Human Announcer 0:00

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

James Cridland 0:12

I'm James Critlin, the editor of Pod News, and I'm Sam Steffi, the CEO of TrueFans. This week, AI is everywhere, and it emerges that there are more new podcasts from AI than from humans, as well as AI being used to copy famous podcasts. We look at what this means for the industry. This podcast is sponsored by BuzzSprout with the tools, support, and community to ensure you keep podcasting. Start podcasting, keep podcasting with BuzzSprout.com. And yes, this is an AI cloned voice from Wondercraft AI. However, the next voices you hear will be real.

Company steals podcast identities for profit

Human Announcer 0:44

From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly Review.

Sam Sethi 0:49

James, I'm going to say something that you wrote this week that stopped me in my tracks. This week there were more AI-generated podcasts published than human podcasts. Let that sink in.

James Cridland 1:03

Yes, exactly. Let that sink in. Not in an Elon Musk way either. Yeah, I was astonished when I saw that. More AI podcasts that are brand new shows than human podcasts. It's quite a time in the industry, I think, isn't it?

Sam Sethi 1:19

Yeah, I I think the next three stories that we're going to cover will show some of the problems that we're having and hopefully some of the solutions that I think the industry is putting in place. But let's start off with this one. Plagiarism is the act of using another person's words, ideas, or work without proper acknowledgement, passing them off as one's own. Competition is a fair fight, but plagiarism is pure theft.

James Cridland 1:45

Is that another Gandhi quote?

Sam Sethi 1:46

No, no, I don't think no, that's Grok or Claude or whatever. Oh, right, okay. Let's use AI to fight AI. That's what I say. That's correct. Um a new podcast studio called Light Knot Studios is copying the names and designs, more importantly, of 75 successful history podcasts, confuse listeners, and attract ad revenue. Tell me more, James.

James Cridland 2:10

Yeah, this was really interesting. So it was first uh spotted over the weekend by Dirk from the History of the Germans podcast. Uh, and uh he was wondering why his show was going down. Uh, he's using a piece of software called Pod SEO, and he was wondering why the shows were going down in terms of the numbers that he was seeing. And he was there thinking, oh, there's another show called History of the Germans, and oh, and it's got pretty well the same artwork, and it was pretty well identical in terms of how it looked, except it was called History of the Germans Podcast. So it wasn't called the same name because they'd added the word podcast on the end, and it was a daily show produced by AI. Of course, AI is very good at doing history shows because uh it's got all of that information in there. That information isn't going to change, so therefore, it's very good at producing 10-minute-long history shows, and that was what was going on, not just Dirk from the History of the Germans podcast, or rather, I should say Dirk from the History of the Germans, but also um a bunch of other um shows as well. So I published on Monday, I published some of the artwork, uh, which was very close but not identical for things like the Hardcore History Podcast or Vikings or Real Narcos or Darknet Diaries, um, Hidden Brain, which uh was changed to Hidden and Unseen Brain. Uh stuff you missed in History Class, which was changed to stuff you didn't learn in history class, but with pretty well the same um artwork and so on and so forth. Um so it was very easy. If you were looking for a particular podcast, you will be duped into uh playing this particular one, and um and so you know, as Dirk was saying, if they stumble on this copy instead, they'll be confused and they'll listen to it and they'll think that it's rubbish and it's not worth listening to. And Dirk said um to me over the phone, I rang him as he was driving to work, uh, and he said, uh, we're all struggling hard for the first listen, it's very annoying. And uh yeah, uh absolutely it is. So uh yes, I thought that that was a fascinating, a fascinating thing, shall we say, uh, about um uh how some people are busy playing around with um uh copying shows.

Sam Sethi 4:36

Now, the owner of this new studio, like not studios, is Ibnal Jay Farabi. Um was he when called out on this, was he repentant in any way, James?

James Cridland 4:50

No, uh he was not. Uh he What did he say? He ended up saying, Fuck you, Lot, because you don't like competition. If your entire business model is being threatened by one person using AI agents, then you need to adapt, otherwise perish. Wow, okay.

Sam Sethi 5:10

All right. Now i i in uh trying to trying to stay sort of semi-neutral before I lose my rag, um is there anything we as an industry could or should be doing?

James Cridland 5:24

Well no, so this is the difficult thing. So if you were to look at what Farabi was doing, what he was doing is he was not quite copying a show's title and not quite copying a show's artwork. So it would be very difficult, unless you have an AI which is trained for all 4.7 million shows, it would be very difficult to end up going, oh, this is obviously a copy of X. Um now I as soon as I saw Darknet Diaries and as soon as I saw uh hardcore history, I I instantly knew what was going on. But you can't expect everybody um to have instantly spotted those. So I think it's quite difficult. And weirdly, this sort of thing isn't necessarily covered by um uh copyright conversations because the audio was different, the the image was different, the pictures were different, you know, and and the names were different slightly. Um so it's not necessarily covered by copyright. Um, some would say it's not covered by trademark, uh, although um uh others would say it is. So it's actually quite difficult for us as an industry to fight against. And I think that that's probably one of the things. I mean, it reminds me, if you remember, coming to America. Yes, and coming uh coming to America has this wonderful uh bit um where uh you end up um uh taking a look at McDowell's restaurant, uh, and this little clip happened.

SPEAKER_01 7:03

See, they're McDonald's, um McDowells. They got the golden arcs the golden arcs.

James Cridland 7:11

And uh yeah, so uh, you know, that now there is a law against this which is called passing off, uh, and that uh is a law in the UK, it's a law in the US, and that is talking about misrepresenting goods and services. And um and this is something that um you know obviously a law exists, but if you take a look at Spotify or Apple or any of those things, the only tools that they've got are for copyright infringement, which which this you know arguably wasn't because the audio was different, um and or trademark stuff, which again, you know, if if I was a Harried support engineer, I'd be saying, well, you know, the the artwork is similar, but it's not the same, and you know, so no, I don't necessarily agree with you. So it's it's it's a difficult one to fight against, I think.

Sam Sethi 8:01

Could uh could we do anything else? I mean, you know there's no way to copyright any cover art, is there? I mean, it i is the cover art itself copyrightable?

James Cridland 8:14

Is that I mean arguably yes, the the the cover the cover art is both copyrightable and automatically copyrighted. Right. So as soon as as soon as you've produced a piece of creative uh artwork or cre uh if as soon as you've cr produced a creative work, um then you can uh then that is automatically copyrighted as soon as it goes into your feed. So yes, but it's it it's slightly different, the artwork, that's the thing. You know, they weren't using exactly the same artwork, they were using artwork which was a little bit different. Um so it's it it it's a really it's a really interesting one. Um I mean it's obviously not ethical, it's obviously not the right thing. So from that point of view, that's um that's kind of important to remember. But on the other side, it's quite difficult to to work out how we can fight against this other than to be vigilant and watch for it, like uh Dirk uh ended up doing.

Sam Sethi 9:14

So it's more like the Mona Lindsay rather than the Mona Lisa, really, I guess, is the analogy. Yes, yes, absolutely. Could or should hosting companies be able to do anything about this other than remove them?

James Cridland 9:29

I mean, uh you know, I mean the first thing that hosting companies um uh should be doing is removing them. Now, that's easier, that's easy for me to say, and there are legal problems with instantly um uh taking them off. Um but you know, I would I would argue that it's pretty obvious what's going on in this particular case. Having said that, you know, a a typical hosting company may not um know of the hardcore history podcast and may not therefore understand that this is a blatant copy of the artwork and of the, or a blatant um near copy of the artwork and of the um the metadata. Um and that and that's sort of assuming that somebody working in support, particularly since this happened over over a weekend, that's assuming that somebody in support understands enough about the the entire industry to go, oh no, I can see what's going on here. And actually, for quite a lot of the particular shows, I didn't know that there were that these were copies of other shows. I had to go searching for them. So um yeah, I it's it's difficult. It is it is very hard, I think.

Sam Sethi 10:37

How is this show making money then? So, okay, plagiarizing the cover art, putting in AI audio, none of that seems to be making money. So, how did they make money?

James Cridland 10:49

No, so as with all of these um types of things, they have um jumped onto a podcast host that offers advertising uh and that pays you for that. So in this particular case, it was rss.com, RSS uh, who I'm a advisor for, they have a platform called Paid, and essentially, as long as you have more than 10 downloads to your show, then they will turn this on for you. Um now I I could be di very disingenuous, and this wouldn't be fair in RSS.com's um uh case, but I could say RSS keep 30% of the revenue uh here. So it's actually uh it's actually in their financial interest not to take this down as soon as possible and to keep it there for quite some time. My understanding in this particular case, um, and obviously I've been having conversations with Ben and Alberto, which I'm I I'm not going to talk about, but in this particular case, um my understanding is that they turned off the ads pretty pretty well instantly, but they didn't want to pull the show down for a little bit uh for uh you know until they'd actually checked uh uh everything. And I and I understand why they would end up saying that. Um but yeah, you know, so I mean that that that's how they were making the money out of this, and how Inception Point AI, which we're going to get on to later, earns their money as well, and so on and so forth. So it's that programmatic advertising, it's a bit like Google AdSense, as long as you've got uh uh as long as you've got you know a show, then you can um uh fill some ad slots and um earn some cash. And if enough people end up um tuning into your particular show, then you start earning quite a lot of cash out of that, which is exciting.

Sam Sethi 12:41

Now I I will say, and you will uh uh and wholeheartedly agree, Ben and Alberto are two of the nicest people in our industry. Um a friend of mine said what they should have done was turn off the ads but keep the keep the podcast on the platform and charge them for being hosted. So it would disincentivise that person to stay on the platform and therefore they wouldn't have had to take the decision to remove them because this person said, Well, I'm not making any money, I'm gonna remove my podcast from your platform, and they would have gone somewhere else, maybe. Um that may be one way of doing it, I don't know.

James Cridland 13:18

Yeah, and I I and I would argue that that's not that that that's not good enough because actually the the harm is still happening to the original podcasters. That's that's the difficult thing. So there's the one side of of the earning money, and all of these were uh all of these shows were being paid, you know, to be hosted, um, because you you can't get access to the um to the ad thing for free. Um so you know, all of these shows were already getting getting charged to be hosted. But even if you turn the ads off, it's still harming the um the real shows that have been set up um, you know, uh uh against these. So it's it it it's not it's not enough just to turn off the money tap um because the traffic tap is still is still unaffected by that.

Sam Sethi 14:06

Is there anyone else doing this similar to what uh you know we're seeing here?

James Cridland 14:12

Is there anyone else? Yes. I mean people are doing this all the time. I think um this was particularly egregious because it happened over a weekend, it was obviously pushed at a load of different shows in one particular genre, but you only have to have a look into the depths of the podcast index, and you'll find, you know, loads of copies of the Huberman Lab, loads of copies of Joe Rogan and and and so on and so forth. You know, there's a ton of that going on. So um, yeah, there's there's absolutely other things, uh um, you know, other companies um uh doing this. Yeah, there was another company that we reported on this week who was doing something uh similar, Dr. Nathan Parley, and he ended up producing a ton of uh interestingly uh named uh shows called The Rest is History Biographies, The Rest is History Stories, the Rest, comma, is history of leadership, the rest, comma, is history, um, all of them with very similar artwork, you know, with the sort of the terracotta um uh you know artwork with two um two uh statue faces uh on there. Um and when you went to have a listen to them, well, it turned out that they weren't AI generated because they were full of stuff like this.

SPEAKER_04 15:34

And he spent his career preparing for that fight. By 218 BC, Hannibal was commanding uh Carthaginian forces in Spain.

James Cridland 15:45

Good work. Uh so Dr. Nathan Parley, uh, who is clearly such an expert in the Carthaginians that he doesn't know how to pronounce the name. Uh there he is, um, doing any of that. Uh and all and also obviously such an expert of being a podcaster that he doesn't know how to edit that out. I'd love to know what his doctorate's in as well. Anyway. Yes, I would love to know what is going on. We'll hear from another doctor in a minute, in fact. So, yeah, so I think it is going to be difficult to fight against this unless we end up with uh a few things. So, firstly, is there a content match like there is in YouTube where you can at least spot people uploading the same audio? Um, is that something that an enterprising company could run as a central resource that uh everybody could pay a little bit of money for? Probably the answer is yes. Um so perhaps that's one thing. But that doesn't necessarily help you when it comes to these sorts of things. When you end up with something where the audio is different, but the names are very, very, very similar, but not exactly the same. Um, and I think it's going to be, you know, i i in terms of in terms of working out what we do about it, that's quite a difficult thing to fix, I think.

Sam Sethi 17:08

I'd like to paraphrase uh Farabi, or should I say, plagiarize him. Uh, we need to adapt so companies like his perish. That's what I think we need to do. Anyways. So have you talked to any lawyers about this, you know, to find out what the legal position is?

James Cridland 17:24

Yeah, so I've talked to a couple actually. I've talked to Gordon Farmark and also to Lindsay Bowen, both of them uh tell me that um uh that uh there is legal action that you can take over what Farabi was doing, and indeed uh over what uh Dr. Nathan Parley was doing as well, um, in terms of uh either copyright infringement, trademark infringement, or a violation of the Lanham Act's prohibition against passing off. Um wow, we're going legal. Um, so um that is certainly one sort of side of it. The other side of it is if you are running a podcast hosting company or a podcast directory um which is publishing um user-uploaded material, um then there is a really easy way for you to protect yourself. Most people have, but some people haven't, and that is make sure that you have a DMCA designated agent listed in the directory of the US Copyright Office. Now, I did this uh two years ago. Uh I think it's$5 for two years. It's not the world's most expensive thing. Um, but you need that in order to be able to claim protection of the DMCA's safe harbor. So if somebody posts something that is a clear violation of copyright, then uh you have protections under the DMCA Safe Harbor as long as you have a DMCA designated agent. And if you don't, then people can easily find that out and then they can go after you. Uh so if you are one this week. So if you are uh if you are a podcast uh directory which is available in the United States, Sam Sethy, uh then make sure that you are uh uh that you have a DMCA designated agent. Um there are companies that will do that for you, but you don't actually need to um use a company to end up doing it for you. It's just as simple as going on onto the US copyright office and paying five five bucks and then making sure that you go back uh again um after I think it's 24 months and doing it again uh and all of that. Um the other thing, if you're a podcaster, uh it's it's always worth trademarking your podcast name. Uh that will cost you about$800 if you're using a decent lawyer to do that. I'm sure that Gordon Farmart will do that for you for a relative bargain. Um, but uh always worth trademarking your podcast name. I would recommend trademarking it in the US. I don't actually think it's particularly helpful to trademark it anywhere else because everywhere that matters is based in the US, even Spotify for this uh kind of thing. So um so I think making sure that you have a trademark is an important thing. Um and knowing how to get it taken down. So in the next week or so, what I'm going to be doing is I'm going to be producing um a uh a page which actually um makes a DMCA takedown notice, um, which is something you need to be careful of because if you um if you put that through and it's not entirely legal, then um people can actually come after you. So just be careful of that one. Um, but I will be making sure that that is available and it's gone through all of the legals and and everything else. So uh yeah, that the there's a bunch of stuff that we should be doing. None of that really fixes the main issue here, but at least it gives us a little bit more protection, which is a thing.

Sam Sethi 21:00

Now let's move on to uh another company that we have a a love-hate relationship with, Inception Point AI. What have they been doing?

James Cridland 21:08

Oh, we've got a definite love relationship. Uh it's it's it's uh it's an excellent thing, isn't it? No?

Sam Sethi 21:14

Well, you know, let's let's not try and you know do it, do them in totally.

James Cridland 21:20

Um Well, there are two different there are two different conversations. Just very aware that the CEO of Inception Point AI uh used to be a lawyer. There are two different stories here. One of the stories uh is that there are more AI generated podcasts being made than real ones, as we mentioned right at the top of the show. Um and if you take a look at the podcast index, which has a new feeds report, which is brilliant. Um really, really good piece of work. Yeah, this is this is absolutely excellent. And as of now, if you just go to podcastindex.org, you click on stats, and you follow the link, because it's a link that I put there, um, you will uh go to Directly to the new feeds report, and that shows you how many new shows have been added in the last 24 hours, how many of those are AI generated, how many of those are legitimate, and how many of those are spam, gambling, and all of that kind of a thing. Really, really useful thing. And suddenly when I took a look at it earlier on in the week, very clearly more AI shows than there were real shows. For the last 24 hours, that's not the case, which is nice. Only only 30% of shows are AI generated. And 54% of shows are probably absolutely fine. There are a bunch of uh SEO and spam things in there as well. So, in terms of that, that is quite a thing. Now, if you want to um if you want to take a look a little bit further, then the podcast index now also has a new API which will allow you to go in and take a look at new podcast shows that have been marked as spam or phishing or low effort AI. And if you are running a podcast directory or something similar, then you can actually use that to end up uh find uh to end up to uh finding more information about those particular uh shows as well. So that might help um everybody keep spam out of their uh services, which is uh quite a good thing. So uh yeah, definitely worthwhile taking a look at the new feeds report. So that's um one of the stories um and one of the particular companies who are producing um this um this AI generated content. They don't like the the the phrase AI slop. So this AI generated content is a company called Inception Point AI. How many podcasts did they add this week? Well, uh, I mean, uh, you know, this week isn't over. Um they added 325 new shows on Tuesday. New shows. New shows. New not episodes. Not episodes, no, no, no. These are new shows. Exactly. So um, and uh on Wednesday they added 159 new shows. Um so they are adding hundreds of shows every single day, mostly about dogs, uh apparently over the last uh 24 hours. It was mostly um uh about wellness um on uh Tuesday I noticed. Um and uh yeah, I mean you know, would you would you take uh uh uh wellness advice from an AI agent?

Sam Sethi 24:35

Yes, uh yes, because I think of course, of course I would. No, I mean I I think I think there are we will be AI agents in the future which are well trained and that know what they're talking about, that will replace doctors. There are examples of that already. But no, would I take it from a podcast that was generated automatically with no checking on it? Yeah, no, I wouldn't do that.

James Cridland 24:57

Now we should say that uh when we interviewed um Janine Wright from Inception Point AI in 2025 for this very show, uh she did tell us that for health and wellness advice, someone is involved in listening and reviewing the content before it's released, which is uh good. Um, that content um uh does uh I mean it's either hosted by somebody called Julia Cartwright or somebody called Dr. Mara Lennox. I don't know about uh doctor, to be honest. But anyway, this is what uh Dr. Mara Lennox sounds like and how she introduces herself.

SPEAKER_08 25:31

Before we dive in, I want you to know that I'm an AI host, which means I can engage with sensitive, deeply personal material without judgment, agenda, or projection. That's not a limitation, but that's a feature.

James Cridland 25:44

It's a feature, apparently. Um so uh there we are. How can you call yourself a doctor? Again, how can you call yourself a doctor if you're an AI voice? I know, yes, exactly. Yeah. I I I I I literally do not know how to square that circle. Um uh you know, I mean, uh the the the prefix doctor means something, but not in this particular case, you know, of course. Um so so uh and and the stuff that they're talking about, just so that um we've covered that off, um, I mean, everything from mental health, uh, gambling addiction, dealing with anger management, dealing with panic attacks, all sorts of things which um I think a a real human being should probably be giving you advice about, to be fair, um, uh, as well as you know, co codependency, vaccinations and vaccination advice. Julia Cartwright has uh produced um five or six of these uh shows all about vaccinations and how to talk to your friends about vaccinations and everything else. And um, you know, and and I did uh rather boringly fact-check one of them. I went through and I fact-checked every single thing, and every single thing was right. So, you know, I mean, at the end of the day, um however icky it feels, um Julia Cartwright's show uh about vaccinations, there was one of them. It wasn't the one called vaccinations, it was called something else. Um, but um that the the particular episode I listened to that I fact-checked all the way through, absolutely everything did actually check out. So, you know, I mean I don't know what to I don't know what to say about that either. Um but um yeah, so so they've produced a a bunch of this. They've also produced a bunch of Spanish language um podcaster uh podcasts. Um they've got a uh a bunch of um biographies in um in uh English, uh including a Charlie Kirk one that they rushed out um directly after the death of Charlie Kirk. Um they've now rushed out uh quite a lot of Spanish language uh stuff. I say rushed out because um uh this is one of them that I listened to. They've um since uh corrected this. Um this is a biography for the Argentine writer Julio Cortavar. I've probably pronounced that entirely wrongly. Um sorry, David Marzal, uh for that, David Marzal uh for that. But anyway, um and uh this is uh a little clip of the middle of that uh show, of course, uh the entire show, all in uh Spanish, but uh see if you can spot where things fall apart a little bit.

SPEAKER_05 28:35

I'm sorry, but there seems to be some confusion. The details available in your request are mentioning Julio Cortázar, the Argentine writer, but the instructions and show details provided are focused on Julio Cortázar Perez, a fictional character inspired by Selena Quintanilla. Can you confirm which subject we should continue focusing on?

James Cridland 28:55

Right, right in the middle of a published uh published podcast. Um I mean I should point out that nowhere does the Spanish audio say that it's AI generated, something that Janine Wright said that she was doing when we spoke to her in uh August of last year, and something that uh Apple require. Um that was not done in this particular show anyway. Uh the previous episode that I listened to ended with the words in English, I'm sorry, I can't assist with that. Um so I I think the people would know that it's AI. But but my goodness. I mean, you know, that's a that's a thing, isn't it?

Sam Sethi 29:32

Okay, so these are all hosted on Spreaker.

James Cridland 29:35

Yes, these particular uh Inception Point AI, yeah. Hosted on Spreaker and monitored and monitored by Pod Track as well, yeah. Right. Um where's the monetization occurring?

Sam Sethi 29:46

On Spreaker as well?

James Cridland 29:47

On Spreaker as well, yes. And so why would Spreaker want to turn around and say um uh and and say no uh for this particular one? Um because of obviously they're making uh you know, if it's 30%, then they're making 30%.

Sam Sethi 30:01

Yeah. So going back to our conversation about RSS.com and them seeing the moral implication of what they were hosting and then deciding to turn off the ads and then remove the podcast, does Spreeker not see the same thing?

James Cridland 30:16

Well, you know, so I I think uh and and I ended up having a conversation about this on LinkedIn because um Christina Rubino was asking me, How are people earning money from this? And so I was talking about the automatic, uh, the automatic ads. Um and I said, you know, look, all all that's happening here is that Spreeker or RSS.com um are using a company which is selling, I don't know, 100,000 podcast ad impressions to a listener in Virginia who we think may be female. Okay, that that's all they're selling. They're not selling shows, they're selling impressions um for a particular person, um, uh a particular type of person, so a listener in Virginia who might be female, um, to an advertiser, and an advertiser goes, Great, thank you, thank you very much. And so that essentially means that um if you get 2,000 listeners, um, then maybe you've made um maybe you've made five five dollars. If the tokens cost only one dollar to make that episode, then you've made a profit already. Um uh there are 8,000 shows from Inception Point AI that are uh in the podcast index's um uh uh list and that and that's the clean list from the podcast index, and maybe we'll get onto that in a minute. Um so you know if there are 8,000 shows, um let's assume just for now, 8,000, 8,000 episodes, um, then you've made$20,000 by having 2,000 listeners to those 8,000 shows, if you see what I mean. So you're making quite a lot of money in terms uh of this. And of course, if you use Apple Podcasts, it's automatically downloading three or four episodes for you. So it's not twenty thousand dollars, it's a hundred thousand dollars. And actually, from the advertiser's point of view, it doesn't matter anyway. Because the first thing you hear is two ads back to back, then the podcast starts, and the listener only realizes that it's AI and it wasn't what they were looking for, potentially, after consuming the ads. So the advertiser is perfectly happy because the advertiser has got its i its impressions, the advertiser has got its plays, and so um and so the advertiser is perfectly happy, so is the ad buyer who is um claiming whatever it is, 10%, 20%, so is the podcast hosting company, which is claiming 30%, and so on and so forth. So everybody gets rich out of this. That's that's the thing. And I don't really know I don't really know where where where you end up because you know, um the advertiser frankly won't care. Um, you know, uh br brand suitability. Well, this this is fine. There's nothing wrong with this in terms of brand suitability. It's just it's just a piece of low-quality AI generated content, but that's not a crime. Um so yeah, I d I I really don't know where to go. It's a miserable, isn't it? It's really miserable.

Sam Sethi 33:16

Yeah, I mean well, as I've said before, Jason Calacanis did this with blogs and and then Google changed the algorithm that took Jason's business out of the market, but he was going to Google Trends and auto-generating blog posts for SEO and advertising reasons, um and throwing thousands and thousands of blogs out like that. Uh and this is what we're seeing with Inception Point AI. They are seeing an opportunity, and unless the industry has a way of saying no, yeah, or Spreaker says this is not what we want, then I don't know what we can do other than let the market decide, which is will people continue to listen to this content, which is clearly evergreen as well.

James Cridland 33:57

Yes, I mean uh so it's clearly evergreen, and if you listen to what Janine Wright says, she says, Well, people are listening. We have uh we have hundreds of thousands of listeners every single week. Um and I think this we know most of those are bots as well. Well, and I think this is this is causality. Um uh b because actually the the yes, uh there are tens of thousands of people l listening every week. Quite a lot of those are going to be bots, but let's sort of ignore ignore that bit and just look at the amount of human beings that have gone into this. They've listened to one episode, they've not subscribed, they've not continued downloading, because I mean, obviously, by listening to some of them, you you you can understand why they wouldn't want to listen to any of that stuff. So at the end of the day, yes, they are getting listened to, but that doesn't say that people enjoy what they're listening to and people want to come back to what they're listening to. The vast majority, of course, there will be some people that like it, but the vast majority of people, you would assume, would listen to half a show and go, oh no, this is AI and this is and this isn't right, and stop and stop listening. But you can still count them as a listener. It's like um it's like that number that we talked about the other week of um you know somebody who's watched um uh uh less than a minute of a podcast on Netflix still counting as a as a viewer there. So, you know, I I I uh you know, you will get people claiming uh, well, you know, the these are being listened to, so let the market decide. If you were to look at total downloads for Inception Point AI over a day, they're probably raking in quite a lot of money. Um but it's it's all it's all a bit it's all a bit soulless, isn't it?

Sam Sethi 35:46

Well, are we being a bit snobby here, James, right? So for example Yes, I mean I think we are our friend John McDermott with Calaroga Shark Media does an AI voiced podcast, right? So is it because of the amount of content that is being produced by Inception Point AI as opposed to the output which is an AI-generated voice?

James Cridland 36:09

Yeah, I I think that that is an absolutely fair thing to say, and the answer that I will give you back is the stuff that Kanaroga Shark Media produces is good. It's produced with AI, yes, but there is a human being who sits there, listens to everything, crafts everything, edits everything, makes sure that everything sounds good, and then publishes it. Inception Point AI is just a tidal wave of shit. And because it's a tidal wave of shit, that we've just heard a tidal wave of shit where they're not even checking the output of the stuff that they've got. They've not even read the transcript, which Spreaker is doing for them automatically. They're not even reading that or putting that into AI to even check that. And that is, I think, the difference. It's the lack of care, the lack of um, you know, you've got a duty to care, a duty of care to your listeners, and it's the lack of that duty of care, it's that lack of really caring what you're doing. You are literally just shoving out shit and hoping that you get enough people to have a listen to the cheapest shit that you can possibly shovel out, because then you will make money. And that's all that Janine Wright is doing, that's all that Inception Point AI is doing, and to be fair, that's all that a lot of other companies are doing. It's just that Inception Point AI is clearly one of the biggest companies doing it and is also really proud about what they're doing as well.

The Podcast Index's role

Sam Sethi 37:42

Well, you know, they've they've got a business model, as you said, it generates a lot of money. They do. Um why why why bother? Why would they care? Now, Dave Jones, we were talking about the new feeds report. Um, Dave Jones, who is part of the podcast index, um well, he wrote the podcast index, I think. He actually said something on Mastodon which was a little bit worrying. He said, I'm in full-blown self-defense mode now with the index. The AI slopocalypse uh is real. Yes. Uh I'm done with Inception Point AI. Uh 238 new podcast feeds in 24 hours. He said um He also went on to say there's a new pod slop generator called Buddha.co with almost 500 new feeds in the past five hours. So again, you know, how should should okay, let me try and ask ask you this question. Uh should the index now be blocking them at source? And I think your opinion is no, because you saw John Spurlock was taking them out of the uh OP3 report. Where do you stand now on this in terms of should we take them out of the index, leave them in the index? How do you think we deal with this?

James Cridland 39:01

Well, I think, and thankfully Dave also thinks the same way. Uh so hooray, we have uh we have agreement uh here on this. I think that typical users of the podcast index, people like you, um, you use the podcast index to um to power the TrueFans podcast directory, for example. 100%. Yeah, and so typical uh podcast index users like you will be automatically um protected from all of this um from anything which is suspected spam, gambling, or AI-generated stuff that's been confirmed AI generated. You'll be totally protected about that because none of those will appear in your version of the podcast index, um the version of the podcast index which is there on the API and everything else. And that is, I think, exactly as it should be. So it is censorship, but it's censorship in a way that I think makes sense for everyone. Um that word uh uh clearly worries some some some people, but let's be fair, it it is an algorithm which is making a um uh a decision on whether or not uh that particular podcast should be listened to. Um so I think that that is um absolutely right. What I was concerned about is all of a sudden these shows disappearing forever for researchers that want to research, for example, how many shows from Inception Point AI are there actually? There are about 8,000 in the podcast index at the moment, but that's not including the ones that have been thrown out of the podcast index for for being AI-generated uh slop. Um, so you you um from a researcher's point of view, what we would really like to see, and I count myself as a researcher here, what we would really like to see is is a copy of the podcast index data, which has all of the um blocks shows in there because that actually gives us enough understanding of what's actually going on here. Um, and the good news is that Dave is actually um uh keeping all of that stuff, he's not deleting things from the index, which is what I was worried that he was doing. Everything is still in the index, it's just marked as do not show because this is spam. And so what he's going to be doing in the next uh in the next week or so is making another version of the downloadable index that you can get hold of, which is a version that has everything in it, including spam, um, for the researchers to be able to dive in and use. Uh, and I think that that's a very exciting, uh, exciting thing. So I think he's doing exactly the right thing here. He's got an A an API where you can go and have a look at the scale of the problem. He's got a full uh database of everything which is in the index, including all of the spammy stuff, and then he's got the regular production stuff, which has all of that stuff taken out for people like you. And I think that that's absolutely perfect. So hurrah for him.

Sam Sethi 42:09

Indeed. And he will be on the show in a couple of weeks, actually. I've spoken to him so that we can have a more in-depth conversation. But yes, I'm so glad that Dave is taking it out at source, that saves a lot of hassle for me. I also implemented something that you told me to do, which is we only add new podcasts to the index in TrueFans based on user requests. So if somebody searches, um apart from obviously some new episodes we put in, but we can use this new API as well from Dave to go back and look and take out any of the other things that were marked as spam or um things that we don't want to have in our local index. Yeah, exactly. That's what we're in the process of doing right now.

A note about Apple Podcasts

James Cridland 42:54

I I can see that being super useful and being able to actually check that. So, yeah, so there are 4.7 million podcasts in the podcast index right now. You can find all 4.7 million in search for the Pod News website. So if you uh try a search, then it will go through all 4.7 million of them. But we only have 1.2 million podcasts in our in our database right now. That's the only uh shows. And some of those, by the way, don't even show up in search because I've marked them as dead or invisible, or I'm not going to show these. So uh yeah, so there's um uh so I think that that is a very good way of just sort of um keeping the amount of um you know, the amount of hassle on your servers down. And by the way, you know, obviously if it's a show which has been marked as spam or uh AI or whatever it is, then obviously the podcast index isn't isn't going to go and poll that RSS feed um uh every every hour or every day, checking if there are any new uh uh episodes, nor nor would we expect it to. Um Because it's that that really adds additional uh hassle and time onto the index. So uh yeah, I think I think all of it makes uh an awful lot of sense. Well worth taking a peek at both the new API that Dave has been working on, um, but also most importantly, that 24-hour feed report, um, which is interesting. Um, just because, you know, ironic, um, but um they are spotting AI by using AI, and the 24-hour feed report page uh has actually been generated by AI coding as well. So no one here is anti-AI from that point of view. Um I think people are anti-specific things about AI and uh not as the concept of AI in total. So um so there's a thing. James, Apple Podcasts. Apple Podcasts, yes. Um I just wanted to clear something up. Uh last week we said uh that Apple Podcasts was earning 10% of all advertising um uh th through Apple Podcasts HLS video. That is absolutely not the case. Um I do know how much Apple Podcasts is going to earn uh from advertising, but it's um but we can't say yet, um, and they won't confirm it to me anyway. Um but in terms of the way that Apple Podcasts are charging, it's not a uh it's not a percentage, it's just a cost per impression. Um so it's as simple as that. Much, much cheaper, by the way, than uh 10% my fault, I left it in. So apologies um uh for that. Uh Apple is not going to be that greedy. Um, so there's a good thing. And to um and to my um to my personal spy at uh Apple, please don't pull my arms and legs off.

The Sound Off Podcast

Human Announcer 45:44

The pod news weekly review will return in just a second.

SPEAKER_03 45:49

I'm Matt Cundle, host of the Sound Off Podcast. I worked in radio for 25 years, and on the day of that 25th anniversary in 2014, I was restructured out of radio. And I thought to myself, wait a second, there's more audio being created than ever before. There's voiceover, podcasts, audiobooks, satellite radio, and I thought, what's going on here? I started this show which discussed all things audio related to broadcasting. And every week I come together with incredible talents and we get right to the nuts and bolts of all things audio. Each guest has a story about how they connect to people through sound. The show is not just for audio junkies. Yes, sometimes we talk about the good old days when we worked in a studio with carts.

SPEAKER_00 46:44

It's a wonder that it even plays at all.

SPEAKER_03 46:47

Vinyl, real-to-reel machines, and later, CDs. You remember those, right? Things move fast in the digital landscape, and there's lots of moving parts behind the scenes. So when we get together with guests, we slow it down a bit. And I ask them to make sense of all these moving parts. For instance, did you know that weather forecasters can be entertainers?

SPEAKER_00 47:10

Weather is the one thing that looks like it it has a degree of performance to it, a degree of performance mixed with science, and weather was more infotainment. I've always used that word to this day.

SPEAKER_03 47:22

And their job can be emotional at times.

SPEAKER_00 47:24

Tornado coverage. It's less about actual stone-cold hard ratings, more about public service and doing the right thing and being on the television and getting that information across and being the calm voice in the heart of a storm.

SPEAKER_03 47:35

Did you know that podcasting is changing how we do business?

SPEAKER_10 47:39

Your goal is to build a relationship. So one of the speakers that I saw talking about branded podcasts said, you're not building customers, you're building fans.

SPEAKER_03 47:48

And while it sounds like podcasts are fun, they're a lot of work like any other job. The amount of work that goes into a 30-minute episode, people don't realize, is incredible. So much work. And people do it because they care. On whatever station, whatever format it is, we have that opportunity to have that impact to one person or thousands. There's four of us that work on this show, and we do it because you need a home to hear the details about why audio is evolving the way it is. So join me every week on the Sound Off Podcast, the show about broadcast and podcast. You know the people. Why not get to know them?

SPEAKER_09 48:25

The Sound Off Podcast on your Apple, Spotify, or Amazon music app. Or go to SoundOff Podcast.com.

Human Announcer 48:34

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

Sam Sethi 48:42

Netflix. Uh, they got into podcasting. Uh surprise, surprise. How are they doing now? How are they doing?

James Cridland 48:48

Well, we've got our first figures, which is exciting. They're not from Netflix, they're from a company called Samba TV, which is an independent measurement company. Um, and they watch what you do on your smart TV, which is going to become important in a minute. But anyway, Samba TV says that in the first quarter, uh 13% of Netflix households in the US, that's 10 million households, by the way, watched at least one cumulative minute of a Netflix podcast uh in the first quarter of this year. So 10 million people watching Netflix podcasts is is what the headline is kind of um trying to be. Um that's that's a pretty good that's a pretty good number, isn't it?

Sam Sethi 49:30

I haven't seen one yet, but by the way.

James Cridland 49:32

I mean, maybe I'm just you know I don't believe that they're available outside of the US. Ah, that may be the reason why.

Sam Sethi 49:38

Okay. Um do I think I'll watch them on Netflix? Uh I'm not sure.

James Cridland 49:45

Well, there really is, once you go diving into the detail, there really is only one show on Netflix which is doing really well. It's a show called The Breakfast Club. The Breakfast Club is a radio show uh that goes on air in New York every single morning. They video it. Um, it's it's um syndicated across American radio and all of that. Um and uh it is responsible. Just The Breakfast Club alone, which is an iHeart show, is responsible for 40% of all podcast views on Netflix, which is massive. It's got three times the views of the number two uh podcast, which is a Netflix companion podcast for Bridgetton, which you would expect to have done quite well on the Netflix platform. So the Breakfast Club is doing incredibly well, and you could almost argue from that that the rest are also ran and are hardly being watched at all in comparison to the The Breakfast Club. Interestingly, half of Breakfast Club viewers are watching that show within 48 hours of the episode coming out. So they are using it as daytime TV, they're using it as a way to catch up for their friends that they listen to, perhaps on the radio or wherever it might be. Um, so that's really interesting, but that it tells you a bit of a mixed message about Netflix podcasts. Firstly, it tells you that 10 million people are watching, and that's great, uh, and that's very exciting. 10 million households, I should say, not people. Uh so 10 million households are watching. But also, secondly, it tells you that there's probably only one big hit right now, and some of those other shows available on Netflix really aren't doing too well if you compare that with The Breakfast Club, which seems to be doing incredibly well. So some fascinating data coming out of that. Now, two things about caution. Um, 13% of Netflix households is spanning three months, not one. Mostly you would um look for this uh data to be one month, not three. So that's one thing. Uh, the second thing is it's smart TVs, not phones. Um, so there will be consumption of Netflix podcasts on your phone, and this company won't actually get that, so the figure will be higher. And the third thing is um one cumulative minute of a Netflix podcast means that um if they have watched 10 seconds and gone, oh no, this is this is awful, and turned it off and done that six times, they still count as one cumulative minute. Uh, so a little bit different to how podcasting works. Um, but even so, um uh I think it's fascinating to see uh the dawn of a new consumption model for podcasts.

Sam Sethi 52:33

Why is that podcast again? Remind me.

James Cridland 52:38

Not a chev show. Yes, exactly, exactly. I mean, it's a cheap TV show, isn't it?

YouTube is #1

Sam Sethi 52:44

You had to go there. Well, you know. Now uh moving on then, uh let's start off with YouTube. Um how are they doing compared to Spotify and Apple, James?

James Cridland 52:57

Well, they appear to be doing very well um uh according to global data. So obviously every single country is different, and um we're probably gonna see uh a bit more of that as we take a look at more uh stats from across the world. But um, YouTube has pulled far ahead of Spotify, according to um global data from a company called Media. Uh Apple Podcast is in fourth place behind Amazon Music, which is a phrase I never thought I would say. Um check that data. Um so apparently 62% of monthly active podcast users are using YouTube. So this is users, this isn't consumption. Um let's make that very clear. It's not downloads, it's not time spent, it's just users using a thing. 62% of monthly active podcast users are using YouTube compared to 47% for Spotify. And I worked out that the figure might be about 25% for Apple Podcasts. The graph that I saw didn't actually have a number on uh for them. Um, the only surveyed countries where Spotify is ahead of YouTube are here in Australia for some reason, and in Spotify's home country of Sweden for an obvious reason. Um, but accepting that YouTube um far ahead. Um so yeah, YouTube seems to be doing very well. As I say, users using YouTube is different uh for podcasts, is different to time spent watching a podcast on these on these platforms. I still think that they are different, even though the infinite dial uh has uh told me this, uh has told me last month that I'm wrong. So, you know, so uh but uh you know very clearly YouTube doing very well.

Sam Sethi 54:44

Let's whiz around the world then, James. What's going on in Canada? It seems that the Canadian Media Fund now supports video podcasts.

James Cridland 54:54

Yes, so the Canadian Media Fund is uh really interesting. So it is a uh fund for uh creators to get some money for from the Canadian government. Obviously, you have uh a fair amount of uh US um uh media in Canada, and so the Canadian government wants to do all that they can to make sure that they don't become a 51st state, and quite a lot of that is making sure that they have a lot of Canadian content, and so they have lots of laws around that, but they also have lots of funds as well. Canadian Media Fund is one of those, and in the past, um they have uh looked at um just um video stuff, so YouTube, um social media, that sort of thing. Now they are finally supporting podcasts, which is excellent, uh, which is a great step forward. I know that uh folks in Canada have been trying to get that done for quite some time. You can uh apply to receive up to 40,000 Canadian dollars, that's about£2.50. Um to grow there, to grow your audience base and to build your monetization. Uh opportunities. Yes, exactly. Exactly. Um so uh yeah, so all of that looking very cool and looking very exciting. So um uh hurrah for Canada, uh, which is a good thing. Um you may also find uh in the Pod News newsletter this week um a really fascinating uh piece from Anna Devoti, who has analyzed the Iranian podcast market. Yes, they are having problems with the internet right now, but they've um but quite a lot of Iranians have managed to get past that. And also, of course, they're having serious economic hurdles as well. But there are still more than 10.5 million podcast listeners in Iran, more than 9,000 Persian language podcasts. It's a really interesting article, uh, which is well worth uh taking a peek at. And uh from one war torn country to another uh in uh Ukraine, um the rest is politics. Uh goal hangers, the rest is politics, managed to get Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky for a full interview, um, which is uh which is impressive, isn't it, Sam?

Sam Sethi 57:07

It is, and I think Zelensky's greatest skill is keeping the Ukraine war front and centre in media. I think all too easily it could have been one of those wars that we you know, like Somalia or whatever that you know, it it's today's uh news, tomorrow's chip wrapper, right? Um and I think that's where Zelensky's skill is in making people talk about it constantly so that it doesn't disappear from the media horizon.

James Cridland 57:35

Yeah, yeah. Uh and he's been um doing uh a fair amount of media recently, but very interesting that he sees the rest is politics as being a big enough show um for him to be spending uh time on. You can hear that interview in the leading uh show that the rest is politics uh does. Um a couple of other things in Vietnam, uh Voice of Vietnam, which is the national radio broadcaster and um the government-funded uh broadcaster, of course, communist government in Vietnam. Um the president uh of that company, Do Tien Sai, spoke at a workshop focused on podcasting and was very uh bullish about uh podcasting in uh Vietnam. Um there was a podcast seminar in this um in this uh conference that he was at that had more than 500 people there. Um 498 people were from Vietnam, uh, but they did have two international speakers, I notice. Where where was my where was my invite? Um so um, but uh yeah, so it uh so you know in terms of um podcasting reaching um another place, um uh suddenly reaching uh Vietnam, I thought was um was uh interesting. Um and um the Overlap, which is a media company owned by Gary Neville, um, but also um part owned now by uh Global as well. Um they uh appear to be acquiring shows as well. So they've acquired uh a YouTube uh channel run by Mark Goldbridge. Um, whoever he is, who's Mark Goldbridge? Uh Sam, you you follow the sports ball, don't you?

People news

Sam Sethi 59:17

Yeah, he's he's uh a bit of a contentious presenter. He's been on Talk Sport as well, but he's managed to accumulate over 1.3 million followers on YouTube uh for his sports network. He's got two or three shows that he runs. And I think the commentary that I heard that was most interesting was from Gary Neville that they see that there's a lot of big standalone audiences for football, but they're not networked. And what the Overlap wants to do is mop up this fragmented football market. Um it'll be interesting to see the winners and losers because obviously there'll be some podcasts who lose out um that don't get mopped up. Um but yeah, this is the first of many, I think, that uh Gary Neville's gonna go for.

Human Announcer 1:00:04

People news on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland 1:00:09

Yes, People News, and normally I swish through the people news because none of it's particularly interesting. So normally you go blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But of course, uh, I have to mention uh you have an employee now, Sam. God help her.

Sam Sethi 1:00:24

Yeah, God help her.

James Cridland 1:00:26

God help me.

Sam Sethi 1:00:27

Who have you? Who have you signed up? Uh the wonderful Claire Wake Brown, who I've been working with on and off for about two years. She she did the uh podcasting 2.0 in practice, and then Claire and I have been doing fanzone and creators. Um, so she's joined in a new role for us as head of community. I'm really excited because our focus is on independent podcast creators, and Claire's got a really good reach out into that community as well. So lots of work that Claire's going to be doing, but very excited to bring her on board. So welcome, Claire.

James Cridland 1:01:02

Excellent. So Claire Wait Brown is your Elsie Escobar. Yes. Uh, other things going on in people and jobs uh include Michael Mignano. Uh, we know him as co-founder of Anchor. Um, he is now known as a venture capitalist um because he's got so much money he'd like to spend it. Um, and he's joined Union Square Ventures as a general partner. Uh so Michael Mignano, um uh I'm over here uh if you want to invest some money. Uh that'd be that'd be a lovely thing.

Podcast events

Sam Sethi 1:01:32

Uh I bet you he does I'll take a bet he doesn't invest into one single podcast platform or sure. I'm sure that that's absolutely the case. I'm sure that that is. He's looking at AI. That's all they have eyes for in the VC world. AI. Oh, can we spend another billion on AI?

Human Announcer 1:01:50

Podcast events on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland 1:01:54

Yes, events, and uh, let's take a look at those. Um uh there was the first Spotify podcast awards in France. Um, winners decided entirely by listeners. Um, there is a way of you voting in the Spotify app, which is very clever of Spotify to end up doing. They're doing the same sort of thing in Latin America uh as well. Um, they've done some uh book stuff as well uh this week. Um, and um they are uh beginning to sell physical books um using bookshop.org, uh which is a website that I link to um whenever I'm uh selling books on the Pod News website. Um bookshop.org in the US, bookshop.org.uk in the UK. It's a bit more ethical way of buying your physical books than uh Amazon and um uh Spotify uh jumping in uh with that. Maybe it's just a glorified affiliate deal, uh who knows. Uh but they seem to be doing relatively well uh in terms of that. And a big shout out for the Independent Podcast Awards 2026 open for entry. It's the fourth year of the awards, uh 1,400 entries, and uh if you want to save on your entry fee, then you can use the code PodNews10, which will uh enable you to do that. You've got early June, you've got until early June to get your entries in. Uh, maybe this is one that we could we could go for. Although we did go for that award a couple of years ago and we won nothing, so uh maybe I won't bother. Yeah, no. The embarrassment is too much, James. The embarrassment is uh exactly, is is just uh is just uh uh uh too much. Now let's move on to events and the podcast show in London is uh happening in May of uh which is uh next month. Um uh I will be there, assuming that Qantas doesn't uh cancel my flight. They've just announced that they're cancelling five percent of all flights, so who knows what might happen there. Um but uh I'm very much looking forward to being there to talking about uh the pod news report card, seeing how everybody is doing, podnews.net slash report card, if you if you haven't filled that in, thank you very much. Um but um they have announced global and iHeart Podcasts as headline partners for the event next month. Bauer are also uh taking part, uh, as are various other uh companies uh as well. Um really looking forward to it. Are you looking forward to it as well, Sam?

Sam Sethi 1:04:14

Yeah, I it's well it's the favourite part of the year, really. We're seeing all your friends, going to see different companies. Um the buzz is great. No, uh it's a really well done event. So well done to Jason and Fergur for doing that uh and the whole of the team. We'll be doing a live show uh as usual, so come along and see us there. And I'll if we're lucky, it'll record. Yes. Well, let's hope. And uh I'll be doing a a futures of podcasting uh event seminar, whatever you want to call it. So if you want to come along and see me. So yes, and you'll be doing, I assume, one of your AI demos, won't you?

James Cridland 1:04:52

I won't be doing the AI demo this year. Um I was looking uh so we had a uh we had a uh advisors board meeting yesterday, and I was looking at the big list of uh speakers and everything else. It's always fun to find yourself um uh uh apparently apparently signed up. Well, apparently signed up to a um uh to a panel uh talking it talking about research. I will be the moderator. Um so I'm I'm genuinely looking forward uh uh to that. I had no idea that I was doing it, but I'm genuinely looking forward to doing that. That should be fun. So uh yes, do uh do come along if you are a subscriber to the Pod News newsletter, then podnews.net slash extras is where you can uh find yourself a code to save a bit of money on that.

Sam Sethi 1:05:38

Yeah, and also the last one I think we'll be doing a podcast standards project area this year, not just a meetup. So there will be a place to go along and sit down and chat as well. So very exciting.

James Cridland 1:05:51

Well, there we are. That'll be that'll be in the top of the pub somewhere. Uh that sounds that sounds very exciting. I hope it will be.

Human Announcer 1:06:00

Tech stuff. Tech stuff. On the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland 1:06:03

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

Sam Sethi 1:06:09

Uh well, uh, there's a new podcast that's in beta. Anytime podcast player, Ben Hill said that the latest version will support embedded MP3 chapters alongside the current podcasting 2.0 chapters. So uh you can check it out on the Google Play Store, or if you've got Apple Test Flight, you can try it out. So, yes, congratulations, Ben.

James Cridland 1:06:32

Very nice. And talking about apps, Overcast has doubled its pricing. Wowzers! Uh, from 14 US dollars uh uh from 15 US dollars um a year to 30 US dollars a year for new subscriptions. If you're an existing subscriber, don't worry, you'll stay at that earlier price uh for now. Um it's still pretty good value. Uh it's still a pretty good power uh app. It's a very opinionated app. Um, but if you like that opinion, uh then certainly worthwhile uh uh giving it a go. Overcast.fm is where to find out more about that.

Sam Sethi 1:07:04

Yeah, I guess someone had to pay for those 48 Mac minis.

James Cridland 1:07:08

Yes. Although apparently he bought them before the price started going uh ludicrously up um uh because of the uh because of AI. So uh yes, I think he's I think he's done all right there.

Sam Sethi 1:07:20

Now Libsyn, uh who seemed to be transitioning uh into an advertising company more than a hosting company, um they had a technical problem with people wanting to leave Libsyn because they couldn't get the 301 redirect to work. Seems they've fixed it, James.

James Cridland 1:07:36

Yes, they have, which is uh really good news. Uh they've taken their time fixing it, but they did um uh want to make sure that it was fixed properly, and um it's good news that they have uh ended up uh doing that. It was about four or five months with that not working well, and um, you know, I I don't want to turn around and say it was Pod News that did it, um, but certainly Pod News giving a little bit of oxygen to that issue um uh can't have um can't have slowed it down being fixed. So I'm pleased that that's been fixed.

Sam Sethi 1:08:08

Now Spotify Chains have added a new feature where you can turn off all videos, including those for music and podcast clips. What have they done?

James Cridland 1:08:18

Yeah, so if you go um uh digging into your Spotify app, maybe you've already got this, maybe you maybe you'll have it relatively soon. You can turn off all video if you want, um, so you'll never see video again in a Spotify, which is interesting for a company that was trumpeting how important video was to be able to actually turn it all off. Now, I should probably say that is probably because um there are people like me who have uh their family on their Spotify um uh setup, and I'm not sure that I want my 13-year-old um looking at uh some of the music videos on there. So being able to turn those off makes sense, and and I can also turn off podcast um uh stuff as well. Um, but uh it's a bit more uh control, so that's good that Spotify is doing that. By the way, if you are a user of YouTube, you will be able to turn YouTube shorts off completely with uh some new controls that they are doing as well. So I am rubbing my hands with glee and looking forward to the day that I can turn YouTube shorts off because they're annoying and I don't like the way that they repeat. So so um the sooner that they uh turn that on on my account, the better. But um, yes, so hurrah for that.

Sam Sethi 1:09:38

I think Spotify in the blog post they wrote were saying it's not so much, you know, that that they're not still into video, it's giving users more controls because they've given you controls over the algorithm for your taste profile, they're giving you controls recently for other things. So I think you know, clearly they've got a um, you know, drive right now to give more options to users to customize the UI. And I think that's a good thing. And I think um more platforms need to look at giving users those controls so that the platform becomes more adapted to the user rather than the user having to adapt to the platform.

James Cridland 1:10:14

You are sounding very, very nice about uh Spotify. It's almost as if, just in the same way as I have a stalker from Apple, it's almost as if you've got a stalker from Spotify.

Sam Sethi 1:10:24

Have I? Strangely, I think I have.

James Cridland 1:10:29

Well, if they're listening, please don't pull Sam's arms and legs off. Uh that would be good. Now, uh Google is also doing something that nobody's asked for and nobody wants. Uh what is it that they're doing?

Sam Sethi 1:10:40

It was just weird, I just thought in this text section. It was just one of those left-field things. They've added Google Meet to Apple CarPlay and they're rolling it out to the Android Auto as well. So now there's no excuse for you not being able to have a meeting on the go while driving. So there you go.

Human Announcer 1:10:55

Boostergram, Boostergram, Boostergram, super comments, zaps, fan mail, fan mail, and voicemail. Our favorite time of the week, it's the Pod News Weekly Review inbox.

James Cridland 1:11:07

Yeah, so many different ways to get in touch with us. Um, please leave us some voicemail. We would love that. We haven't had any voicemail this week. We would love a bit more of that. You can use the link you'll find right at the top of our show notes. You can also use boosts or email. Uh, we share all of the money that we make uh as well. Thank you to the total amount of sats that we have earned this week, which is up, up, up, up, uh, to 6,105. So uh thank you uh for that. That's um uh nearly doubled, but not quite from uh last week. So that is excellent. Brian Ensminger um uh always keeping up the um the top of the uh chart. Um couple of boosts and things, um, both from the ugly quacking dunk this week, uh, which is uh nice. Um uh good to hear the both of you for another week. We are definitely blessed to be able to listen to someone not sitting in our house. Don't want us to forget how amazing and blessed we have it. Thanks for the episode and the news. Have a great week. Uh and he also says, A plus guys, thanks for the episode. Thank you, Bruce. That's uh very kind of you, and thank you for uh using Podcast Guru and um sending us a bunch of uh sats over. That's very kind. So have we got any messages in uh TrueFans, Sam?

Sam Sethi 1:12:18

Weirdly we have, yes. Uh I sent you one, James, for a thousand sats. Uh this is for James Gridlin to test the new Allen address and metadata comments. Does this appear in your strike wallet? I think we had it, but then maybe it's broken again. Who knows?

James Cridland 1:12:32

Yes, maybe it is, or maybe it isn't. Maybe it's my code, or maybe it's not. Uh so we'll we'll soon find out, won't we? Um The joys of programming. Yeah, yeah. The joys of programming. Well, the joys of uh uh is your is your is your CTO using uh a bunch of AI yet?

Sam Sethi 1:12:49

No, no. We are AI free still. You Luddites.

James Cridland 1:12:53

Do you not understand what the future is?

Sam Sethi 1:12:56

Uh yes, yes.

Sam and James's week

James Cridland 1:12:58

Vibe debugging, no one's gonna get that, yes. Seth Goldstein has sent us um uh 1386 um sats. Uh he says, I've been using Surf since it was in Alpha. Oh, yes, we were talking about Surf last week, uh a kind of um social network aggregator. It's come a long way, uh says Seth. It's essentially an RSS aggregator on steroids. It's already quite popular in the Fediverse with those who've been using it for the past year. I have a podcasting surf feed that includes you guys and more of the podcasting peeps. Hooray! Um yes, uh, I haven't been able to play with it because it's only available for real phones, not for toy phones. So again, uh please don't pull my arms and legs off. Um and uh Neil Vellio, interesting that HLS can be IAB certified. That was one of the first thoughts I had when I heard about it. Yeah, absolutely. So um that is good. Um, talking about Brian Barletta uh and uh his uh interview last week, uh, and also he liked it when I bleeped out the word fk, so I'm gonna bleep out the word fk again uh just for him. And thank you to uh people like Neil, uh, but also uh to Will Clark, to John Spurlock, to Seth Goldstein, uh, and to uh Dave Jackson from the School of Podcasting, um uh who uh in one of the disclaimers that I have to write on Reddit, I said that Dave has never buyed has never bought me a beer. There are plenty of good reasons why Dave has never bought me a beer, and one of those good reasons is he gives us five uh dollars every single month uh so that we can go out and buy ourselves a beer. So, Dave, thank you very much. Uh much appreciated to all of our power supporters. And if you would like to join them, weekly.podnews.net is where to go, and we thank you from the bottom of our heart. Uh so what's happened for you then, Sam?

Sam Sethi 1:14:44

Well, we've been experimenting with video this week. Uh, we've put in a new video UI. So we've added a little video icon if there is a video in the alternative enclosure or video in the primary, and then what we'll do on the desktop, we'll play the video first as a uh uh when you click play, but on the mobile we'll play the audio first. So again, we're just trying to see how much video is now being produced, but also trying to make it more obvious to the user that there is a video option available. That's nice, yeah.

James Cridland 1:15:16

Uh video is always a good thing, so um uh some people tell me. So uh yes, that's good.

Sam Sethi 1:15:21

Uh we've also completed our full screen TV mode, so you've got an option now to go full screen on a large TV if you want with TrueFans. So that's quite a nice little option that we've added. Um, and in the user settings, of course, going back to what Spotify were doing earlier, which is why I was saying things like it's nice to have apps that actually allow users to customize the environment. You can also uh say, no, I don't want video to play first on the desktop, or no, I want video on the mobile to play first. So you can choose how you want those uh playbacks to appear. Um, and then the last thing we we're adding, which you'll see later today, um, on the homepage is the ability to change it by medium. So, yes, you can have audio video, but we'll have audio books and music. So you can say, only show me uh by this medium. So I only want to see videos, or I only want to see audiobooks, um, and I only want to see it in this date time, or I only want to see podcasts episodes that are longer than one hour or shorter than 30 minutes. So again, we're just trying to give some more customization to users to allow them to set the app to work the way they want rather than the way that we think it should work for them.

James Cridland 1:16:35

Now you've added a really interesting new feature called CoListen and Chat, uh, which sounds very similar to Netflix and Chill. Um what what is what is what is co-listen and chat?

Sam Sethi 1:16:48

So we came up with a a feature probably about a year ago, where if you follow people on TrueFound in a social model, you might see James is listening to Pod News Weekly Review and it'll pop up a little notification and I can say, Oh, great, well I'm gonna go and listen to that as well. The problem was you could join the exact same audio point that James is listening to. So I could say, right, I'm at 24 minutes as well, James. And we could have left comments for each other, but that's a really poor UI for doing that. So we've just literally added and pushed yesterday um a chat client as well. So now you can say, Yes, I'm listening with James, and now both of us will appear in the chat window as listening, and now we can start a conversation. This works with recorded podcasts as well as live, so yes, it will work really well with some fans on TrueFans who like to listen to this show, and now they can listen together. Or like I like to listen to the Friday night show with Adam and Dave, and you know, again, there's few people that I listen to that show with. Now we can all chat together while listening to the live show as well. So it works in both cases.

James Cridland 1:18:03

That's very nice. And I do wonder whether or not there is um a way of um saving that chat so that um if if there's public chat, which this isn't, I think, but if there's public chat being able to then I know this is public, it's public as well. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Okay, so you could actually you could then um mm maybe as you're playing back a show, you you can actually see what people were chatting about at the time, uh, which I think that YouTube does. So um, yeah. No, very cool, very cool. Uh thank you. Away from uh away from the excitement of uh of uh of uh true fans. Have you been um on on any exciting podcasts?

Sam Sethi 1:18:41

Uh yeah, well, thank you to Norma Jean Balenki. I'm on Podbiz, that'll be coming out shortly. Um I'm going on to Ralph Estep Jr.'s breakfast show later today, which is very exciting. That's a live show. And uh the interview I did with Matt Cundle's just come out. Matt's got an amazing voice for radio, hasn't he? And um, yeah, I've got the husky voice in this one where my my my braces and teeth don't quite work together, but hey, what the heck? Um but thank you, Matt, for doing that. So that's out as well. So uh yeah.

James Cridland 1:19:12

Not as husky as Brian as Brian Barletta was, that's for our sake. Um that was a very different, different sounding Brian Brian Barletta. I hope I hope somebody has told him to shut up for a bit in the nicest possible way. Um so that it so that his voice gets better. But yeah.

Sam Sethi 1:19:29

And I'll also be on the new media show soon as well. So it's all happening, it's all good fun.

James Cridland 1:19:34

It is all uh good fun. Uh by the way, you should check out the new media show. I think uh this week or last week, last week um was uh all about local podcasting. Um and uh definitely worthwhile a listen. Um the uh chap who runs the Citicast Network uh talking on that uh individual show. So uh yeah, um w well worth taking a taking a peek on.

Sam Sethi 1:19:56

Well, this week's show has got Sharon Taylor on. Um and it was like a walk down memory lane with her and Rob, you know, when he was at Spreaker and they were talking about when she was at Omni and they were talking about the uh good old days of low-cost CP CPMs. And yeah, so if you want to walk down memory lane of podcasting, join join the two of them on the new media show.

James Cridland 1:20:16

Yes, exactly. Uh when when I last saw uh Sharon, we were talking about doing a podcast together, uh, which uh I think she wanted to call Shazza and Crito and I was and I was not up for. Uh so we'll see what happens, but doubtless uh hosted on on Omni Studio. So there you go. Build the Empire. Yes, why not? So, James, what's happened for you, mate? Well, uh, I've been doing uh I've I've been doing it. So um uh firstly, I went to the gym today and they've changed all of my exercises because I had a big test last week to see if I was still falling apart. Uh and they've changed all of my exercises, and so now I'm absolutely shattered with um you know muscles that I didn't know I had now hurting. Yeah, exactly. So uh so boo. Um uh also um uh recently I decided um uh while while my wife was away, I decided that uh I would uh do a little bit of washing, uh of washing clothes, and I decided that I would look up how to wash jeans because I've got some new pairs of jeans that needed their first wash, and I thought, right, I've screwed up jeans before, giving them their first wash. I wonder how I should do this properly. So I actually went to have a look. And it turns out, right, apart from anything else, you're supposed to turn them inside out and then do all the buttons up and everything else, which I'm sure that you knew. Um, but the other thing that uh Levi's guess. Yeah, I'm sure that there, you know, so the other thing that Levi's tells you to do um is it says don't wash them too often. We recommend only washing your jeans every tenth wear. Every tenth wear? Have they ever been to Queensland? Do they not know how hot and sweaty it gets here? I'm not washing them every tenth time. What a horrifying idea. Yes. So anyway, so that was uh uh so that was uh uh one thing that was uh that was entertaining. Um another thing which was entertaining is seeing for some reason my Mac is now telling me all of the apps that I'm running which will uh stop working relatively shortly um because they are using the the Rosetta thing and and not using the the new Mac silicon or how whatever it is. Um one of those things is the Rodecaster Pro. Um the original Rodecaster Pro software that allows you to put um you know to put uh um uh uh new new sounds onto the buttons. Uh so when that stops working, that's going to be uh that's going to be very annoying. So I'm hoping that um all of that kind of stuff is fixed. But um yeah. Yeah, you would kind of hope, although the Rodcaster Pro is a pretty old piece of piece of equipment by now. So maybe they won't. Maybe I'll actually have to go and buy one uh instead of using the one that uh Alban Brooke gave me. Anyway, uh we'll see, we'll see how that works. Uh currently working on uh a couple of articles. One article which um um I've I've had some entertaining conversations with lawyers about, so that's fun. Um, but also another article which is all about uh the history of the Zune when it comes to podcasting, uh, and some pictures of Rob Greenley looking very different to uh the way that Rob Greenley looks now. Um I'm enjoying putting those uh together. Um uh the fun thing is uh asking in the Zune subreddit um could anybody be able to play my podcast on your Zune, please, and then send me a photograph. So I've got a couple of pictures of people listening to this very show on their Zoom. Wow. Um, which is uh which is fairly amazing. Um and the final thing, um just just something, nothing to do with podcasting, but just something that I have uh caught myself doing. I don't know whether you've ever ever bought anything from AliExpress, Sam.

Sam Sethi 1:24:04

Nope, I've heard of it from you, but no.

James Cridland 1:24:07

Yeah, so AliExpress, I mean, it sells um uh some electronic stuff at ridiculously low prices. I just bought um a little tag, uh, one of those air tag things, but instead of buying a an Apple uh AirTag for$47 or whatever it is, um uh uh here in this country, uh I bought um I bought a cheap Chinese knockoff, which works in exactly the same way, works with the app and everything else, and uh including shipping, uh I think it was$1.75. And that's Australian dollars as well, including shipping. I have no idea how they do this. Anyway, um, but it turns out that AliExpress has um the app has some games in there, and the games in there, they're kind of you know, merge games or there's a you know, there's um there are there are a couple of other of these of these sorts of types of um very standard games and they're they're done okay, but as you um as you do quite well in them, it gives you actual money that you can go and spend in the store. And I thought this makes no sense, but of course it makes perfect sense because you're in that app every single day playing your game. Um, of course, it's giving you money, and so you're thinking, well, that's brilliant, but you're also seeing things that you might want to buy. So actually, it's a really, really clever, it's literal gamification. Literally and it's really worthwhile taking a peek at, actually. It's really worthwhile playing around with that app and uh seeing uh the little tricks that it does, but um yeah, you know, and it and it showed you know, so I've got I think I've got twelve dollars to spend on stuff at the moment. Now, the clever thing with the AliExpress app is that you can't spend twelve dollars on a on a thing, it gives you up to twelve dollars discount on individual things that you are buying, but that discount might be 80 cents, it might be you know$1.20, it's not going to be an awful lot. Um, but nevertheless, you know, you're kind of sucked in to continue to want to play these little games because you are literally getting money out of it. Um, and I just thought that's really clever. And maybe there's an opportunity there for someone that is doing um, you know, a podcast app that um you you know maybe um you know earn money to pay for um to pay creators or whatever it ends up being of just putting a couple of a couple of little uh games in there. It's just another reason to open that app in the first place. But I just thought that's a really clever, crafty thing. Um but yes, I've got no idea how much how they you know how they afford anything.

Sam Sethi 1:26:49

Yes, poor poor poor persons 24 hours a day working for nothing to give you a little air tag, eh?

James Cridland 1:26:57

Well, I mean, you know, I I I I think quite a lot of it is um paid for in some other way. Right. Um but um uh these are spy in your house, yes. Yeah, they are very keen to get me to install the widget. Um, and if I install the widget, then they'll give me even more money, and I'm not installing the widget because that essentially means running their code every time I open my my uh my uh iPhone. Um I mean, and certainly if you were to do that on an Android phone, God knows how much stuff it would actually get. At least, at least I can relatively guarantee uh thanks to the uh iPhone, um I can relatively guarantee that it won't have too much um you know nasty stuff going on. But um uh yeah, it's um uh really interesting though. Really, really interesting just to sort of take a peek and all of the little things that they are doing in that app. You know, they give you money when you open the app. Um uh they give you more money when you're playing this game, they give you Uh tokens that you can then change into game uh tokens so you can continue playing the game and then continue earning more money, which you can't spend all at the same time. It's just it's just genius. Whoever has done this is just is just genius. So uh yeah, it's um a fascinating thing. Anyway, uh that's uh that's it for this week. Uh all of our podcast stories, of course, taken from the Pod News Daily Newsletter. You can sign up. It's free at podnews.net.

Sam Sethi 1:28:28

You can support this show by streaming Sats. You can give us feedback using the Buzzprout thumb mail link, but better still, use the voicemail link. Where are you, everybody? Uh you can send us a boost or become a power supporter like the 24 Power Supporters at weekly.podnews.net.

James Cridland 1:28:44

Our music is from TM Studios. Our voiceover is Sheila D. Our audio is recorded using Clean Feed. We edit with Hindenburg, and we're hosted and sponsored by Buzzprout. Start Podcasting, keep podcasting.

Human Announcer 1:28:56

Get updated every day. Subscribe to our newsletter at podnews.net. Tell your friends and grow the show. And support us. And support us. The pod news weekly review will return next week. Keep listening.