Welcome And Quick Headlines

Human Announcer 0:00

The Pop News Weekly Review uses chapters. The last word in podcasting news. This is the Pop News Weekly Review with James Crittman and Stan Steffi.

James Cridland 0:12

I'm James Critten, the editor of Pod News, and I'm Stan Steffi's CO 2004.

SPEAKER_00 0:17

We wanted to keep this as cost reasonable as possible so we could get more people who are already creating video content and help me get on Apple Podcasts.

James Cridland 0:26

Alvin Brooke from Brust Prout as the company adds Apple Podcasts video.

SPEAKER_02 0:30

The global community is really engaged with the opportunity of coming to this event for everyone to meet each other.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Jason Carter looks forward to the podcast show in London and It ushers in what we hope is a new era of open music distribution.

James Cridland 0:47

Oscar Merry Talks Music on RSS. This podcast is sponsored by Bud Sprout with a tool support and community to ensure you keep podcasting. Start podcasting, keep podcasting with Budsprout.com.

Human Announcer 1:00

From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly Review.

Sam Sethi 1:05

First of all, let's start off with our sponsors and friends, Bud Sprout. They have launched video distribution with Apple Podcasts. Go on, give me the detail.

James Cridland 1:14

Yes, they were the first to do it, uh, actually, the first podcast hosting company to make video on Apple Podcasts generally available. So hurrah for them. Um, that is very cool. Up until uh Monday, I think it was. Um everybody who was saying that they did Apple Podcasts video was not actually making it available to anybody. It was either invite only or for enterprise clients. But BuzzSprout were the first to help you start podcasting on Apple Podcasts. I thought um that I would catch up with Alvin Brooke. And firstly, because obviously we haven't done a good enough job on this podcast, I started by asking him who is BuzzSprout?

SPEAKER_00 1:57

Buzzsprout is the best way to get your podcast online and out to the world. And now that also includes getting your video into Apple Podcasts.

James Cridland 2:06

Yes, and very exciting too. So this week you were the first to announce video distribution via Apple Podcasts. What did you announce there?

SPEAKER_00 2:14

Well, we've been working on this for quite a while. It's HLS uh distribution onto Apple Podcasts. We built out a podcasting stats package uh that now includes video as well. Uh so now podcasters can upload a single file to Buzzsprout and get that video into Apple Podcasts while continuing to distribute the audio everywhere else.

James Cridland 2:35

Yeah, it's very exciting, isn't it? Other people have also launched this week. Some are charging by downloads, some are charging by bandwidth, some are charging by upload time. What's the way that Buzzsprout is charging for this?

SPEAKER_00 2:49

Uh we have slightly different pricing. So the way we're doing it is it's about$10 more a month for on our base plans. So you just have audio plus video. We've always tried to avoid as many megabytes and gigabytes and audio codecs and all of that extra stuff. So we just say upload up to 72 hours of content a year. And in 1080p resolution, we're going to serve that up as video and it'll be$25 a month when billed annually.

James Cridland 3:17

Certainly more simple than some of the other companies that I have uh seen. What happens if I do a show and it gets loads and loads and loads of video downloads? Is there a point where you'll step in and say, oh, well, actually, yes, you need our enterprise plan.

SPEAKER_00 3:31

We uh we've we've never been good at very good at moving people to a pro plan. We have we do have one, but um now if you have over a terabyte of outbound data, then we'll come and talk to you about$20 more a month per terabyte. Uh, but the goal is that when we get to that level, that you're probably making pretty good money on the podcast. And so uh you're just helping cover those costs. I mean, video, as you know, and even HLS video is much more expensive uh from the just the cost perspective for all the podcast hosts.

James Cridland 4:06

Yeah, yeah. It's it it is fascinating, and it's that difference between audio, which frankly a lot of people can uh do, uh a lot of people can self-host and everything else. As soon as you move into video, especially when you move into 1080p, then you are talking about both a lot of bandwidth, but also a lot of requests, and both of those are charged by most people. Um, so there's a real difference, isn't there, in terms of how people are charging for this, and then looking at each individual podcast company, how people um, you know, how those individual podcast companies are going to be charging for it as well. Um, you you've you've, I think, just made a really uh a really simple uh plan of this is how much you can upload and just go for it. Um which um, you know, was the thinking there just to keep things as simple as you possibly could?

SPEAKER_00 4:58

Well, I think that we all settled on different pricing plans because of just we had different pricing for the way we did audio podcasts. And when we looked at it, we actually lowered the prices for our audio podcast plans recently, and we decreased those a bit, and then we added the video component for everybody who wants to do video. I still think a majority of our podcasters will probably be audio first podcasters, and some of them will upgrade to video. Uh, but yeah, we wanted to keep this as cost reasonable as possible so we could get more people who are already creating video content and help them get on to Apple Podcasts.

Simple Pricing Versus Bandwidth Reality

James Cridland 5:37

Yeah, there's a lot of people who are very keen to point out you do not need to do video for podcasts. I think the benefit with this now is that there is a genuine choice that if you want to do video for podcasts, then now you can. Um, and I think that that's um, you know, it's it's it's always been quite difficult to get video into Apple Podcasts. It's been possible, but it's been quite difficult. Now there's um a much a much better technological um solution, but there's also a much better solution just in terms of helping people understand how easy it is to actually get video in if you want to.

SPEAKER_00 6:17

Well, I think that um so what Apple has launched now with HLS video, it's so much more compelling than putting the entire video file inside the media enclosure in the RSS feed, which they've had for you know 20 years. And the reason it's so compelling is because we're not downloading these massive uh files to our computers and taking up all of our storage. And the other is you can now have a single listing in Apple Podcasts, which has both your audio, your video, and your transcript all in a single listing. And I think you might have been the person to point this out, but shows like uh This Week in Tech or maybe even the new media show, um, if they're split into multiple listings, they just don't get the same uh benefits in Apple Podcasts because they look like two different podcasts.

James Cridland 7:09

Yeah, and I think that that's going to really help. I think actually that's the secret here. The secret isn't necessarily the fact that Apple has this. Um I mean, I've I've heard another podcast this week uh spend 20 minutes explaining how HLS video works. And I'm there thinking, I do not really know why people need to know that. Um I know that we've done that in the past on this show. I think this show is aimed at a slightly different audience, but I think for a tip I think for a typical podcaster, um I mean, really all you need to know now is that Apple Podcasts does video the same way that Netflix or YouTube do. That's basically all you need to worry about. But in terms of being able to have video in your main podcast feed, which you've not been able to before, um, so that whatever somebody is consuming, whether it's video or whether it's audio, it's the same podcast. Um, I think that's a big, a big difference. And that should certainly help the algorithms in terms of recommendations. That should help um people being able to share podcasts. I shared this week in tech only a couple of days ago. What do I share? Do I share the audio version or do I share the video version? I really don't know. And so being able to actually go, nope, it's super simple. It's just here's where the podcast is. I think that's actually where the really big change is here.

SPEAKER_00 8:38

You know, when I've explained this to podcasters, I found myself explaining it as the podcast is becoming multi-format. And so we've always had audio, but then Apple Podcasts went and they did a lot of work around transcripts. They brought the transcript tag that podcasting 2.0 developed, and now we have podcast transcripts in Apple Podcasts, and now you can flip between the transcript, the audio, and now the video, so that it's all there inside of a single experience. I know that um I think you you might have given them a little bit of grief for not having the like read-along transcripts yet, but it's I think a really nice experience that there's different parts of my brain that engage with different types of media. And so if I want to see something for a second, I can just click that button and watch the video. And then if I want to grab a quote, I flip over to the transcript and I scroll down and I copy it. It's a seamless experience, and it's one that I think is unique. Um, really, I mean, it's it's a unique experience even among video players on the web.

James Cridland 9:44

Yeah, I think it's um, I mean, uh Spotify does much the same sort of thing, but I think the way, the technical way that Apple has done it uh is very clever um and and very neat. And and I think that it therefore works much better. I mean, uh uh Apple did invent HLS, so I suppose they know what they're doing there uh in terms of that. Do you um have any plans to support Spotify video or indeed um uh getting a video straight from the Bus Pratt dashboard onto YouTube as well?

SPEAKER_00 10:17

Yes, I think now that we have decided to start supporting Apple Podcasts uh video on Apple Podcasts, we're also going to work on other distribution to other video uh locations. So Spotify's on the list, YouTube's on the list, uh, and that's gonna be part of the roadmap going forward. I you you did say Spotify is similar to Apple. Um I still think that Apple is unique in that they live in a very different world than YouTube or Spotify do right now with video content because Apple Podcast is still a delivery app. You know, it's an app where I say I want to follow this show and I want all the downloads, and you get all of the shows. You know, they still show up. And when I'm on YouTube, they went over the last 15 years from being very delivery forward where I got everything that I said I wanted, and eventually it moved all the way to it's pretty much a discovery platform where the YouTube algorithm decides what I'm most likely to watch, and then it serves it up. And it's really nice, you know, to be able to get discovered or discover new content, but there's not a great place on the internet right now where you can get video delivered a hundred percent of the time. And Apple Podcast is unique in that that I can say, I want to follow this creator and I will get their content delivered to my phone without you know the algorithm jumping in the way and saying, oh no, there's actually a viral new dance trend, and we think you need to watch a video about that instead.

One Listing For Audio Video Transcript

James Cridland 11:54

Yeah, no, I I I I would I would 100% agree with that. And I think the the interesting thing about Apple Podcasts is that it is very much um focused on uh it's almost anti-algorithm in a way, in that you, although it's got algorithms in there, if if you, as you say, if you follow a show, you will always get that show appearing. Um, and I think that's a very different experience to um to YouTube, where yeah, you know you're never quite sure what it's going to show you next. Um and that's and that's uh and that's both a blessing and also not so, which I suppose is that. Um this show obviously talks an awful lot about um podcasting 2.0 and the and the um and the benefits of uh things like the alternate enclosure, um, which would um theoretically at least add video, and that could be HLS video, it could be uh a full download to uh the RSS feed as well. Does BuzzSpratt have any plans to support that?

SPEAKER_00 12:56

So the we directionally think the alternate enclosure is a great idea. I mean, the idea that, like we said, there's all these different formats of how to create uh consume the same content, whether it be audio, video, transcript, or you know, multilingual, uh, it'd be great to have all in the feed identified as the same piece of content. Um, but we've had 17 years at Buzzsprout with you know two big assumptions. One is we're delivering audio files, and the other is we deliver an entire audio file all at once. And you know, six weeks ago, though both of those challenged those were challenged, and we said, okay, we're going to start streaming video. And so both of those shifted. And we just have a lot built up with you know how apps cache and how we deal with fraud and abuse. And with all of these, you know, things being challenged at once, we started looking at alternate enclosure and said, I think there might be some other ways where we can maybe improve it so we can avoid some of the you know abuse things we fought for 17 years. And as you know, I mean, video is just so much larger that the opportunity for somebody to get hit by um, you know, some new vibe coded bot and uh rack up a huge bill, we don't want to pass that on to our podcasters. So to make sure we keep the cost low, uh, we've held off for now. But you know, we've always supported open podcasting, and I think alternate enclosure is kind of directionally the right way to go.

James Cridland 14:27

YouTube doesn't charge anything for video, and Spotify doesn't charge anything for video. Do you think that Apple Podcasts realistically is going to be a place where most people, most podcasters, put video if it's so expensive, to put it on there?

SPEAKER_00 14:42

Uh yes, I think that it will be. Um because uh it's a again a delivery platform. And if you're a YouTuber, um you hear YouTubers and talk about this all the time. You know, I used to create content. I talked to a YouTuber today who uh his rep said, I think you should start some courses. I see you have courses, we just enabled courses on your account. He uploaded 70 videos all at once, like they recommended, and instantly he tanked his channel, which was his full-time job. And he had to spend months figuring out what happened. Well, it's because they saw 70 what they thought were low-quality videos uploaded at once. And it's not because it was bad content or it was objectionable, it was just that the algorithm interpreted it his channel as changing massively. And it would have been very nice for him if he'd also was able to distribute that same content and his livelihood didn't just depend on YouTube, but also was clap cross-platform. And so I think creators who know I've got a core audience, I want to be able to reach them directly, then I think they will migrate some of that audience over to Apple Podcasts, where the show, whatever type of video show it is, can be delivered directly to their audience.

James Cridland 16:00

I think there's a big um there is a big difference, isn't there? Uh and I think uh uh the there was an interesting uh piece from um Steven Rob Stephen Robles and uh Justin Jackson, where um uh they were saying that um they got loads and loads more plays, double the amount of plays in Apple Podcasts once Stephen had switched to video, and also it hadn't harmed the YouTube channel as well. And and I thought that that second bit was almost more interesting than of course you're gonna double because Apple Podcasts will presumably be um promoting you a little bit more in the algorithms and so on and so forth. But the fact that it didn't damage YouTube, I thought was really interesting. This is definitely a multi-platform, multi-format world, isn't it now?

SPEAKER_00 16:48

I mean, it is, and I think it's why I mean we have 20 years of Edison research showing uh audio podcasting was growing year over year. And then when we had the rise of video podcasting, it grew even faster. We had, I guess we had that one slight down year, but besides that, uh video has always been additive to audio, and I think it's because they're different audiences, and I think we're gonna see a little bit of a bump over on Apple Podcasts as well, because there's another audience that is interesting and interested in consuming this content. Um I would maybe be a bit cautious in telling people their stats are going to double right away because I think in our beta, almost everybody who's in the beta got featured by Apple Podcasts, or half of them did, uh pretty you know, at one point or another. And so it was very exciting for everybody. Uh, but there, you know, your results may vary.

James Cridland 17:45

Yes. It's a shame that we're not doing video um uh for this particular show. Uh you may be able to hear that I am not in my normal office, uh, I am uh by the side of a forest uh in Australia, um uh uh with my dog, who is uh very excited about uh something that she has seen in the eucalyptus forest. Um and the reason why I'm here is that there are five burly Australian men pulling my roof off at the moment. So therefore, there was always there was always that. But I noticed that if you want to go and take a look at some good Apple Podcasts video, um then the latest episode of Buzzcast is in video, um, which is uh very exciting. You have um you have spent a long time getting your bookshelf absolutely right, Alvin. I'm impressed at that, and your lighting as well. Um and I think you know the the the there's gonna be a ton of skills that people end up having to uh think about in terms of uh in terms of uh set dressing, in terms of making sure that the uh you know, making sure that the lighting is is all done uh is all done right and everything else. Uh I noticed that one of your one of your team just has a laser printer behind it.

Video Prep Costs Without The Panic

SPEAKER_00 19:08

Yes. Well, uh Kevin, I know before that video we shot it, Kevin goes, I don't think I uh I have the right set for it. And I was like, well, no, we're launching video, so I think we should do it. Um but that is I mean, we're we're joking about it, but that is the downside of video. Um, I really did go put on a buzzwrap shirt because I know if we're gonna be on video, I want to have one. And Jordan, when we do video, she goes, Oh, I want to go do some makeup before we film. Yeah, and there's just a lot more prep. The lighting is that's been something that's been pretty not intuitive for me to get lighting set up in specific ways. And the cost goes way up as far as the production. Um, so what I've been telling our creators is we now have video distribution. We're really excited, especially about how Apple has implemented it. We can help you get your video onto Apple Podcasts. But if you're a creator who loves audio content, I don't think you need to feel the anxiety that you're going to be left behind if you don't do video. Um, the stats for years is video has been promoted, video podcasts have been promoted on YouTube and Spotify. Um, the stats really have shown the audio ecosystem is robust. And it's because there's so many areas of life where we listen to content. Um, you know, you're in the car, you're working out, you're uh maybe just working with your hands and you want to listen to something. I think there's always going to be a space for creators who want to just do audio first or maybe even audio only content. So I hope uh, you know, as much as excitement as I have for video, I don't want to scare people into thinking you need to go buy thousands of dollars of cameras and lighting gear.

James Cridland 20:54

Alvin, it's great to chat. We will um will will we be seeing you in London or who are you sending?

SPEAKER_00 21:01

I know Tom will be there and I think Jordan might be joining as well. I don't think I'm gonna make the flight over this year. Yeah uh every year it's exciting to see everything that's happening over there. Podcast show looks like it's getting better and better. So I hope you have a wonderful time.

James Cridland 21:18

Yeah, it should be it should be really good. And if you would like to start podcasting or indeed keep podcasting, uh then you should go to buzzprout.com. You can get started for free uh over there. And um, all of the information about video is also over there as well. And tons of pictures of Albin with a very fancy microphone, um, uh very well lit uh all the way over there as well.

SPEAKER_00 21:42

Microphone that you gave me, I think.

James Cridland 21:43

Correct. Correct. I didn't notice. Albin, it's been a pleasure. Thank you uh so much for your support as well. Thank you, James.

Sam Sethi 21:51

Super impressed with the audio quality, considering you're in the middle of the outbank somewhere with your dog.

Alternate Enclosure And What’s Next

James Cridland 21:57

Yes, no, it was uh yeah, no, that was that was the one. There's a clean feed and a 5G connection. That's all you need. 5G connection and and that's it. But yeah, so six hours per month that you can upload um uh for uh video and indeed audio. Um and um as you've as you've heard, you know, in terms of that, um they are uh expecting that you do a normal amount of downloads um and uh and that everything is going to be all fine uh in terms of that. But um yeah, no, I think it was I think it was good.

Sam Sethi 22:39

I thought you asked a couple of really interesting questions. One was well, why wouldn't you just put it for free on YouTube? Uh and I thought that was a good answer from Alban. Uh the other thing that I thought was interesting though, and it's the alternative enclosure question, right, that you asked Alban. He seemed to duck it, if I'm honest. I think that wasn't a real answer. Um that's a sort of we'll wait and see answer. Um, which I was a little bit sort of, mmm, I wish he'd just said you're gonna do it, really.

James Cridland 23:07

Yeah, I mean, it would be nice if he um if he had said that he was going to do it, but on the other side, you know, I mean, at the end of the day, uh this is how you really annoy somebody by saying, Oh, it's coming in just a month, and then a month turns up and then it doesn't actually happen, and blah, blah, blah. And so I think, you know, he he was as honest as he could be, and basically saying, look, we we genuinely don't know yet. We don't know yet about what this actually means. We don't know yet, frankly, whether we should be doing an alternate enclosure using H using HLS or an alternate enclosure using uh MP4. Um, you know, there's all of that stuff that really isn't uh particularly known yet. So I think, you know, in terms of that, I mean, really, you know, they they don't know much the same as everybody else doesn't really know. Um, and so I think it's yeah, it's it's just one of those things of of this being a brand new thing. And as he was saying, you know, we've had uh not that long, you know, uh he was talking about six weeks, um, to to have a think about how to charge for all of this and how it works in terms of customer support and everything else. And the fact that Buzzbrat have been first is pretty impressive, I think.

Sam Sethi 24:22

The question is with analytics very quickly. Now that HLS is now available, what do you think we'll have to change for hosting analytics?

James Cridland 24:32

Well, I think the definition of a play is still the same. It's one minute's worth of um of uh podcast which has been um which has been downloaded. And is that the IAB definition? That's the IAB definition. And that I don't think that that needs to actually change. What you can see with the HLS um uh video is of course you can actually see how long someone had a listen uh to it and or had a watch uh to it. And we shouldn't forget, by the way, that um it it what when you switch to Apple Podcast Video, you you're actually switching everything over to HLS. Um so we shouldn't probably forget that bit. Um but in terms of um in terms of what that means for um for analytics, I don't think it makes it shouldn't make any difference in terms of what the consumer sees, what the podcaster sees, because you know, at the end of the day, we know what a unique uh Innverted Commas listener is, and we also know um what a download or a play is because it's over a minute um consumed.

Sam Sethi 25:39

So Apple have auto downloads set on. Do they have auto downloads set on for HLS video then?

James Cridland 25:47

Uh they have auto-downloads set on for the audio by default, um, and that includes HLS because let uh again let's not forget this. When you turn on Apple video, then what you're actually doing is you're turning your entire podcast into delivery via HLS. So the audio track is a separate track, but it's that track which is used if you just want to listen to the audio. And when you turn on auto downloads or uh auto downloads is automatically turned on, it's automatically turned on to audio and it will still download via HLS. If you've enabled video, it will still download the audio. Good lord. But not the video, the world's most complicated thing. Now you can make it download the video as well if you want to. Um so automatically download the video. Um, but that is an additional um I think you have to do that on every single um uh show that you want to automatically download. So the app by itself will automatically only download the audio.

Sam Sethi 26:54

But that audio track within the uh HLS playlist is different to when Apple hide the video because they're still playing the same video track, they're just hiding the display, aren't they? So that's not actually switching to the audio play track within the playlist.

James Cridland 27:12

Oh well, um no. So um uh so uh boringly, the way that HLS works, the way that Apple's HLS works, is that there are a number of different tracks. There's a number of different video tracks, which are you know the different uh resolutions, 240p, 512p, you know, etc. etc. uh as it goes up. Um and then there is an audio track or more than one audio track uh in that. So the benefit is when you when your player switches between, I don't know, 240p and 1080p, um, then it's still consuming the same audio track in that list. So the same audio track is being uh is being always delivered to your device. And when you turn off video, it's not just hiding the video, it's stopping getting any of the video tracks, but it still gets the audio track.

Sam Sethi 28:08

Right, okay.

James Cridland 28:09

So um so audio is a separate track within the HLS multivariant playlist. Um and that's basically how the Apple Podcasts uh system is going to is going to um consume an audio podcast, is it still uses HLS. So uh you know, so it gets um it gets really interesting, you know, what is the definition of video here, you know, because actually there is um there is consumption going on here um through HLS. Um and let's be fair, even if you look at audio and you're looking at this show, for example, uh this show is 90 minutes long. Let's assume that there is one uh chunk every 10 seconds. Um, so that would be 90 minutes long times six. That would be 540 separate downloads to download this particular show if it was with HLS, or one download if it was with MP3. This is the thing, it's really complicated, and the more that you dig in, the more complication arises because you then discover more things about the way that Apple do video, more things that the way that Spotify do video, more things um uh about um uh all of these, uh uh all of these uh tools. Um and I think this is the point that Albin was making in terms of in terms of alternate enclosure. Frankly, we're just catching up. We still don't really know how any of this is going to play out.

Sam Sethi 29:40

Well, one uh spanner in the works that you wrote about was Apple requires approval. It's a merger. All podcasters are wanting to submit video to Apple Podcasts will need to manually get an API key from Apple. Explain, James, because that confused me.

James Cridland 29:57

Yes. So if you want to um uh enable video on your on your podcast, the first thing that you have to do is go into Apple Podcasts, find an API key, download it, it's a.pem file, then upload it to your podcast host, captivate podogy buzzsprout so far. Um and once you have done that uh and I think uploaded a uh a bit of video, then you have to submit an approval request to Apple Podcasts, and Apple Podcasts will then manually approve your uh podcast to appear in video. Uh, according to some of the documentation that I've seen, it can take up to two weeks for Apple Podcasts to approve that request. Um, that may not be how long it takes in practice, it may be a lot faster in practice, but the documentation says up to two weeks. Um now I I should say uh um I don't know of any publishers or shows that have been disallowed uh so far. There is a suggestion that it's a technical quality check to help the platform with um, you know, the the the growth that they have uh and all of that. But um Apple Podcasts to get in audio is now pretty well instantaneous. Apple Podcasts to get into video, it's back to the old days of give yourself up to two weeks because otherwise Apple Podcasts might not actually approve your show. Porn. That's basically it. It's stopping porn. Well, I think it's exactly that. Yes. I think it's um I think it's stopping porn or movies, uh feature films. Yeah. Uh and and by the way, you you can totally understand why Apple definitely doesn't want porn on its system. Absolutely. And you can also understand um uh certainly seeing some of the problems that Spotify have had in the in the past with both porn and with uh movies, um, that uh Apple want to avoid that. Uh I would probably say, you know, you you can still um you can still stick porn in there once you've put a normal uh you know a normal uh show in there. So I'm not quite sure that that's going to be foolproof, but anyway, um uh there we go. Now, with all of this, so so far we've talked about additional cost from one podcast host, and we'll talk about others. Secondly, uh, we've talked about a pre-publishing approval process. With all of this, this does not happen with Spotify, this does not happen with YouTube. So um so you do have to ask yourself a question at some point. Um, why would somebody jump through all of these hoops and pay so much more to be on Apple Podcasts, which we're always told is a number three, if not number four, platform now? Um, uh an Apple show, no signs of wanting to actually market Apple Podcasts as a destination, which would be kind of useful. So um I I you do wonder with all of this, how many people are actually going to do that? And that again may be part of the buzzbrat conversations of you know, not necessarily worrying too much about downloads. Um, so you know, I don't know. It's uh it's uh again, um we're we're at such early days.

Captivate And Podigy Pricing Compared

Sam Sethi 33:18

Let's move on then, James. Now, Captivate announced that they're doing Apple video as well. What did they have to say?

James Cridland 33:25

Yeah, so they are charging on up to 1,000 video plays for a$12 a month add-on. So you just buy an add-on and away they go. Um, they uh are doing it at 720p uh in terms of um in terms of uh resolution, um because well partially because um uh that's really the size that you need on on an on an Apple phone. At the moment, um Apple Podcasts isn't going to be available on Apple TV with video, so therefore there's absolutely no point in doing 1080p. Uh so you might as well not. Um, but um if you go over a thousand video plays, then you start being charged in terms of bandwidth. Um you cannot see their bandwidth calculator until you have been approved for Apple Podcasts video. Um, there is no way of uh doing that. How do I know? Because I tried. So uh in terms try to break all of these. It's got been your job this week. Yeah. So in terms of that, um, that is um, you know, that is fine. Again, you know, captivate's full HLS, it's uh full Apple Podcasts uh video the way that Apple uh want it, up to 720p in this particular case. You can go above that. You talk to Rob.walsh at global.com uh and you ask him very nicely, and he will do that uh after saying you do know it's going to cost you more. I think that that makes a lot of sense. Right now, there is no point in going above 720p. Um, and I think that that makes um uh perfect sense. Uh again, they're not supporting the alternate enclosure yet, but that is something that they have said that they want to support. Just the same as Buzz Brown has said. It is something that we want to support, but not yet.

Sam Sethi 35:19

So I listened to that same very long podcast that you did, which is called In and Around Podcasting, which had Mark Asquith back. Um and uh don't know where he's been, but he's back.

James Cridland 35:30

Ah, yes. Now he was talking about uh some other form of alternate enclosure, but they have which is which is even more complicated. Okay.

Sam Sethi 35:41

I all I heard was alternative enclosure MP4 but not HLS. And I was thinking, okay, fine, well that's what you're doing.

James Cridland 35:47

Yeah, no, so no, actually, what they're doing is not uh uh what they're doing is something which isn't the alternate enclosure that we know. It's something which is an alternative if you want to put different audio to your video. So if you are, let's just say pocket casts, okay? Pocket cast only takes audio from an MP3, um, you know, from an enclosure in your RSS feed. Um, the way that some people are doing um are doing uh video and audio is that the audio is just the audio track from the video and they strip that out and they make an MP3 out of it. Um what Captivate are allowing you to do is have an alternative enclosure where you can upload an MP3 if you want to. So a proper mastered for audio version of your video podcast, um, which I think is brilliant. I think it makes a lot of sense. I wish that they hadn't have called it an alternative enclosure, because all of a sudden that has confused the life out of everyone. Well, they confuse me, that's for certain. So um, but uh they are talking about okay, you you upload your video, and if you want separate audio, then you can upload some some alternative audio there as well, and I think that that is a brilliant thing for any podcast hosting company to be doing, so that they're not just taking the video file and just um scraping the audio track off that.

Sam Sethi 37:30

How does the app read that? Because we don't know what field to read. The enclosure is what? The enclosure is the alternative audio and the HLS is in the API. Is that it?

James Cridland 37:41

Yeah, exactly right. Exactly right. So the enclosure, you the the normal standard enclosure will be the MP3 file, the audio. Right. Which um uh and and you can upload if you're with Captivate, you can upload a special MP3 file. It isn't just the the audio that you've um that you've uh grabbed. Um what a podcast app won't see is it won't see, of course, the video, because the video is through Apple's proprietary uh API or super secret API, as I like to call it, and they don't like me saying I'm sticking with proprietary to like anyway.

Sam Sethi 38:16

Moving on then, like London buses. Here's a third one. Podigy out of Germany have also announced that they're going to support not only the Apple Podcast, but they claim that they are also supporting YouTube and Spotify. They say they're the first to support video podcast distribution to all three major platforms. What are they doing then, James?

James Cridland 38:36

Yeah, and I think this is a really good thing for them to be doing. So this is proper video podcast support. This is video podcast support that not even Flightcast is offering, where you have uh one video file that you upload to Podigy. Podgy will send that to YouTube, will send that to Spotify, will send that to Apple Podcasts, job done, tick, and away they go. Um, the way that they are charging is four video episodes, so they're charging by episode of up to 30 minutes per month. Um, and that's basically the way that they are uh charging uh for that. So there's no complicated thing about downloads or anything else. It's four video episodes of up to 30 minutes per month. Um, and I think that that's not a bad way of charging, to be honest. But um, no, I think that that looks, I mean, it's really clear, isn't it? You you get a certain amount of video, great, you get unlimited audio, fantastic. Uh, and your video goes everywhere that you watch video podcasts, other than Netflix, of course. So uh I think it's a pretty good uh plan, to be honest.

Sam Sethi 39:47

Again, I think they're being uh wisely cautious, they're they're setting a limited amount, seeing what the usage is, and then maybe they'll open the doors a little bit more. But they talked about the alternative enclosure as well, James. What are they doing?

HLS Radar And Early Video Boosts

James Cridland 40:01

Um, they do uh I asked them about the alternative enclosure or the alternate enclosure, uh, because as we know, those are two separate things. But anyway, uh I asked them about the alternate enclosure, which um uh if if you are still playing catch-up on this, would allow every other open podcast app to also show video. Uh, and um they uh would like to support it. Um, and uh they've said that uh you know that that's definitely a thing, but at the moment they are still looking at the implications of adding that. So pretty well the same answer that we've got from Captivate and the same answer that we got from Budsprout as well.

Sam Sethi 40:37

Okay. Now, friend of the show, John Spurlock, is doing something quite interesting. He's got his HLS podcast radar. What's he pointing his little gun at and what's the results?

James Cridland 40:49

Yeah, so he has a website which is hls.livewire.io, and this is um a listing of recent podcast episodes that are publishing HLS, so that's um the technology that Apple is using, but that are publishing HLS as an alternate enclosure. So this is what we uh ideally want everybody to be doing, to make their video podcasts also available as um as a uh HLS alternate enclosure, which uh would allow anyone to um see the video version and to link to that. Um, and if you're using podcast apps like Fountain or Podcast Guru or Podcast Addict, uh, or indeed TrueFans, um then you can uh already watch video in this way. Um so John has been capturing all of these things. He's noted that Flightcast has done a load of alternate enclosures using HLS, which is good. So hurrah for them. Um, and um, but you know, basically anybody that is producing HLS video using the alternate enclosure is with the HLS Um uh podcast radar website that uh John has put together, which is uh really nice. And he breaks it down in terms of you know what people are using in terms of um in terms of resolution and you know and all of that and everything else. So yes, it's a good uh it's a good site to have a look at. It's great for testing. Thanks, John.

Sam Sethi 42:20

Uh love it. Fantastic. Yeah. Does all of this video matter? Has there been an uplift in the number of people streaming Apple Podcasts?

James Cridland 42:32

Well, according to one case study, uh there has been. Uh it's been an amazing uh thing from uh according to Transistor, who um are on the record uh uh of saying that they will be doing Apple Podcasts video. Um they say that it's going to be absolutely wonderful. And according to primary technology from Stephen Robles, which is a show which is on the Transistor Network, it doubles your plays in Apple Podcasts when you add video, and it has no effect on your YouTube audience, which is just as important for Stephen Robles, obviously, because that's where he makes a ton of his money. So uh according to that one case study, then it has an incredible effect. One should not forget, though, that Apple Podcasts is promoting the heck out of video right now. And Stephen Robles is uh primary technology, maybe one of three video podcasts at the moment, which are available in the tech um uh category, and uh will probably have been promoted an awful lot on the front page of all of the uh of all of the Apple Podcast apps globally. Um so I think to be honest, that it's a lovely um it's a lovely uh piece from Justin, but I think to be honest, it's not necessarily um uh anything more than Apple Podcasts are so keen to promote anything to do with video right now. And you will not get that if you are among the um the many thousands that add video to your show in the next six months. You won't get that. The only reason that Stephen got that is firstly, he produces great content, but also secondly, um, he was one of the only content producers to be producing it, in my humble opinion.

Sam Sethi 44:21

Yeah, I mean, shine a light and guess what? Yeah, you know what will happen.

James Cridland 44:25

Yeah. They the the one thing that I found interesting about that story, though, wasn't necessarily the numbers. That's fine. It's um pointing out that if you are a paid subscriber to primary technology, uh um then you do not get any access to the video. So you've paid lots more more money to get an ad-free version of the podcast, but Apple Premium Podcast subscriptions doesn't have video in it. Slow hand clap for Appleware. Uh I'm sorry. Hang on a minute.

Sam Sethi 45:00

They're still taking a cut of that subscriber revenue. So what the 30% down?

James Cridland 45:06

30%.

Sam Sethi 45:08

Yeah, but my point being, so they're getting they're going, you just said it, they're going to announce a cut of the advertising revenue. Not public yet, but they will announce it. Hopefully not 30%. But they're taking 30% of the subscription revenue. It's the same HLS file. Why aren't they showing it?

James Cridland 45:27

Um well, it would it be the same HLS file? Because it could it could have ads in it, and so you might have to upload a separate uh separate video.

Sam Sethi 45:35

Yeah, I mean it's down to the hosts, down to the host to send them an ad-free version. I mean, you've got Spotify and YouTube demanding that of hosts, haven't you already?

James Cridland 45:44

Yeah, and and you know, you you could still do it the current way that Apple Podcasts are doing it, which is you you you can actually go to Apple Podcasts Connect and upload. Um so yeah, um, so that I think is a is a miss. You you can ignore the fact that there's no chapters with video at the moment. There's that there's no none of the fancy read-along transcripts or any of that. But uh actually actively turning video off for the people who are paying you money seems a bit of a seems a bit of a mess. Now that might just be something that Apple, you know, they're getting round to it and um and they'll fix it relatively soon, a bit like Apple TV, making uh podcasts, making video podcasts available on Apple TV, which lunacy they don't. Um but I think uh new hardware, new hardware needed. So uh yeah, but but you know, so that for me was the standout that actually there is a not good um that there's uh not a good connection between paid subscribers, what you get as a paid subscriber through Apple Podcasts, and uh Apple Podcast video. Um, and that's something uh I think that Apple Podcasts really needs to fix.

Spotify Video Risks Permanent Lock In

Sam Sethi 47:02

Now, talking of lunacy, let's go to Spotify. They've been doing video shows for over 10 years now, according to Rain. But James, our friend Dave Jones highlighted something about Spotify's video and RSS. What are Spotify doing?

James Cridland 47:20

Yeah, so if you're thinking of using a podcast hosting company to upload video to Spotify, maybe you're thinking about using PodyG, for example, or Libsyn. That ease of use, and there's clear ease of use, you upload a video file and they do it all for you. But that comes with an incredible cost because according to Spotify, you will be forever locked into using your current podcast hosting company. Um Spotify gives you during Forever. Forever. Um Spotify gives you warnings in the sign-up process that says, This cannot be undone. I understand that my Spotify podcast will be exclusively managed through Libsyn, um won't automatically transfer to another hosting provider, and this cannot be undone. And then you go into another screen and it adds another thing saying this cannot be undone. More than that, it says this permanently replaces your RSS feed with API-based distribution. Hello, it's James in the edit here. Now, while Spotify doesn't deny any of this, those warnings are on Podigy's website, not Spotify's. So it isn't Spotify saying this directly, it's the UX on Podigy's website. And now back to the edit. Now I see uh I've got a page on the PodNews website which shows that in the last 30 days, PodNews itself has seen 3,500 podcasts switch podcast hosting company. It's one of the things that RSS does. It's part of the freedom that RSS gives you, that you can move, you can find better deals, you can find different monetization options as your podcast grows. BuzzSprout is a great podcast host. It's not great for everybody. So if you ever need to move off BuzzSprout, BuzzSprout will help you move off. Unless, of course, you've signed up with a podcast hosting company that is publishing your video episodes directly to Spotify because Spotify very clearly here twice say that in Poddiges UX that this cannot be done and it will permanently uh stop your RSS feed from working, and you won't be able to um uh change things uh ever again. That is a incredible lock-in, I think. Um and I I I should just point out Libsyn launched Spotify video distribution last week. They don't mention it at all in their documentation. Podygy doesn't even have documentation about connecting your show with Spotify video, but there again, why would they? Because for them, they're rubbing their hands together going, brilliant, we've got this client for life now because they can't move away. I think it is an astonishing, astonishing thing.

Sam Sethi 50:19

Yeah, I mean I I and breaks RSS at the same time, right?

James Cridland 50:24

Yeah, um and breaks and breaks RSS for Spotify completely. Rob Grunley was right. Uh, yes, it it's it's it breaks RSS in the same way that Apple's um uh super secret API breaks RSS. Um so yeah. Um, but the I mean this to me, uh it just looks it it just looks really bad. So I I would say to anyone who is considering uh using a podcast hosting company to upload video to Spotify, do not do that. You can do it for free on the Spotify website, it'll take you a couple more minutes, um, and and I appreciate that, but you're not being locked into a podcast hosting company that at some point in the future they may be bought by a Nazi and you want to move away. So that's kind of important. But uh uh what what you're currently doing there is you're is you're backing into a into a cul-de-sac that you can never get out of. So yeah. One of the things I mean, backing into a cul-de-sac would be helpful, wouldn't it? Because then you could actually get out. But if you drove in frontways into a cul-de-sac and your car didn't have reverse, then I'm glad I've I've cleared that up. I'm so glad.

Human Announcer 51:38

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

London Podcast Show Preview And Parties

James Cridland 51:47

Who have you been talking to this week?

Sam Sethi 51:50

The wonderful, wonderful Jason Carter, the uh founder and person who runs the London Podcast Show. You're on the board of it, I believe, or you're an advisor to it, or something to that effect, aren't you? I am indeed, yes. I'm on the International Advisory Board, I believe, yes. Excellent. Well, I thought I'd find out from Jason what's going on at this year's show, what can we look forward to, what's the highlights, and where, more importantly, are all the parties?

SPEAKER_02 52:15

Limey, where do I start? Lots going on. You're right, fifth year. It's just getting bigger and bigger as an event. We're super excited about it. My personal sort of highlights with where we are with it is just seeing the take-up from people across the UK and around the world that really want to come to the show this year, and also just in terms of partnerships and new partners on board. We've got brilliant retention in terms of the big headliners like iHeart and Global and Bauer coming in for the first time, continuing to have YouTube and BBC Studios and Amazon and Spotify and Audio Boom and ACast, and the list goes on. So, what people can expect is a fantastic program. We've got international speakers from Morton Strunch, from Podomo, from Jesper Rapburn from ABC Australia to Greg Glende from ACAST, Cory Leighton, Max Kitewell from PAVE. The list goes on. I'm not going to read through 400 speakers. I should say that good timing here to have this chat because all stages are live today. So if you go on the website, you can see the full picture. You know, we've got a really broad kind of coverage in terms of content. Really pleased to see new stages such as the international stage, which is sponsored by Podmome. We also have a create a first stage, which is partnered by Arcade, which is all about the creator economy, and we've got some great speakers. I think in terms of value for people attending, the networking got bigger and bigger. So there is a huge amount of networking at the conference itself, from leaders in podcast breakfasts to freelancers meetups to international meetups to Clatten and Pass holders get togethers, executive dinners in the evenings, darts in the evenings. So lots of that. I think also what pleases us is the global community is really engaged with the opportunity of coming to this event for everyone to meet each other. There are so many other events that are actually happening around or during the week of the podcast show, and really pleased that we're a conduit to bringing the whole kind of global community together in London. So my take on this is that people will descend on London, meet each other. Of course, there's loads of sessions, but networking is the number one reason really people come to the event, and that they leave with a packed address book full of new contacts and getting business done.

Sam Sethi 54:31

That's generally been my point of view. Yes, I try and get to as many seminars as I can, but it's also just getting face-to-face time with friends from around the globe. I did ask for a third day. I guess that's never gonna come. I mean, it's so packed. I mean, just simply the event itself, you know, has so many streams that run through the day on both days. It feels like you miss out occasionally. Was there ever a thought of a third day?

SPEAKER_02 54:57

There's never say nether. Uh, I would say to you, Sam. In any event, there's the launch phase, people buying in and seeing that it's for real, and then making sure that it stands up and then being established. And we're now, I'd like to feel it a point that the industry feels it's of real value to have the podcast show. And now we're at year five. We're definitely at that point where it's actually review time. What do we do? What kind of packages do we have? Do we have more days? Do we look at other locations? All of those things. They're not off the table. And as you know, we've been throwing those things around for a year or two, but it's about making sure that the Jewel in the Crown event, the London show that we do, we get right. And we're always mindful or thinking about what's the next iteration of the podcast show. And so the day three question is not a never. It's one that we're looking at amongst many other things, really. I think the important thing is we're constantly talking to the industry, whether it's the hundred partners that we have at the show, or speakers, or people like yourself, or we have an advisory board. The show is there to support the industry. So we take the lead from you guys.

Sam Sethi 56:04

One of the rumors flying around was there might be an international podcast show from you guys. Anything you'd like to say? No.

SPEAKER_02 56:16

All I would say is it's the same point, really, is that it's really important to make sure that we get a perfectly or as perfectly formed event in London first off, and then move to the next stage. In terms of thinking about the wider expansion of the event to support the industry, as I keep saying, it's not off the table, and it is something that we would continue to consider.

Sam Sethi 56:39

Okay. Most important thing, where's the parties this year? What parties can people go to from the London podcast show?

SPEAKER_02 56:46

But like I said, there are so many, and there are some that I find out about after the show. It's like, oh god, I didn't realise that Sonza had a thing in Frederick's restaurant on Upper Street, or that there was a CAA thing down the road. Our official party is actually with Patreon this year. As a Patreon partnered for the first time last year, and they've joined forces with us, and we will be doing a big party at the standard on the first day of the show on the Wednesday, but with DJs, rooftop, sunset party, cocktails, all that kind of thing. So that would be where I put the flag in the sand as the one to go to, but I would because it's our official party. It's an important year for us as well because it's the fifth edition of the show. So there are things like we've got on the Tuesday, a fifth birthday, drinks, reception. As you will know, there's some lovely British pubs in Upper Street and Islington where the show's located. So we've taken on board some of those pubs and people can create a meetups and various things like that. There's so much going on. I'm seeing every day other events that are also happening in the week. We're really excited about it, Sam. We're really excited about this year. And we're beginning to be a better world machine in terms of delivery. So I'm not as manic as I may have been in previous years.

Sam Sethi 58:00

Yeah, in terms of numbers, have you blown through the numbers this year in terms of attendees?

SPEAKER_02 58:04

No, because as I've mentioned before, we have 6,000 or just over 6,000 visitors across the two days. And actually, I made a decision uh I think before the last show not to go beyond that because we want to make sure it's a comfortable experience in the main venue. And there was one year, I think it was year two, that I think we pushed that a bit too far. You may recall, and there was a lot of queuing, and it was less comfortable for sessions, and we don't want to damage the experience for people that are at the show. But what I will say is that our partners coming on board and also our delegate passes are way ahead of last year, and last year was way ahead of previous years, but the ultimate number will remain the same, which is just over 6,000 across the two days of the event. So, you know, your point about day three and those kind of things. It is time to begin to think about where we go next and what we do next.

Sam Sethi 58:56

So if I haven't got a ticket and I still want to get one, where could I go?

SPEAKER_02 59:01

So there's still time. I think the important thing is to go to the podcast show London.com website. This is the final week where if you purchase a pass, you'll save. It does increase on the 13th, may to the final ticket rate. So I'd encourage anyone to do so now if they want to kind of get best value. And yeah, they're all still available. We've got our day gold passes and our platinum two-day passes. Silver passes are sold out, unfortunately. But yeah, tickets still available.

Sam Sethi 59:27

Thank you, Jason. I can't wait. It's the most exciting event for me of the year for podcasting. I love it. And um, yeah, me and James are going to be doing a live show as well on the last day. James is doing the kickoff with the report cards, so lots for us as pod news to go and get excited. Look forward to catching up with you and having a drink, mate.

SPEAKER_02 59:47

Yeah, you you too. I must I must say that James Cridlin's, he's become an annual thing that he kicks off the first morning on the first day of the show, and it's always a roadblock. He's doing something right, isn't he? Very much looking forward to meeting you guys. We'll see you very soon. Thanks, Jason.

James Cridland 1:00:02

The excellent Jason Carter from the podcast show. We will be there. If you are going to be there and you are a power supporter, then please drop us an email weekly at podnews.net and we will tell you uh where the beers are. Weekly at podnews.net uh is where to get in touch with us there. Um if you can please come on the first day, the the Wednesday, get there nice and early so that you're in there from 9 a.m. and go straight, go straight to my opening uh keynote thing. Because it's gonna be a long one. No, go go straight. I I'm I am only talking for 15 minutes maximum.

Sam Sethi 1:00:40

Oh, geez, Louise.

James Cridland 1:00:42

I'm only talking for 15 minutes maximum. So go straight in there, go straight, and you will find me going through the pod news report card for the year, where I am uh taking a look at some of the big news headlines, but also going through the pod news report card. Uh, the results of the pod news report card for this year. We had a good number of people uh significantly higher this year than last year uh who had taken uh who have taken part. Um I've got uh how everybody is scoring in terms of that and some of the uh nice and less nice things that people have been saying. Uh so please come and uh see that. Uh also um uh day two, uh 10 to 1, go and see Sam talking about how podcasting is evolving from single apps to creator portals. Uh, what will you be talking about there, Sam?

Sam Sethi 1:01:31

Um one of the things that's been a constant theme for me, looking at beyond just um podcasting as an audio or video platform, but looking at blogs, looking at merch, and how that whole creator economy focuses, you know, think substack, think patrons, think think supercast. I think that's the way the market's going. I'll also be showing some new stuff that we've done on TrueFan. So if you want to see co-listen and chat, you want to see premium RSS working, not just demoed on a slide, uh, then come along. Yeah, I'll be showing some of that stuff.

James Cridland 1:02:06

Yeah, that would be uh excellent. And of course, we will both be doing the Pod News Weekly Review this very show, live uh from uh one of the tiny little rooms live from the uh from the show um at uh 10 past four on uh the Thursday afternoon. Uh and uh looking forward to uh seeing you there. Turn up early, uh, because that is a good plan.

Inception Point AI Signals Shift

Sam Sethi 1:02:29

Uh let's get back to our favourite company of the year then. Uh Inception Point AI, James. What's going on with them? What they announce now?

James Cridland 1:02:37

Well, they they haven't announced anything. Oh but I did notice I did notice that uh all of a sudden they've stopped publishing new shows, which is very strange. They've been publishing more than 200 shows a day, and all of a sudden they stopped doing that. I also noticed that when you go and listen to some of their output, there's no ads in there anymore. And I thought, oh, that's weird. There's no ads in there anymore. They've stopped publishing new podcasts. What's going on there then? Um I suspect that there is something going on there then. Uh I'm not quite sure what's going on there then. Um, but I think that there's definitely something going on. But I did ask Janine Wright, the CEO, uh, and I asked her, look, you've stopped auto-publishing new shows, um, which you've been doing for a long, long time, and you also have no ads anymore. Uh, and uh she uh sent back a statement, and here is that statement.

SPEAKER_06 1:03:44

We're in the middle of an ongoing platform migration and commercial transition, so some publishing and monetization signals may look unusual from the outside during the handoff. We're not commenting on counterparties or active negotiations, but the business is very much moving forward. There's a much more interesting story here than the tired AI slop caricature. I'll be speaking about the future of AI and podcasting at the podcast show in London on Thursday, May 21 at 2.20 p.m. on the Origin stage, and I'd encourage anyone interested in what we're actually building to come hear it directly. I am an AI voice, and I was made by Wondercraft.

James Cridland 1:04:21

You were. Um, I I thought it was only fair to put her her words into AI uh and read it. I thought that that's probably the right thing. Anyway, uh, yes, so that's interesting, isn't it? What's going on there then? Watch this space, I figure.

Sam Sethi 1:04:35

I I love the active negoti negotiations part. I wonder. No, I look, I'm I should I even speculate.

Human Announcer 1:04:42

This is a jingle to cover up an edit on the Pard News Weekly Review.

Earnings Awards Events And Industry Numbers

Sam Sethi 1:04:47

James, let's move on. Let's move on. That's a good idea. We talked about uh Apple earlier today. Um feels like hours ago. Um Apple announced their financials at the end of last week. They talked about their services revenue, which includes Apple podcast subscriptions, which reached an all-time high, James, of$31 billion, up 16.3%. As I mentioned though, James, they never mentioned the actual word podcast in there. They weren't at WWDC either. Um does that mean I win the bet?

James Cridland 1:05:19

No. Uh we've got to wait until WWDC. Uh because that's what you said. You didn't say anything about the the earnings, the earnings call. Apple doing very well, certainly in terms of services revenue. Um it's uh Tim Apple's second last, I believe. He's got one more uh uh to go, and then um it ends up being John Apple. So uh looking forward to John Apple taking over there.

Sam Sethi 1:05:41

So my wife pointed out something very interesting to me. His title is executive chairman, not chairman and that has a very distinct difference. So he will actually still be hands on as in the executive element of the day to day running of Apple. He's not stepping down as most people think. To do um a complete handoff and just be a chairman of the board.

unknown 1:06:05

Right.

James Cridland 1:06:05

So that means that uh Tim Apple um as executive chairman of uh Apple, he still has a day-to-day piece of work. Guess what? So does Daniel Eck. Daniel Eck is executive chairman of Spotify. So people were talking about him stepping down. He's not stepping down, he's got two co-CEOs, but he's still involved as well. So that's interesting. So basically two uh executive chairmen still very much involved in the in the business.

Sam Sethi 1:06:37

And it would make sense given him uh knowledge that he would have of operational functions and also the relationships he has with government and world data. It would make crazy sense for him to step away completely.

James Cridland 1:06:51

Yeah, yeah. So I think uh I think uh and and there's equivalents at uh Google as well. And I think uh all of that makes a bunch of sense. So hurrah and well done for for to uh Tim Apple and to uh John Apple, uh as uh they will be known from here on in. Um more uh numbers though, weren't there, uh, from uh other folk?

Sam Sethi 1:07:13

Yeah, ACARS have published their Q1 results. Sales were up 20%, 26% up in North America. Um the company actually made a profit for the first time ever. So well done to Greg and this quarter.

James Cridland 1:07:28

In this quarter, that's right. Yeah, in the in the uh in quarter one, they've never made a profit in the past. They have in other quarters, they made half a million, so it's not um it's not much. But uh yeah, they have done uh well in terms of uh that. Their litens landed at more than one billion for the quarter, with their average revenue per liton up 19%. That's probably the most important number uh because it does show you how good they are at selling um and how good they are at managing their yield as well. So um, yeah, some nice numbers out of uh ACAST as well. The drinks are on them at the podcast show. Well, the ACASTRMs will be open. The ACASTAMs will be open at the same time as the Pod News Weekly Review is recording. Um, but I am uh uh as will, by the way, um uh my understanding, uh the Sony Music uh entertainment um stand is also having uh drinks as well, which I've been invited to. So um uh yes, I'm gonna have to be very quick at drinking beer.

Sam Sethi 1:08:33

They'll save you some, James. Don't worry. Yes.

James Cridland 1:08:37

Now, uh one thing though that I did notice uh around uh ACAST though, and this came from Podscribe. Um Podscribe released its industry rankers for April for podcasts, for advertisers, and for publishers, and in their publishers' ranker, there was a change. ACast is now smaller than Audio Boom. So Audio Boom having a good time of it as well in terms of their numbers. So um there's a company uh worthwhile watching, I think.

Sam Sethi 1:09:07

Let's whizz around the world, James, very quickly. Um in the US, it looks like uh James Murdoch is looking to buy Vox Media.

James Cridland 1:09:16

Brilliant. Uh good for James Murdoch. Moving on. Uh words of encouragement and thought. Yes. A bunch of awards have been announced. Uh the Publisher Podcast Awards has just announced its short list, so hurrah. Uh, the Golden Lobes announced its winners as well as a full list on the Pod News website uh for that. Um, really uh good fun um seeing uh the uh photographs that I got from the Golden Lobes and seeing the PodNews logo uh on there. I I rather badly cropped a photograph purely so that I wasn't cropping my own logo. Because I thought, because I thought, look, there's my logo on there. If if I move this, if I move this image up a little bit, then it'll look a bit better. But if I move it down a little bit, then you'll get to see my logo. So I'm gonna do that. So apologies to whoever it was who I ended up doing that uh to. Um many congratulations to Pablo Torre Finds Out, who is the winner of the audio reporting Pulitzer Prize for a story about the Los Angeles Clippers. Um uh, you know, barbers, I think, uh, you know, hairdressers, all types of hairdressers really ought to be focused on. So I'm pleased that Pablo Torre Finds Out has been uh doing that. Uh and also uh the nominations for the Clue Awards have been uh announced. Um, and uh that included uh the recipients of its prestigious Crime Fighter of the Year honour, which have gone to three Jeffrey Epstein uh survivors. Let's not um stop talking about that because that's kind of important. Um events that are happening over the weekend include PodFest Cairo in the Tahrir campus of the AUC and the New Zealand Podcast Summit in Auckland. Um so uh I hope that uh both uh folks are enjoying uh that particular or those particular events. Uh also the Banff World Media Festival. Ooh, that sounds exciting. Um that's in uh June. Uh among the speakers, Georgie Holt from Flight Story and Sheffield Dogfest, which is a really big documentary festival. Um it's on its 33rd edition. Um, that is happening in early June. They've just announced its full industry program. There's also a public program in there as well for you to go to.

Human Announcer 1:11:35

The TechSoup on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland 1:11:39

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

Fountain’s Plan For Music On RSS

Sam Sethi 1:11:44

One of the things I did last week was I went to an event in London run by Fountain, which is all about how Fountain is supporting music uh on the podcast platform and using RSS. And basically I uh got a chance to talk to Oscar Mary, uh, Dovi Datt and uh Nick as well for the team there. It was a really well-run event. Um, and so I thought, you know what, let's get Oscar on the show. Let's get him to tell us all about what Fountain had been doing with music artists and how he sees the future of music in podcasting.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:20

Yeah, so maybe it would be useful for me to start briefly just with a high-level overview of how music on OpenRSS actually works. And the starting point for all of this was actually a proposal that came out of the podcasting 2.0 community to introduce a new tag to the RSS feed called the medium tag. And this allows publishers of RSS feeds to signal to apps what type of content they are hosting within the feed. The default is just that podcast. So if you don't include a medium tag in the feed, then apps should just assume that this RSS feed is a show and all of the item elements are episodes. But the medium tag allows us to signal to apps that we're doing something a little bit different. And the way that music posted on RSS feeds is enabled is just by setting the medium tag to medium equals music. Alongside the medium tag, we also came up with the concept of a publisher feed. And this is again signaled by the medium tag, allows you to have a kind of higher level entity that sits above the main RSS feeds with the items that sit within it. So when you combine the medium tag with the publisher feed, what this allows you to do is host music on OpenRSS. So the main RSS feeds with the actual audio items become albums, the items become tracks, and the publisher feeds become the artist profiles, which allow you to reference back to each of the album feeds. So this is how we've been able to create this new ecosystem of music hosted on OpenRSS that can be ingested by any podcast or music app in the same way that it works for podcasts. And we think this is really exciting because it ushers in what we hope is a new era of open music distribution where artists can publish once and have their music ingested in any app in a more kind of open and democratized way. There's also a whole bunch of other benefits that we get from integrating the music into the existing podcast ecosystem, things like music podcasts, things like live streams, which I can talk more about. But that's the kind of background to all of this. And Fountain, as a hosting company, we offer podcast hosting, but we also wanted to make it really easy for artists who are curious about this new developing space to get started with music hosted on RSS. And so we offer a very simple and uh affordable plan for artists. It's just one dollar a month to host your music and have it distributed to all of the modern podcast apps that support this new standard. There's a lot of exciting things happening, including the music podcasts. And yeah, the event that we did last week was more a demonstration, especially to people in the UK, people in London, on how this all works. We got a couple of bands down to the event just to showcase everything about how this is working.

Sam Sethi 1:15:44

The event was really good. You had three or four bands. The idea was that people would load the fountain app, they would fill up their wallet with some micropayments, some sats, and they would be able to stream the SAT live to the band while they were playing, but also people could be online on one of the podcasting apps, not just Fountain, so Podverse, TrueFans, Podfriends, etc., and many others. And they could also watch the concert at the same time stream SAT. So this direct from fan payment is really the crux of the model. Is it because Spotify doesn't give independent music artists any real feedback or payment? Is that where the problem started? Or is it just a case of here's just any alternative model that we just want to try?

Direct Fan Payments Inside The Player

SPEAKER_01 1:16:30

Yeah, this is such a great question. I think there's a few different reasons why there's this organic community of people that are passionate about music and trying to build an alternative to the traditional streaming platforms. And this is very organic. It's not just fountain, there's many people, you know, pushing this forward, and it's really exciting to see. But I think from my perspective, there's a couple of key reasons why artists are interested in this. The first is many independent artists don't really make any money whatsoever from the mainstreaming apps, Spotify and Apple. You know, it's essentially nothing if you're a small independent artist. And these artists are looking for an alternative way to make money for their art. And often that will come down to direct fan support. And don't get me wrong, there are amazing platforms out there for direct fan support like Patreon, like Bandcamp. These platforms are incredible, and a lot of artists are able to support themselves and support their work by using these platforms. The kind of issue that we see and many see with the direct fan support platforms like Patreon is that they're kind of separated from the music listening experience and the music discovery experience. So if you're supporting an artist on a Patreon, you know, it's very hard to share that support with others. It's very difficult to, in the moment that you're listening to the music, then go and find the artist's profile on Patreon and support them that way. So the whole kind of reason for exploring this new music ecosystem is to maintain the benefit of direct artist support whilst integrating that support into the listening experience. So I can just discover new music, I can listen to that music, and then I can support all direct from the player in a way that's interoperable across many apps. So that's the primary reason. And when you speak to artists, they're really, really excited about that. And then the other kind of reason for this is it's 2026, why can't we have this reason? Which is music podcasts. Obviously, everyone listening to this loves podcasts, and we're all very excited about how it's an open ecosystem where creators and listeners have choice. It's 2026, why can't we have music in podcasts? It's so easy to start a podcast. You can choose one of many different hosts. Why can't we have that for music podcasts? And it's because music is so locked down and controlled by these centralized platforms. So the ability for this new open music ecosystem built on RSS to allow anybody out there to just start a podcast, pick the tracks that they want to play, play them in full, and have the people that are listening to that podcast not only be able to, you know, hear the track, click through to the track and the artist profile and the app that they're listening on, but also support the music podcast and support the artists. We just think this is so cool and it's such a refreshing new way to discover music, to support the artists. And it should be something that the podcast industry should have. We should have music podcasts, it should not be locked down in the way that it is. Now, obviously, it's still very, very nascent. You know, there are thousands of artists that are participating in this ecosystem, but there's still a long way to go to get to the kind of numbers that we see on Spotify and Apple. But yeah, those two reasons, the combination of discovery and direct listener support, and then just the ability to play music in podcasts is kind of why we're pushing for this. And yeah, all of the artists that we speak to are very, very excited about it.

Sam Sethi 1:20:19

One of the tags that exist is called the license tag. Now, you talked about this when I came and saw you in London. Tell me more about the license tag, and then more importantly, what is the music license tag that is now available?

SPEAKER_01 1:20:32

Yeah, so it's very important that artists, you know, have control over their music and how that music is used, especially when the music is hosted on a on an RSS feed that's publicly accessible to anybody. And the kind of ethos that we as a community have agreed on and that artists are bought into when they join this ecosystem of open music on RSS, is that the music is freely available for anybody to play or anybody to use in a podcast or anybody to display in their music listening app. There's one caveat though, and this is what the license kind of outlines, which is if as an app developer, if as a you know website, if as a player you want to include this music, you need to give the listener a way to support the artist. So it essentially says if you ingest this music, you need a donation button on the player on the page where the music is being played. And that's the kind of guideline that the value for value license outlines. And that's kind of the the only rule if you're going to kind of play in this game.

Sam Sethi 1:21:51

Now, given that so I'm just gonna take a step back. So there's a music artist that they come to Fountain and they host with you, it's one dollar, they go into their admin console, they set their license up. All rights are still reserved for the music artists. It's not like you're giving your rights away, you're just giving permission to for the music to be used in other shows. I then, as a fan, discover that artist on one or many platforms. I can then pay that artist as I stream and listen to the music artist. I can go to their publisher page and maybe find the discography of other tracks they have. They may have a pod role that tells me of other artists' friends they have as well. So this ecosystem of discovery then really opens out. And I think this is the most exciting part. I think you and I have been uh pushing this rock up a hill for a little while. I think with England Costello in the early days. And I think we have to take a step back to take a step forward. You know, we had the challenge of case end and L and address wallets and all these micropayment stuff. I think that's all settled down now. I think the next six months to a year, I think we can really start to see stability in the model of payments and then really fountain leading the charge on how music artists can really get into this new ecosystem. So given that all of that's working or starting to work now, one of the things that I think is a challenge is um when you want to mix it. We've got a friend, mutual friend, the podfather, Adam Curry. He did a show called Booster Gram Ball back in the day. So again, uh is this how you see maybe new radio? I don't want to call it radio as in traditional radio, but do you see this as a new form of radio as well, where uh somebody talks about music artists and mixes them into shows? Is that also something that you envisage coming along?

SPEAKER_01 1:23:41

Yeah, definitely. I think that live experiences are going to be a big part of this ecosystem. Obviously, we have the live item tag, um, which allows podcasters to go live via their RSS feed, and then they can turn that live, that live stream into an episode after the fact. And what's so cool about the way this all works is that the music references, as in with the metadata around which tracks were played during the live stream and then which plac which tracks are featured in the episode can be maintained as that content transitions from a live stream to an episode. So, yeah, live is definitely a big part of this. That's one of the things we wanted to demonstrate at the event. So whether you were at the gig and you supported live via the fountain app or just the QR code in the room, or whether you were streaming live from any of the supporting podcast apps, when you sent that donation, it the money would go in real time to the current playing artist. And this is what's so cool about programmable payments that work in a permissionless way between different apps. Now, I know you know over the past years, it it has been a challenge getting these standards kind of agreed in the community around how do we do micropayments, how do we do programmable money, how do we share the metadata between apps. But I do think we've made a lot of progress, especially in the last year. And ultimately, it doesn't really matter which protocol we use to send the money, as long as we do have an a way of doing open payments, then we can build these kind of experiences. And you know, when when you have artists being paid in real time for the performances that they're doing on a live stream, and then you can take that, you can move that to a podcast episode that people can listen to in any app. You can listen to these music podcasts in Apple Podcasts, you can listen to them in Overcast, they're freely available. Obviously, we'd like those apps to support the music reference metadata. That that's probably a long way off, especially for the likes of Apple Podcasts. But, you know, the fundamental building blocks of open distribution via RSS for music and open payments via, you know, we're using the Bitcoin Lightning Network, but the the way we've set it up, it's protocol agnostic. So we could use stable coins, we could use anything else really. These are amazing fundamentals for music distributed on RSS, and we just need more experimentation, more participation. And I think the the live event that we did last week was a great way to showcase that. And yeah, the artists absolutely love it. And for the people, you know, I was speaking to the sound engineer at the at the venue, and he was like, This is so cool, you know, we're we're creating a new form of live experience for artists and their fans where they can, you know, make a little bit extra on top of that ticket money, and then after the fact, you turn that into a music podcast, they can make another little bit extra. And I think in total, the artists are about almost$600 on the night, which you know may not sound like a lot, but for these artists, they're not getting paid that much for the gigs, and so it really does make a difference.

Sam Sethi 1:27:08

For those people that were new there on the night, did you get any feedback from them? What did they think of it all?

Premium RSS And Live Item Momentum

SPEAKER_01 1:27:13

They loved it. I think the chance to participate in a way where you can see your donation and you can see your message appear in the live chat, you can see yourself on the leaderboard, that's really cool. I think overall, for the people in the room though, they just were there for the music and it didn't make too much of a difference. But I think it's more for the people that aren't able to make it to the actual gig. They can watch the live stream, they can tune in, they can go and listen after the fact when it becomes a podcast episode. So I think it's more for people that aren't able to make it to go and see their favourite artists.

Sam Sethi 1:27:47

Now you've been working pretty hard on all of these standards, I know that. One of the things that you have also worked on is something called We haven't really decided on the final name. It was going to be called Secure RSS, Premium RSS. But basically it's a mechanism for encrypting the MP3, MP4 so that if an artist wanted or a podcaster wanted to do a full payment. So one of the challenges is that at the moment an artist has to, as you said earlier, send their audience, their fans, over to something like a Patreon, pay for the premium content over there, then bring back a private feed into the app and then make a payment. And it's totally disjointed. So I know you've and I have spoken in the past, but the idea is to have both freemium and premium content within the same RSS feed. Where are you now as Soundton on this? How have you evolved and are we calling it premium RSS? I guess.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:44

Yeah, so in a similar way to hosted on RSS, the ability for a podcaster to offer a premium variant of their episode that is in the RSS feed in a way where any app can understand it and present the payment option to the listener in any app without having to do some kind of API integration. This is a fundamental building block for open podcasting that will enrich the ecosystem and help podcasters make more money. I think it's something that as an ecosystem we should strive for and we should try and work together to define the standard. Now, currently there is no defined standard within either the podcasting 2.0 community or the podcast standards project, but the technology is there. You know, the ability to gate a premium variant of an episode via the alternate enclosure, which is how Fountain does it in our hosted RSS feeds, it's all possible. We just need to come together as a community. And, you know, maybe the podcast standards project is a great vehicle for this so that we can just define how this works, come up with a standard that everybody agrees upon, and then we can just any podcast host can offer this to their customers, and they don't have to go app by app and do an API integration for each one. They just put the metadata in the field. The app knows how to read that metadata and can facilitate the user payment. And then you know, that listener gets access to the premium content. So this is what we want to see. Fountain is doing it in a certain way, but we are completely open and flexible to go with whatever the community kind of moves towards. But I think the most important thing to get across is this is an amazing building block and a fundamental feature that OpenRSS should have. And we should try and work together to get the standard agreed, uh, and then every single host can adopt it.

Sam Sethi 1:30:57

Oh no, I'm 100% with you. I think it's also the way that hosts can take some of the large money that companies like Patreon and Substack are making and bring it back into the open ecosystem rather than giving it away over there. Yeah, we as CEO of TrueFounds have done much the same as what Fountain have done. So we use the alternative enclosure. I think you and I spoke at actually the London podcast show last year, if you remember, about using the primary enclosure for a clip, which explains what how the actual premium is working in terms of the alternative enclosure. And it also, I think you said something very clever, which was it doesn't break the RSS feed because apps like Apple and Spotify that don't support the alternative enclosure will still get that clip. So it was a great way forward, and I think we adjusted in TruFans to follow that model. I think with the recent HLS video announcements from Apple, I think again, I think it's been really interesting how many companies are finally beginning to understand what the alternative enclosure is because Transistor now, for example, has said they're gonna support the alternative enclosure because they're gonna put Apple's HLS in the API, but then they're gonna take that same HLS file and put it into the alternative enclosure and put the primary enclosure still for audio or MP4. I think the pieces are just beginning. I really feel like pieces are falling into place after two or three years of building the standards. I don't know. Do you feel that excited as well?

SPEAKER_01 1:32:26

Yeah, exactly. And it's so cool because you know, let's take, you know, an app like, for example, Pocket Cast, you know, if they do the work to support alternate enclosure parsing in order to support HLS video via alternate enclosure, then they already know how to work with the alternate enclosure. And then it won't be too much of a heavy lift to support alternate enclosure for other things like premium episode variants. So it's a massive step forward that hosts that are supporting the Apple Podcast video API are also going to put those HLS playlists in the alternate enclosure. And for any of the hosts that are doing this, please, please do put the HLS playlist in the alternate enclosure. It's a great way to keep video podcasting open. But yeah, I do think that will help cement the alternate enclosure as a really valuable tool for doing exactly what it says on the tin, which is providing alternate media formats. Video is one of them, but premium variants should be another one that we all look at. So yeah, hopefully, you know, once everyone gets through the implementation work of alternate enclosure for HLS video, then we can restart the discussion about premium episode variants, come to agreement on what the standard should be. And then, yeah, hosting companies can offer these premium services. There won't be a need to install a private feed and have two separate feeds and all of that, which is terrible UX for the listener. And your host can manage everything for you, and then apps only have to know how to pass the alternate enclosure and can offer that premium experience for listeners.

Sam Sethi 1:34:08

If you were a betting man, um, would you say that Apple will support the alternative enclosure? Would you say that Apple will support HLS in the primary enclosure?

SPEAKER_01 1:34:19

I honestly don't know. I don't know what their plans are, but I think the most important thing from my perspective is that the hosts, if they are going to support HLS video, you know, just add the alternate enclosure tag to your feeds, please. And that way, all of the long tail of podcast apps, which is what makes the podcast ecosystem so great, is that listener choice, they can have the option to add video playback via alternate enclosure.

Sam Sethi 1:34:45

Now, recently I've said it earlier on in this interview that you've become a host as well. And the idea is now that you provide audio and video. Video being MP4. Are you going to be supporting the Apple HLS API as well, do you think?

SPEAKER_01 1:35:01

Yeah, so we we currently support video via the alternate enclosure, but it's via HLS, so it works in pretty much the exact same way that the Apple Podcast spec works. And yeah, we are going to be uh supporting the Apple HLS video via their API as well. So that should be coming very soon.

Sam Sethi 1:35:22

Podigy out of Germany and Flight Path, no, Flightcast have uh already added Spotify and YouTube video support as well. Do you envisage over at Fountain also adding those two platforms to video?

SPEAKER_01 1:35:39

Yeah, I think potentially. I think for us, Fountain as a hosting company is really focused on helping podcasters make money via listener support, direct listener support, and also building community around their show. We think the social activity around your podcast is really important for the sustainability of your show, for the enjoyment of actually doing it, and also for growth, because we believe your audience are the best people to help uh you know grow your show and recommend it to other people. So we're really focused on those monetization and community features, but we want to do it in a way where it's open and we can try and bring all of the social data, all of the monetization from loads of different podcast apps, and have that all flow back into your fountain hosting dashboard. So, yeah, I do believe that eventually the job of a podcast host will be to distribute video and audio to everywhere that people are going to listen. But then for fountain specifically, we're more focused on that monetization and community aspect because there's a lot of data out there, and the data that we have as well is all open. It comes back to what I said at the beginning about music, what we've been talking about in terms of alternate enclosure, premium variants, and then coming back to the open social. We want open podcasting to be the best user experience for viewers, listeners, and creators. And we want it to compete with the interfaces on platforms like YouTube. And that means comments, that means donations, that means live streams, that means you know, music, that means everything, but we want it to work in an open way. And we think all of the pieces are there. It just requires showcasing it, and that's why we have the fountain app and we have the hosting product so we can showcase both sides of it, and then coming together as a community within open podcasting to define the standards, and then just building it. So, yeah, these pieces are so important, but it's all there for us. You know, we can have a world where you're listening on Overcast, you leave a comment on an episode, I see that comment on Fountain, I like it, I reply to it, I add the episode to my queue, I listen to that episode, I send a donation, the podcast hosted on a transistor, and they receive that donation into their dashboard there. This is all possible. So let's come together and let's build this.

Sam Sethi 1:38:11

Last question then. Um, live. We talked about live uh music and we talked about live podcasting. Where is Fountain on producing or delivering on your live services?

SPEAKER_01 1:38:23

Yeah, so the event last week was kind of a test run of our new live stream infrastructure that we've built. We want to make it really easy for podcasters to go live in all of the podcast apps that support the live item, but also have a live chat and receive donations on the live stream and then make it really easy for podcasters to take that live stream and convert it into a regular episode that then gets distributed everywhere. So, yeah, we did the first test at the event, and that should be rolling out very soon to all of our customers the ability to go live. And again, if you're a host or you're an app developer and you haven't looked at the live item, definitely go and check it out because you know it's it's a really cool way to add an additional uh experience for the listener. It's not going to be a thing for all shows. Obviously, format matters, but for some shows it works incredibly well. And obviously, going back to the donation conversation, the amount of donations that people tend to receive on live streams is really, really hard. Take a look at the live streaming platforms like Twitch or Kick. Massive volume in donations. So, yeah, if you're interested as a podcaster in live streams, definitely reach out to us and we can showcase how that will work.

Sam Sethi 1:39:38

If I'm a developer, Oscar, and I want to find out more about the things that you've talked about HLS, the license tag, publisher feeds, premium RSS, and live the lit tag, where would I go?

SPEAKER_01 1:39:52

I guess there's two places to go. One is the podcast index GitHub, where there's a lot of documentation on the existing specifications, but also the proposals for some of these newer specifications. The podcast standards project, sign up to that, get involved. There's a Slack group with conversation around that. And then just feel free to reach out to me directly, always happy to chat to people. But what we want to see is everybody in this industry embracing these open standards and building on them so that we can create a better experience for creators and for listeners.

Sam Sethi 1:40:26

Oscar Mary, thank you so much, my friend. I'll see you at the London Podcast Show.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:30

Yeah, see you there. Thanks, Sam.

James Cridland 1:40:31

The excellent Oscar Mary from uh Fountain there, and I would certainly echo um that uh yeah, you know, what what he said about HLS. Um uh Apple Video is forcing people to understand how HLS works and to uh produce HLS uh files and things. Uh and uh it gets really easy and simple, therefore, to support the alternate enclosure, which will mean that your video turns up in apps like Fountain, which is uh a really good thing. So hurrah for him.

Sam Sethi 1:41:00

Now uh Dave Jones from the Podcast Index has launched a new API endpoint, James. What's this one?

James Cridland 1:41:07

So this uh and I uh uh haven't fully understood what he is um wanting here, but I think my understanding is that he is asking for podcast apps, so uh, you know, apps like uh TrueFans to upload using this API endpoint numbers of followers for all of the shows, um, so that there is some kind of understanding for the podcast index how popular individual shows are. And you know, that that that's I think what he's trying to end up doing. So it it ends up um hopefully making search better uh and that sort of thing, you know, work a little bit better. I'm not sure that anyone will, um, but I think it's a nice idea.

Sam Sethi 1:41:53

Well actually we have. We have we have it. Yeah, um it's pretty simple. It's a CSV file upload, we're gonna do it every Sunday. I think the reason is I looked at it. Adam and Dave give us so much value. Um it doesn't make sense for us not to give them value back in this way. It might take a little bit of work, but uh you know, we we get so much value from them that this is a give back that Dave's asked for. So I think it's just the right thing to do.

James Cridland 1:42:18

Yeah. No, I uh uh excellent. Well, um it'll be interesting to see what happens there in terms of how the whole thing works and um what that actually means in terms of the data that you get back and whether or not that changes the search um uh information. Of course, if you're using this type of thing for search, then what you're essentially doing is you're making it harder for new podcasts to get into search if you're not careful. So you have to be quite careful in terms of how you end up using this. But um the more data, the merrier, from my point of view. Um so I think that that's uh certainly a good thing.

Sam Sethi 1:42:55

There is a new proposal being touted. Uh it's very early days. It's either going to be called the podcast contact or the podcast booking. I think contact's probably where it goes. Uh have you seen this proposal?

James Cridland 1:43:07

Yeah, this is a proposal that uh I think Alex San Filippo has been working on. Um it comes from you know his uh business, which is PodMatch, which is um a way of matching podcast hosts and guests, but he has uh thought r there must be a good way in the RSS feed to show that you know you're interested in guests and here's the person to get in touch with and all of that kind of uh stuff. I think that the pushback that he's had um is um oh dear, and this is where and this is where Adam Curry will start shouting at me. But the pushback that he's had is yes, this is great, um, but we want it to be more more complicated. We want it to have more things in there. So not just about booking uh guests and things, but uh actually let's make this all of the contact information that you might need for a particular podcast. So who sells your podcast? Um what the what the email addresses are for the hosts if you want to put that kind of thing in there, and so on and so forth. Um, and so this is where that that that um comment that I made about podcast index, um, some of the folks in podcast index wanting to make things more complicated. It was seen as a real negative when I said it. And um both Dave and Adam were very angry about it. But this is exactly the thing, isn't it? That actually this is better, this tag, it's better if it includes other forms of contact as well. This is making it more complicated, but it's also a better thing. And it's that balancing act of working out, okay, uh, is all of this additional information that we would like to put into this tag, stopping it from just being a booking system, which would be real quite easy and quick and simple to put together, but make it a bit more complicated. Um is that going to slow everything down? And clearly the answer is going to be yes, but where's the balance, where's the middle ground in terms of that? So I don't think it's a bad thing that we're that we're trying to get more into this particular tag. I don't think it's a bad thing. It's just a thing that we just need to balance in terms of how complicated do we want to make this and how simple and therefore actually unusable do we want to make it as well. Is that the balancing act of being somewhere in the middle?

Sam Sethi 1:45:30

We've got a tag called accept guess, yes or no, or maybe, um which I think was going to be then uh rolled out and it would be enhanced with this uh a podcast booking tag. Uh-huh. And then I think it was Daniel who wanted to make it a wider tag, so he called it podcast contact. I looked at it all and I thought, mm, far too early. Uh there's too many people with too many um stakes in this tag.

James Cridland 1:45:57

Yeah, there's a the there's a lot, there's a lot of different uh different conversations there. I think the benefit of Alex San Felifo being involved is that he is very connected, of course, to the podcast guest booking uh industry. Uh and it is an industry. And and actually, if he can get it working for that, but we make sure that it is extensible for other forms of contact, then you could certainly see somebody like Podscribe or Magellan AI turning up and saying, Okay, can we have the sales house now in here? Because wouldn't that be brilliant for them to know exactly who sells the advertising for this particular show? Um, that would be a super useful thing to have in an RSS feed, um, uh, because it would, with one really easy, uh, easy lookup, you would know exactly who represents that particular show and so on and so forth. As long as we don't back ourselves um, again, back ourselves into a cul-de-sac. As long as we don't forward, uh, drive forward into a cul-de-sac so that we can't so that we can't get out. Oh dear. Uh then I think that that would be good. We've got a driving test coming up or something.

Boosts Fan Mail And Unreliable Trivia

Human Announcer 1:47:07

Booster grab, booster graph, booster grab, 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 1:47:21

So many different ways to get in touch with us. Fan mail by using the link in our show notes or boosts or email, and we share any money that we make uh as well. It's different money, different money uh than any money that uh the main pod news makes, by the way. So um uh this money Sam shares in um uh and so do I. Uh the main the main the main pod news money I share in, and so do about 20 people in the middle of Dallas. So uh let's just uh you know that that's uh always worthwhile uh working out. Um thank you um to you if you've been uh streaming this show or the Pod News Daily, in fact, um and giving us streaming sats. Um we have received 20,000 sats just from streaming in the last week. Uh so that is definitely a good thing. Thank you if you have been doing that. And particular uh thanks to you if you've been um paying us sats. We've got three times the amount of sats this week than we did last week. 60,811. So there's a thing, I can tell that because Runway has told me that. Um so uh any mention um on the old uh TrueFans, uh Sam?

Sam Sethi 1:48:32

Yeah, we've had a few. Uh Neil Velio said, Albertus makes so much sense. Why aren't more people incensed by all of this? Rob Greenly seems to have become an AI slop advocate on LinkedIn. Yep. Neil Velio going for him there. Uh Neil will be joining us at the London podcast show, he says.

James Cridland 1:48:49

Um Yes. Uh well I and I'm looking forward to Neil doing that. I think Neil should be using the voicemail uh feature of I think so as well. And we've got fan mail from uh Alaska, from Anchorage in Alaska, Libsin audio customers who just saved their audio files as static image videos to gather the 100 gigabytes a month allowance and get around Libsin's audio monthly allowance limitations. Yeah, I don't think it'll work that way, but thank you for the idea. Uh that's very kind. We should say thank you to Mike Hamilton at the Rogue Media Network, who's been a power supporter for uh many months now. Uh thank you, Mike, um uh and uh very much uh appreciate uh everything that you have uh done. Mike is no longer a supporter, but Dan Kendall now is. Uh Dan works for Mission-based media. Uh, he does an awful lot around uh medical podcasts and stuff like that. And in fact, you've probably seen an article that he's written about his concerns about AI and stuff like that, which went into the pod news newsletter yesterday. Uh so Dan, thank you for becoming uh a power supporter. Much appreciated. Uh, along with Ralph E. Owens, Silas. vote ne uh Seth Goldstein, John Spurlock, and Martin Lindescog, some of our newest uh supporters. Much appreciated. Weekly at podnews.net uh is our email address. Don't use that. Go to weekly.podnews.net uh and you can become a power supporter uh there that would be wonderful and if you are a power supporter then email us and we will tell you where the drinks are. What's happened for you uh this week Sam?

Sam Sethi 1:50:25

Well you know you said you wanted me to do a fun fact so you can play that jingle. Well I'm gonna give you a fun fact.

Human Announcer 1:50:30

Oh yes uh this is this is unreliable uh unreliable okay and now unreliable trivia with Sam Sethy.

James Cridland 1:50:38

Go.

Sam Sethi 1:50:40

The expression if I give him an inch what do you say is the second part of that normally? Give him an inch g something something a mile yes he will take a mile. That's not true. It the original one was he will take an L and I was like what the hell's an L an L is a measurement in German from your L bow to the end of your finger and that was the original expression. If you give him an inch he'll take an L which is that uh extra length and that's why we call the bit on our arm the L bow. It's where our bow of the finger to uh elbow that length is called the L. So yes if you give him an inch he'll take an L.

Human Announcer 1:51:25

That was unreliable trivia with Sam Sethe. Trivia may not be truthful. Please check out fact before no guarantees are given use this trivia with caution especially in a pub quiz or a similar situation for terms and conditions lie.

Sam Sethi 1:51:35

So are you doing anything uh uh exciting over the weekend? Well no not after that no uh measuring my L's everywhere um no no I'm off the Unipod in Birmingham uh oh yeah Birmingham yes Birmingham um so yeah no fifth year now that Nina Robinson's been doing the event and I'm going up there I'll be speaking uh this year's uh theme is on video podcasting um I don't know what I'll be talking on yet um but you know uh it'll be something to do with podcasting I'm pretty sure so yes off there with Claire Wait Brown so we will be up there come and say hello. Very nice uh excellent no that should be good and you've been doing I think uh I think we spoke a couple of weeks ago and you were talking about um going uh uh walking or something yeah well last year I did the Thames Path this year we're doing the great uh we're doing the South Downs walk from Winchester to Eastbourne we've been you know done a couple of legs we did another leg last week which was quite nice the weather was great um we ended up in cocking actually there is it's called Cocking um and it's got a nice little pub there as well if you want to go and uh down a pint with cocking uh yes bleep all that out if you like um but no it was lovely and why why why would I do that? It's a place name in the UK.

James Cridland 1:52:54

Exactly yes now uh and yes next leg is seven sisters which is wonderful but very very hilly so yes oh right yes I've been to Seven Sisters it's on the Victoria line not that one no no it's the one on the coast anyway James what's happening for you there we go well um uh in the show notes you've added lots of uh beautiful pictures of the South Downs um so I thought that I would share which I've shared on uh social media James at bne.social on um on mastodon um the location that I was at when I was recording the interview with Alban earlier on in in the day um this beautiful sort of forest and uh and everything else it was lovely up there it was very very nice and quiet um so I enjoyed that apart from the plains that you could hear um but uh still so that was all very pleasant and the reason why I was there is that um I I currently have some burly Australian men who have been spending the day ripping the roof off this house and putting a new roof down uh because we had a big hailstorm about four or five months or so ago and um and that made lots of holes in the roof. So um yeah so that is all uh fixed now mostly I think they're coming back tomorrow to do a little bit more of that uh so that'll be good and then uh I think I've got about a month to go and then they're coming to do the solar so that'll be a thrill and you won't be there and an excitement I I will be I will be I will be here when they install the solar because uh I've insisted on it so um yeah so we will uh hopefully that will you got your protractor out so you've got the right angle um yeah no they actually went out because could because we've got um scaffolding round the house at the moment and so the solar people turned up and they said bloody hell have you got scaffolding up and I said yeah we're just about to get the roof redone and he said oh great this is the best job in the world why we can just go up there and I said well you're not allowed on the scaffolding because I've signed a piece of paper saying that you're not allowed so just make sure that I don't see you and so they went up on the roof um and uh yes and they used they don't use protractors granddad they get their iPhones and they put their they put their iPhone literally on the roof um and they've got a little app which tells them what uh what what angle it is well they believe it yeah so uh yeah so they were so they were doing that so um yeah so we've got basically as many um solar panels that the roof will hold uh and we've got a battery um so that we won't be out of power anymore uh so that's good and uh yes and all of that and all connected onto onto uh home assistant as well because you know why not so all of that will be done so uh yes I'm I'm very much looking forward to uh all of that uh happening and never having to pay an electricity bill again except we will still will because uh so it's is it a Tesla bank it is not a Tesla bank because no I think it's a solar battery made by those nice Germans who have never been Nazis ever and have never caused any wars so that's all okay. Indeed. And on that bombshell uh that that's uh that's it for this week.

Sam Sethi 1:56:13

Um all of our podcast stories taken from the Pod News Daily newsletter at podnews.net yeah and there's 90% more stories up there if you haven't uh read the Pod News Daily because I only take about 10% of them. You can support this show by streaming Sats. You can give us feedback using the Buzz Brow thumb mail link or the voicemail link when they change it on the website. You can send us a boost uh or you can become a power supporter like the 24 power supporters at weekly dotnews.net.

James Cridland 1:56:40

You you do know that they're paying for our drinks in a couple of weeks' time and and we have to be very very polite about them.

Sam Sethi 1:56:47

No, no I've worked out they like it when we have a goal we get more money.

James Cridland 1:56:52

You're paying you're paying for the drinks I think anyway our music is from uh TM Studios our voiceover is Sheila D who says how much she enjoys doing little voiceovers for us which is uh which is awfully kind of her and very good at lying um uh our audio is recorded using Clean Feed we edit with Hindenburg we're hosted and sponsored by Buzz Sprout start podcasting keep podcasting 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