no, I I think you're right. Um I mean we we um uh we very rarely do have ads in this uh show. Um we use BuzzSprout ads, which is um uh something that our sponsor offers. What we haven't done, and what we could do, is actually say ad-free um uh now, and we can definitely do that because um because Buzzsprout now offers paid subscriptions, which has integration to Apple Podcasts. That was really the reason why uh it was quite difficult to do in the past, was you know, not not having uh you know, having to go to the Apple Podcasts Connect website and then upload an ad-free version and everything else. It's now much, much easier. So perhaps that is something that we can end up doing. But um I think we've had ads in this show, I think three times in the last three months. So I don't think it's a massive thing. But uh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sam Sethi 45:29

Oh no, it it's not massive, and and we're not gonna increase it. But I I when I I listen back to the show, you know, and then I'm enjoying the show sometimes.

James Cridland 45:38

And then and then suddenly you hear me saying, let's have a break, probably in a really bad place because I don't bother to actually set where the where the ads go, which I could do, which I probably should.

Sam Sethi 45:50

Anyway, we'll see. It's gonna be, as you say, an ongoing challenge. Uh both the uh slop for um AI generated content, but also the amount of ads that go into podcasts as well.

James Cridland 46:02

Go for a break. Now uh sorry, I just thought I'd

Round the world

James Cridland 46:06

give it a go. Let's go around the world, shall we? Uh, what's going on in Japan?

Sam Sethi 46:09

Uh you're big in Japan, yes. Uh Japan has a podcast festival which will take place on March the 14th to the 15th in Akasaka. I hope I said that and didn't butcher it. In Tokyo. Uh 30,000 people are expected. 35 live shows will be from major Japanese creators, including radio and TV broadcasters. It's the first real example of the country treating podcasting as a mainstream platform. This sounds quite a bit.

James Cridland 46:36

It does sound very large, doesn't it? Yeah, two whole days of podcast festival, 30,000 people going. Of course, uh none of the listeners to this show should be going because you should be going to Podcast Movement Evolutions, which is happening at the same time in Austin in Texas. Uh Pod News isn't uh directly connected anymore, but still, we're still big fans. Uh so um that that would be a thing. But yeah, 30,000 people expected to this Japanese podcast festival in Akasaka, I think it's pronounced. Uh I could be wrong as well. Okay. Um, but um, I mean the interesting thing from my point of view is that you know, there are some big shows there. Um, you know, radio shows, TV shows, um, in terms of the uh companies making the podcasts. Um and um Japan is a very, very TV-focused culture. Uh, it's a very video-focused culture, it's much less focused on audio. So for Japan to have that podcast festival is, I think, a good thing. Maybe that coincides with uh podcasting becoming more video more visual. I don't know, but um, yeah, it's um worth a peek. Um I could couldn't even tell you whether or not it's free or not uh to end up going, but uh yeah, it's turning the entire neighborhood into a podcast theme park, it says. Uh so so there's a thing.

Sam Sethi 47:57

I look forward to you to being the keynote speaker next year and using Wondercraft's AI to voice translate to Japanese.

James Cridland 48:03

Juno, I would love to be in Japan again. I I've only been to Japan once, uh and it was that time when I'd left the BBC, but they told me that I couldn't work in anywhere else. And so I and so I went round the world in a huff. And uh Japan was just amazing. What an amazing place. Um properly foreign, properly weird. Uh so I'd love to go back there again.

Sam Sethi 48:26

Yeah, my wife grew up in Japan. She grew up in Osaka when she was young. Yes. Her her first language was Flemish and the second language was Japanese before she spoke English. Wow, weird. Gosh. Um, we'd love to go back there because I think the skiing out there is amazing. But anyway, I transgress. Now um whizzing back over to Le Français, uh, what are the French up to?

James Cridland 48:51

I transgress. Okay. Um independent podcasts are set to be available on the Radio France app. This is really interesting. So, Radio France is the public service broadcaster for France, obviously, um uh in terms of uh radio, so it's um kind of um the equivalent of the BBC radio at least. Um, they now have a new agreement with the Syndicate of Independent Audio producers. And basically, if you are an independent um podcaster in France, you would put your show forward to Radio France. Would you like this in your app? And Radio France will listen to it and say yes or no, uh, which I think is a really nice idea. BBC Sounds doesn't have that sort of thing, ABC Listen down here in Australia doesn't have that sort of thing. The MPR app doesn't have that sort of thing. It's a very uh it's a very interesting model. Um, the one thing that I would say is there doesn't appear to be anything in that list about money. Um, so I don't know whether the independent podcasters get paid. I don't know whether they have to pay Radio France. I I I don't know whether they have to edit all of the advertising all of the advertising out. I I don't know any of that detail, but just that sort of interest, I thought, yeah, that was an interesting thing for Radio France to end up doing. They seem to be doing things in a very different way than other public service broadcasters, and I think that's a good point.

Sam Sethi 50:21

I mean the French doing something totally different to the rest of the world.

James Cridland 50:24

I mean uh Yeah, I mean I've j I've just been doing some uh radio work um where I'm I'm uh for a client putting together a big list of uh radio trade organizations. Of course, France has four of them, because of course they do. Bless them. Um but uh yeah, no, it's a weird, weird and wonderful thing.

Sam Sethi 50:46

Okay, let's whiz over to the US. Now we talked about Disney starting to put uh companion podcasts on the Disney Plus app. But it looks like they're extending that now with American Idol. So it's going to stream live um this show that is American Idol on Disney Plus as well as ABC for the first time. But they're also going to be launching companion podcasts to the show on Disney Plus and Hulu. So are they getting into podcasting or is this just cheap TV?

James Cridland 51:18

Well, I think they're getting into podcasting in a way, but all obviously also Disney um is the company that owns ABC, and so therefore that that explains why they're working a little bit closer together with um the different bits of the ABC uh uh of the Disney, you know, uh organization. Um, but yeah, I I I think putting podcasts into, you know, if you're producing podcasts, Netflix, for example, produces podcasts to promote its shows, can you listen to those podcasts on the Netflix app? No. That seems weird. So the fact that Disney has fixed

Interview: LIam Heffernan, Mercury Podcasts

James Cridland 51:57

that is, I think, a good thing. Well, while we talk about Disney Plus, let's talk about Hulu as well, because Hulu we've not heard doing very much in terms of podcasting. Um, but uh yes, they are going to be doing the American Idol official podcast, but they've also done a deal with Headgum, uh, which is interesting. So the We're Here to Help podcast, um, which is um produced by Jake Johnson and Gareth Reynolds, um, that will be available on Hulu. It's the first of its kind, uh, so the press release says. Um, so yes, another story of another streamer getting involved with Inverticommas podcasts. Close Inverticommas.

Sam Sethi 52:38

Yes.

unknown 52:39

Yes.

Sam Sethi 52:39

Where's the RSS feed? Um just asking. Back here in the UK then. Um, Mercury Podcast Network, our friend Liam Hefnan, um, is marking his first year. Um, and with that, he's launching a product called Orbit, and he's also launching a Hall of Fame. I thought you were in the Hall of Fame, James, but maybe there's another Hall of Fame now for independent podcast creators.

James Cridland 53:04

Yes, gosh. Well, there's a thing. Well, you caught up with uh Liam and you asked him, firstly, what is the Mercury Podcast Network?

SPEAKER_01 53:12

Well, we launched Mercury in February last year. We launched, I guess, as a typical network, but our plan was always to do a bit more than that, be more than that, and be more of a an advocate for the whole indie podcasting space, which is hopefully what we're gonna talk a bit more about. But you know, in the last year, we started with a couple of really great indie shows. We've now got a roster of about 20, and we're kind of going onwards and upwards. I think we're one of the fastest growing independent podcast networks in the world. And last year's just been an absolute blur. It's been a lot of sleepless nights growing a network, but we're doing some great things. So, yeah, next steps.

Sam Sethi 53:48

Give me some examples from some of those network podcasts you've got.

SPEAKER_01 53:52

Yeah, I'll give you a couple of examples. The first is our first original that we launched last year, which was uh Spooky Storytime, so uh weekly horror anthology. It's one that we we worked very closely on to bring to life, and we completely own that. That's gone from strength to strength. We've started growing a nice little audience there, and we really wanted to sort of tap into a sort of female hosted, female targeted horror podcast, which we noticed didn't really exist, and we thought, let's do it. I think one of the things that make we can do really well is it can give a bit more creative autonomy to independent creators in ways that bigger networks maybe can't because they have certain commercial pressures to deliver straight away. We can create shows that have a slightly slower burn to them, and that's what we're seeing with spooky storytime. And because of that, we've been able to deliver something that fits in a real niche and a gap in that space, and we're starting to see the results from that. Another example of a show that we've worked with is Passmaster, they're a phenomenal show with a couple of really, really talented guys, uh Ryan and Tan, who put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into their show, and they just need that help with the growth, with the brand building, and some of those elements that they just don't have the capacity for. And you know, again, it's one of those that just requires a hell of a lot of just banging on doors and sending emails, and it's in theory easy enough, but it comes down to time, it comes down to money, it comes down to resource, and all of these things are just stuff that independent creators don't have, and that's where we're stepping in to help.

Sam Sethi 55:31

Now, let's start to talk about a couple of things you're announcing. One is the Hall of Fame. Now, why do we need another Hall of Fame?

SPEAKER_01 55:39

Well, yeah, you're right. I mean, there's a lot of Hall of Fames out there. Uh but one of the real things that we wanted to do at Mercury was not just to represent and support podcasters, but to celebrate those who have already contributed enormous value to the independent space specifically. So rather than being just a generic hall of fame that tries to make some nice kind of high-profile friends across the industry, we are a very targeted Hall of Fame. We call it our Hall of Heroes that celebrate those who have really championed independent podcasts. And we think that by doing that, what we're able to do is really bring together that community of people who have changed the game in in the independent world and shine a spotlight on them, really. I mean, Emma Turner, one of our first inductees this year, she's frustratingly modest considering everything that she does for our industry. Um so being able to actually hold her up and say, look, she's awesome, and this is what she's doing for you, it's great to be able to do that.

Sam Sethi 56:39

And have you added any others into the Hall of Heroes?

SPEAKER_01 56:44

Yes, so Ariannis and Blat is our other inductee, and we do have a third this year to round off our 2026 cohort. It is currently under wraps, it's a surprise they don't know yet. Very few people know who this person is, but we're working out a way to surprise them at some point in the future.

Sam Sethi 57:02

Oh, you're so kind. Just bring it around anytime you like. Anytime you like. Cool. Now, one of the other things you've done is created a product called Orbit. Tell me more.

SPEAKER_01 57:12

Yes, so I I always find it hard to actually tell people what Orbit is because it's actually a very simple concept. It's taking the infrastructure that we've now built at Mercury and it's offering that to all podcasters. Now, the the challenge with that as a typical network is that you can't just invite everyone and anyone onto the network because you have to be able to deliver a certain amount of support with that. What we can do is say, look, we have a this sort of network, we have free hosting to offer you, we have the ad marketplace to plug you into, and we have by building up that community, we have a lot of cross-promotional power with that. We can also, you know, use some of our own sort of promotional expertise and network level resources, and for a small monthly fee, less than you're gonna be paying currently for any hosting plan, you get to use that. So, what we're doing is giving all podcasters this immediate day one cost saving with the potential to then also earn money from advertising in ways they just can't do on their own. And this is all part of what we wanted to do at Mercury, which was to find ways to actually empower all independent podcasters with the same resources and tools that that currently and up to now have been hidden behind a paywall.

Sam Sethi 58:32

First of all, congratulations. It'll be interesting to see the adoption. Will you cherry pick some of those from orbit and bring them onto the Mercury network?

SPEAKER_01 58:42

Well, there's definitely a long-term plan there on our part. I think at the moment, doing that scouting and going out there trying to find shows that are really good fits for Mercury is a heavy lift on my part, but it there's also an awful lot of discretion and sort of qualitative judgment there. There has to be always, and that will never change. But the more that we build Orbit up and the more people we have there, the more just insights we have. We can see that data, we can see what shows are doing well, what shows aren't doing well, we get that first-hand data set that we can use to do the sort of trend analysis and really understand what is happening in our industry, the shows that are showing the most potential, and and where we can step in and offer the support. So, you know, it's gonna make our decision making a lot smarter so that we know that the shows that we then promote up to Mercury are shows that we we genuinely know we can help to succeed. Right.

Sam Sethi 59:35

And if I wanted to sign up to orbit, where would I go today?

SPEAKER_01 59:39

Uh you can go to mercurypodcast.com forward slash orbit and all the information is there. I I will caveat that I I built this website without any knowledge of actually how to build a website or something like this. So I'm open to feedback. Please be as as harsh as you need to be.

Sam Sethi 59:54

Oh no, no, be gentle. He he's working hard. He's working hard. Liam Hefnon, thank you so much. It's always good to see you. Will we see you at the London Podcast Show this year?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:04

Of course you will. Yeah, I'll be around. So if anyone else is there listening to this, do drop me a message and let's uh let's catch up. Lovely. Liam, take care, mate. See you soon. Cheers, um.

Announcer 1:00:14

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

People, jobs and events

James Cridland 1:00:22

Right, let's take a look at people and jobs. And um uh what have we got in people and jobs? Well, uh, we've got a couple of new directors of Goldhanger, uh, Gary Lineker, who's one of the co-founders, which weirdly wasn't a director, he is now, and it's probably a BBC thing. And Greg Bettinelli, who is um uh an important partner at the Cherning Group. Um, now that they've invested into Goldhanger, they get a place on the board. Um, so that'll be interesting. Um, the IAB has a new chair and vice chair, um, which is um possibly slightly less interesting. They're from uh TV and from um and from an ads uh company from Amazon. Um Kaleidoscope getting bigger, uh including buying uh Christy Mirabelle's podcast marketing agency, The Listening Party. Uh Christy will now be Kaleidoscope's head of marketing. They have been earning or raising, I should say, not not earning, raising, um uh quite a lot of money. I think they initially raised 2.5 million and then raised five million last year as well. So they're clearly doing something interesting and exciting. Um, so um worth a peek at what Kaleidoscope are doing.

Sam Sethi 1:01:36

And the other bit of story in People News is Kate Jaffy uh from the House of Podcasts has said she's going to publish her last newsletter, which you can read via Pod News Daily, I think.

James Cridland 1:01:48

Yeah, that's right. She she she she'd done an awful lot of really good work, um, sort of between 2017 and 2023. And it's a really interesting read because it's the first newsletter that she sent for a couple of years. It's also the last newsletter that she'll be sending under House of Pod. But um uh just really sort of going into just the the wild ebbs and flows that some parts of the podcast industry have seen over the last um five years or so. Uh so well worth a read. You'll find that if you just search for House of Pod in the Pod News website. Right, let's take a quick look at some uh awards. Um uh new awards, brilliant. Um, the Society of Editors in the UK. Who? No, I've no idea either. But anyway, they've launched the News Podcast Awards 2026. Um, it's the first UK awards dedicated exclusively to recognizing excellence in news. Maybe we should put this show in no. Um maybe not. Um but nevertheless deprecating this morning, aren't we? Yes. It doesn't necessarily say anywhere that you have to be based in the UK, which is interesting. You would have thought that that would have been in their uh rules, but it doesn't appear to be.

Sam Sethi 1:03:04

Well, the Scottish podcast last week didn't have to be Scottish.

James Cridland 1:03:07

Yes, but only in one category, whereas this one, uh seemingly anything uh can be. But uh here's a US-only podcast awards. It's the Abby No, stop it. Uh it's the Tumber Awards, um, a new set of awards from Vox Topica, um, uh talking about public interest audio, the inaugural awards on a podcast that prioritise accuracy, public understanding, and audience trust, and effectively set a higher standard for civic and mission-driven storytelling. I do wonder really how to report on these sorts of things, because you know, I mean, I reported on a really dodgy award ceremony uh a couple of weeks ago that was literally an award ceremony that you would pay to uh pay to go to, pay to be given an award. That seemed to be it. There didn't appear to be any judging panel, there didn't appear to be any form of communication in terms of what the categories were or anything else. Um, and it it did strike me when I was writing that, it did strike me that the difference between that obviously dodgy podcast award and this sort of thing is quite small. You know, even the Ambis is quite small. The the the difference is that they're bigger, they've got the glitz and glamour associated with them. Um, but the big difference is the judges. And I think maybe what we should be uh looking for and asking for is okay, who are your judges, who are your judging panel, how will you be judging this? How will you be getting your um you know your nominees list? Where will that come from? All of that kind of information is I think quite important in all of these awards. I haven't seen any information about the judging panel for the Society of Editors, whoever they are. Um, I'm sure that the Turnberg Awards, um uh because they're being run by um uh quite a decent company, I'm sure that they will have, you know, a good um a good view uh there in terms of the judges, but the only thing that it says is a panel of industry leaders, public affairs experts, and media professionals. So not quite sure what that says either, really. So, you know, all of this I do find quite difficult, really, which of these awards are you know a kosher and which of these awards aren't. And I really don't I'm beginning to not really know what the answer is. My suspicion is that we will see loads more awards because the Golden Globes have gone, oh well, you know, there's something in giving awards to podcasts. And y y you know, and I think I think we'll probably see loads more awards coming out of the woodwork this year.

Sam Sethi 1:05:51

But um Well, I I thought the Global Awards are very good. And the winner of the Global Awards is the news agent from Global.

James Cridland 1:06:00

Unfortunately, unfortunately, Global are uh Global are a weird company. I'm I'm a fan of Global normally, but they did pull out of the ARIAS, which is the UK's audio awards. They've pulled out of that. They don't want to play in that game, they just want to judge their own homework. And uh it's a great shame. I wish that Global were a bit more uh keen to play with others and to get their team, you know, the the the um you know the recognition that they deserve rather than here are the global awards. And um amazingly enough, all of the winners are from Global. Um I don't think that that's a particularly good thing, to be honest.

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Podcast events on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland 1:06:43

What is going on? Well, there's On Air Fest happening in uh late February in Brooklyn in New York. The AMB is of course happening at the same time. Uh the final schedule for that has just come out. Uh, Evolutions by Podcast Movement is happening in Austin, Texas, um, as part of South by Southwest there. So that is um uh uh looking uh quite interesting. Um I I know that a number of people have been asking me, and I'm not quite sure why, um, how do we get tickets? Uh the answer is you don't need tickets, you just turn up. Um so it really is as simple as that. There is a website that you can go to where you can um sign up to a newsletter which will tell you all of this, uh, but you just turn up. That's as simple as that. So um, and they've got some good uh speakers going on there, so that's fun. Um, but South by Southwest in Sydney, which um should have been happening this year in October, has been cancelled. Um, it's only year four for South by Southwest Sydney. Um, the New South Wales government that bankrolled at least part of it uh in previous years has pulled out in the middle of that contract, which is interesting. Um the South by Southwest folk said that there were two dedicated stages for podcasts at the event last year. If dedicated stages means quite small rooms, then they were absolutely correct. Um, but um uh it's a shame in some ways to see South by Southwest in Sydney not happening. Um, it wasn't my favorite conference that I've I've ever I've ever been to, to be honest, but no, but there we are. There is a uh a podcast festival with lots of podcasts you can go and watch being uh filmed in Sydney. That's called Dome Fest, and that's happening at the end of uh March. Um right now is the Web Summit in Qatar in Doha Um or Doha in Qatar, um, which is going on uh right now. An event that I was promised that I would be a speaker at. Hmm. I'm sitting here in Brisbane, Australia. Don't think that came through. Uh so there we are. Um but that's a pretty big uh event, and certainly the big one uh which was in Lisbon at the end of last year, uh, was something again that um I was potentially going to be speaking at, but um uh events transpired against me. Um but I think they've got another web summit coming up as well. I can't quite remember where that is, but that's in another entertaining place. Dubai probably yes, uh in June. Really? Um so that uh I've never been to Brazil. Just saying, um that would be nice. Put it out there, manifest it. Yes, June the 8th to June the 11th. Um, and um uh the they they had an event there last year, it had 34,000 people there, so yeah.

Sam Sethi 1:09:37

I'm just gonna put it out there as well. In case James is busy, I'm available.

James Cridland 1:09:41

Yes, I'm not sure whether I can actually make it, but uh I'm sure I can. Anyway, there we are.

The tech stuff

Announcer 1:09:47

The Tuck stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland 1:09:52

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

Sam Sethi 1:09:57

Well, it's gonna be a lot of James talking technology this week, actually.

James Cridland 1:09:59

Yes, I have a feeling it might be this time.

Sam Sethi 1:10:01

Yes, yes. Now, um to set the scene, um over the last couple of years, there's been a push to create micro payments within podcasting 2.0 apps, and for a while it looked like it was all working swimmingly. We were using something called Keysend, um, and all the apps had supported it, and so micro payments from those early adopters was flowing nicely between apps, along with comments and in my case, as I call them, super comments or boosts for all other apps. And so it was all going very well until the brakes were put on, and somebody said, We're gonna change the format protocol of the way that we send information over the Lightning Network. Stay with me. And it was called Ellen address, which just simply means they went from a long-winded number to a more friendly email-like wallet address, so James at podnews.net or Sam at podnews.net. And that seemingly then caused a break in what we were doing. Now, clever people like you, James, Oscar, and others have come up with some new specifications. One is RSS payments, and then another one is called Boost Box. I'm gonna stop there and take it over, James. Go.

James Cridland 1:11:21

Yes, well, I I got a bit um I got a bit frustrated, you might have heard this time last week, because I was saying, oh, you know, I wish I could just, you know, you can kind of see the payments in my strike account, um, but then you have to follow links and everything else, and it's just a mess. And I I I wish it that this could be easier. I wish there was a helipad for um uh for this new world of uh LN address payments. And so I have built one. Um rather uh rather bizarrely. Uh it's called Runway. You see Helipad Runway. Nice. See what I was doing there? Um, so it's uh it's called Runway. Uh you'll find it at podnews.net slash runway if you want to have a play. You need a strike API key so that I can look into your bank account, but don't worry, it's nowhere near as scary as it sounds. Literally, the only thing that I can see are your payment details. I can't even see your uh total balance. The only thing I can see is your payment details. Yes, right. Yes, well, yeah, but only your only your payment, only who has paid you. Right. Okay. That's the only thing that I can see. So I can't see how much money you've got in your account. I can't see my payments are only fans, that's fine, that's okay then. I can't see, yes, I can't see any of the payments going out. I don't even know who you are, but more to the point, I've been writing the whole thing in JavaScript so that my server doesn't even get to see any of this stuff either. It only happens in your browser. And I'm trying to write it in really clear, understandable JavaScript so that um so that people can just read the JavaScript and go, you know what, okay, this this looks fair enough. Um yes, so that's what I've built. Uh at the moment, I mean it works, it's not brilliant at the moment, and uh it'll break as soon as Adam Curry tries it. Um but uh but one of the things that I'm um uh just getting my head around is uh how to store a database in your in your web browser, um which it it uh apparently you can do. I had no idea. But anyway. Index TV, yeah. Yeah, index TB, which is amazing. So um so I'm beginning to build that into the system as well, um, with the idea of uh speeding it up and making it work very nicely. I found a uh fatal mistake with the with the ape with the um uh solution that we have chosen, um which is uh deeply technical, which I won't go into, but um I have found a fatal problem there, but pretty well, it's working quite nicely. So um yeah, I'm quite I'm quite pleased with how the thing is working now.

Sam Sethi 1:13:52

So in summary, basically, if you have a strike wallet and you are using Allen address, you can now use Runway to see all the payments that you receive or send from your um podcast app.

James Cridland 1:14:08

Yeah, exactly right. So it it it it will look um quite similar to how Helipad looked. Um, it's a bit more complicated to do that because of the way that it works, but that's um the uh plan. You will be able to filter out uh streaming sats and just show boosts, um, but you can see who sent you the message, you can see how much the total uh money was that they boosted, because that's not necessarily the same as the total money that you earn. Um you can see the messages and everything else. So um, yeah, it's um it seems to be working quite nicely. So um yeah, I'm quite pleased with it so far. It's it's just it's one of those things that I'm really using to learn more about JavaScript and to particularly learn about local storage and things, which I've never played with before. Um the benefit of local storage is that it lives entirely on uh your machine, it doesn't it doesn't get sent back to the server. Um so there's real benefits there in terms of privacy and everything else. But um yeah, if you have a strike account, and I I know you do, uh Sam, you should give it a go and see if it um and see if it works uh well for you.

Sam Sethi 1:15:14

Yeah, I think I mean one of the things that we've talked about over the last couple of weeks is that we have LN address working. Um we we basically know that because last week's podcast 2.0 show, um, a couple of people sent um payments to uh Adam and Dave and they received them and we looked at the splits and we looked at the payments and they they were all good. But we have got uh a couple of things broken in the spec that we need to support, which stops um payments from uh people to this show from TrueFans. Um but the the other part is is a boot box API element that uh we don't have support for, so we don't have the ability to put comments with um the support with the payment at the moment. Yeah. Um all this is good. All this is good. It just means hopefully in six months or less we will all be all sorted with L and address again and all flowing with SATS between apps.

James Cridland 1:16:15

Yeah, and it and it does seem to work and seems to work quite nicely. Um so the Boost Box API is essentially it's just a URL that goes into the payment details, and then you can click on that payment details and you can find more information there, um, which is quite uh which is quite useful. Um so that's certainly that's certainly helpful. Um I I have spotted that there are a few um there's a really nice thing about it, which is if you go to that URL that you've been given in a web browser, it um gives you this nice page that explains everything for you and explains how much money you've you've got and everything else. But uh, but there's also a specific um HTTP header which you can read, which just has that information in it. That's lovely, but it doesn't work from a browser. So so all of a sudden I have to then proxy that through my own website and and all of that. And I don't I don't really want that. And so I found out who wrote that initial uh specification, uh, which is nice. Um he is on the podcast index.social. Um so hopefully that will um get that working and um and we will see uh a little bit more information you know about that coming coming uh soon. But yeah, if you want to play around with it, podnews.net slash runway. I'm trying to fix it so that it doesn't break too much while I'm adding additional features, but uh it's worth a peek.

Sam Sethi 1:17:45

So Castamati is now supporting the Boost Box API, Fountain supports it as well. Um Podcast Guru has something similar. Um, I'm sure they're going to because I remember Jason saying he didn't know anyone else was working on this, so he came up with his own spec. Yes.

James Cridland 1:18:00

Um it's very it is very, very similar, but it's not the same. And so therefore, I I I'm um there's a bit of ugly code on there at the moment which uh understands, oh, it's podcast guru, therefore I will do X with it. Right. Um obviously nobody had turned on cause, so uh so so that was a good first step. But everybody's been really, really reactive so far. I've basically said, can you turn cause on? And everybody has. And I've now said, oh, can you do X and this is missing, and blah, blah, blah. And so I think more and more and more of that is going to work quite nicely. Um, you can really see that there's that it it it it has promise. Um, and it's lovely that when we get to it, um, I'll be able to read out some boosts.

Sam Sethi 1:18:47

Indeed. Now, uh, last bit of tech news this week is Caster Pod out of France, Benjamin Bellamy. Um, the open podcast hosting software platform is now much easier to install with a new one-line installation script. So well done to the guys there.

James Cridland 1:19:04

Yeah, super good, super good. So if you want to install it, it's literally one line and away you go. Yes, so many different ways to get in touch with us. Fan mail by using the link in our show notes, or you can use boosts in um many different podcast apps or email, and we share any money that we make uh as well. Um, we've got some boosts.

Sam Sethi 1:19:26

Excellent. Go for it then, James.

James Cridland 1:19:28

Yes, look. Um, so uh the ugly quacking duck uh send us a row of ducks, double two, double two sats using podcast guru. Ever changing is so true, very important, even more for your podcast.

unknown 1:19:40

Have you any idea what this is about?

James Cridland 1:19:42

Thanks for the updates. Good job, Sam and James 7-3. Um, yes, I can't I can't remember what uh Bruce is actually talking about there. Uh ever changing. But still, Bruce, uh, I appreciate it. Thank you for your um for your row of ducks. Thank you to another row of ducks that you that you sent earlier on in the week. Congratulations, James, on your awards. Sam, great hearing about your funding. I am looking for a new job. I'm good at nothing, and I tell people I'm the biggest bum of all. When do I start?

Sam Sethi 1:20:12

Uh take a take a uh ticket in a very long queue of emails that I've received. Yes.

James Cridland 1:20:19

Yes. So there we go. Uh and Franco using customatic. I'll be frank with you. I I asked him to send me a boost so that I could actually see it in my data, so that I could then code around it. Uh, because that's the uh lazy way of coding that I do. Uh, but Franco very kindly uh sent 10,000 sats. He didn't need to send that. Uh that's a nice uh amount of money. So thank you, Franco. That's very kind of you. Uh post both a boost and also a stream so that I could get the uh the code working. So much appreciated uh for that. Thank you to Brian Ensminger, who's been streaming this show with streaming SATS for a long, long time. One of the things that I do plan to do with Runway is to um be able to actually see who uh has been uh streaming SATS the most so that we can thank them as well. So thank you, Brian. Uh very kind of you. Um and also RW Nash, who um we mentioned this boost last week, but we didn't mention your name. So thank you. Uh always better with a tech segment, Jets. Yes, there you go. Um so thank you uh so much uh for doing that. You might be interested to know, because runway worked it out, uh, that over the last um over the last 100 payments we have earned 15,000 sats each. Um so 15,000 sats for you, Sam, 15,000 sats for me. Um, and a and a small amount of those sats going to the podcast index as well. So thank you all very much uh for that. Much, much, much appreciated. Uh we should also say thank you to uh our many supporters, uh our many weekly um supporters who pay us even more per month, uh, which is uh super kind uh of you. Um people like Silas Vogt, who is our newest uh supporter, Seth Goldstein, uh the excellent John Spurlock, uh Neil Vellio, John McDermott, and uh Brian Ensminger. Uh thank you all so much uh for your support as well. Weekly.podnews.net is where you go uh to uh support us if you wish to

Sam and James's week

James Cridland 1:22:19

do that. Uh so what's happened for you this week, uh Sam, you've not been busy on your uh on your uh lavishly funded uh podcast company. Yes, yes.

Sam Sethi 1:22:28

Yeah, I mean I've been at the Ferrari garage, obviously, and you know, gone to the yacht company. Yeah, right. Because my investors would not have a panic if they heard that. Um, we um we we we continue to upgrade our service. Um we had a massive crash this morning. Um, so we it's all restored. Thank God for the backups and everything else works. So that plan at least was uh put into plan and it works. Um but we're moving, as you know, to MongoDB uh Atlas, so um hosted, so that'll be good. Um we've added uh support, the first part of our support for the new podcast store tag. Now it's not official, we're just as always with TrueFans, we're trying to test stuff early. Um and then we will move to a proposal that was put forward by Nathan Gathright, um, which is basically the second part, which is where you do upload product and descriptions and links out. And so, yes, that's been quite nice. You'll see that in the UI in the coming days. So there'll be a little shopping cart icon, uh a bit like the funding tag icon. Um so that's good. I'm quite pleased with that. You'll be pleased. We are adding support for OP3, James. So yes, excellent. Uh so there'll be it'll be optional, but it'll be on by default.

James Cridland 1:23:44

Oh, well, yes, there's a thing.

Sam Sethi 1:23:47

Yeah, I think that's the right way to do it, isn't it?

James Cridland 1:23:51

Yeah, I mean, I mean, up to you. Um uh yeah, I mean, obviously Open3.

Sam Sethi 1:23:56

Just ask you for advice before I go and create a rickety. Yeah, yeah. It's on my it's on by default. No one's ever done that before, Sam. What are you doing?

James Cridland 1:24:06

I can't be uh I mean obviously I can't be a uh an advisor to you because I'm an advisor to RSS.com. But um uh yes, I uh I mean as long as it's as long as it's obvious, um, because obviously OP3 makes your stats public. Um uh so as long as long as that's obvious for people, I think yes, it's a great uh it's a great plan. The more data that we can get into OP3 the better, because that actually helps us understand what the in uh what the entire industry is doing. So uh yeah, I think I think that's a very good thing.

Sam Sethi 1:24:37

And we are adding that bot blocker. So the idea is that it will be granular, so you'll be able to do um, yes, I want Apple. Yes, I want Open AI. No, I don't want Claude, no, I don't want Twitter. So yes, you'll have that. Um we've got our video and live hosting working now, it's in test mode. Um, so that's quite good. I'm quite pleased with that. We're talking about hopefully sometime, only in February, we'll get that live. Um, along with AI chapters and transcripts. So we're gonna try and do something similar to Apple's timed links, but more open, not just to Apple um destinations you'll see. Um we have to add support for Boost Box, we just talked about it. Um that's a big thing for us to do. And finally, I'm starting a new walk. So I'm gonna be walking the South Downs in in the UK.

James Cridland 1:25:29

What what what are the South Downs for people who don't know? I'm um obviously I know, Sam. Obviously, I know. But but if I didn't know, what what are they?

Sam Sethi 1:25:39

So uh there's along the south coast of England uh places like Eastbourne, Hastings, Brighton, Rye. Um so you walk along the length of the coast of the south of England, and it's quite undulating, but it's very, very scenic. And yeah, so we're gonna start that this Sunday.

James Cridland 1:25:58

It's quite undulating, but it is very scenic. Uh excellent. Um yes, the range of chalk hills. Um, so I suppose uh they finish with the the White Cliffs of Dover, I would guess. Yeah. Do they? No, not quite that far.

Sam Sethi 1:26:13

Maybe not as far as that, but we'll uh I'll let you know the exact route when I've been briefed fully. But we are starting on Sunday, so that's going to be something that I'm looking forward to doing.

James Cridland 1:26:22

Very nice. Uh it says here um that uh they're 260 square miles, which is 670 square kilometres, um, but it doesn't necessarily say how long that walk is going to be. But it's the UK's most visited national park. 39 million visitor days annually uh go there, which is um which is very exciting, and uh there'll be sheep. So um so I hope you enjoy the sheep.

Sam Sethi 1:26:47

Well, I'm hoping my dog's still on the lead when we go past them. Um yes. Phantom! Um anyway. So what's happening for you, James?

James Cridland 1:26:55

Elevated rolling grassy hills. There we are. Um so uh yes, I um uh today I went uh into the ABC, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, uh, where they were interviewing me, not for not for radio. I've done a lot of interviews on the radio for them. But no, this wasn't interviewing on the radio, this is interviewing uh for the TV. Um so I'll be in some news reports about um ABC Perth turning off F AM and turning off FM or something, uh turning on AM or something. So uh anyway, I'm talking about that. But my goodness me, such amount of faff if you're doing TV. Because they insisted on sitting me in a radio studio because I was talking about radio, and then there was big consternation because the uh the screens in the radio studio had ABC Radio Brisbane on them, and they would and they didn't really want Brisbane to be in shot, so lots of people had to work out how to turn those off. And then uh they did the interview uh where I was literally talking to somebody at the end of a moment. Mobile phone who was interviewing me. And then after the interview, they then had to take video of me in three different positions and then take pictures of my hands so that they had some B-rolls to cut to in case they needed to edit some of me. And it was just, my goodness me, so much faff for 10 minutes of interview, of which they're going to use 20 seconds. So just really interesting. And yes, and working on uh runway and working on a few other things. Um I did notice um somebody um uh has unearthed a bug on the Pod News website um where um I was storing the Apple information um for a week so that I didn't annoy Apple too much with the incessant queries that we're making of Apple's uh database. That's all fine, but what I hadn't appreciated is that uh when people were trying to reset their podcast pages, it was still getting the old Apple information, and so they were getting a little bit confused. Now I've worked that out, I've fixed that bug, but that was uh that was an interesting bug to end up fixing. Um, so it's always fun doing that sort of thing instead of writing the newsletter, which is really what I should be doing.

Sam Sethi 1:29:31

It says here though, just just the last bit that you you snuck out. Uh not needed to shave for a free few weeks. Are you growing a beard, mate?

James Cridland 1:29:41

I mean, I I've I've got sort of stubble stroke beard, um, and and I just sort of leave it and it grows out. Yeah. Um, that's how that works. Um growing in, that's all I've got. It was quite yes, it was quite it was quite bushy. Um, I mean, it wasn't it wasn't mad, but it was quite bushy. So I thought, well, I better go and just smell nuts. Shave it, shave it back to the stubble. And I had to stick the uh the contact lenses in and everything else, so um just that I looked I looked uh and wear the suit. Right. Uh so god, you you don't have to do any of that for podcasting. No, no, no.

Sam Sethi 1:30:17

You see, there's the thing, and then you had to put makeup on, yes.

James Cridland 1:30:20

I know, at least they didn't ask me to do that. So that was uh No JD bounce eyeliner. Oh no, no, none of that. I don't think he wears eyeliner. He does. No, none of that. You're never getting back into the US. I don't want to. Um anyway, and all about Bobshell. Yes. Uh that's it for this week. All of our podcast stories taken from the Pod News Daily Newsletter at Podnews.net.

Sam Sethi 1:30:45

You can stream a sats to this show to support you. You can give us feedback using the BuzzSprout fan mail link in our show notes, and you can send us a boost or become a power supporter like the 23 Power Supporters at weekly.podnews.net.

James Cridland 1:30:58

Yes, our music is from TM Studios. Our voiceover is Sheila D. Our audio is recorded using CleanFeed, who is another Emmy Award-winning company, and we're hosted and sponsored by BuzzSprout. Start podcasting, keep podcasting.

Announcer 1:31:11

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