Announcer: 0:00

The Pod News Weekly Review uses chapters, but not video. The last word in podcasting news. This is the Pod News Weekly Review with James Cridlin and Sam Sethy.

James Cridland: 0:13

I'm James Cridlin, the editor of Pod News, and I'm Sam Sethy, the CEO of TrueFans.

Justin Jackson: 0:18

Apple is a big deal because they've got a lot of reach, but unless creators start using HLS video, it doesn't matter what we want, what we care about, what we're trying to push.

James Cridland: 0:29

Justin Jackson from Transistor. In this special, extra large edition of the Pod News Weekly Review, we look at what Apple Podcasts is doing with video. This podcast is sponsored by Buzz Sprout with the tools, support, and community to ensure you keep podcasting. Start podcasting, keep podcasting with BuzzSprout.com.

Announcer: 0:49

From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly Review. To those of you who are seeing television for the first time, we'd like to sound a note of caution.

Sam Sethi: 0:59

Right, James, buckle up, here we go. Uh big, big announcement from Apple. Um first of all, James, Apple Podcasts, in my words, finally enables HLS video for podcasts, sort of. What have they done?

James Cridland: 1:13

Yes, sort of. So let's look at this from the users side, first of all, because it's the users that actually are the people that matter the most here. Uh right now you can watch video on Apple Podcasts. You've always been able to watch video on Apple Podcasts, but it's not been a very good experience. You've had to really search for specific RSS feeds that have video in them, and it's not been a particularly nice experience from anybody, really. So Apple Podcasts is fixing that, and they are also doing video in a new way which looks identical. Um, so basically, you'll get all of your favorite shows in Apple Podcasts. So good news, I think, for everybody. If you have been going to YouTube or going to Spotify to watch a few of your favorite shows which have video on them, then now theoretically you'll be able to see those shows in Apple Podcasts, assuming that those people are using a compatible podcast hosting company. So from an audience point of view, it's great news. Really, really good news. Apple podcasts will get much more video. Uh, it'll all work beautifully. One of the nice things about Apple Podcasts video is that all of the Apple Podcast features work, kind of. Um, so everything from caveat, caveat, caveat. Well, so so everything from um uh uh you know uh 1.3x uh speed um for example, you can do that with video, works perfectly. Uh if you want dialogue enhancement, you can do that. Um so that works perfectly as well with the video files. All of that works really nicely. So from a point of view of just a seamless experience, um, it's really good. It's a really nice experience.

Sam Sethi: 3:07

So from the point of view of the user, let's start there. What do I need? Can I do it today, or do I have to upgrade my iOS?

James Cridland: 3:14

So from the point of view of you, the user, uh, you don't get it yet. Uh, you will get it probably at the end of March, uh, which is when iOS 26.4 comes out, which is the next version of iOS. You will see people talking about the developer beta, which is out now, which I think you have to pay $199 to access. Um, you will also hear people talking about the public beta. I would steer clear of that, to be honest, uh, and unless you really know what you're doing, and just wait until the end of March. Um, there's uh virtually no video currently available anyway. Um, so wait until the end of March and uh and it'll work great for you.

Sam Sethi: 3:52

So let's say I've got a show with video, it's mp4. Does that work in the new format that Apple are launching?

James Cridland: 4:01

Right. So you're talking about uh creators now. So let's um yes, let's take a look at uh creators. There are two ways of doing video with Apple. Um, you have been able to upload MP4 files, which is a video file, um, and um there are other forms of video files, but MP4 is the one which is used the most. So you can do that, and that will continue to work. And in fact, it works better because when you go to an MP4 enabled video podcast, then you can press the play button and it opens in full screen and you can actually see the screen instead of having to fiddle around and work out how to turn it from a tenth of an inch high, tiny little screen, into something that you can actually see. So uh good news from that. So if you are a podcast creator and you're producing mp4 files, great, you can absolutely continue doing that. Now, the downside of doing mp4 files is that that means probably that you end up having two RSS feed uh in Apple Podcasts. So if you take a look at This Week in Tech, for example, then you'll find a This Week in Tech audio version, and you'll also find This Week in Tech video, and they are two separate feeds, and that means that This Week in Tech actually doesn't do as well in Apple Podcasts as it should do, because all of the algorithms are set to only have one feed per show. Um, so mp4 video files, they're fine, you can absolutely carry on doing that. People like Blueberry support those, um, and uh many other people do, so hooray. So no support for the alternate enclosure yet. No support for the alternate enclosure, and that probably isn't going to come. Now, there is another way of doing uh video, and this is what Apple Podcasts have announced, and it's a thing called HLS. Now, HLS, uh the L stands for live, but uh ignore that because this is nothing to do with live podcasts. Um, what HLS is is it's just a different way of doing video. And HLS is is in the very simplest terms, um, a list of 10 second-long video files, and it basically says play this one, followed by this one, followed by this one, followed by this one, and that's what you're seeing when you watch a video using HLS. Real benefits in terms of technology for that, um, because it can choose different versions depending on how fast your internet is or an audio-only version. Um, so that is all good, and real benefits from the podcast hosting side because it only bothers to download um the bits that you're going to watch. Um, so if you stop watching halfway through, then great, you're not going to download the rest of that particular show. So there are real opportunities in doing HLS that way, but you have to be with a participating podcast host. And there are four podcast hosts right now who are signed up to do this. They are ACast, Art19, Omni Studio, and Simplecast. And there's a good reason why it's those four for now. There will be others to come, um, but the good reason is all tied up with advertising, which we'll get to in a little bit. But if you're a podcast creator, then if you're with those um four um uh podcast hosting companies, then you can do video now uh if you want to, and that's all good.

Sam Sethi: 7:19

So if I am with one of those four, I upload my video uh and they convert it to HLS, or do I have to give them HLS?

James Cridland: 7:29

Probably what'll happen is your podcast hosting company will convert that big video file that you've just uploaded into uh the HLS format, which is probably and I've not seen the full the full details, but I'm assuming that it's going to be at least three, if not four, different versions of that file. But you again, you don't need to worry about any of that. You just upload your MP4 into the podcast hosting company and they will sort all of that stuff for you. Okay.

Sam Sethi: 7:57

Now, if anyone wants to go and see this working today, James, can they go anywhere and view a video or view a demo?

James Cridland: 8:05

Uh they can. Um, and probably the easiest way is to go to the um the pod news website and uh find the day that we covered Apple Podcasts is the main number one story, which was earlier on this week. Um, that has a link to Stephen Robles's video. Stephen does a fantastic job of showing how all of this stuff works. He's got some uh views in there. Um, some of those views are correct and some of those views aren't. But nevertheless, um it's a very smart thing, sponsored by Transistor. Um uh so thank you to Transistor for uh sponsoring him to do that. But it's a great video and it's uh well worth a watch.

Sam Sethi: 8:42

Now, assuming that you are one of those people who does want to pay your $199 like me, um what can I go and do with it? Can I go and see any existing shows that might work as well?

James Cridland: 8:55

Yeah, absolutely. So yes, you can, uh, is the quick answer. So once you've um uploaded to the latest Apple developer beta, and there are various things in there that work and various things in there that don't. So let's just uh bear that in mind and be a little bit careful. Um, but um yes, if you search for Kiki Palmer, that's K-E-K-E, uh Kiki Palmer, um, then you'll find uh one of those uh embedded video uh files. There is um uh there is another one, uh another video podcast, Mind If We Talk, uh, which is a podcast um hosted by Acast and uh is uh produced by BetterHelp. Those are the two that I've found so far. There is also uh Zane Lowe's show if you're a subscriber to Apple Apple Music. Uh I'm not, so therefore I can't access that one. But those three are available in video, so you can have a play around uh with those right now. And of course, you can experience the better MP4 uh thing as well.

Sam Sethi: 9:54

Now, this is not being delivered via RSS, it's being delivered by a special API key that only Apple gives out to those four so far. Um so the question is, is RSS dead then?

James Cridland: 10:07

Wow, that was a that was a step.

Sam Sethi: 10:11

Um so Yeah, yeah, that was that was a massive leap, I grant you, but you know, throw it out there, see what happens.

James Cridland: 10:18

Yeah, so um no, you absolutely still need an RSS feed, um, because that is where Apple gets the um the name of the uh of the episode from and the show notes from and all of the other information that goes into your uh into your podcast. Um if you own an Apple home pod, um then uh firstly, why? And secondly, um that uh will only read the MP3 files, and so uh there again, that's all that that will uh do. And actually, weirdly, if you have an Apple TV, I know that we've just talked about video, but if you have an Apple TV, it won't do any of this stuff either, and so it will only read MP3s or MP4s. So um with all of that, yes, absolutely you still need the RSS feed, and in fact, you can't do video podcasting without an RSS feed. Um, so the RSS feed is most certainly not going away. Now, the reason why Apple is doing um HLS the way that it is doing um is um probably to do with billing and the advertising size. But the way that it basically works under the hood is you upload your video to your podcast host, that's probably I don't know, let's say Acast. And Acast uh has a secret API that they can then submit to Apple and say, you know, this episode that we've just put on our on our RSS feed, here's the video for it. And that's basically how that bit works. Um so that means that other podcast apps will never see what that um video file is. Um that means that if you use Overcast or Podcast Addict or Pocket Casts, um then um uh yeah, you you they they won't see any of the of the video, and that's a bit sad. Um, but nevertheless, that's the way that Apple has chosen to end up doing it.

Sam Sethi: 12:15

Now, um will you see um Apple put HLS into the main enclosure? Do you predict that they will add support there eventually?

James Cridland: 12:26

Um that was one of the questions I asked when I spoke with um Apple. Uh, and of course, uh the instant answer was we never talk about uh plans for the future. So um um, and that's the standard Apple way, because as soon as I said, have you any plans to you could instantly see them reaching for their card that says we do not talk about the future. Um uh so um I wouldn't have thought so. I know that there has been lots of people talking about the benefits of HLS for audio. Um and HLSE is actually being used for audio in this when we go really deep into the into the tech. But from a point of view of replacing the MP3 file, no. Um there will still be lots of things out there that still need the the MP3. HLS doesn't really fix anything uh in terms of audio. Um there are a few vague fixes in terms of um uh in terms of advertising, I guess, but really it doesn't fix that much. It's much more expensive, actually, to host a file using HLS than it is just uh uh an MP3 file. Um so uh no, there's no the the the there are no plans, um, not that Apple would tell me, but um the there wouldn't be any plans to fix that.

Sam Sethi: 13:41

Uh just uh a funny aside, when I was a Microsoft System Engineer, when we had a great question, which we couldn't answer, the answer from the team was always great question, we could take that offline. I think it's a bit technical for the whole audience. You know, it's like we haven't got a bloody answer to this one, and I'm not gonna say that publicly.

James Cridland: 13:59

Um, fair enough.

Sam Sethi: 14:01

Now, um, so given that HLS is the way they're going to do this, what's so special? You've talked about it breaking it down into small segments. Does this mean that they can start measuring how long you listen to the podcast? Can they measure when you started playing it, when you stopped? Because we know that a download is not a play, and the download metric really should be retired to an OAP home now. Um, so is this the first step in measuring real play and listen time?

James Cridland: 14:32

Um step back a little bit because the benefit of doing HLS is that it is different from the way that Spotify and YouTube work in terms of video. So when you upload your video to Spotify, Spotify says, Thank you very much, and they keep your video and they serve your video, and you have no access to, you know, it's it's not yours anymore, you can't do dynamic ads in there or or anything else. Similarly, when you upload a video to uh YouTube, YouTube says nom nom nom, thank you very much for the video. Um, it does all of the complicated transcoding and stuff, it serves it, it puts the ads where it wants to, you have no control over that. Apple doesn't work that way, and Apple is keeping the power and the control of the experience with the podcast hosting companies, which is essentially with us. So great for Apple in terms of doing that. So they won't be hosting any video, instead, they will be purely linking to the HLS files, just the way that they're currently linking to the MP3 files. So all of that is really good, and the reason why I mention that is that that allows us in podcasting to do dynamic ad insertion, and that allows us to basically sell the ads ourselves rather than give the keys of the entire industry to Spotify or to YouTube, which is what quite a lot of people have been doing. Um, so all of that is really, really good news. Now, yes, absolutely, it also means that um you can uh get much more detail in terms of how long people listen to your podcast for, but there again, you've always been able to do that to an extent with um Apple Podcasts Connect anyway. Um, but um it does mean that you can sit and have a look at what chunks of the video you're being asked for, and then you can work out, oh, okay, so this particular user skipped that bit. Um, and you can probably you know work it out from that if you really want to. So it's it's it's pretty good at that, and that of course means exciting things for advertising, um, because all of a sudden you can actually see whether or not an ad was requested by the player, which probably means, it doesn't guarantee, but probably means that it was actually played. Um, and so therefore you you've got another bit of information that you can give back to advertisers. Now, at the end of the day, advertisers don't really care about that. The only thing that advertisers care about is did um I sell more trainers by uh by sticking this ad in the um I'm not sure. Is this where we're not going to agree?

Sam Sethi: 17:19

Yes, yes. I I my comment on LinkedIn about blind faith. Right. So I was on stage at podcast movement with Rob Walsh and I said advertising is the Emperor's new clothes. It's totally blind faith, right? So I'll give you some examples. Raja, right? Two million people listened to this radio show. No, they didn't. You just extrapolate it from a small sample. TB, four million people watch the show. You don't know that, you're extrapolating.

James Cridland: 17:47

So no no advertisers use that as a as a method of knowing how many people they reach.

Sam Sethi: 17:53

No, but they they don't know. They can't say that one dollar in equal three dollars out. They can't. There's no metric that's measuring that. Now, I think what Apple has done by using HLS has given the companies like ACast and uh AdsWiz and others a real benefit. They've said, right, we know that six-second chunks of this advert were being played, and therefore we can tell you with categorical evidence that this advert was played, and we can tell you when they stopped playing it.

James Cridland: 18:25

Was there anybody in the room about that?

Sam Sethi: 18:27

Oh, okay. That part we can't do. The dog was watching. We have no idea, right? Yes, I grant you that part.

James Cridland: 18:34

Who was the person who was listening?

Sam Sethi: 18:37

Um the IP address is all they will give you down to. At least you can get to that part, but at least you know that somebody actually Did anybody buy the trainers? Well, is there any attribution that can link out? No, there is no connection between the two. But you've got a better use of your money knowing that at least something played the ad. It didn't just download and was skipped past by everybody. Because there's no current measurement of it. I think this is a really good first step. Maybe it's not perfect, but I think it's a really good first step in being able to go back to advertisers with a better certainty that somebody actually clicked play and your ad was heard, or at least it was played out on the podcast rather. And they can also show consumption data. Where did they where did people skip? Because they can do the six-second measurement. I think it's the first example of real attribution where the ad was played, it played for so long, and people skipped at maybe 80%. Right, great. Can we do anything with that data? Of course you can. There's more analytics you can measure from it. I don't know. I'm just I'm more excited by what Apple's given to ACART and others now.

James Cridland: 19:46

And that's one of the things that's not attribution. That's not attribution, that is delivery metrics. Um, and so you can actually have more delivery metrics, and that's and that's a very, a very helpful thing. Um, but it's not it's not attribution, it's not telling you that these trainers were bought because somebody heard that ad. Um but but we've already had that, and we've had that for the last five, six, seven, ten years.

Sam Sethi: 20:12

And what method?

James Cridland: 20:13

That's what comp companies like Magellan AI, like Oxford Road, do really, really well. Part of the way that they do it is through IP addresses, working out um who heard this ad and then who visited this particular website. Um there are uh plenty of other ways uh in there uh as well.

Sam Sethi: 20:30

But that's an extrapolated view because they're not measuring every person, are they?

James Cridland: 20:34

Well, I mean they are in terms of the IP addresses, yeah. Yeah. So if you if you if you know that your ad was in this particular show um and and this particular uh episode, then you can actually see every single IP address that heard the ad. And you can then have a look at every single IP address, not just that bought the trainers, but who visited that website in the first place.

Sam Sethi: 20:56

Nothing to stop you doing that with this model then, because they you still have to do that.

James Cridland: 20:59

No, no, of course, but uh but I guess I'm saying is there isn't anything new here. The only thing that is new here is a delivery metric, um, which we've not necessarily had as um as tightly um as we've uh had in the past. And that's assuming that the podcast hosting companies, because it will be them, not Apple, but that's assuming that the podcast hosting companies wish to um work out the size of the beach by counting every grain of sand, um, as um some people used to um you know talk about it, um, counting every single thing. Um because at the end of the day, it's very statistically um uh fine to um take a look at 2,000 people and extrapolate that out. Um actually, in terms of the the statistics, um that works that works very nicely.

Sam Sethi: 21:52

But you could filter that, you could say this person played the ad and anything below 50% ignore, everything above fifty percent ignorance. track the IP through.

James Cridland: 22:01

Well you could, but then you're you're you're then saying that uh if you only hear half of the ad that's then useless. Possibly. And I don't necessarily think that that works. Well it might be 10%.

Sam Sethi: 22:11

I mean 50% may be too high but I think I think what we're seeing is you you're you're giving I think more assurity to an advertiser that there's a return on their investment that actually the ad was played. Right now I'm sh not sure that you can even guarantee the ad was played and even heard.

James Cridland: 22:30

No but I mean at the end of the day you can you can take a look at um we we advertised our trainers in this particular set of of shows and we sold 20% more trainers. That at the end of the day is how people work out whether or not podcast advertising is working for them and that is why we're a $2.4 billion industry because people come back again and again because because podcast advertising works even though we have a skip button even though um there are numerous ways of getting rid of the ads if you really really really want to at the end of the day podcast advertising works um because people listen to people like you and like me um talking about Buzzprout and and saying what a good podcast host that is that is uh you know part of what makes advertising uh work not that um that particular company will be um checking every single mention of ours and uh and and and um you know and their sales figures but you know what I mean so I think I I I think yes there is definitely more information here there is definitely more information that um will be helpful and useful for podcast hosting companies um I was talking to somebody involved in the podcast advertising world uh earlier on in the day and he was saying um the listen numbers aren't actually going to be particularly helpful for for them anyway um because at the end of the day all that the client really cares about is selling more selling more trainers um I'd love to know the the advertiser who is actually selling trainers on podcasts um but you know what I mean so the one thing though though that I would say about dynamic advertising in terms of uh video and let's remember Spotify have announced it but they've yet to do it YouTube have announced it but they've yet to do it so Apple will be first in terms of dynamic video uh integration more than that if you do dynamic videos with YouTube then YouTube takes 40% of the money that you have earned through the advertising Apple will not be doing that. Similarly if you do advertising dynamic advertising with uh Spotify there will be a percentage there. The one thing that Apple is doing and this is the thing I think which is riling up a few people and also is the reason why it's not done in the RSS but instead is being done through this secret API is that Apple will be charging for every dynamic ad which is played through Apple Podcasts and I believe by the way even if you're listening to the audio you'll still get charged because the dynamic um advertising is happening through the HLS and Apple will be charging I've been told a number but I don't know whether it's uh correct Apple will be charging an amount cost per thousand ads that actually go out. So actually from Apple's point of view that means that there is a revenue stream coming here which has never existed before and it's Apple basically putting themselves into podcasting in a way that they've never done in the past and that is quite interesting.

Sam Sethi: 25:48

I I agree and I think it's quite smart of Apple as well to take uh a penny on the pound for you know every ad that's served will look Spotify's video strategy I think we've both said you know uh is not really working. I mean we've heard from numerous content creators who have removed themselves from the video side and gone back to Spotify's span which gives them a better return on you know uh advertising YouTube obviously announced and haven't done it I wonder two things then James will this trip YouTube over into doing it or they just say no we we said it but actually we prefer the model we currently have and will Spotify go actually this is a better model than giving a percentage of subscription back to the creator wow okay let's copy Apple well that will be a big change from Spotify so the way that Spotify works at the moment is anybody can upload video podcasts for free.

James Cridland: 26:46

They sit on Spotify's server so you don't have to pay for the bandwidth and for the hosting and if you're big enough you can earn money from Spotify directly similarly with YouTube. YouTube works exactly the same way you can upload video podcasts for free they sit on YouTube server so you're not paying for the uh hosting and the bandwidth and if you're big enough you can get money from YouTube. Now Apple is very very different because firstly it only accepts video podcasts from these partnering podcast hosting companies secondly you're still paying for the podcast hosting whether you like it or not so that's a thing. And then thirdly Apple won't give you money in fact the reverse Apple will charge you money through your podcast hosting company that is a massive massive difference. It's a real change in the way that podcasting works. Now it's quite interesting and exciting and it's actually no different to some of these other tools there are tools which are currently available which do uh attribution how how well your podcasting works and indeed even uh serving of dynamic ads uh in the first place they will charge you an impression based fee um whether that's you know 50 cents cost per thousand two dollars cost per thousand one dollar cost per thousand um uh they will they will charge you something like uh like that but no one has been doing um what Apple has just announced um which is to charge you a fee for showing a dynamic ad on their platform and I think that's a really interesting move a really interesting step forward and also not having to worry about the hosting as well.

Sam Sethi: 28:29

I can see I can see Spotify sitting there going yep I think this is a good way of doing it.

James Cridland: 28:34

I mean Spotify must be kicking themselves going we're paying how much for exactly that some so yes no that that that's going to be fascinating that's going to be really really interesting. Here's a question for you James um if I skip the ad do still get paid? If the ad has been delivered to the device um and it's my understanding that it's the device that actually requests the ad.

Sam Sethi: 29:02

So if the ad has been delivered to the device then yes you will get um you uh the your podcast host will get charged for because they're delivered in six second packets if I go from minute ten to minute twenty the in-between packets don't get delivered it then starts delivering from minute twenty. So the in-between packets from 10 to 20 weren't delivered that's where the ad was do I get charged?

James Cridland: 29:26

Well if you if you skip um uh and you know you're you're talking about six seconds I've been talking about ten seconds we don't actually know the length of the whichever yeah yeah of the segment that Apple is asking for but if you skip enough so if there is an ad somewhere in the middle of the show and you skip directly to the end of the show then no that ad won't be requested um and so therefore uh nobody will um will uh be charged for that ad unless it's automatically downloaded aha um and of course that is a whole different kettle of fish um but if you're just uh if you're just um uh streaming it if you've just pressed the play button and you're listening to the show and you decide that you want to skip right to the end to have a listen to the Pod News inbox for example then that's all cool um and none of the ads will be delivered to the uh audience so therefore you won't uh end up uh paying for it is my understanding of how this works okay do Apple charge for baked in ads they will not charge for baked in ads BuzzSprout is our sponsor they won't charge for that they never have they never will um so that's good so the charge is just for dynamic advertising and just finally for clarity this isn't using anything like Apple's private relay is it's not it's not using Apple private relay there's no change um it doesn't use that for all of all of podcasting um so that's good and also Apple won't give you any targeted data so um if you use some apps you'll notice that it says can this app track you what that's really asking for is can we tell that app your uh advertising ID which is a random ID that your phone has given them for you essentially so you so they can work out how many users they've got what you've been doing whether you've seen this ad before all of that kind of stuff Apple Podcasts nope you don't get any of that so the only thing that Apple Podcasts can target on is IP addresses. So they don't know although they can buy databases that purport to say they don't know whether you're a boy or a girl they don't know whether you're 25 or 55 they don't know if you have a car they don't know if you can't drive none of that information is going to be available for an advertiser to know how how to target an ad. And probably more importantly no information is going to be given to an advertiser to know whether or not they have already played you the ad in the past other than an IP address and IP address is change of course so that's quite interesting. And that is again very different to Spotify or to YouTube which monitor the heck out of you and know exactly who you are know exactly or infer exactly who you are infer exactly what what what it is that you're that you're a doing so the targeting data is um is I think an interesting sort of part in this um and I'm surprised that Apple feels that it can charge um when it's not giving any targeting data. It's not actually giving anything back other than appearing on the on the biggest podcast app in the world which I suppose is one thing but yeah.

Sam Sethi: 32:44

They're charging for access to their audience aren't they that's right. Exactly they are yeah but also it's the first time that first party data has been given back to hosts because all the hosts who do delegated delivery for Apple weren't getting first party data. Anyone who gives their content to Spotify YouTube doesn't get first party data back. Yes the creator does through their own dashboard but the hosting companies don't get it. So this is a a step as well I think in giving ACAST and others access to first party data.

James Cridland: 33:15

Yes in a way I mean obviously we all have access to first party data uh in terms of downloads um but yes Apple uh Apple and uh Spotify and YouTube know exactly which bits of the podcast you played which bits you didn't play which bits you skipped um they will continue to know that by the way video will be included in Apple Podcast Analytics so you'll you'll know exactly what's going on in there but your podcast hosting platform should now get that little bit of more data. Now HLS isn't perfect because HLS will obviously buffer more stuff in advance hence the slightly weasley way that I answered your question about if people skip the ads will they get charged it really depends whether whether or not the ad has been delivered to that device yet and if your device is buffering 30 seconds in advance then obviously um all bets are off there. So um but yeah you know so um so people will get more more data um uh out of it um it will be included in Apple Podcasts Connect directly as well uh so that's helpful um and I think you know uh just to come back to the sort of start of of of where I sort of jumped in on this for a listener or a viewer if we have to use that word it's really good news because all of a sudden you'll get loads more access to great video shows in Apple Podcasts and it works just the same way as the audio does it's a really nice clean experience and with HLS it means you can skip around um the video file and it just works. MP4 doesn't work that way but uh HLS does so it's a really nice experience and and I think you know Apple are doing exactly the right thing by doing all of this.

Sam Sethi: 35:07

So talking the experience you've got it on your phone I've got it on mine. What was the pros and cons for you?

James Cridland: 35:14

You wrote a nice piece about what your impression was of it yeah I mean I think it's a good um it's a good experience there are various things that do and don't work it's a developer beta that's um exactly what normally happens so there are subtitles in some of them there aren't subtitles in other of them I can't see any of the chapters appearing in video yet uh and all of that stuff I'm sure that all of that stuff is coming um uh so that should be good um playing around with it it's very obvious when there is video available because there's a nice little video um uh icon as there has been uh uh all the way through Apple Podcasts history um which is uh nice you can turn the video off and that switches to an audio only experience which shows the episode artwork now I wrote in my review that that plays the audio track from the video so much the same way as Spotify or uh YouTube works actually it doesn't actually it doesn't the big reveal it's playing the audio track from the HLS my understanding the more that I dig into it is that what Apple are asking for in your HLS playlist so an HLS playlist is essentially here's the uh the 4k version here's the 1080p version here's the 720p version okay so you've got all of these different versions of the video um which your um which your app can access and what it will also say is here is the audio only version right so you end up with a playlist of maybe four things in there three different video uh sizes and then you have the audio now what I'm trying to understand is does the audio still have to be identical because it will play so I've been told by Apple it will play the audio render which is the the little uh playlist that is just audio it's playing it through HLS because it knows that it's got an HLS file um but does that mean that um I can put the radio ad on the audio track and then in the video put the TV ad for example and the quick answer is nobody knows yet so I'm not quite sure but what that doesn't mean is and what I wrote which is now incorrect I've discovered is that I wrote it plays the audio track from the video it doesn't it plays the audio track that appears in the HLS manifest which may or may not be the audio track from the video but could be a separate audio track for audio which has been um you know mastered in a slightly different way etc etc if Apple are cool with that and so what I'm trying to do I don't know whether Apple will uh play ball with this but what I'm trying to do is trying to ask Apple um can I see what the specifications are for the HLS that you are asking content providers for? I can't see any earthly reason why they wouldn't give me that but I also conversely can't see any earthly reason why they would so I'm a little bit stuck there. But I think I think therefore that that means that it isn't just a straight audio track from the video which is at least something.

Sam Sethi: 38:40

So I got asked a question by somebody on LinkedIn which was what if I just produce a recording a video and I don't do the audio and that makes my life easier because I can just upload it to you know one of those four hosts I can upload it to YouTube and I can upload it to Spotify and they will then downgrade it to the audio only now from what you've just said if the audio is missing from the HLS manifest would Apple just play the audio from the video?

James Cridland: 39:15

Well my guess is that the audio won't be missing from the HLS manifest because my guess is and I think manifest is the wrong word but I'm going to use it anyway playlist probably the master playlist. But anyway if um my guess is that Apple has a standard specification of we need these um and I'm making up a a a number we need these four different versions of your file in the HLS master playlist um and one of those will be audio only. And this again comes back to why they're using a secret API to do all of this and not doing it in the open RSS because they can't trust us to do things properly in the open RSS um alternate enclosure tag. And so the reason why it's being done through a secret API is firstly so that they know who to send the invoice to which is let's face it part of their plan but also be on the other side um they will also be able to actually get you to sign up for this is exactly how we want that HLS to look and that's going to be a useful thing too. So um so yeah I I think you know it's my assumption and um and certainly my understanding is that they will be publishing this kind of stuff publicly at some point but my understanding is that their requirements for the HLS are specific this size this resolution and also this version of of audio in this bandwidth using this codec and you would expect any any company to end up doing that.

Sam Sethi: 40:53

Okay. Couple of questions then on the back of that um first of all you said earlier that HLS is more expensive to host because you're having to host multiple versions of the same file assuming that Apple are predetermining that you have to have audio and video and could also predetermine multiple audio versions because you know again it might be 128k stereo um 96k mono as well the hosts are going to have to pass that cost on. So is this going to be a more expensive hosting solution um with the hope of getting money back through the advertising than just normal hosting.

James Cridland: 41:38

Absolutely it will yes and if I was a podcast host I'd be going hooray finally we can actually turn around we have a justification for putting our prices up because we've got video in there as well now. And so I think it's great news if you are an accountant at a podcast hosting company it's great news because you can turn around and justify yes if you want to turn video on it's not going to cost you 20 bucks a month it's going to cost you 200 bucks a month or it's going to cost you 70 bucks a month or it's going to cost you 60 bucks a month per thousand viewers that you have or however they want to end up working it out. But yes absolutely it's going to um uh it's going to be a way for them to put their their their uh their uh um you know uh bills up um I would say that the um uh the cost of hosting isn't the file space um filespace is not a problem file space is cheap as chips these days um the issue is twofold the issue is if you're using a content delivery network as most people do I think 65% of all podcasts are delivered through Amazon Cloudfront Amazon Cloudfront charge you based on two things they're based on uh they base it on bandwidth so the total amount of stuff that you um that you um um uh send out but also they're charging you on total requests and the big difference between a two-hour long file that is um that is sent out as one chunk uh and a two hour long file that is sent out as lots of five second uh chunks uh is that lots of five second chunks in two hours means lots and lots and lots more charges per individual file file request so it's that bit that is going to be expensive um and certainly when I looked at uh so Amazon have just changed the way that they charge for CloudFront and you can buy this sort of package which includes everything and I looked at that and even for me and I don't do any HLS now even for me it's it's the amount of requests that I'm being asked for which is costing me a lot of money not the whole amount of bandwidth that I'm actually using.

Sam Sethi: 43:58

Lucky for truth Fans, we don't use Amazon then because we have a different model.

James Cridland: 44:03

Well, yes. Lucky for TrueFans. But of course, you know, TrueFans, you you have a different model in terms of the way that your podcast hosting works. Um, you charge for bandwidth. Uh, captivate has a different model, they charge for downloads. Um, and you can see Captivate as when they turn on um video, you can see that Captivate will probably charge for audio downloads and charge separately for video downloads, of course, because that would kind of that would kind of make sense. Correctly. So it's all of these different ways of charging. Again, so so what what what started uh uh 45 minutes ago on this podcast as being Apple have um turned on video, brilliant, has turned into they've completely changed the way that advertising works, they've completely changed the way that podcast hosting is going to be charging for in the future. Um they've completely changed so much in this one uh announcement. It's so it's a fascinating announcement because you can just keep on, it's like an onion, you can keep on um peeling back new bits of this, and the more that you see, the more, the more that you cry. Um it's um but yeah, so there's all of these changes. Um, and it it it's um no wonder that actually uh it's been quite hard to get your head around because there are so many things in here.

Sam Sethi: 45:29

So looking at it though, um have anybody in the industry been talking about this as well? What have they been saying?

James Cridland: 45:37

Oh, there's been lots of people in the industry talking about this, as you would expect. Um Max Cutler from Pave Studios says that it's brilliant, uh, as Max as Max Cutler would. Um Brian Barletta uh from Sounds Profitable also really likes it. Um, this isn't just serving your own ads over DAI or enabling the platform to sell ads for you, it's the podcaster in control. Um and uh it wouldn't be a Brian Barletta quote without the word incredibly. Uh so here it comes. Uh a tech fee attached to ad serving is incredibly refreshing when compared to a percentage of ad spent. This is a big deal. And he's absolutely right there, because there are lots of people that will give uh charge you a percentage of ad spent, and that ends up being incredibly expensive. Um, so uh yeah, uh Matt Deegan writing that this changes the economic architecture of podcasts, uh, which is um certainly one way of putting uh it. Rob Greenley writing the real story isn't that Apple added video, the real story is that Apple is choosing how video enters the podcasting ecosystem, uh, he said. Um and again, he's he's right there. And Nick here uh writes another proprietary take on the otherwise open standards world of podcasting, a lock-in strategy to a format based on open standards. Ouch. Um, so there's lots and lots and lots of these um of these uh conversations. What what would could what would be really helpful now, I think, firstly, because I've talked an awful lot, um uh is uh to hear from uh somebody else who is in the industry, who is in the industry running a podcast uh hosting uh company and to find out um what they think. So uh let's spin the bottle and find out who we're going to choose. Oh, look, it looks as if it's transistors Justin Jackson. How exciting.

Sam Sethi: 47:34

Yeah, absolutely. Uh yeah, I start off by asking Justin, um, Apples dropped a bombshell yesterday. What did they tell us? And what did they drop, Justin?

Justin Jackson: 47:42

They announced HLS video support inside of Apple Podcasts. Uh something don't we just go woo-hoo? That's what we want to do. That that's this is what at the Podcast Standards Project, we've been talking about this. We've been talking about video from the beginning. Back in 2022, I think our first blog post mentions adding video, more support for video. And we really ramped up discussions and demos and specs for HLS video in 2025. So even back in August, I said, in particular, having Apple Podcasts adopt HLS video would legitimize the standard and likely trigger widespread adoption across the entire podcast ecosystem. So here it is. It was a surprise, no advanced warning aside from a few select launch partners that they had. But overall, I think this is going to be good. Overall, I am pleased. Overall, it's nice to see Apple moving in this direction. It's a very different approach than Spotify and YouTube. It's a bit of a different approach than we were hoping for. But I think on the whole, this is good news for the open podcast ecosystem.

Sam Sethi: 49:03

Yeah, I remember talking to Buzz Sprout probably in that 22 time window, where I said, Are you going to support video? And I got a resounding no, hell we'll freeze over before we do that because it's too expensive. Why would we use MP4? Blah, blah, blah. And this was just when YouTube was raising its little head above the parapet and going, We're about to do podcasting. Everyone went, Oh my god, here we go. And so as a counter, I was trying to get hosts to do something, and I was getting a deep, strong no, we're not going to do this. And then the conversation around HLS was raised. Well, is this an alternative way? You know, you don't download the whole lot, maybe you stream elements of it. Could that work? And maybe charge it as a premium. And that's when the PSP took it on board. And I think you've been banging the drum very well for that, and we've had meetings in London. I don't think what we got from Apple yesterday was everything we wanted, because correct me if I'm wrong, Justin, but HLS only works in the Apple channels and it doesn't work in the main podcasting app.

Justin Jackson: 50:10

Uh no, I think it will work everywhere. I thought they're only going to support MP4 in the main app. Oh, I see. No, I think once podcasts adopt this, if you have HLS video enabled, then it'll show up in the app. It'll show up in search. It'll show up on their home screen if they feature you. And hopefully eventually, what I would love is for them to also have that old switcher at the top, which was in iTunes and even early Apple Podcasts. You could switch between show me all the audio only podcasts and then show me the podcasts that support video. I think hopefully that's coming. But yeah, I think this will be throughout the Apple Podcast app. This is just their first release. We often criticize Apple. And I think it's harder inside that machine than we give them credit for. And I think they have lots of constraints on their side. For example, I don't think they're being malicious when they hold back information until launch day. It does really suck. They told all podcast creators that it's coming. And so then, of course, every podcast hosting platform is going to get inundated with customer support requests saying, Hey, do you offer this yet? But I think they've got a lot of constraints on their side. So I can appreciate that. I think this is just the first announcement. For example, this does not preclude them from eventually supporting HLS video in the alternate enclosure tag. Video has lots of difficult implementation factors, like what are we going to do about explicit material? What are we going to do about truly horrendous material that can be images that could be uploaded as video? There's a lot of things to figure out there. So yeah, kudos to them for this initial launch. The ultimate test is that creators have to care. And so I think this is something else I've been thinking about a lot. We, as the ecosystem and the industry and as well-meaning stewards of the open standard, could say, this is the way it should be, and this is what we hope it to be. But if creators don't use it, and if consumers don't care, then it doesn't really matter what we implement. It doesn't even matter if Apple supports it. Apple is a big deal because they've got a lot of reach and they've got a big install base. But unless creators start using HLS video and adding those podcasts to Apple, and then unless consumers start enjoying that video and watching it, then it doesn't matter what we want, what we care about, what we're trying to push. What's exciting is that I think in the open ecosystem, we've been looking for a big platform partner that can at least give us a chance to get the distribution. So they emailed all of their podcast creators saying this is happening. It's in the discussion. People were talking about it on Reddit. And again, we got lots of customers asking us about it. I got the I was on holiday, and I actually got the reason I found out is because customers were messaging me personally saying, Hey, are you going to support this? So they have a lot of distribution with creators. And if they do the implementation right on the consumer side, and if they eventually add this to Apple TV and their whole ecosystem, this has a good chance of at least seeing if consumers care. And so yeah, I'll be looking at that, I think. But yeah, not everything we wanted, but I think it's a good first step. Okay.

Sam Sethi: 54:03

So uh a couple of questions come to mind. First of all, I think consumers, the younger consumers, certainly, if I look at my 26-year-old and my 21-year-old and their friends, the way they consume YouTube is they don't actually watch YouTube all the time. It's there, it's in the background, the audio's playing, they can hear it, and then they'll switch their head to the video if there's something that's relevant. From my basic test with iOS 26.4, which I think you need, it's the beta, so it's not the final version. Yeah. They're doing what Spotify does is you upload a video, and then when you want audio, they're fundamentally just using the audio of the video, they're not actually switching to an audio file. So it brought up a really interesting question yesterday on LinkedIn where somebody asked me, should I just produce video only now and let Apple, Spotify, and YouTube use the video? And then they will switch it to audio in terms of just removing the visual image, and therefore, do I no longer need to do an audio edit as well?

Justin Jackson: 55:10

Yeah, I this is actually one of those big unanswered questions. And this came up as we were creating HLS demos and then eventually had apps like TrueFans and Fountain support it, which is yeah, you could so the way it works on TrueFans, correct me if I'm wrong, is if you're streaming HLS video and you switch to the audio version, it actually switches to the audio enclosure. Right. Yes. In practice, what ended up happening and this is again, this is one of the I think the most important things is especially for the open podcast ecosystem, is we need to get out of the theoretical as soon as possible and into the real as soon as possible. So as soon as we released this, Steven Robles, who has the primary technology podcast, he was one of the first people to adopt it. He's like, I'm gonna use that HLS enclosure on transistor. And then he was like, but wait a second, he's like, I produce a separate audio version that's very distinct from my video version. But on TrueFans and Fountain, when you switch between them, it's not one for one. The length of the file isn't the same. And so now we have a power user that's saying, like, this doesn't really work for me. However, the paradigm that emerged on Spotify is switch between audio and video. And they've kept that paradigm and they're testing a lot of things, and they're uh consumers apparently like that feature on Spotify. YouTube Music also launched with that same feature, and people apparently like that feature on YouTube Music. And from a creator's perspective, I often think about like the 80, 90, 95, 98% of podcasts, like 95% of podcasts are currently getting under a thousand downloads per episode. What about them? What are they gonna do? And I think we we often focus on the top end of the market, like what are the top 20 podcasts, and who are the power users like Steven Robles and what do they want? But the reality is, especially for the open ecosystem, we have to care about that 95% who are just making a podcast for fun, or just making a podcast to make a little bit of money, or just making a Dungeons and Dragons podcast because they want to do something fun with their friends. What are they gonna do? I think most creators are just gonna want to upload one video file and have that be their podcast. And yes, all of the audio nerds are gonna be like, you can't do that. You need to craft that the audio just for audio. And sure, obviously on the upper end of the market, people have all sorts of opinions. But the vast majority of creators, I think, if they're gonna do video, are gonna want to upload one video file. And by the way, they're gonna want it distributed to YouTube and Spotify. And what's exciting about this Apple announcement is it at least gives us an option in the open ecosystem that they can take if they want it. So that will also be available to them. And I think they're just gonna upload one video. So I think we're gonna see more people that are recording their podcast, at least the creators I talk to and the surveys we've done of transistor customers, most creators are recording video already. You can do it in Descript, you can do it in StreamYard. Yeah. So if you're doing it already, all you have to do then is switch your editing technique to now instead of editing the audio waveform, I'm editing the video and audio waveform at the same time. It's a little bit more time to edit. Again, for a regular creator, it's just going through, adding a little bit of music, maybe normalizing the audio if you're lucky, and maybe cutting out a few spots. Um, yeah. So I I think, yeah, if I was re if I was advising creators, and what I have been advising creators is just create a video and edit that, export the video, export the audio. That's your podcast. They're the same length, they're the same thing. And I think, especially with this switching paradigm, having a separate audio version from video version, I don't know what we're gonna do about that. But from the app side, they've got to solve that problem. And I think they're just gonna be like, well, if they start watching the video, we're just gonna switch and they turn off their screen, we're gonna continue to use that video version. Can't see another way of managing that problem.

Sam Sethi: 59:54

Okay, so a couple of other things that came out, the announcement that I want to ask your thoughts for. First of all, what's interesting about the announcement is YouTube and Spotify have promised dynamic ad insertion for a while, but neither deliver it. So Spotify are seeing content creators losing money right now with their video solution on Spotify because it's a percentage of subscription with no DAI. YouTube have promised DAI, but there isn't any. So if you're uploading to Spotify or YouTube, you have to remove all your ads. It can do host red ads, but you can't do dynamic ads, right? Apple now, with this announcement of loopfrog the pair, and going, yeah, we'll do DAI through our partners and you can now do it through Apple channels. So will we see Spotify and YouTube respond, I suppose, is the question.

Justin Jackson: 1:00:46

I mean, YouTube is already doing dynamic ads of some sort with a select few of their creators. So they might not be that far behind. Yeah, it'll be really interesting. It was interesting to see who showed up for all of those HLS discussions that the Podcast Standards project held. Because all of a sudden, folks from the industry that had never attended a meeting were attending. And a lot of them were from the large ad network companies. And I think from their perspective, they're thinking, how are we going to battle this wall, these walled gardens? If people are now uploading video to Spotify and that takes them out of the dynamic ad insertion pipeline and takes them out of our ability to track downloads, and if people are uploading to YouTube, while we can't dynamically insert ads in there at all, they're getting squeezed out. And so I think from their perspective, this Apple announcement is very interesting because it gives them a place to do that. And again, often we talk about the podcasting market using overall averages, like overall, Spotify is at, I don't know, 36%, and Apple's at 15, and YouTube's at whatever. But when you actually slice up, for example, the top 20 podcasts, a lot of them, their primary audience is on Apple. And so I think for publishers of those shows where it's like we have a sizable audience on Apple Podcasts, that audience also often skews their uh a higher value customer or higher value consumer for to target ads to. And so I think, yeah, I think there was a definitely an appetite from the big ad now ad networks and publishers to have some sort of solution on their side. But listen, there's this is there's multiple we're talking about multiple markets now. We're talking about the market for advertising. And advertisers have lots of options and they make decisions, uh all sorts of decisions based on all sorts of criteria. Like they could spend money on Google AdWords, they can spend money on ads in Chat GPT, they can spend money on ads on Amazon Prime. So they have a lot of options and they're gonna choose whatever's giving them results. So if all of a sudden, I don't know, Triton is selling ads, ad impressions on Apple Podcasts video, and those are delivering really good return on investment, then people will keep it, it'll it will work in that way. If it doesn't, then they'll they'll put their money in YouTube ads are fairly easy to book. YouTube's ad platform is definitely has a lot of advantages as well. So the problem on YouTube is that a lot of kind of the desirable customers are paying for YouTube premium. And so this is another interesting thing is how is this on Apple going to all converge? Are people going is this also going to, I imagine it would partner with Apple Podcast subscriptions, right? So now you're going to be able to say, oh, this is actually the premium subscriber, and so Apple will know to just not have ads in that stream. Spotify is trying to do something similar, I believe. So yeah, it's a yeah, interesting time and lots of moving pieces that have to play themselves out. Eventually the ultimate determining factor will be do consumers watch these videos? If they do watch these videos, are they responding to the ads? If that happens, will advertisers keep booking them? There's a lot of unanswered questions right now.

Sam Sethi: 1:05:07

Okay, so I fully agree there's a lot of unanswered questions, but try and answer these two ones for me. Does the API requirement for hosts to be able to uh send HLS basically into the Apple channels mean that they've broken RSS?

Justin Jackson: 1:05:28

You still need to have an RSS feed. The and it sounds like this is selective in the same way that you can upload a video to Spotify for one episode but not the other. So there could be folks that are like, oh, I've got a big interview coming up. I want there to be a video version of that. And advertisers want to sponsor the video version. So I'm going to make an API call to add an HLS manifest URL to that episode. But my audio episode, Remain the same. So it's still you still need an RSS feed to submit to Apple Podcasts and for even for this to work. The RSS feed is still the foundation, the key that gets you in. I think understand why Apple's doing it this way. In some ways, like for all we know, we don't know what's motivating them, but for all we know, the motivation for all of this, including, for example, we haven't talked about it, but they're going to charge some sort of fee. Apple's going to charge some sort of fee. First time they've ever done this for dynamically inserted ads. So every time an ad runs, they're going to get some sort of fee. We don't know if this is like a revenue opportunity for them or this is just a convenience fee for so that they can pay for all the lawyers that they've had to hire for this. But I can understand why Apple would want the initial release of this to be like, we need to get people, we need to get hosts to sign a bunch of legal documents. We need them to use an official channel. And then we need creators probably to sign something. Because there's just again, as soon as you're dealing with images, it is a whole new ball game, right? Like what can get uploaded to as images and video can be truly horrific. And they have to have some sort of way of managing it. And I can understand why they would launch it this way. It doesn't preclude them from doing alternate enclosure and or even saying the primary enclosure. Like maybe eventually, and again, I don't know what folks in the ecosystem will think about this, but there is a world where the HLS HLS becomes the primary delivery mechanism. And you just put your HLS manifest in the primary enclosure. An HLS manifs manifest can have all of your video versions at all the different resolutions and an audio version. So it you can have it all in that that text file, basically, and then that could stay in the that could be in the primary enclosure tag. And maybe that's eventually where we're going. I don't think it breaks RSS. I think, again, like the right now you've got to add these via API, but that doesn't necessarily mean it has to be that way. There's it doesn't preclude Apple from eventually accepting these in other ways. It might mean actually that we need to add. Yeah, it might just mean that we add, I guess this is possible already, but the idea that you might just add an alternate enclosure for certain episodes. So oh, this episode has video. So hey, Apple, you can pick it up here. So yeah, I don't think it breaks RSS. I think Apple is still the best of the big companies, is still the best supporter of the open ecosystem. And this is a good move towards in that direction still, right? It's still the creators hosting the video. We can add that HLS manifest URL to the alternate enclosure tag and make the API call. That's fine. And maybe APIs also need to be a part of the open ecosystem. That's another piece to this. Is maybe that's another ingredient that we need to be considering more often.

Sam Sethi: 1:09:40

I think the alternative enclosure is something that we hope Apple will adopt. Yeah. I think manifest, as you pointed out, is a pseudo-alternative enclosure in its own right because it has audio and video capability. Yeah. I think within the podcasting 2.0 community, I've heard other uses of the alternative enclosure. So for one, it could be language translation, right? It doesn't want to be in that primary manifest, maybe. Secondly, Mary at Fountain and myself have certainly been working on premium RSS, which is encrypted content. Which is an alternative to Apple subscription channels, right? So again, there are other places that the alternative enclosure will have value within the open ecosystem, not just for video and audio.

Justin Jackson: 1:10:26

Yeah. I think if this goes well for Apple, like if this test goes well, they are there's lots of incentives for them to want to increase the amount of video content on Apple Podcasts. So if it turns out in these in this limited initial release that they're just seeing consumption on their side, that's like, wow, people really love this, people are really using it, advertisers love it, creators love it, everybody loves it. How can we get more of this content on our devices and on eventually on Apple TV? And then to be able to expand the pie, they might be like, well, let's adopt the alternate enclosure tag. So I yeah, I think it could still happen. And again, I think the Apple's a big company, they have they have billions of users, they have a lot of they've got to do things, and they have a lot of lawyers. I don't know if I've mentioned that. So they've got to do things a certain way. That's just the reality of being a giant corporation, and I'm just pleased that they continue on to support the open ecosystem. Is it is this perfect? Not yet, but I'm still waiting. I sometimes we just got to give them time. And again, I think the encouraging part is that if a lot more creators are publishing HLS manifests, then it's super easy for the host to say, oh, well, we now also support the alternate enclosure tag. For example, like all these initial partners, right? Omni and all them. For their advertisers, why wouldn't they also just add that for the first time, by the way? I don't think any of them support the alternate enclosure tag right now, any of these initial hosting providers. So now what why not? Why not just add the alternate enclosure tag with HLS manifest in there? And now Pocket Cast is saying they're gonna add HLS support, TrueFans has it, Fountain has it. You're gonna get way more distribution for your video. That's what you want, right? You want to sell more of those ad impressions. So I think it's gonna have a positive ripple effect throughout the industry, especially for apps that aren't Spotify, YouTube, or Apple.

Sam Sethi: 1:12:54

Putting your co-founder CEO hat on for Transistor, what does this mean for you? What do your customers think? Because you're not an ad platform, you're not like ACAST or Triton, so you're not delivering ads through dynamic head insertion, but you're obviously a partner of Apple. You do delegated delivery. Yeah. So day two after the announcement, what do you now say you're going to do for Transistor in terms of feature and function that you add?

Justin Jackson: 1:13:23

We've been talking about video for a long time. I I got into podcasts because of video. I was watching Dignation and Leo Laporte, all of those folks on Techzilla, all of those shows on the bus, on my iPod classic. That's how I got into podcasts was video first. So it's a big deal for me. As a creator, I think every show I've created in the last four years has been video and audio. We're recording the video already. We've got an editing system where we just edit the video and then we publish, export the video file, export the audio file. That's just part of our routine. When we survey our customers, the majority are doing video and audio. And so to me, it's just undeniable. This is where it's going. Practically, for a team of our size to build video infrastructure, it's definitely a heavier lift. But you know, I've been I've built a prototype that I'm using myself right now. I think it will be tiered. Like the adding HLS video is definitely a bigger lift than uploading video to YouTube and Spotify. But our customers are asking for it. And in my mind, it's just we're always going to charge value for value. So yes, if you want us to distribute your video to YouTube at Spotify, you'll pay for that. If you want to upload it, if you also want us to host it and uh stream the HLS video and have that on Apple, then you'll pay for that as well. So it's, I think from a business perspective, there's an opportunity there. There's still some open questions about it. It does add a lot more complexity to this nice little podcasting world we had. I can completely understand players in the industry that don't want to touch video. And I honestly, I still think there will, if you want to be an audio first or audio only podcasting platform, whether you're a hosting platform or a listening platform, I think there's still plenty of opportunity for that. I think that market will continue to grow 10, 15% a year. I think it'll be fine. But yeah, we're thinking about it. And if you think about, again, there's a type of creator now that is either selling their ads directly, like acquired, or they have they're selling their ads directly and they have a big subscriber, paid subscriber base like Steven Robles. Those for those folks, they want this. Like as soon as they heard about this Apple thing, their highest value listener is on Apple, and they want to give them the best experience. So it's going to be, depending on how you monetize, I think it's going to be interesting for a lot of different podcasters. And yeah, so it's something we're thinking about for sure.

Sam Sethi: 1:16:27

Okay, switching hats, Justin, putting your PSP hat on now. Which of the tags do you hope or expect Apple to adopt next?

Justin Jackson: 1:16:38

The easy lift would be the person tag. I that's the one that I'm because the worry with the person tag is that people are going to fake that there's somebody famous. And but that's already happening on Apple Podcasts. They make mistakes all the time with their tagging system. So I think the one piece that we have talked about is how to how can we verify these people tags? Can we have a central repository for like you just update similar to Gravitar? You just update your Gravitar one place, and then that syndicates everywhere. So I think we need to have more discussions about that. But the person tag, creators have looked at Apple's guest credits thing forever and gone, how come I can't access that? And yeah, so I think the person tag would be great. I think pod roll would be great. I love to see different implementations of that. True fans, pocket cast, like just like show other recommended by the creator. Like that's such a great opportunity and feels like a relatively small lift. And then the other one is the lit tag, the live, like now you've got, as soon as you add video, here's the other thing that a lot of podcasters are doing is they're recording. I do a show called The Panel. We record the live version on YouTube, and that's we're live. Hey, we're live. And I think being able to uh have an indicator in Apple Podcasts that your favorite show is live, just like you can see in other apps like TrueFans and Fountain, like it's a really cool experience to like show up live and be like, oh, here we are. So, and I've seen really simple implementations of live. Blue Sky, for example, just rolled out a live now thing where all you do is you put in your Twitch URL and say how long you're gonna be live for. So there's no API, they're not checking anything. It's just like, hey, I'm going live on Twitch, here's the URL, and I'll be live for two hours. And then when people are scrolling, they say, Oh, Justin's live right now. I'm gonna check that out. So those three are interesting to me. And I uh the having, for example, pod roll on the episode level, I think could also be very interesting. That's not implemented, but that's something I'd love to see as well. So, hey, you enjoyed this episode. Here's five more episodes like this that you might enjoy. I think those are all really good candidates.

Sam Sethi: 1:19:18

The other two I would love to see. I think one they won't, one I would love them to see, and I expect them to see do as well, is the location tag. If you look at the transcript with timed links, and you look at the fact that transcription is basically a building block, in my opinion, for other services on top, layered on top. So Apple's gone, okay, we can now read this with AI and we can highlight, I don't know, books, events, locations, whatever. Right, look at that. Now we can send it to more Apple services, right? It's very ecosystem block based. But yeah, you look at what Spotify just announced last week, it's very similar. They're doing that as well now. But if you take location, given that both, well, given that Apple's got an Apple Maps product, it's not very hard to see that you could layer location on top with categories. You take one of my ideas has been I live here in Marlowe in Buckinghamshire, and my categories for Pod News Weekly Review are news, tech, and business. So can I now, using the location tag, find other people who have podcasts local to me with those same categories? Oh look, I can. And now suddenly I can do a real-world meetup, or I can do a guest interview, or I can just talk to somebody locally about some of the challenges that we both have with podcasting. I think there's lots you can build. So I hope Apple implement location. The one that's frustrating me from the podcasting to the O community is the publisher tag, which is fundamentally what Apple channels is. So if you took Wandry on Apple, you've got a combination of freemium and premium content within that channel. And then what Apple has just said is that okay, we will provide dynamic ad insertion into the free content within that channel. Um, but if you want to pay a subscription for some of that content in that channel, then we'll remove the ads, or the ads aren't dynamically inserted, right?

Speaker 6: 1:21:18

Yeah.

Sam Sethi: 1:21:19

We have had publisher feeds as a approved tag for over two years. And I hate to say it, Oscar and Dovidas from Fountain came up with the idea. TrueFans implemented the idea, no one else has implemented it. Um, we're sat here looking at Apple channels. Now, I think we have missed, I think, a big opportunity. Yeah. So Publisher Feeds is the one I think that has slipped through the net for a lot of the podcast community. I think that's a good one to bring up.

Justin Jackson: 1:21:50

Yeah, that there's one thing that again, I just want to bring up again, which I think is important, is ultimately this has to be creator driven. Creators have to want to use these features. And you see it on the podcast hosting site all the time. We have all these things that they can use. They could use the person tag, they can build themselves a little website, and they can even choose a different theme on that website. What do most people do? Most people choose just whatever is the first website theme we give them. That's what they choose. Same colors, everything. They don't modify anything. Very few people use the person tag right now and pod roll as well. So some of it is a visibility issue, but there are definitely some things that creators want more. And I think live is actually just a great example. So many people go live and like live. And so, what can we prioritize in terms of what do most creators want most of the time? I think live is a great one. But as you go up, like you can see a kind of higher tier creator or a more professional creator. Things like a publisher tag that echoes what they have on Apple at the channel level becomes pretty compelling. But I want us to be thinking about weighing both of those things. Like, what do 95% of podcasters want? And what could we even realistically get them to do? And there's a lot of folks doing video, so it makes sense for us to do something with video. A lot of folks are doing live, makes sense for us to do something live, and then everything else I think we have to apply the same filter to. But yeah, I think this is an exciting time for the Podcast Standards Project because now it's like, okay, it was always Apple's not doing anything. Well, now Apple has started doing things. And again, in my conversations with Spotify and even YouTube, there's opportunities there as well. I don't think they're as opposed to things as we think. Podcast transcript tag being a great example. Like, why not grab it? It's there. Just treat it like YouTube treats transcript uploads, like you can upload your own transcript or we'll generate one for you. So I think there's, yeah, this latest move by Apple is very encouraging. Again, I would love to know how long they've been working on this. Because if this was a fairly recent development, first that's exciting because that means the podcast ecosystem does have a voice that Apple's listening to. And the second thing is it means Apple can actually move a bit faster than we thought. So if this was something they've been working for like three, four years on, then, well, okay, it was just in the pipeline, whatever. But if this is something they're like, you know what? Like a year ago, they're like, we should look into this. And then they started working on it and building it, and they were able to get it initially launched in a year, that's exciting because that means that they could also move on other things as well. And we just might see, and when Apple moves, it just really does help for it to go across the open ecosystem. And also, like you said, like now, like if you can do dynamic ads on Apple Podcast Video, but you can't do it on Spotify or YouTube, how does that move them? It makes things more interesting. So yeah, I'm pleased and and I'm hoping that maybe we'll see maybe the live tag, maybe the person tag, maybe the publisher tag. It's all in play now. And now all we have to do as an open ecosystem is make the best possible case, the honest case that creators are actually asking for it. This is something creators want. This is something that a lot of creators want. This is something that a lot of listeners want. And if we can make that case, I think I think that's what became compelling about video, is that we could say, well, creators want it and consumers want it. And so it becomes a lot more palatable if there's evidence of demand.

Sam Sethi: 1:25:39

Justin Jackson, we probably could talk for ages, but I'm sure we have to end this podcast at some point. Thank you so much. Um, I think we're gonna be talking about this a lot more in 2026. I look forward to seeing you in London. Yes. That's the London Podcast Show. I'm sure we'll be chatting about it there as well. See you soon. Thank you. Justin Jackson there, the wonderful Justin Jackson, he's about to snowboard from his home to his office. Yes. Um, couple of things in there. One is, and it's a question for you as well, James: what will traditional hosts do? I mean, Justin's talking about they're going to have to now add video, they can't ignore it. They're gonna have to look at DAI because without it, you know, they're not gonna be able to play in the ad game that we've just described. But we've asked in the past, or I certainly have asked in the past, of our sponsor Budsprout, when will you support video? And two years ago it was like you know, hell will freeze over before we go down that road. Um that now has to be reviewed surely by them, Blueberry, and others. But if they're not getting the secret API key and they're not serving Dynamic Ads, then what's their role within this new Apple ecosystem?

James Cridland: 1:26:52

Well, I think uh there's a couple of things there. Firstly, I can tell you that Blueberry is talking to Apple and uh will be enabling HLS as soon as possible. You would imagine there's probably quite a cue there, um, but I know that Blueberry are currently uh talking uh with them. Um so you've got that kind of side. The other thing that I can tell you is that um Buzzsprout will be talking about this, surprise, surprise, in the BuzzCast, uh, which is their uh podcast um that uh will be available, uh it's probably available right now. Um it's available at some point today. Um so uh you can uh have a listen to what they end up uh saying uh there. We are recording this the day before that they uh release, so I've got no idea what our sponsor is saying, but whatever they're saying is absolutely right. Uh so that's important. Um, but I think uh, you know, I mean, in total, it's not complicated to do the HLS bit. The DAI bit is way more complicated, but the HLS bit is actually quite easy and simple. The question really is in terms of The cost of hosting, how you end up charging your user that when they have come from a world where Spotify and YouTube give you that for free. And I think really the big unknown here is how many podcast publishers will be interested in undoubtedly spending more money to get into Apple Podcasts in terms of video. How many shows will just turn around and say, no, we're not going to support that? Many of the big shows that are available in video right now are through Spotify's megaphone. I would imagine that Spotify's megaphone will not be supporting this, certainly for a while. So I would imagine that that's probably not going to be a thing. So therefore, no Joe Rogan in video and plenty of other Spotify shows. So what does that mean for the take up of this? I simply don't know. Let's not forget that Apple is the biggest podcast app in terms of consumption. It beats Spotify, it beats YouTube by a sizable margin in terms of total consumption, in terms of total minutes spent. And also some data that I have from Edison Research that I don't know if I can uh announce yet, so I won't announce the actual numbers, but uh I do have some data from uh Edison Research which very clearly shows that if you use Apple Podcasts, you listen to more podcasts than you do if you use YouTube or you use Spotify. So again, you know, Apple Podcasts is a great place to be. Um and I think that that's going to be um uh fascinating to watch.

Sam Sethi: 1:29:39

I've got one more um question around this, James. Lots of other questions probably as well, but this one. So in in the round, all of this is happening within the Apple channels, right? So um you're getting uh premium content in the Apple channels, which is you know paid subscription, and now you're getting ad-supported content in the Apple channels. So you've got freemium and premium within those Apple channels, and then outside of the Apple channels, you have audio and video, but in traditional MP3, MP4, correct?

James Cridland: 1:30:15

Uh I don't think so. I don't think you need to be uh in an Apple channel um to turn on uh video. Um so I think you can do it video. Yeah, no, yeah. Um no, I don't think that you have to be from a uh from a podcaster point of view, no, you don't need a channel in order to turn on um the video in this way. Um I mean you obviously can, um, and from a technical point of view it's tied in with the um with the podcast hosting companies because it uses the same API. Um but from a point of view of what the user um you know of what the creator will have to do, no, you don't have to include channels and things like that in there, although it's obviously useful to end up doing that.

Sam Sethi: 1:31:03

The only reason I ask is because one of the bugbears I have with the podcasting 2.0 community is its lack of support for the publisher feed. And the publisher feed, the way that I use it is that let's take Wandry, for example, we would aggregate all of Wandry's podcasts within that channel or that publisher feed, and uh the way I sort of envisage it based on Apple is that you could have freemium content in there, which is ad-supported, and you could have premium content, and but it's all around Wandry. So Wandry would flag up whether this was you know ad listened or whether it was paid listened. And I just wondered whether Apple was doing that with their channels, but you seem to suggest that no, you could have ad-supported um HLS outside of a Apple channel.

James Cridland: 1:31:55

Yes, you can do. Um so yeah, you don't have to worry about that. And in fact, to even um be a little bit more obtuse, you currently cannot charge for video. So you can only charge for audio only paid subscriptions. You can't have a paid subscription, which is video. So actually, yeah, there are a few a few interesting sort of niggles there. Um, but no, I I know that you know a publisher feed would be useful. Um I can I can certainly see that. I think the the needs to be a really good use case, and um I'm not necessarily sure that the use case is quite there in terms of um a publisher feed, but yeah, absolutely, you know, it wouldn't it be nice to see more support uh all the way through for some of the podcasting 2.0 things, which by the way, is what I would suggest anyone who is thinking about implementing this, particularly the many friends that we've got who work at podcast hosting companies. If you are going to implement HLS, forget all of the stuff about dynamic ads just for the minute. And just if you're going to implement HLS video for Apple, you've got access to the secret API, which allows you to give Apple the HLS uh link. Um, then please also consider putting that HLS link in the alternate enclosure. That's what it's for, and that will enable your clients to be in the iHeartRadio app when that launches uh video support a little bit later on this year. It'll mean that your video is uh visible in uh other apps like TrueFans and Fountain and many others. Um and it is literally a two-minute coding job to add that alternate enclosure because you've already got the HLS uh file, uh the HLS manifest, the HLS URL, you've already got that, you've already got the link to the RSS feed. It's it's just super easy, and we also know that it does not break Apple because it's just the way that RSS works. So if you are going to implement uh HLS the Apple way, then also make sure that you stick it into the alternate enclosure because that will get your clients more viewers on more podcast hosting companies, uh, sorry, on more podcast apps than um than you would otherwise, and that's good news for your audience and good news for your um for your for your uh clients. So um, yeah, you know, the alternate enclosure, although Apple don't use it, um still absolutely no reason why you wouldn't want to add that into this as well.

Sam Sethi: 1:34:42

Yeah. The last thing you wrote, and and I do recommend everyone go and read James's uh post on Pod News Daily, which breaks this down in detail if you want to read it rather than just listen to what we have to say here. But one of the things you did say was that this Apple uh um channel stroke uh ad platform ecosystem is a proprietary system because of the API. So my view is that we as the podcasting 2.0 community, which wants to be open, should embrace. Now, this is this is just me and and I think Oscar will um confer with me. Um we want to support something called Premium RSS, which is a method of charging for content alongside freemium content and aggregate that inside of a publisher feed. And that's the way that I'm gonna be going forward, and that is an open way of doing it that everybody in the ecosystem could use rather than API which only Apple will deem to certain people.

James Cridland: 1:35:43

Yeah, I mean, I you know, at the end of the day, I I I mean, I don't know whether the publisher feed thing and the Apple channels is a bit of a is a bit of a side note here, but certainly in terms of the video, um yeah, you know, I mean, let's use the open standards that we have. There are very good reasons, and I understand the reasons why Apple has chosen not to do um uh though those open standards for this. Um whether or not they're good reasons, I don't know actually, but they are definitely reasons. Um so that's and so that's absolutely fine. Um, but the one thing that I would say is, yeah, you know, we we just need to um we just need to make sure that um if we're gonna go to the hard work of producing HLS uh and HLS video files, then let's use those HLS video files. Let's use what Apple has worked out in terms of what they want in those HLS video files, and let's use that as the de facto standard for all of open RSS podcasting and stick that into the uh into the alternate enclosure as well. Agreed.

Sam Sethi: 1:36:49

Now, let's get away from Apple for a bit. Oh, thank heaven. Um but it still is situated around advertising. So Podranker claims to have checked 128 episodes to discover how much ads are in podcasts. Um what do they say? Are we oversaturated?

James Cridland: 1:37:08

Are they oversaturated? Actually, Podranker says that there are much fewer advertising in podcasts than Magellan AI has recently said. Um so Podranker uh reckon it's 3.7%, which is about two minutes an hour. Magellan AI said 8.82%, uh, which is about five minutes an hour. Not seven. If you read seven, then that was an idiot that wrote that. Um and the correct answer is five. So um the difficulty with doing this data is firstly, Podranka's um uh information is far, far smaller. It was only 128 episodes uh in this particular case. The second thing is it really depends where you download the ads from. Um, I listened to um uh you know, I listened to a number of different shows which have no advertising in them whatsoever because I live in Australia, and why would you want to advertise to anybody in Australia? Um, so I think you know, you you've got that kind of side of it as well. Um, but you know, it um I'm more interested in the trends of how many, you know, how the amount of ads in podcasting is increasing. Um, and Podranker has done that. Podranker also did another piece of um data which was all about um the um the podcast uh host that would interrupt the most, uh, which was quite interesting. Um they chose 20 different diff different shows. Um someone emailed me and said um the woman didn't do uh what was it? Um there was only one woman in the charts. Um and the reason why there was only one woman in the charts, there were actually two, but the reason why is that they only looked at 20 shows and only two of those had women in it. Uh, it's got nothing to do with the amount of interrupting. So, you know, so there's a thing. But that was some quite interesting, if pointless, information from that company as well. Um, I'm a sucker for pointless information, uh, and that was one of it.

Sam Sethi: 1:39:10

No, I I only put this in for the show notes because I wonder whether now with this advertising platform that Apple's put forward, will we see more saturation because there's a a definitive way to push it through? I don't know. We we'll we'll see, I guess. It's one of those I keep wondering whether companies, not just Apple, um, are going, yeah, we can sneak a little bit more and the elasticity hasn't broken yet. Keep add another ads. Oh, I agree.

James Cridland: 1:39:37

And and you know, and the iHeart ads, uh the iHeart shows have the most ads in there because iHeart comes at this from a world of US commercial radio where every second second you're listening to another advert. Um so uh yes, I I I I do agree. Um uh of course, j just to um um just to um uh pick you up on something, you said Apple's ad system, and of course, the whole point of this is that it isn't Apple's ad system, you're linking out to ad systems from all over the place, um uh rather than Apple building their own, which um thank heavens they're not. Um but yeah, no, I think I think um there is a real worry, and particularly when you have a look at the amount of advertising that's in US media, which is way, way higher than the amount of advertising which is in anywhere else on earth. Um, I think we look at the US and we go, well, that's normal. And actually, no, the answer is that the US has way more advertising than most people would call normal. And you and I, we grew up in the UK. Um, we watched um the BBC, which has no advertising on it, we listened to the BBC, which has no advertising on it. Um, and so therefore, we saw far, far less um uh you know advertising and uh commercials. In fact, ITV, the only commercial television uh channel uh when I was growing up, was banned in our house um literally because it had ads on there, and my parents thought that I might see ads for toys that I would then want. Uh, and so we weren't allowed to watch anything on ITV, which was we'll talk about X-rated ads in a minute.

Speaker 5: 1:41:15

Yes, which was quite a thing. So um, yeah, but there's a thing.

Sam Sethi: 1:41:19

Now, one of the things that surprised me out of this, and it I don't think it's a good thing from Apple, but let's see. Um, they announced something called an Apple Creator Suite. Um, are they stretching the creator suite or creator studio concept by saying you can put all of the Apple products together and now you can record with Apple, you can edit with Apple, and you can publish with Apple. I think they're pushing it, aren't you?

James Cridland: 1:41:44

I mean, they clearly want some of Adobe's money. Um, uh, and uh that's the way that Adobe has been earning their cash. And so they're trying to sell all of their creator um uh products as um a subscription, uh, including Final Cut Pro. And uh now if you go to the Apple Podcasts for Creators website, you will see Apple Podcasts promoting Final Cut Pro as a way for you to edit the video, um, and also promoting something called local capture on iPad, which apparently does a very good job of um of of of uh you know allowing you to record FaceTime and those sorts of things. So um, you know, clearly um everybody's being uh very good corporate people and cross-selling stuff, you know, throughout the industry, I suppose.

Sam Sethi: 1:42:35

Uh now, last thing uh I'll say um Apple's events on March the 4th. It looks like it's a hardware event. You mentioned earlier that um video on Apple TV through this model doesn't work, and you mentioned that obviously um home pod doesn't work. I think the March the 4th event is all about new versions of Apple TV and HomePod. So um, apart from low-cost Mac Airbooks in yellow, blue, and green, which will come out.

James Cridland: 1:43:05

Um I think it's MacBooks rather than MacBook Airs. Um, okay. But yes, um, so there's so there's certainly talk on that. I'm hoping that there will be an Apple uh a new Apple TV with new uh hardware because the Apple TV has been five, six years without any any refresh, and it would be nice to see a bit of a bit of that. I may even buy one.

Sam Sethi: 1:43:31

Um I'm I'm the same, James. I'm actually thinking about kicking out my Fire TV.

James Cridland: 1:43:36

Yeah, oh I mean definitely kick out your Fire TV. We've got a Google thing um at the moment, and it's fine. Um the weird thing that that Google thing is doing more than anything else is it's actually keeping my smart um my smart home together because um Google TV streamers and indeed Apple TV boxes are Matter thread uh servers. Um so it it basically makes your smart um home work. Um yeah, but I am you know I'm sort of very slowly de-googling my life, and uh one of the things that I will be doing is probably buying one of these Apple TVs, assuming that everything that we have is available on the Apple TV as well.

Sam Sethi: 1:44:18

You you and me both, I'm I'm getting rid of my Alexa's because to get Alexa Plus, you have to get new hardware.

James Cridland: 1:44:23

They well, yes, and you don't want to be helping helping uh you know Amazon with their with their um whatever it is that they're doing. Let's not get political.

Sam Sethi: 1:44:33

Mine wasn't for that reason, mine was more for the fact that they're not thread enabled, and I have to therefore move to the next generation to get Alexa Plus and thread support. And I'm like, do I want to do this? And then suddenly um the fire TV is a little bit slow, and I'm like, I need to get a new one. And so yeah, I'm gonna have a look as well. Um, so yeah, we'll see.

James Cridland: 1:44:58

Indeed.

Sam Sethi: 1:44:59

Now, moving on, um, I read a story about Netflix. Now it's it's an interesting one because it's talking about the next battleground for attention according to Netflix is gonna be live events. So we've seen them doing uh a lot around podcast acquisition recently. Uh they've done uh acquisition of um fights, they've got a new MMA fight with Ronda Rousey. Um they paid five billion dollars for the rights to uh a lot of uh WWE and they posted the Jake Paul versus Anthony Joshua mismatch. And um the bit in the article though was it said live episodes of some podcasts, namely the Bill Simmons podcast. And according to um report, live is where Netflix wants to go next.

James Cridland: 1:45:54

Yeah, I mean, you know, the only time that I turn on a television is when there's something live that I want to watch or turn on a television channel. Um uh, you know, and whether that's live sport, which obviously has um something there, whether that is um, you know, uh uh live news and all that kind of stuff, live is a really important thing. Um live uh um podcasts, you know, all exist. I was doing a live um uh episode of the new media show, for example, earlier this week. And um, so you know, all of that uh exists. I suppose, you know, in the new world of Apple where they have to make money out of things, where do they m make money out of live podcasts? I suppose is one of the questions we have to ask ourselves. Um again, not quite sure what the answer is there. Um, and indeed, you know, live um gives uh a whole additional headache in terms of uh content. But certainly for Netflix to be doing that, it makes um it makes a load of sense. I believe that Bill Simmons has been live on YouTube for a long, long time. So one of the things he probably wanted when he made that switch is is I want I still want to be live. Um and so you know that that is that is a thing, but um, yeah, it's it's it'll be you know um uh clearly you can see that Netflix wants to get more live stuff into the into the app. Amazon Prime has more live channels in there now, um, you know, and etc. etc. So you can you can imagine that being quite an important thing. And in fact, I was listening to the rest is entertainment earlier on this week, and they were talking about the real money which is now available. Everybody in the TV industry is desperately looking for money, because um there is no money left in in TV, so everybody's desperately looking around for money, and then you've got these um, we would call them betting companies in the UK, but they're not called betting companies in the US, they're they're kind of called something else, the wagering companies or something, because they're not um you know, they don't fall under the same rules, um, but they're companies where you can bet on, you know, what color will Donald Trump's tie be tomorrow, and you know, how long will the press conference be? Uh, and all that kind of uh stuff. You can bet on that and you can get money back. And those types of companies um who are right in the middle of the Golden Globes, if you didn't uh see that, those sorts of companies will be earning lots and lots and lots of money, particularly for live events, because that's where they can really get their money's worth. And of course, they've got money to burn, they are where the money is. So um quite a lot of the conversations going on at the moment are live events enables betting, and betting enables um, you know, the the opportunity that you have with um earning money from these sorts of wagering companies. So, you know, it's all it's all interconnected in some way, shape, or form.

Sam Sethi: 1:49:00

Well, I mean, at the last general election in the UK, one of Richie Sunak's advisers put a bet on the date of the general election, given that he wrote the PR piece that was going out. Bit of an odd one that, yeah. Putting your own bet on.

James Cridland: 1:49:14

Although, interestingly, in the US, because this isn't regulated, in the US, um, that sort of insider information is absolutely fine. So you you you know, so so there's all kinds of there's all kinds of information there.

Sam Sethi: 1:49:30

Um Yeah, we've seen we've seen the president himself drop the market, then pick the market up and make money in between itself.

James Cridland: 1:49:37

Yes, indeed.

Sam Sethi: 1:49:38

Um no, I mean football in in the UK has a big problem with the Far East doing that, but um and players are very, very closely scrutinised. The only reason I mention it is I think there is money because YouTube does a lot of live. I I I I tend to watch a lot of live events and both the politics stuff when it's breaking news. And I've noticed goal. hanger um are now putting some of their live events behind their members' paywall. Yeah. So now if you want to see the breaking story and get the immediate response from, you know, um the rest is politics or the rest is politics US, you have to be a member first. Yes.

James Cridland: 1:50:16

No, it's uh uh definitely opportunities there to unlock additional information that you know live is valuable and so being able to lock that behind um membership wall uh makes a bunch of sense. Now let's um let's tell you about a podcast that you should be going and having a listen to uh it's a podcast called Ad Infinitum it's from our friends at uh Oxford Road um some really good um they've just been doing uh series three which has been talking about advertising and particularly talking about radio because it was World Radio Day um uh last uh Friday um and so if you go and you find uh ad infinitum wherever you get your podcasts you will hear a bunch of people including Tom Webster and Paul Rismandel who knows a thing or two about radio let me tell you um and many others talking about um radio and radio's relationship to podcasting and everything else uh it's uh well worth a listen um so uh go and uh hunt that out uh if you can find that and if you're a fan of radio heaven knows why you would be but if you're a fan of radio I do write a radio newsletter every single week which is much I'm just gonna say where were you on this list was just a great feature I know well you know yeah but you know um uh uh English you know not from the US um that's probably it but anyway um if you are a fan of um radio and all of that radioland.emil uh is my radio newsletter that comes out every week or so roughly um and you can find that and uh enjoy that you can also find that in your favorite podcast app uh as well which is nice one of the things that I have spotted is if television falls over uh in terms of live broadcasting then actually radio falls over at the same time because guess who's paying for all of those transmitters and it ain't the radio business it's the TV business. So if the TV business turns around and says actually we don't need any of those transmitters anymore then radio will go oh oh well where did our transmitters go?

Speaker 5: 1:52:17

And didn't you put a date on that as well?

James Cridland: 1:52:19

Yeah there has been a date which is 2034 and the reason why it's 2034 and this is in the UK the reason why it's 2034 for the demise of live TV is that all of the TV in the UK is broadcast by one technical company it's called Arkiva. It's not a monopoly uh absolutely not a monopoly um oh yes it is because I used to use them as well but um but arkiva um uh can't even spell their name correctly without a U. Arkiva are the uh company that owns all of the big transmitter masts and essentially uh the BBC's um uh contract with them runs until 2034 you can imagine that the BBC has thoughts about whether or not it wants to um re-sign uh that contract for another 10 years knowing um what the uh future of live TV is going to be so uh yeah really interesting and what does that mean uh for the world of podcasting and on demand who only knows but um yeah it's a bunch of all of that kind of stuff going on now um World Radio Day just um I it was an interesting one because the Pope got involved um I don't know why the Pope got involved but he did uh they've got a podcast it seems and also a and also a radio station they they they've got a massive radio station called Vatican Radio when I used to do late night a m radio in uh South Yorkshire if I stopped talking uh enough then you could actually hear uh Vatican radio behind me because they used to broadcast on that frequency somewhere in Europe and you you you used to hear you know them praying behind me while I was playing some songs or other. So yes but uh yes so UNESCO puts together World Radio Day um and uh the theme this year was all about um AI and human voices and everything else uh lots of people talking about uh human connection and shared experience uh which is what I talk about an awful lot so uh yeah it's um uh happy world radio day if you um if you observe that that was on February the 13th I was just gonna say what he said AI is a tool not a voice and he calls on communicators to preserve human faces and voices. Nice Amen and also with you right let's go let's go let's go around the world then uh shall we uh firstly in my part of the uh in my neck of the woods um there's actually been a very big um audio um conference which uh has just happened in Sydney in New South Wales uh so big and so impressive it was that Brian Barletta from Sounds Profitable went there and I wasn't invited. That goes to show you um so um so uh so there's a thing um but we also missed an online symposium from a um from a group of academics that study audio and one of the people who ended up speaking there was from Australia Siobhan McHugh who makes a bunch of uh great podcasts as well um and she basically railed against the whole idea of video podcasting sorry Siobhan um I think I think it's a thing now um but uh but she will be on the show next week to tell us will she yes I pinged her so she did excellent yes but she's great because she is because she did my podcast festival along with you back in the day so I went on she is excellent. I had a speaking at podcast day 24 which was the last big uh podcast conference here uh and she is very good she knows her stuff oh well I'm very pleased about that she's also got a very good book which I helped her uh with a few things in um so that's good um podcast one in the US um um they went on to the Nasdaq in September 2023 and they are about to do a reverse ferret if you believe what Semaphor uh has written um they are looking for a buyer and they want to go private um they they're actually doing pretty well in terms of their share price certainly over the last 12 months it's gone up to 12 to $2.86 um on its first day it was $4.39 um and has never got anywhere near there but pretty well after the first week it's um you know it's gone it's had its ups and its downs but it's doing pretty well right now so not quite sure what they're doing there. What are they doing there, Sam?

Sam Sethi: 1:56:49

It's normally the exec team are going to be taking money off the table. It's easier if they uh are not having to be a listed share all the embuggerance of reporting um but also then they can pay themselves what they want they don't have to pay shareholders as much.

James Cridland: 1:57:04

New word for this week embuggerance in Japan uh if you want to advertise on podcasts in Japan it's not quite as easy as just translating it into Japanese and and saying go um because uh firstly two things um uh Japanese words are longer and so therefore you could easily overrun the space that you have but also secondly um you need to do it right and um Japanese people expect different things they expect different tones they even expect different politeness levels can you believe so there's a company called Otonal who has added new service for Japanese audio ad localization they will do the translation for you they will find a voiceover for you they will even find the audio files because obviously uh in Japan the music that they listen to is a bit different to the music that we listen to in the West and so uh yeah fascinating company that has worked out a real niche there of um of organizations that want to advertise in their country but don't want to do a bad job of it um so many congratulations to Otonal for that um and then in the UK where you are um Rajart has published its MIDIS study so MIDIS stands for something can't quite remember what it is something to do with multi-platform and internet delivered uh audio services there you go that sounds good doesn't it uh it's probably that it's not I believe in the yeah it's probably that um and um they do this every single quarter there's tons of information there um some of the information is how many people listen to podcasts 26% of the population every single week um and you can also see in there uh where people listen to podcasts why people listen to podcasts there's all kinds of use states and you know and all that kind of stuff which I never uh to be honest get an awful lot uh out of sources of podcast discovery word of mouth being the number one social media being number two suggestion from podcast player and podcast chart is at number three and radio at number four there's a thing uh the most popular podcast chart is uh the most popular podcast genre is comedy um and uh it also says lots of other things in terms of um people listening to the shows that they download and all of that kind of stuff 14% claim to watch podcasts weekly 14% which must be an all-time record um so lots of information there in case you're wondering how British people uh listen to podcasts uh the main thing is that total listening to podcasts per week in the country is 111 million hours the US is seven times that um so uh not doing too badly in terms of um in terms of uh audience size well British people listen with a cup of tea and a cucumber sandwich that's what we do yes and a digestive uh I made a fatal mistake I went to the supermarket the other day and I didn't buy the normal digestive I bought the healthier choice digestive which uh not enough sugar in them that was a bad plan um awards and events um lots of awards lots of events going on um uh which are uh all exciting um there is a Mip London uh award and event going on in uh the UK it's part of Mipcom Cans but this is in London uh it's running at the Savoy Hotel so they've uh splashed out uh on that that must be an expensive place to hire out Blimey um but uh lots of podcasting people there all of a sudden because video and podcasting um so that's worth a peek February the 22nd to the 24th so that's uh next week of course on Airfest also happening next week as well which should be uh good fun to look forward to podcast movement evolutions let me tell you about that that is in Austin Texas March 13th to the 15th it's free to go to free free free um but um if you're clever you will go on to podcastmovement.com to register because if you register then you get to go in front of the queue of people who didn't um so that's uh probably a good thing so um go and take a peek at that I've been told of a number of very exciting keynote speakers who they have um uh speaking at this particular event I don't think it's up to me to announce who those people are but let's just say we've been talking about one of the companies quite a lot uh so far um so um worth a worth a peek uh podcast movement evolutions uh free free foo free in Austin Texas alongside South by Southwest can I make a prediction for this show you know we were talking about predictions this is going to be the longest one we've ever done yes I think so the tuck stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review.

Sam Sethi: 2:02:00

Yes it's the stuff you'll find every Monday in the Pod News newsletter here's where Sam talks technology just before uh Sam starts um let me just remind you we do have chapters this could be a long one so so there is always that um uh so yes uh technology what uh fatal mistakes have people been making with technology this week Sam well can I just say walk the dog the next half hour you'll be fine keep up with us now um uh yeah podcast addict um they've been adding automated chapters to podcasts without the creator's consent and unsurprisingly it went wrong because they added X-rated chapter images uh to make the matter worse it also works in CarPlay so while you're in the car up comes an X-rated image lovely for the kids in the backseat tell me more James yes this is such a stupid thing to do so podcast addicts has this thing where you can turn on automatic chapter images um uh and instead of trusting that the podcast um uh creator will put some chapter images in uh podcast addicts has turned this thing on which literally goes to Google and searches for whatever the name of the chapter is and sees if it can find an image.

James Cridland: 2:03:19

It's probably quite good for books and for movies and things. It's much less good for you know talking about Pornhub. And um there was a tech news podcast in Italy called Digitalia and they were talking about a court win that Pornhub have just got um they put their uh podcast chapter um uh name of Pornhub wins and uh hey presto podcast addict did a Google search for an image for Pornhub wins and got an image from Pornhub um uh which is just genius and so I contacted uh Xavier that runs podcast addict and I said um I'm I'm gonna cover this I should probably ask you for a statement and his statement you know normally you would expect oh we're really sorry this didn't work the way that we thought we would we're gonna rethink how it works and blah blah blah no he turned around and he said well firstly it's an opt-in feature and secondly I'm very surprised because I've turned the safe search on uh that was as far as we got there um uh I mean not helped by the fact that this pod that the podcast um that uh he did this to uh is Franco Solerio's podcast now Franco Solerio you probably recognise because he's the man that develops Castomatic which is a competing podcast app or albeit that castomatic is on iOS and podcast addict is on Android um so Franco Solerio is not is not happy um Xavier appears to not see that there's a particular problem here um I think it's I think it's un you know um what what's the what what what's the angry phrase that I would I would say unconscionable that you would just randomly add um images off the internet that by the way you probably don't have the licenses for anyway and just chuck it into your podcast app. What a stupid idea and the fact that he's not taking the thing away he's just making alterations to the feature to produce safer results i.e's um sticking in a uh a block list of words including presumably the word porn um is just bizarre so um I mean podcast addicts it's a very strange app every time I want to write about it Xavier is not the world's most uh happy go lucky jolly person um uh the the the the app is ugly as anything um but s lots of people like it and it's a top 10 app 1.8% of all podcast downloads hello to you if you're listening to this in uh podcast addicts maybe we should maybe maybe we should be entitling this this uh the this uh chapter I don't know Big Naked Black Man um right let's just BBC just call it BBC let's just see of course now I've oh my god we did talk about the BBC earlier god imagine what you put in now I've said that of course what um uh yes what Apple will be doing is uh making a podcast chapter oh heavens anyway um yes let's uh move on from that and um let's move on to a great tool that I discovered called FFAB um it's a graphical front end for FFmpeg now FFmpeg is the thing that um does an awful lot of very nice conversions of audio files from web format to you know ASC or to mp3 or all of that it does or to HLS or to HLS it does a fantastic job of doing that too it's really really good but it's really really complicated to end up using um so FFAB is a graphical front end that you can use if you're running Mac or Linux and uh it's got knobs in there it's got dials in there it's got everything in there but the lovely thing about it you've you've done it again now you just said knobs come on podcast addict what image are we going to have there again hello to you if you're enjoying this in podcast addict. So again you know you can you can play around with ffmpeg to your heart's content but the beautiful thing about this is that it then shows you what the command line is that it's that you have just created um and I didn't realize it does dynamic compression it does EQ I know that you can set ID3 tags using FFmpeg because I do that every single day automatically it will set the LUFS levels correctly um so it'll be the right loudness um it does all kinds of stuff it's really really good so um yeah definitely worth a peek if you are um self-producing your files FFAB is the name of this uh front end uh they say it's coming out for Windows in some at some point but it's available for Mac and Linux right now.

Sam Sethi: 2:08:08

I can't think of anything other than Thunderbirds right now.

James Cridland: 2:08:11

No exactly um when I when I was uh talking about this on on another podcast um on Monday I was another podcast another podcast it's my Radio Man podcast yeah you're fine um and I was there going FFAB Scotty and then thinking it's it's not it's not uh it's not that is it um I I don't really understand how any of that works but anyway um FFAB uh it's worth a peek now global are doing something clever aren't they Sam well they are they I mean they're producing their own podcast app and they are aggregating all their content through it but um they've got somebody within their own team who specialises in deliverable into the car and now they're pushing that very heavily so they were in the BMW and the mini and we talked about it a couple of weeks back that BMW and Mini are moving away from CarPlay and Android Auto to their own system and it looks like Global is now integrated with that but they're also Global is still going to make it available via Apple CarPlay Android Auto but you will be able to then get all their radio stations and also their podcasts.

Sam Sethi: 2:09:20

Now as we've seen I mean Global recently hired um somebody to head up their podcasting and Stephen Toomes is head of in-car distribution for Global Player. Looks like they're being really serious about what they're doing with distribution now.

James Cridland: 2:09:35

Yeah I am I I mean I'm surprised that there aren't more podcast um uh companies and more um radio companies doing this because actually it's a really important thing it's um you know uh um every radio company should be focusing on how do we make sure that we are in um the car um because um car radios are either going away or they're awful um and so actually being able to um make sure that you can get your stuff into car um you know into into the car makes a bunch of sense um so it actually is so it absolutely makes sense um if you want to end up being uh in there and you said their podcasts it'll make their podcasts available in cars it'll also make loads of other podcasts uh as well the pod news daily is in there in the global player so you can go and have a listen to the pod news daily um this show uh weirdly isn't um but that will be something that I change uh within the next 24 hours because I need to find out how to get um that in there but where does four hours get me if I listen to this show yes exactly we're only doing this for the streaming sats uh for the one person that's still that that still actually does that um so uh yes um no so I think it's a very clever uh plan from uh Global it looks very smart uh you'll see a picture in uh yesterday's pod news uh because it was the lead story because it had a nice picture uh so there's the thing uh snap now I snap oh snap chat as some people might call it um uh they've just released to a select group of Snapchat creators now I wasn't going to obviously include it it's not directly related to podcasting but I thought it was interesting that those uh creators can now provide a subscription an experimental new revenue stream that allows the creators to reward their big supporters I'm a massive fan of or rewarding people for their time and attention and it's interesting to see Snap doing that as well. Interesting to see Snap doing that and if you're going to mention Snap I'm gonna mention TikTok um because the good news is Sam Which one TikTok which one the US one or the the worldwide one? I've got no idea. The good news is the good news is Sam that TikTok has made another new podcast episode. They haven't it's

Sam Sethi: 2:12:00

Yeah y you told me off and said it has no RSS, so I'm gonna be able to do that.

James Cridland: 2:12:03

It's a podcast called TikTok in the Mix, which is a podcast which is only available on TikTok. And uh I spent five minutes to try and find out how to listen to it on TikTok and still couldn't work it out. Um but the good news, Sam, is that they've announced that episode two has just been made available. Um uh two months after episode one with breakout country star Megan Moroney. Um according to the music website's digital music news, um, they have covered it with a breathless headline, which is TikTok is suddenly a serious competitor in long-form podcasting. Oh no, they're not.

Speaker 5: 2:12:44

Ah, bless TikTok, eh? She's big in Nashville, big in Nashville. Well, yes. Um, yes, possibly um possibly the only thing.

Sam Sethi: 2:12:55

And lastly, um, Audible um and Kindle have got together a little bit more. I mean, we always knew that you could use your Audible with your Kindle, your audio book. Um, they've added a new feature called Read and Listen. Now, this is what I thought Spotify was trying to do a couple of weeks ago, but we didn't quite understand how you went from a digital content to a paper content, and they said they were going to sync it. Made no sense. But this one is where you can read um content on your Kindle and it will sync to the audiobook and vice versa.

James Cridland: 2:13:27

So yeah, it's a very smart, very smart tool. And uh yeah, I think that uh, you know, Audible do some interesting things. I mean, as we all know, Audible uh invented podcasting in the first place, uh almost genuinely, actually, because Robin Williams was doing something that I think is a podcast about three years before Adam and Dave did. Um so um, but Audible, you know, doing this sort of thing. Audible also um this week uh announced the Narrator Hall of Fame uh for this year um for people who read audiobooks. Um and there are lots of exciting people, um, none of whom I recognize who've been Saskia Mahlvelt and Ray Porter and Emily Woo Zella. That's an actual name. Um so all of all of these people have been um highlighted as being very good at reading books out loud into microphones. So I think that they're doing a pretty good job.

Announcer: 2:14:22

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

James Cridland: 2:14:35

So many different ways to get in touch with us. Fan mail by using the link in our show notes or boosts or email, uh, and we make uh we share any money that we make uh as well. Uh we got some messages in um TrueFans, haven't we, Sam?

Sam Sethi: 2:14:50

Silas uh sent us uh $2.38 Aussie dollars, but again, I can give you that in stats if you want. Uh TrueFans has a co-listen feature question mark. Uh Are you adding a chat to it? The answer is yes. Uh well, I didn't know that, he says. This week I added what I call parties to the new secret bounce pad Wii app, which has a party chat already. Great minds. So, yes, that's his own app. Um, yeah, we have a co-listen feature. Um, we've had it for a little while. Um, it is good to notify you of people you follow in TrueFans what podcast they're listening to, and you can jump in at the same point. Um, we need to extend that now with a real-time chat so that uh the podcast itself might not be live, but you might be live co-listening with a friend, which is what Spotify have just added as well, I think.

James Cridland: 2:15:41

Yeah, no, I think it's um it's a smart thing. I know that my daughter is using uh Spotify Jam as well, where you can um put uh additional songs onto people's playlists and all of that kind of stuff. Uh Seth says, great interview with Tony and sends um 1.3 Australian dollar redoes over. Um uh thank you, Seth, uh, for that. Neil Vellio, incredible hires, talking about uh Robin Elsie, of course, joining Captivate. Well done to Mr. Asquith. Yes, well done indeed. Thank you for the dollar, Neil.

Sam Sethi: 2:16:10

He missed a bit off. He missed a bit off that comment. Which was Giza Job.

James Cridland: 2:16:17

Yes, quite possibly. Quite possibly. Uh thank you to Brian Ensminger, who is our top streamer this week, um, who has been uh streaming a lot, streaming the Pod News Daily mostly. So thank you, Brian, for that. And the ugly quacking duck uh has sent us um a row of ducks, 2,222 sats. Again, thank you. My daughter, he says, just told me one of her favourite actors is doing a new podcast. I said, Really? Yes, YouTube would be where we could watch it. Video? Thirty minutes later, maybe she understands the difference, he says. Thanks for the episode for the audio podcast that I enjoy listening to. Yes, I enjoy making it in terms of audio uh as well. Uh Bruce, thank you. Uh that's very kind of you. Fair dinkum of you. Um Double Two Double Two Sat. Um thank you so much to our power supporters as well. Weekly.podnews.net is where you can join them, uh, including uh John McDermott, uh Martin Lindescog, John Spurlock, uh who was uh name checked by Dave Weiner this week in his blog as one of the two Spurlocks of RSS. Uh there's another Spurlock, apparently. And uh yeah, um, but doing uh an RSS app. Um so who cares? And uh Mzileen Smith uh as well, um, who is uh in our big list of uh 23. Thank you to all of those. Uh you can uh join that at um really super helpful um and um uh very much appreciated. Weekly.podnews.net is where to go for that. Right. What's happened for you this week, Sam, as we reach um minutes number 100.

Sam Sethi: 2:17:56

Okay, uh very quickly. Dealing with lots of teas and eyes, bugs, and uh all sorts of things. It's it's always fun building software, he says. I think we started this show off air going, what fun it is building software, though.

Speaker 5: 2:18:08

Um I was saying, I was saying there's a bug. There's a bug. Yes, thanks.

Sam Sethi: 2:18:12

Yeah, and I found one straight after this, we'll be on it. Um, but you know, we're we're working on the monthly refunds, so we've got that coming up now for testing and uh what happens when you cancel a plan, what 301 redirect, so all of these things that we have to do, you know, it sounds very exciting when you say we're gonna do hosting, and then you go, yes, but there's all these other things you need to come across. So, yes, a lot of uh a lot of that grunt work in the background. Um, we've tested streaming MP4. Now we talked about Apple having MP4 video within the primary enclosure, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Um, but we don't want to do a complete download of a one gig MP4 video file. So we've worked out how we can do um streaming in the same format as HLS, sort of. Um six-second packets. Um and so yes, we're testing that. It's all working so far. Uh yeah, if it works the way we want, then we will launch video hosting, hopefully early next week will be the goal.

James Cridland: 2:19:17

Very nice. Why would you not do HLS then?

Sam Sethi: 2:19:19

Uh we are doing HLS and we already have within the alternative enclosure, but of course, because Apple and the others don't support HLS, we can't do it there. Right, understood. And to roll out video hosting would make most sense of.

James Cridland: 2:19:31

So that would enable you to roll it out in any MP3 MP4 enabled uh podcast uh app which of course the biggest one by far is gonna be uh is gonna be Apple. So uh yeah, that makes a bunch of sense.

Sam Sethi: 2:19:46

Um we have been working on an experimental um tag um which Nathan Gathright, myself, Daniel J. Lewis put in the GitHub. Uh it's the podcast store tag, it's actually live on the TrueFans page right now in uh Pod News Weekly. Um you can go there and you'll see a little shopping cart, you click on it and it goes currently to a dummy uh page on Sticker Mule. But it can go to any. And we've implemented in the way that you can have multiple shops. So it's stage one, stage two will do what you said last week, James, upload images, descriptions, prices, and stage three will take payment on platform. Uh but yeah, stage one, it's there, it works. Um gonna ask for a lot of feedback and then see whether we want to adopt that in the podcasting 2.0 community. Nice. Uh last few things, um, AI chaps and transips are coming, and then publisher feed. Publisher feed, this is the thing I want to spend more time on in the next few months. So I won't say any more. We talked about it earlier, um, but that's where I would like to go next. Right, James, what's happened for you?

James Cridland: 2:20:53

I have, Sam, spent four hundred dollars of my own money, four hundred dollars, about two hundred quid. Wow, on a chair. Cool. It's not a very exciting chair, although it is in Pod News Red, because you know, I had the choice. So uh is this for our video that we're gonna do? No, no, we're not doing that. No, okay. Um never say never. As as I said in the new media show this week, Sam Seth he wants me to do video, but no. Um you did video with Rob. I know I did video with Rob. Uh yes. Oh, I'm still wearing the branded the branded shirt that you know that I had to wear and all of that nonsense. Um and I don't even wear makeup, so you know, there's a thing. Anyway, um, so yes, so I've been sitting on the same chair for 15 years. Uh it's a very cheap IKEA chair. I didn't I didn't appreciate how low down it was. It was really low, it turns out. This new chair that I've got actually goes up to the right height. Um it's probably going to stop my back hurting. Uh, so that's good. Uh, my wife has one uh that is matching in terms of um in terms of what chair it is, but uh it's in teal because she likes that colour, and so why not? Uh and it's out of shot anyway for my uh for my videos. Um so yeah, my goodness, what a choice. What a difference it's made to have a chair which is actually comfortable. Um wow. Uh I would heartily recommend if you're if you're there, maybe it's the end of tax year, um, maybe you're there thinking, um uh, you know, you've got uh you've you've got a little bit of money and you would like to really improve your working environment. My goodness me, a chair. A chair is the step forward. Um better than standing for three hours, yes.

Sam Sethi: 2:22:44

Yeah.

James Cridland: 2:22:45

Yes. No, a chair is a brilliant thing. So, yes, um, so I would heartily recommend that. That would that that was one thing. And the other thing, a little bit demotivating, really, I have been uh coding up runway, which is a way for anybody that is collecting streaming sats into their strike account. Uh, it's a way to essentially grab all of those payments, uh, be able to pass the information which is in there so that you can thank people for um for uh you know streaming sats, and you can thank people who've sent you boosts and all of that kind of stuff. Um and there are three people that support it at the moment, Fountain Customatic and well, kind of podcast guru. Um and um but you know there's conversations now going on in the podcast index GitHub about some new tag and some new API standard that includes Noster and includes various other complicated things that nobody cares about. Um and the only reason for it is that if we use Monero in the future, you see, Sam, then there won't be a space to put um a payment uh piece of information in there. And so therefore, we need something, we need a brand new method that might work with Monero in the future, even though nobody's using it. And you know, and and now we've got people running around like headless chickens working out how to code this new MetaBoost standard and tag and fiddling around with RSS feeds and everything else. What an utter waste of time all of that is. We've we've got a way of doing micropayments, it works, it works through Fountain, Custom Matic, Podcast Guru-ish. Um, it sits there, it's just a URL that you can just click on and learn more about who sent you that payment. It's super easy, it's super simple, but apparently that's not good enough. And it's back to square one, and some people are kicking up, you know, issues with it. And I just found, wow, what am I wasting my time for coding runway when um clearly that's gonna go away and no one is going to be uh paying stuff through streaming sats or through boosts anymore. Um so I found that really bizarre. So I posted this on podcastindex.social a little bit earlier today. Um already had a response from Oscar Merry who said, totally agree. This spec has been around since 2024. Nobody has implemented it because it's overly complex. The RSS metadata spec is simple. We've got two apps that have implemented it, two more that are working on it. We all need to align on this if we want to re-energize open podcast payments. Agree with Oscar. Hurrah. So um, yes, so hopefully I'm not wasting my time doing a little bit of code. I mean, I'm not because I've sorry, align on what?

Sam Sethi: 2:25:32

I mean, um you've lost me at Monero and Nostra.

James Cridland: 2:25:35

Yeah, well, I mean, just align on the way that we are signalling the information about who paid what in the payments. Um so if you've got if you've got a wallet or a bank account or anything else, there's always a little line in there that that you can put an invoice number or a little message. Um so when I share half of the money that comes in through the the the power supporters, um then I will um then I will send you a little message of, you know, here's your buzzparate share or something. Um and that appears in your in your bank account. Um and so we've all got that. We can put a little URL in there which has a link to all of the information of who's paid what and everything else, um, which is what the standard is. Um but all of a sudden that's not that's not acceptable because there are certain ways of paying where you don't have that little um payment information and blah blah blah. I mean, my my my answer to that is well, if Monero doesn't have that, then we don't use Monero then, do we?

Sam Sethi: 2:26:42

It's as simple as that. I have to say, uh, as someone who's developing all this stuff as well, um, we are looking at stablecoin. We are we have a method in our platform. We work with the biggest, one of the biggest payment providers, and we work with the other biggest payment providers, Stripe and PayPal. It works, right? We can take cash in, tokens out, and call them what you want.

James Cridland: 2:27:04

And that'll work absolutely fine. But I'll I'll bet you that um in any of those uh in any of those tools you can leave a little payment information. Yeah. Um so therefore, so therefore, if the answer is But it won't work with Monero, then the answer is well tough Monero. Um if you if you if you don't have payment information in your in your app, well tough, no, nobody will use it then. Um but but you know you you you you can just feel the the dragging of heels of of um people going oh no or maybe maybe we can do it a different a different more complicated way.

Sam Sethi: 2:27:40

Um I look I you noted well if you were listening and still listen, well done to you if you're here still. Um true fans are not listed in there. We aren't we aren't rushing to do this, we aren't rushing to get it. We you normally true fans, if you if you've been following for the last three years, is normally first to do most things. I am not putting a priority on it because it moves like you know quicksand every bloody two weeks. I think screw that.

James Cridland: 2:28:10

If the spec i is gonna move every single two weeks and you've got people like podcast guru that do a half-ass job and do half of it, then of course it's not gonna it's not gonna get taken up. Right now, we've seen such a drop in the amount of um of uh streaming sats that we get. We've seen a tremendous drop in the terms uh in terms of the boosts that we get. You can hear it on the podcasting 2.0 show as well. Um, it's really noticeable now that they've got a couple of boosts, they're all from the same people, they're from CSB, they're from the um they're from Bruce, um, and Martin and Martin from True Fans, yeah. And and that's kind of it. And and you go, and they're of course using the old um uh the old key send node stuff. So so the whole thing is um it's it's just it's just a frustration that that we've got a solution. The solution works, the solution is simple, it's straightforward.

Sam Sethi: 2:29:07

Keysend worked, yeah.

James Cridland: 2:29:08

Yeah, I mean, I mean key send keysend uh a kind of work but but but was very uh complicated to do. Now we've got something which literally works with tons of different podcast wallets and and and all of that. We've got it, we can just we can just do it. But but as you so rightly say, when you've got you you know groups like um you know groups like Alex Gates and uh and um uh Podfriend um sitting there going, oh well no, actually we're gonna do this in a different way. You you're there thinking, really? I I mean this is this is how things don't happen. And it's a frustration that there isn't um you know, I I I mean ideally somebody somebody giving them a big slap and saying move on, and maybe that's me. Uh you know, I mean I don't know. I suppose that is me. But um, yeah, it's just it's just a frustrating.

Sam Sethi: 2:30:01

Well you noted you noted in the boost today that the amount that appeared on the screen was a Aussie dollar amount, not a SATS amount.

Speaker 6: 2:30:09

Yeah.

Sam Sethi: 2:30:10

And and because we hide the complexity and we we just think there's too much complexity. That's fine, yeah, yeah, yeah.

James Cridland: 2:30:15

No, absolutely. I I I mean I think I think all of that all of that works works really well. Um it's it's just if there's gonna be loads of different ways of doing this, um, then nobody is gonna code it. No one is gonna code it. So um, you know, it's in it's important that we just go, you know what, it's gonna be this way. Um I mean, arguably, you could say that you could say the same about podcast video. But I think I think the answer is gonna be slightly different there. Um, but uh yeah, no, it's it's just um it's just a bit frustrating. Anyway, runway has one little bug in there, um, which I'd like to uh to uh fix. But otherwise, I mean it's working, it's working very nicely. Um it still needs some error uh error uh catching, because I don't really know how to write JavaScript. But I'm not vibecoding this, Adam Curry. I'm not vibecoding this. Uh so uh yeah, so there we go.

Sam Sethi: 2:31:14

But uh well anyway, that's so it's about to take off the app, is it? That's what we're saying.

James Cridland: 2:31:19

That's it, hey, hey, well, you know, helipad runway. See that that that's that's all I did. Um so anyway, that's uh that was a bit of a rant. Um but still there we are. Uh so um yes, so hopefully everything is good. Uh we had a lovely, lovely week last week, and it was all wet and it was all cool and everything else. And uh we're back to temperatures. Um 33 today, which is uh over over 90 Fahrenheit. It's been um it's been hot and minus two this morning. Yes, well, I know I I know who's in the best part of the world. Uh so and by the way, uh minus even more than that in um in parts of the US as well, so we shouldn't probably complain too much, and an awful lot of snow as well. Um I had lots of snow outside my outside my house, James. Uh, as I was told earlier on today. I hope, by the way, if you did watch the new media show Envision, uh, I hope that you enjoyed the fact that I had found my um my blueberry mug, uh, which I just just left there as a little a little tribute every so often. Every so often had a had a drink from it. So uh yes, although it was only water. Um anyway, that is it for this week. That was a very next week on the weekend. I know that was a very flatty end to almost two hours, Stephen Goldstein. I hope you've enjoyed it. Um all of our podcast stories taken from the Pod News Daily Newsletter at Podnews.net.

Sam Sethi: 2:32:47

Uh you can support this show, we hope still with Streaming Sats. No, Brian Ensminger is doing it and a few others. You can give us feedback using the Buzz Sprout fan mail link in our show notes, and you can sort of send us a boost. Come on, keep coming. Uh, and become a power supporter instead, if you prefer, like the 23 power supporters at weekly.podnews.net, and we thank them all.

James Cridland: 2:33:08

And we thank them all. The best way to support us if you want to support us with streaming sats and things like that uh is to use a new podcast app. I would recommend, um, not that this will make a friend with uh me and Sam, but I would recommend that you use either Podcast Guru or you use Fountain. They both work fantastically, or Castomatic, in fact, uh, for that. They all work fantastically. TrueFans also works, but in a slightly different way for now. Um, but I'm sure that everything will all be fixed. But you can you can use you can use any of those. You can use any of those. And we'll see all of that.

Sam Sethi: 2:33:39

When when the last five minutes conversation settles down and somebody agrees on the standard, we might actually spend some development time.

James Cridland: 2:33:48

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

Announcer: 2:34:02

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