Announcer 0:00

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

James Cridland 0:12

I'm James Critlin, the editor of Pod News, and I'm Sam Sethy, the CEO of True Fans.

Is podcast advertising broken?

Sam Sethi 1:00

Something I've been saying for years. Tell me, is it broken?

James Cridland 1:05

Well, you you think it's broken because no one listens to advertising, which is wrong.

Sam Sethi 1:11

Show of hands. Anyone listening, go on, tell me skip.

James Cridland 1:17

Well, I I will tell you, I mean, this is nothing to do with the with the actual story, but of course, people wouldn't come back to podcasting and advertising podcasting again and again if they thought it wasn't worth their time.

Sam Sethi 1:30

Um it's their job. People do what they told get told to do. Anyway, let's get on with this story. We're never going to answer that question.

James Cridland 1:38

Come on. I mean, I mean, we are because all of the evidence is on my side that people come back and they podcast uh and they advertise in podcasts again and again and again because it works really well for them.

Sam Sethi 1:49

But doing the same thing time and time again is the first sign of madness. Yes, go on.

James Cridland 1:53

But something has emerged from secret. Um, a alliance for measurement in podcasting. Never again. I know exactly. An alliance for measurement in podcasting. It's called AMP, and they are trying to do a few things. They are trying to firstly define the word podcast, which they say is vital. Um, they also want to define what an impression is in terms of podcasting, uh, and um from that um uh try to uh define um uh add response from a podcast. The problem that they say is that there are lots of different people uh in this, everybody has their own definitions. Um, it is getting harder and harder to work out exactly um what the right definition is, and that means that podcasting is losing money. They say um that there is a billion dollars of demand sitting on the sidelines, a figure that they um haven't actually backed up. Um but um uh and and so they they think that these definitions and things are vital. They've been working on this for the last year, and they will be revealed, apparently, um, in July uh at the upcoming CAO summit from Oxford Road in Palos Verdes in California, wherever that is. Uh Rancho Palos Verdes. Um anyway, what do you think about all of this stuff?

Sam Sethi 3:20

Uh what is podcasting? Podcasting is like porn, it's hard to define, but you know when you see it, right? Um I think that's where we are with it. We all know what a podcast is. Yeah, but we do do we though? Because we've added video to the mix, we're now going, ooh, is that a podcast? Is that it's not got RSS, is that a podcast? So we we we do know, I mean, within reason we know what a podcast is, and we know what a movie show is and we know what a radio show is. We just haven't got a strong definition because of what you've rightly pointed out of how do you account for it on a spreadsheet, which would then give us the industry of podcasting for the rightful metric measurements, right? I think that's the first part. Yeah. I think when I go back and say I don't think podcasting works, because I think it's it's all about application. I think podcasting can work out. I think podcasting advertising can work really well. Now the apple is you know, maybe towards it works because now we can measure the play card, now we can measure the consumption, now we can measure if that app was played for, and now we can measure how long it was played for. Those things couldn't be measured before, and that's why it was always negative to the advertising metrics. I think the industry has got a massive opportunity to really go back to advertising and say, look, we can tell you exactly what's going on, and here is the data that matches it.

James Cridland 4:47

Yeah, I think there's definitely something there. I just to come back to the definition thing, I think the definition thing is really important. And the difficulty with the definition that we've got at the moment of oh, well, you know, you you you kind of know what a podcast is, um, is that uh that that that, as you say, doesn't allow us to understand if we don't have a definition of the word podcasting, we don't have a definition of podcast industry. Um, and so therefore, that actually doesn't help any of us because at the end of the day, we all want to know what industry we work in. Um, and uh if the definition of podcasting uh isn't fully understood by anybody, that means that we don't actually have an industry either. So I think it is important that we get that bit right. Um by the way, my suspicion is that we will end up in a world where things that we think of as podcasts today are not actually defined as a podcast tomorrow, which is going to be very strange. And particularly audio fiction, for example. If one of the definitions of podcasts is, you know, it's two people talking in front of a microphone and it comes out every week, um, which which is a a definition of podcasting, um, then audio fiction i is not that, and audio fiction goes away, um, at least it goes away out of the definition of a podcast, and that's um, I think a great shame. Um but you know, again, we're just sort of waiting for for this stuff in secret. Um did did you notice who is involved and who isn't involved? Because that's one of the things that I find quite fascinating about this.

Sam Sethi 6:25

I noticed who's involved, yes, because they listed out some of them. Who's not involved, James?

James Cridland 6:31

Well, so not involved are the IAB. You would have thought that something talking about uh the first full podcast measurement framework would involve the people that have been measuring podcasting.

Sam Sethi 6:44

You know, didn't you tell me once that there's multiple IABs?

James Cridland 6:49

I mean, there's lots of IABs across the world, yes. Um, but the IAB in the US, people who have come up with the podcast measurement guidelines, you would have thought that they would have been involved in this sort of thing. The other um uh set of people who I don't understand uh why they're not involved. We have a trade association for the industry. It's called Sounds Profitable. Surely this is uh the number one thing that Sounds profitable should be working on. They're not in this list either. What what I uh you you know so I look at this and I and I think, is this a deliberate thing to keep both Sounds Profitable and the IEB out of this? Is this something that um that they are doing deliberately? Have they forgotten that they exist? What what's the deal here? I don't really understand why those two industry associations and Sounds Profitable has, you know, um somewhere north of a hundred different companies um involved in that in that organization. Um and they're not involved. If this was the radio industry, you would have the radio center, the equivalent of Sounds Profitable, involved in this. Um, but there is no such involvement. There is only one podcast measurement um service, Podscribe, which is um which is taking part in this. There's no other podcast measurement attribution company. So I I'm kind of looking at it and going, is this the whole industry? Because it doesn't look like the whole industry to me. Um are they all Oxford Road um uh clients? Possibly. I don't really I don't I I'm I'm just kind of looking at it and going, you know, it's it's the whole sort of secret thing. And they said secret, um, uh by the way. I know that um I know that Adam Curry thought that it was just James being uh a little bit uh a little bit sarcastic, but no, they actually they actually said the word secret. We've been working on this in secret since last summer, which is very um podcasting, isn't it?

Sam Sethi 8:54

I I look, I'll be honest and say I don't hold out a lot of hope for this group, by the way. Um uh only on the fact that anything done in secret like this isn't always gonna uh cause problems because we're not getting a consensus. The other people missing from there, YouTube uh Dax certainly are not there. Um you could go on A Cast Art There. Um all the people who were announced by uh Apple for the HLS advertising platform, so you've got now Spotify there, but no A Cast series is there, but where where's uh Art19? So again, a bit weird. Um and also given that I think technically what are they gonna be looking at? Look, maybe we should just hold off and let them come up with what they've got before we start, you know, criticizing it. Shoot it down.

James Cridland 9:42

Yeah, yeah, maybe maybe that's the plan.

Sam Sethi 9:45

No, maybe we should hold on. Now, what did Adam have to say about it or the podfather? What did he think?

James Cridland 9:51

Well, he um has said something which I think actually makes an awful lot of sense. I think, frankly, you wouldn't get people saying this a year or so ago, but I think saying it now makes uh a ton of sense. He said, just cut the um podcast app developer into the ad revenue. Now, Apple is already doing that. Apple is already being cut into the ad revenue. Uh, if you look at um the way that that works, uh Apple will get an amount, we don't know how much um in terms of that, but Apple will get an amount per ad, which is um played in the Apple Podcasts app, which means that Apple, for the first time, can really push podcasting because it knows that it's going to earn money out of podcasting every single time a podcast is is played in the app. Now, um, why couldn't you do that? If you've got that for Apple Podcasts, well, why couldn't you do that for Overcast, for Spotify, for Pocketcasts, for any of the other uh services? Then the podcast app developers give back the uh first-party stats that they have, not who is listening, but how many listeners you got for that for that exact bit, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You know, so that there's a little bit more of a sharing of uh of data and a little bit more of sharing of the money, because at the moment the podcast apps um up until now haven't earned a a single cent from podcasting. Um and I think that that should probably change.

Sam Sethi 11:20

I just wanted to stand behind that thought, uh, as you can imagine. Yes, uh, I think it's right, but will will the uh advertisers and the advertising delivery platforms see that they need to do that? I was on podcasting 2.0, I think nearly 18 months ago, maybe let's say yeah to 18 months ago, talking about how I called it reverse stats at probably a rubbish name, by the way, but the idea of um when you got to the advert, the advertiser then started paying the podcaster for serving that. And I actually said with programmable money, why don't we pay a little bit to the listener? Because that's the person the podcaster advertiser wants to read pay me for my time and attention. And I think paying the app so with programmable money, but it doesn't have to be um microponents app you could uh pay each interested party, the podcaster who's certainly had the app that's actually delivering it, and and the listener maybe even now that listener one might be too far, but I think there is a role there for each person to make a little bit out of it.

James Cridland 12:33

Yeah, I I but it won't happen. You know, I think it's just about to happen in terms of Apple Podcasts, and actually it makes life easier for the podcast industry if you were to turn around and say, and I don't know what the figures are, so let's make up a stupid figure. Let's say ten power ten dollars cost per thousand. So uh every thousand plays that your ad gets, um, you know that you have to pay ten dollars to let's say Apple Podcasts, right? If you know that, then actually, well, it makes life simpler if you pay ten dollars to the podcast apps. That then means that you can um turn around and go, okay, we we know how much to charge for podcast advertising because we know that for every um for every you know $40 cost per thousand that we sell, we know that ten dollars goes to the podcast platforms, right? So therefore that that's just a cost of doing sale. We we do that at the moment with credit cards. So um it's a 3%, roughly 3% figure that uh if you accept credit cards, 3% goes um into the system. Some of that goes back to Visa or to MasterCard, some of that goes to your bank, some of that goes to Apple, some of that even goes back to the consumer, to the buyer, through cashback or through reward points. Um so we've kind of we've kind of already got this. Um but but we don't uh but at the moment it is is going to be um there's gonna be no charge for having advertising in a podcast app apart from if you're Apple. And I think, you know, well it if we've accepted that, and we and we clearly have, that um Apple gets uh a small amount of our money, well why why don't we just say all podcast apps get a certain amount of of our money? And then that makes life so much easier to budget for, to understand. Actually, uh as it as it currently stands, if you were a successful podcaster, you would be actively diverting people off Apple Podcasts and onto Spotify or Pocketcasts or whoever it is, because you know that you're going to make more money from um Spotify or from PocketCasts, because they don't charge for the ads. So, you know, I I I think I think you end up you end up with that, and that and that to me seems to work much, much better. And and as Adam says, you know, the the the quid pro quo there is that there is a bit of data sharing, there is a bit of information. And if you know, if Marco at Overcast wants to say, oh no, I'm I'm never going to do that, well that's absolutely fine, Marco. You're leaving money that could be feeding your family on the table, but that's absolutely fine. You you you you don't don't worry about that. But but that to me seems like a sensible next step, and then enables us to understand the size of the market, enables us to understand all kinds of things.

Sam Sethi 15:30

I look, I'd love that to happen. I think the first step is when will Apple announce what they're going to take uh as a cut of the advertising revenue. Uh that will then set the benchmark, and then I guess somebody like AMP can use that to say, right, this is going to be the model, and then all of us developers go, yeeha, we'll have some of that, please.

James Cridland 15:53

But um goes on there, ideally. Well, let's uh well let's see what happens, and let's of course um see what happens with um some of the people who are selling the

Interview: Captivate and DAX US

James Cridland 16:03

ads.

Sam Sethi 16:04

Indeed. Now uh Dax US. Now, over the last six months, James, you've reported quite a bit about Dax. You've talked about uh uh Let Hollander leaving Dax US, he was a former CEO for and uh Brian Conland became the company's pro resident or you've talked about Dax partnering with Dax, which is an advertising effective effectiveness management or part of Hollander. Um and um and uh we've talked about Rob Bolt uh joining from going to uh Dax and equally you've talked about DaxUS and Captivate announcing a new unified monetisation suite for lots and lots of news there from Dax. So you know what? I thought it'd be a good time for us to catch up with Brian Conland, the president of DaxUS, and Mark Asquith, the MD and co-founder of Captivape. I started off by asking Mark Asquith, what's Captivape been doing the last six months? You've been very quiet, Mark.

Mark Asquith 17:06

Yeah, it's been a couple of different things that all led to the same place. You know our mission. We focus on helping serious creators at any level, whether you're a bedroom creator coming into this for the first time or if you're a seasoned network producer, publisher, uh, that is very well put together. Captivate exists to help anyone that just says that they are serious about podcasting to do better in podcasting against their own goals. And it's been more of the same, but with some bigger swings. So, of course, we've had the Apple Video HLS launch partnership, which we'll talk about, I'm sure, at some point. But the bigger piece has been working with Brian and his fantastic team out in the US, and of course, the wider global team on just bringing another layer of monetization to captivate creators outside of the listener support, the tipping, the memberships, the subscriptions, the exclusives that they can do, everything that is self-sustaining, self-funding, and working with your people like yourself at TrueFans on the more modern versions of monetization. And this project has really focused on adding programmatic, direct sales, host reads via captivate marketplace. And none of this is possible, of course, without globals. Other iron in the US fire, which is Dax US. So it's been very interesting from a product standpoint because you know as when we put this thing out towards the back end of June, you're gonna see some things in in there that typically captivate and very thoughtfully put together as we always try to. But you're also gonna see the diversity that we're trying to bring to the layers of monetization for podcasters because we know eggs in baskets never really works, and I think that's as true for the bedroom creator as it is for the enterprise publisher. And Brian's team are absolutely instrumental in this, and they're the real talent there when it comes to monetisation. So Brian's team have been wonderful. So it's been a busy six months, but it's been fun.

Sam Sethi 19:05

Okay. Just for a bit of background for everybody, Captivate was bought by Global a few years back. Global is the big radio group here within Europe that has a footprint now in the US. Dax is the digital advertising exchange. So let's get some of that terminology out of the way. Now, Brian, congratulations, president of DaxUS. So, what does this all mean for you now?

Brian Conlan 19:27

This is a very exciting opportunity for us, and we've been really working a lot behind the scenes with Mark and the team at Captivate because we just see the US market continue to evolve, and podcasting is becoming a bigger revenue stream for a lot of advertisers. And there's a single theme we kind of hear in the marketplace is Mark alluded to these bedroom creators and mid-tier creators go under monetized today because some of the bigger networks are taken care of. They're bigger shows that are requiring more live events and hostry type of sponsorships. But we feel there's this magic middle here in the US market for advertisers. And that's where we want to lean into our monetization expertise through the Dax platform and our sales team in the US, where we can aggregate together mid-tier creators and have a very loyal listener base that in total can bring together scale for advertisers, which we're known for here at Dax US on the streaming side, but now bringing that same approach to the podcasting world, right? And I think if you look at the landscape today, a lot of these hosting platforms do one of two things. They really scale monetization well for podcasters, where people are going on there for monetization help, or they built the platforms to help the creators from a tool standpoint, right? They're making the hosting platform as easy to use for distribution and the recording of their podcasts. But we see the opportunity by marrying Captivate and DAX together as two platforms to bring this unified approach to the creator economy in the US marketplace and allow advertisers access to the scale of people on the Captivate platform today and hopefully a larger audience that will adapt to Captivate and DAX moving forward.

Sam Sethi 20:59

Now, I came across Dax from my radio world. It was the online radio advertising platform that, you know, was very successful. So you're bringing this now to podcasting. Now, as Mark alluded to, this is dynamic ad insertion, not host bred advertising. And of course, Dax has a high quality advertiser. You know, you're not getting your bargain basement advertising. Is there a I suppose a barrier to entry as a podcaster? How do I qualify? Do I have to have a certain level to be able to qualify for, or could anybody do it through self-service? What is the process that they can do?

Mark Asquith 21:37

The process is important to us because I don't like that. The uh opportunity that exists for creators uh has been framed in a similar perspective as uh the way that we've done everything with Captivator, which is the creator shouldn't have to wait for enterprise grade quality tools. And service and platforming just because they're not quite enterprise level yet. And so we've taken a similar approach to the monetization, quote unquote, qualifications. If we're completely honest, qualifications only exist because monetizing costs money. That's the only reason that qualifications exist. You look at RSS, you look at any other hosting platform out there, those flaws, those barriers to entry are getting lower and lower and lower. And we've seen hosting companies in the past give away free hosting in return for the dollars off the advertising revenue, which as a model, you like it or you don't. That's buy the by. Captivate and Dax got their heads together. And there's a real focus here in that we're not just launching here's Captivate and DaxUS. What we're launching there is actually this platforming approach, the Captivate Ad Marketplace, which is underpinned by Dax audio on demand servers, high grade, high quality, world-renowned high-class technology that is reliable and scalable. And we're bringing that to creators through the ad marketplace. So to answer your question, actually, anyone qualifies to go into the ad marketplace. But what we're trying to do, and what we're starting to see success with in the beta testing, is that people that do hyperlocal, for example, let's take Gareth Davis, he does hyper-local podcasting, and it's really valuable because he might have 3,000 listeners, but they all live within 10 miles. Businesses within that radius and in that catchment area have a fantastic opportunity to target hyper-local audiences, but they don't want to reach out to podcasters, find where that podcast supply is coming from. That opportunity exists from a transactional perspective, and it just needs someone to make it a bit easier. So the marketplace will work in a number of different ways in that you and I, Sam, we could strike up a deal and we could say, well, this is great, but look, you know, I'm not a legal expert, I don't know about contracting. I don't want to, don't send me your bank details, Sam, because I want it to be done properly. The marketplace will facilitate that. Sam, here's a link. Go and sign up. That's cool. It's all secure. Tell me what you want to do, we'll collaborate on it. There's a campaign that runs, and that can run at any given scale and at any given level. What we're really focused on from a captivate standpoint is that that exists to everyone, but it also exists as part of a real high-quality priority waterfalling system that means that what I want as a podcaster is top of the tree. But monetization opportunities in the programmatic world are easy to access. So this is much more than a nice shiny press release that is actually just business as usual. This is the the unification of platforming, underpinned by this world-class top-tier, higher grade AOD server stack, and then Brian and the DachUS's team's expertise in yes ads, yes, sales, yes, programmatic. So this is a real nice holistic approach for creators at any level.

Sam Sethi 24:58

Okay, so I can see the value for podcasters. Brian, as an advertiser, can I buy a campaign? So instead of buying an individual podcaster, I want to buy basketball, I want to buy NFL, I want to buy, you know, grocery of a particular type. How do they advertise or approach you and how do they get to buy it across podcasts rather than the individual?

Brian Conlan 25:23

Yeah, I mean, I think that's where Dax's market expertise comes into play, right? We built a platform that allows that ability to do audience targeting, content targeting at scale across a full list of shows instead of picking one individual title. Uh, we work with partners like Barometer's Founder number eight to allow for contextual and brand suitability targeting for advertisers. That's become a staple for a lot of the holding companies now here in the US. And I think those tools have really opened up discovery for some more of these mid-tier and long-tail creators, where in the past they weren't getting a seat in the monetization table, but by these tools enabling them to be part of a custom list of shows, we now use our SSP and the tools that Global has built as part of DAX to allow for that smarter monetization and more depth, right? And I think the piece that we're looking for here is providing additional reach for advertisers as well, right? I think that's something that every brand is looking for is new consumers, right? And by doing this across a wider variety of audiences and shows, it allows us to tap into that reach that we've been known for for so many years on the streaming side and now bring that to the podcasting world for advertisers.

Sam Sethi 26:28

So from a DAX point of view, can you now go out and pitch we're going to be doing radio and podcasting within the same campaign?

Brian Conlan 26:36

Yes, exactly. That isn't that's the whole strategy here, right? Is we've really made a focus here, DAX VIPS over the last two years to go out and aggregate premium pure play partners and radio station streams that in aggregate we can provide to advertisers as a unique exclusive audience. And now we're taking that same approach to podcasting where we can use the captivate platform to bring podcasters into the ecosystem for DAX that will give unique audiences to advertisers across both streaming and podcasting through a single touch point.

Sam Sethi 27:05

How are you measuring success of campaign then? How do you understand whether the person's listened to the advert? What's the metrics that you're going to provide back to the advertiser that says, yep, you took the campaign out and it was success because of these matters?

Brian Conlan 27:20

Yeah, I think, I mean, in the US market, we've seen a major adoption for attribution partners tier, right? I mean, you see Claritas and Podscribe becoming a mainstay in the US agencies in terms of performance and outcomes. And I think the unique opportunity that we will provide across streaming and podcasting is advertisers will have the opportunity to optimize across both channels, right? I think we've seen success already with some brands where we can run a streaming and podcast campaign at a single CPM and allow them to optimize between each bucket based on what's working best for them, which is unique in the marketplace. Not everyone is offering that capability, right? So that is something that Dax has as a unique opportunity. And again, we are constantly working with global to figure out what else we could be bringing to the market to innovate and provide new opportunities. So there'll be exciting things to share in the future on that topic. But again, we feel that this is a really great step in the right direction to now take our opportunity here in the US from a streaming first approach to now getting into the podcast space and using the great platform that Mark and the Captain team have built over the last 10 plus years.

Sam Sethi 28:23

Mark, is this going to be coming to Dax UK? Are you going to be rolling out a Dax UK radio and podcasting campaign capability?

Mark Asquith 28:34

There's definitely a strategy to roll a more holistic approach out, I would say, worldwide. The timing on that will largely depend on the market appetite and obviously the supply side just really kind of fitting what we're trying to achieve as the bigger picture global organisation. There's a lot of exciting stuff going on with Global Studios as well, which is focused on really high-class talent, as we've seen with acquisitions through the overlap, the fellas, and so on and so forth, plus the flagships, the news agents, the sports agents, and so on. So the jigsaw at the moment is essentially looking at how can Global best serve the audience in each given territory, how can it best serve the advertisers in each given territory? And as Brian mentioned, you know, not just on the tech side of things, there'll be a heck of a lot that we'll be able to talk about as we move through this year into next year around that kind of question. So it's an exciting time for sure. And the US was such an obvious launch pad for this kind of approach, just because Captivate is largely US-based, just because that's where the industry grew up, and that's where we came through, if you like, as Captivate and as people. Um, so this will provide us with a lot of a lot of learning, a lot of insight, and a lot of opportunity. But yeah, I think the through line is keep your eyes peeled on the rest of it.

Sam Sethi 29:53

Okay. So you mentioned very early on about Apple HLS. This is the video and in some cases audio switch as well, moving away from MP3, MP4. And this is exciting on one hand, which is you know, now we can start to do true streaming. That download of podcasts is no longer needed. That download metric that we've used in the past is now pretty much there. So we're looking at the number of claims and we're looking at you know consumption. I think 60%, 80% of the podcast episode was consumed. How is captivating addressing this, first of all, the Apple HLS? And then secondly, we'll talk about the analytics.

Mark Asquith 30:32

The HLS mechanism overall has been really well put together by Kieran and the engineering team. It was extremely well thought out, very rapidly executed, and just really well put together. And as part of that, you know, HLS streaming through Apple um is done in a very specific way that allows us to infer measurement uh at each level, you know, as well as anyone through TrueFans. You can see what is happening in the logs. That doesn't always mean, and this is a very captivated approach, that doesn't always mean that we should go as far as we could immediately. Because I think the bigger picture that we've got to consider here is actually what does the switch to video mean for advertisers? What does it mean for people whose businesses rely on advertising revenue? And there's a heck of a lot to consider there. So technically, what is technically possible? We know we can read the logs, we know we can deliver baseline analytics, we know that the platforms that are providing the delivery of HLS to consumers will be able to provide analytics in the future as well. And this is that inflection point that we see every three to five years in podcasting, where we are all looking at I think the best way that we can do things for the people that matter to us, all the stakeholders, you know, whether that's the users, the podcasters, the advertisers, internally, and so on. Um, in short, we're cooking some things up. You know, we like to think on things and sort of think think through things a little laterally, uh, but I wouldn't say it was as clear-cut as we uh simply should do what we could do. I think there's more to it than that when it comes to video.

Sam Sethi 32:14

Okay, so watch this space. Now, you recently took on two wonderful new employees, Rob Walsh and Elsie Escobar. We know what Elsie is going to be doing, you know, she's a community-driven face of Captivate. What's Rob's role? Because I think his role's more to do with DAX than it is captivate.

Brian Conlan 32:31

Yeah, I mean, I could take that one. I think Rob came on our radar towards the end of last year, and Mark and I were having a conversation about kind of the roadmap we had ahead for the Captivated DAX platform. And someone like Rob Boss, who's been an industry staple for many years and has great relationships with the podcasters, is someone that we wanted on our team as we continue to build this opportunity here in the U.S. I think Rob and Elsie both provide a tremendous amount of industry knowledge and just great relationships and great reputation. And I think that's what we want to be known for, right? I think if you look at the Captive Date team, Mark Hearan and everyone over at Captivate have an exceptional reputation in the podcasting space. And we like to think DAXUS is the same for advertising here in the U.S. So we want to be working with higher quality individuals that can help podcasters grow their audience and then also be bringing the right podcasters into the Captivate marketplace. So that way we're bringing unique supply that's premium for advertisers. So I think when we saw both of them, it was a great opportunity to strike and bring them onto the team for what's ahead here with Captivated Dax.

Sam Sethi 33:30

Nice. Now, Brian, one of the things that Dax will have been doing is audio advertising, radio, and now podcasting. And we just talked to Mark about video and the you know Apple insurgence into video has driven the whole market very quickly. How's Dax dealing with video advertising then?

Brian Conlan 33:50

I still think it's a little early for us, Sam. I think we're kind of watching how the market evolves. It's definitely something we'd like to think about and start to get into soon. But again, I think the US market is different than what we see in the UK, right? I mean, US scale is crucial. So you have to make sure you have enough scale on the video side of the business to be competitive. And then I think the the advertising community is still trying to figure out the metrics for video sales in podcasting and how do you blend that with the audio approach, right? So I think it's a wait and seed for us. It's definitely something that's on our roadmap and thinking about, but we're not there yet here at Dax US.

Sam Sethi 34:27

Now, if I want to find out more about how to get involved as a podcaster, you know, I want to get onto this Dax marketplace, how would I do this?

Brian Conlan 34:36

I would say check out our latest press release on Pod News. I need to reach out to Rob Walsh directly, and he'd be happy to kind of give you a background of what we've worked on, and we'll be love to be in touch.

Sam Sethi 34:46

Brian, thank you so much. Mark, as ever, good to see you, my friend.

Mark Asquith 34:49

Thank you, sir. Always appreciate you and Jims. Thanks for everything, my friend.

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Podcast Network Insights

Advertiser 34:57

There are so many podcasts about podcasting. How to start, how to grow, how to monetize. No other podcast rings you the conversations with podcast networks like this one. Networks come in all shapes and sizes, they start from all different ways, from someone not liking how things were being done, so they crafted their own network, to someone who started in the media world and understood content, to niches or broad networks. This podcast is filled with hot takes and blueprints, digging into the conversations that I normally am having off the mic. I'm Greg Wasterman. I've run podcast listening platforms, I've run a podcast content platform, and I'm currently the head of relationships for the podcast hosting company RSS.com. I believe life is about time and relationships. It's through my relationships that I get to bring you this unique perspective of podcast networks. I've talked to so many podcasters who've been upset with their network experience. I've also talked to plenty who love their network. If you're a podcaster, should you join a network? What should you consider? Since I work in the industry, I get to bring you names of people and networks you may never have heard of. If you're a network operator or you work in the podcast industry like myself, you'll walk away with ideas how others are operating their business. Tune in weekly and get ready to learn about podcast networks.

Announcer 36:13

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

Sam Sethi 36:22

Okay, so we've said that, you know, advertising's cooked. Um Justin now Jackson from Transistor went one stage further. He said podcasting is cooked, James. He gave a presentation at the London Podcast Show. Yes, now but doesn't Justin Well, I was gonna say, doesn't Justin own a hosting company? What's he on about?

James Cridland 36:41

Yes, well, uh, in the same way that advertising isn't cooked, and advertising works absolutely fine for lots and lots and lots of people. Um uh podcasting isn't cooked either, uh, Sam. Um no, he was talking very much that was he was talking very much about um uh the changes that we are seeing in podcasting. He and uh Jeremy Ens as well, uh, talking very much about the changes that we're seeing in podcasting. Um there are an awful lot of changes, of course. Um, claiming that audio-only podcasts are a thing of the past. I'm not quite so sure uh to be fair, um, that AI slot would drown out the good stuff and so on and so forth. Actually, um they then went on to give a number of interesting tactics around thriving in podcasting, which is uh still uh uh um absolutely a thing that you can do. Um it's a really good uh video. Um I know that they got it filmed uh at um the podcast show in London. Um so um, but a really a really good video of theirs that's um now available for anybody to watch on YouTube. It's definitely well worth watching. So um um uh go and uh take a peek at that.

Sam Sethi 37:52

I'd also recommend everyone to listen to this week's pivot if you haven't. Uh Minute 20, Scott Galloway and Carl Swisher talk about um all of the acquisitions by Netflix, but they also talk about what is a podcast, and they try and look at the definition in their eyes of what they think a podcast is today. Um spoiler alert, you know, they talk about it being democratised radio and TV. But well worth the listen. It's about five minutes long, uh, a good little clip.

James Cridland 38:20

Yeah, and that's absolutely where they are. And that reminds me of um uh Ancler Media's like and subscribe newsletter, which this week um contained if you paid for it, contained a really good piece all about who at Netflix buys podcasts and what sort of um terms they want you to sign up to. Um so again, all kinds of stuff uh going on there.

Sam Sethi 38:43

Now, somebody else who thinks podcasting is dead, does he? Uh not sure. Ralph Estep Jr., uh one of our power supporters and friends of the show, he examines the recent creator survey from RSS.com. What did he say, James?

James Cridland 38:56

Yeah, so um uh firstly the survey from RSS.com was really useful. It was um uh a bit of information, um, obviously just from RSS.com customers, so not necessarily every single podcaster. Um, but um there's an awful lot of useful stuff that comes out of that, and it's um probably quite useful for somebody like Ralph to uh take a look into the data um and to give a um uh a balanced view of that. Obviously, Ralph EStep Jr. doesn't work for rss.com and so therefore can pull other things out of the uh data. One of the most important things that he discovered um from the data is that um actually people aren't finding podcasts in podcast apps, which I find um uh really interesting. People are finding um uh uh shows, um uh a lot of people are finding shows from uh places like social media, like word of mouth, um, like uh guests and things like that, and even YouTube, which is interesting. So um, you know, six percent of new listeners found their favorite podcast on YouTube. Um so uh yeah, there is a bunch of um a bunch of new discovery stuff which is uh going on. And also he talks about you know um our podcasts earning money uh yet and all of that kind of uh stuff. There is a a bunch of data, it's very much worthwhile um uh taking a peek. Uh, and you'll find that linked from the pod news newsletter this week as well.

Sam Sethi 40:30

I I think uh one of the things that you've given me is the idea of using something called RSS Auto Discovery, which we've added uh to TrueFans in the uh HTML. Um and also I decided to look back at um standards that have been around for a while, thinking about discovery. So I was looking at microformers and microdata and sort of data and no longer data. Google is using JSON LD as a mechanism for discovery within uh uh uh SEO. And I think we're gonna have a look at how we can use JSON LD within our uh website to help with the SEO discovery. I think that might be also another good way. I agree, social media is another way, but I think there is also something at the metadata level that we can do.

James Cridland 41:22

Yeah, there is absolutely something at the metadata level. Uh, anybody that is looking into uh you call it JSON LD, I call it schema, but anybody that's looking into um that uh metadata which is in a web page, um just go to the Apple Podcasts website, copy what they're doing, literally. Um, because there is so much data that they have put into schema on the Apple Podcasts site. Um uh it's really good. PodNews has much the same schema in our podcast pages as well. Um, and it's a really useful way. It's not necessarily a way for humans to discover new uh shows and stuff like that, but it is a really useful way for computers to find um more information about podcasts in a uh standard uh uh format as they're scraping the web. Uh obviously, you know, the RSS feed exists as well. Um, but uh yes, definitely a uh a thing worth uh looking at. And I know that Podpage as well is also focusing on uh schema um uh as well. It just makes it easier for computers to find shows, uh, and that's part of

YouTube adds more new features

James Cridland 42:28

it.

Sam Sethi 42:28

Moving on then, James. Uh last week we talked about uh Spotify defining three groups, free users, uh paid users, and now super users. Well, a week's past and YouTube says, yes, premium subscribers are podcast super users. So adding more perks for it for super users, James. What are they adding?

James Cridland 42:48

Yes, I mean they're not uh they're not um super thrilling perks, but nevertheless they are perks. They are um three new things. Uh firstly, auto speed, which is an intelligent speed playback control, it says. I think it um skips uh silences and that sort of thing. Um secondly, um a thing called on the go mode, which um is built for you listening to podcasts on YouTube but with your phone in your pocket. And when you pull your phone out, um, it recognizes that this is a podcast and it gives you podcast-like controls rather than the slightly more finicky um uh video controls that you get on YouTube otherwise, um, which is I think quite smart. So the play button is much bigger, for example, and the skip buttons are much bigger and they work the way that you expect them to work and all of that. I think that's quite a smart idea. Um, and I think that they've understood how podcasting uh works from a YouTube user's point of view. Um and then finally, because of course Spotify has done this um so have uh so have uh YouTube, um, or rather, YouTube was actually first. Um uh they they had some form of AI personalized playlist generator. Um, you know, play me rock music that reminds me of California in the 1960s, for example, and it will go off and get you a playlist um that works a bit like that. Um uh YouTube Music has now added podcast recommendations into that. Uh that's something that uh Spotify went live with a couple of weeks ago. Uh it's a thing rather confusingly called Ask Music, uh, and it's in an app called YouTube Music, but it plays podcasts. What is a podcast? Uh so um so all of that is quite nice. Um uh it's always nice to see new uh features. Uh there are a couple of new uh, well, there's one new number as well. Uh Sam, did you see what that new number was?

Sam Sethi 44:45

Uh 125 million.

James Cridland 44:47

125 million. That's that that would that that was an exciting number. Actually, uh the number that uh they came out with yesterday last week was eight hundred million hours of podcasts. That is the amount of podcasts that were consumed by YouTube premium users. Um back in um in uh April, uh 800 million hours. That sounds a big number. Uh, how many YouTube premium users are there? Oh, we don't know. Uh so uh does that tell us anything about YouTube consumption? No, not really. Um uh so uh again it's just that entertaining black box of YouTube.

Sam Sethi 45:27

Is this a bit is this a bit like Spotify's 500 million hours of video?

James Cridland 45:32

Yeah, yeah, I mean it's just it's just like um it's it's just I mean, at least Spotify has a bit more numbers out there in the open. Um but the the last time that we found out how many YouTube premium users there are was March 2025. That's over a year ago, and there were 125 million. My my guess is that that number has doubled, if not, if not got even bigger. Um, but 800 million hours of podcasts from YouTube Premium users, okay. Well, you know, whatever. The one thing that we do know about that is that that means that um YouTube premium users, of course, are the only people that can listen to podcasts without having the screen on. Um, because that is still a thing with uh YouTube. Once again, I would say they had people standing in front of a set of podcasters um at the the the the at the the podcast show a couple of weeks ago, they didn't bother announcing this to the podcasters there. They waited, I think, five days and then announced it as a blog post. Um and it it it does kind of go to show the the um the contempt that some of these companies have for podcasting. Um if you've got a bunch of podcasters in a room, why not announce new stuff to the podcasters instead of in Spotify's case to investors and YouTube's case to a blog post? Um, you know, to talk talk to podcasters. You know, we are quite friendly people sometimes. Uh so I think it's worthwhile doing. Not at seven in the morning, you know.

Sam Sethi 47:07

Uh where's your coffee? Come on. It's here. It's here. Right,

New Patreon features

Sam Sethi 47:12

moving on, James. Now, one of the things that we have seen as well is premium content. We've talked about this from companies like Supercars being bought by Fox Media. We've talked about Substack and Patreon, you know, and and last week we even talked about Spotify getting into membership and obviously Apple with uh channels. Now, Patreon has been one of those places where you can send your fans to go buy your premium content and a private feeling to buy that. Well, Patreon sends out very clear to talk about the forums about funding for the comments for the destination rather than purchase and take the content away. And we're talking about you know you having access to your own membership areas, you having access to activities. Um what do you think, James? Uh Patreon is now pretty much a Substack rival, it's a destination rather than a place for purchase.

James Cridland 48:14

Yes, I think Patreon is most definitely, you know, changing the way that it has offered and you know, and uh is changing the way that it works. And I think certainly it is now, as you say, somewhere where you will go and put uh content rather than necessarily just somewhere where you would accept payment. Um so you know, they launched um last month they launched um a new um sort of front page into their app, um, things called quips, which are you know sort of short posts that you can um add uh into there, um, you know, all kinds of uh all kinds of you know, a new home feed, all of that kind of stuff. So they they've done an awful lot of work uh here in terms of that. My suspicion is that we're gonna see more of that um you know happening in terms of um you know, but both Patreon, Substack has has done something quite similar, very much focusing on we are a place for your content as well as for people to support it. Um I'm surprised that companies like Buy Me a Coffee haven't copied them because it seems that that makes an awful lot of sense. And you know, and Beehive, for example, as well. Beehive has all of the tools, but as far as I can see, doesn't have too much of the membership payment um uh stuff. But I think that we are certainly seeing um, you know, a um uh I think that we're certainly seeing uh a set of companies who are who are all sort of merging here in terms of the types of services that they offer.

Sam Sethi 49:54

One other thing I just wanted to highlight, it's probably going to be something that people don't look at for a while, but uh it's something that I noticed. We talked about gamification last week with Spotify, and we talk about uh you know other platforms adding gamification. One of the things I noticed was within the uh announcement different page members that we're talking about uh your activities, the likes and comments are talking about uh activity on the pay post will be only visible to other pay members. There is a standard connectivity to the standard. And I can see uh we are building walls again, so we we talk about first-party data that we're talking from the side. I think we're building another set of walls that's called data for around activities. If you start to say um I would like to share like some comments, well, what's the form of share about it? Uh oh, we don't know. Is there a standard? Well, there is a standard called the activity stream, and uh again, I think this is something that we won't get to talk about for another six months. I think there's a problem coming because uh all of the platforms seem to be doing YouTube even talked about activities as well and gamification. And they all seem to be doing their own little uh way of doing it, and I think we're just gonna end up with islands of data again.

James Cridland 51:19

Islands of data uh in the stream. Yes, I I I and I think that was one of the exciting things, if you remember back to Web 2.0. Um, one of the exciting things about Web 2.0 is that it was talking about interoperability um uh in a way in a in a way that I could uh that that I can't clearly do at seven o'clock in the morning. Um but it was talking about um you know working together with other things and there were RSS feeds all over the place, there were APIs all over the place, you know, you could you could put a Facebook like button on on a web page somewhere else and it would and it would work fine. And we are moving very much um away from that at the moment, and I think that that is a shame. Whether or not activity streams is the right um is the right step, I don't know. But I think certainly being able to um uh open up as much of this data um uh to to allow other people to build on it makes an awful lot of sense. And and I'm yeah, slightly sort of nervous as to quite why that isn't happening as much. Although, you know, of course we are now seeing you know AI tools being used to basically smash their way through some of the walls and um and uh grab uh as much information as possible. Um so perhaps the the answer is that AI will fix it, as is m uh the answer to quite a lot of things at the moment.

Sam Sethi 52:47

You are VC, you're mad VC. What's the answer to every problem? AI will fix it.

James Cridland 52:52

AI will fix it.

Sam Sethi 52:54

Here's another billion dollars. Go and spend it. Yes. Well done, Sam Altman. Yes.

James Cridland 53:00

Yes.

Around the world

Sam Sethi 53:01

Right, moving on, James. Around the world, uh seems like Sirius XM and iHeart Media's merger isn't going to go ahead. Tell me more.

James Cridland 53:10

Well, do you remember do you remember when uh you you asked me uh what you thought of uh what I thought of the Sirius XM and iHeart merger? And I said, Yeah, I don't think it's a thing. I think it's just uh I think it's just a a press release um trying to force people out. Guess what? It's not going ahead, it's not a thing. Uh who'd have thought it? Oh, uh I would have thought it, and I thought it only only a month or two ago. Uh so yes, um uh I would suspect that that has just um sharpened the eye of a few of the shareholders of both Sirius XM and of iHeartMedia, um, and uh will perhaps prod them into action, which is what it was built to do anyway. Um hurrah, whoever um whoever leaks that uh shenanigans.

Sam Sethi 53:59

Yeah.

James Cridland 53:59

I'm I'm I mean I'm pretty I'm I'm pretty sure if you consider that Dax's owner global owns 38%, I think, of iHeartMedia right now. Um you know, at some point they will be going, uh, when are we going to either when do we cash that in, or when do we just press the button and buy the rest? And and at some point there will be a conversation going on in London about that. Um and you know, and obviously a merger with Sirius XM would have significantly weakened them. Um so perhaps they are thinking now, uh, it's probably time for us to make that move and for Global to actually be a global company. It isn't at the moment, amusingly. Um, but when Global is a global company and and properly moves into the US, um, not just with DAX, but with other things as well, um, then then wouldn't that be interesting? But um, yeah, that's where we are.

Sam Sethi 54:57

Well, I think they're gonna have to do it because their buying power is gonna be diminished when you start to see companies like Netflix going into the market and being able to spend a hundred million. Um iHeart won't be able to compete when it comes to you know buying up content.

James Cridland 55:12

No, well no, well indeed. Um so uh yes, I mean uh certainly worthwhile, you know, global uh taking a look at that. Um uh Tubi, uh, which isn't a um um well I was gonna say isn't a service that we have access to outside of the US. I think it might be actually.

Sam Sethi 55:30

I think No, it is, it's in the UK 2024 it came. I don't know about Australia, but I checked it. Yeah, it's in the UK.

James Cridland 55:36

Well, Tubi is uh getting more and more into podcasting. Um some of Sirius XM's biggest podcasts uh are to be streamed on Tubi now, including Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend, Rotten Mango, and What Now with Trevor Noah. Now, the interesting thing with this deal, it's different to the deal from Netflix. This deal is that um you get access to Tubi. Uh, you can still be on YouTube if you want to, um, and that uh advertising sales for video podcasts on Tubi will be shared between Tubi and Sirius XM. So it's a much more traditional media uh deal. Um there's no exclusivities here, it's just straightforward. Tubi, um, you know, if you if you you you can put your your shows on there and you will earn a bit from the advertising which appears um uh around them. Um so SiriusXM doing a deal with uh Tubi, Tubi, of course, part of Fox. Um, and AudioCuck um has added another show onto Tubi as well. I think AudioCuck is working with um Fox with Red Seat Ventures um for their ad sales anyway, so that's an obvious uh move. Um but uh Chubi probably um one of those companies to watch, I guess.

Sam Sethi 56:51

Now uh a report out. It's one week, James, to go in the UK until the rest is football from uh Goalhanger lands on Netflix. So, yes, Gary Lindka's doing the round. He was in uh talking to Matt Slater at the New York Times about the World Cup that's coming up on June the 11th. Um will you be watching or listening to the rest is football, James?

James Cridland 57:15

Oh, I will be sitting next to my Netflix box just in case anybody has the bad idea of trying to turn it on. Um uh yes, I will I will not uh I will not, I stole that joke from a radio uh comedy of uh 20 years ago. Um uh no, I won't be watching, but um is this the first podcast on Netflix which is available globally? Um I suspect it probably will be. Um uh uh it sounds as if the rest is football will be available in the US on Netflix. It obviously is gonna be available in the UK on Netflix given the advertising that they have done. I don't know if you saw the the big ad in um in a pod news newsletter earlier on in the week at the b at the BFI IMAX in Waterloo, which was taken over by um by an ad from them. So clearly it's gonna be available in the UK. I would assume that it's gonna be available everywhere. And I would assume that um uh that means that we'll be able to watch it um in Australia and why and why not? I mean, one in ten of us uh are Brits, you know, in Australia. So I I would assume that that is going to is going to happen. So that's gonna be uh a fascinating thing. At the moment, all of the podcasts, it m my understanding, all of the podcasts available on the Netflix platform are only available in the US. So perhaps this is the next move in Netflix moving podcasts out to everybody. I don't know.

Sam Sethi 58:45

I thought it very interesting uh listening to the news agents this week. They had a Australian with the world's strongest Australian accent, strength channel. Um I mean he didn't say fair income, but he said everything else. Boy, oh boy, go and listen to the news agents. He did not sell it any worse than he did. It was awful. It was like why have you got an Australian in the first place, America? Selling the World Cup in your country. I didn't get that connotation. And so secondly, he just did a really bad job. Worth listening to car crash.

James Cridland 59:29

Yes. Really? Oh well, well, there you go. Uh uh, yes. Well, I should I should uh take that. Um the US special envoy. Um why why would that be an Aussie then? That makes very little sense.

Sam Sethi 59:44

350 million Americans who could have done the job, yeah.

James Cridland 59:47

Yeah, very very little sense. Oh well, well, there you go. America first, as they say. Now now edit that one out.

Sam Sethi 1:00:03

Whizzing round uh to France then. Uh Cannes Lions, the international festival is on, James. What's going on?

James Cridland 1:00:10

Yes, uh it's on later in the month. Um I thought it was interesting looking at um uh um uh where audio is going to be there. Um Bauer Media, which is a big um European radio broadcaster, are going to be at Cann Lions trying to uh excite advertisers about audio. But so is Radio Centre and Commercial Radio and Audio, which is Australia's version of Radio Centre, which is a trade body for radio. They are going to be there. They are uh hauling uh Mark Ritson, um, who is a uh speaker for hire about how great radio is. Um uh he will be talking about how great radio is to um the advertisers at Can Lions. Um Sounds Profitable are also there as well, um, doing a few um uh events at uh Can Lions. It's very much um turning into an event where you would want to promote um, you know, uh any form of advertising to the ad buyers who are uh there. But um I think this is the first time that Radio Centre and the CRA have spoken at that event. Um uh I could be wrong, but I think it's the first time. So um, you know, good to end up seeing that, I think.

Sam Sethi 1:01:24

I mean, it should be on the agenda at least. So yeah, it's good to see it.

James Cridland 1:01:27

Yeah, it really should. There is a body called the World Alliance of Radio, the World Radio Alliance, um, which is essentially Radio Centre and CRA and all of the other ones from all of the other country uh all of the other companies uh and countries. So, you know, Radio Connects here in uh Canada, which is where I'm speaking to you from today, um uh Egta from uh Belgium, uh Radio Media from Finland and so on and so forth. Kind of you do wonder, well, surely the World Radio Alliance should be the people speaking there, not just two of their members, but um uh, you know, but uh you know, slow, slow starting, but you know, why not? Uh jobs and uh people and uh all of that. Some very interesting jobs going at the moment. Um if you fancy being head of finance at Goalhanger, um uh then uh why not? There is a job for you there. Um I thought it was interesting. Head of finance to me sounds like a pretty big job, um, particularly at a company like Goalhanger. Um the salary range is up to £95,000 a year. £95,000 doesn't seem to be a very high figure um for that.

Sam Sethi 1:02:39

One of your key criteria is you have to count do your seven times table because I've got subscriptions and seven pounds each.

James Cridland 1:02:45

Well, that might be it. Uh I suppose reporting directly to the CFO. So it's not the CFO's role, it's just a okay, well, I kind of understand that a little bit better then uh in that case. Also, they have a head of growth memberships team, um, which uh uh which I think tells you the focus that that company uh has uh in terms of uh m memberships and uh stuff like that. Um so jobs going at Golhanger, jobs also going at uh ACAST. You, yes, you could be the director of creator management and manage all of those creators. Lucky you. Um uh if you want to work in uh New York, um then that job is for you. Podnews.net slash jobs is the place to go. And uh awards and events, lots of awards were announced this week. Uh Sam, uh loads of them. How many uh did we win? None again.

Sam Sethi 1:03:37

None again. But can I ask? How many did we enter? None. So you can't win it unless you're in it.

James Cridland 1:03:44

Uh oh yes, well, uh yes, there is there is also that too. Um the Australian audio awards, the AAA's um uh took place um uh last week. Um we have a full list of the winners. That is an interesting new awards from Australia, um, which essentially um is uh from the ashes of the previous commercial radio awards. Uh they then added the ABC into that and some podcast awards in there as well, um, and uh a bunch of winners in there, including Mamma Mia Out Loud winning the People's Choice Award for Podcasts. There was also another award for radio uh in there as well. Uh also uh the Quill Podcast Awards were announced. Uh Spotify announced the um their winners of Spotify's Creator Milestone Awards. One of the problems, of course, in podcasting is that uh only um only the big shows get promoted. Um, and uh this is uh Spotify really reinforcing that because uh if you win a Creator Milestone Award, which you can only win by being a big show, um, then um uh as a reward for winning that um you get more promotion in the uh in the app and you get promotion uh elsewhere on social media and stuff. So they're essentially giving promotion to the very shows that don't need it. Um but well done then. Uh anyway, um Dick and Doof uh ended up winning an award, which is a big German language show, and the diary of a CEO uh with uh Mr. M Mr. Bartlett uh also ended up winning um a Creator Milestone Awards, although um uh only silver. Um there were no gold award winners this time round, so um there's a thing. Um and finally the other award which I thought was really interesting was um the BBC World Service runs an award um for international drama and um the international drama competition for 2026 um was uh uh announced, the winners were announced. Um, more than 800 entries from 87 countries around the world. Um, so audio drama doing really, really well. It's not something that gets talked about an awful lot in um terms of podcasting, in terms of this particular Particular area, and it really should be talked about more because there is so much going on in that space, but it's very difficult to monetize. And I suspect that that is one of the reasons why we don't hear about it too much. But yeah, that that that I thought was really interesting. One of the winners, one of the two winners was an Aussie, I noticed. So there's always

Interview: Dino Sofos, Crossed Wires

James Cridland 1:06:22

a favorite.

Sam Sethi 1:06:23

Yes, uh finally, James, uh other events in the UK Crosswise, which is coming to a trifle from the 2nd to the 5th of July, organized by Dino Stoffonica, along with Arthur V and Great James on the Great Event. Uh I think it's not 23rd July now. Um tickets are not £1,200 are very, very reasonable.

James Cridland 1:06:49

I should I should just point out great great ways to be able to do that.

Sam Sethi 1:07:02

Um they are going to be uh having lots and lots of people go up there for some great podcast shows broadcasting live from various venues around Sheffield and hoping to get up there for it. Um but I thought, you know, well, let's talk to Dino's office first and find out how the event's doing, where they are with Headline Act, and I've got something to announce with the BBC.

Dino Sofos 1:07:27

I'm knackered to be honest, Sam. We were not surprised. Crosswires was running the podcast track at South by South West London this week. So we had a full day of some of the biggest podcasting talent in the UK in the lovely Christchurch in Spittlefields, amazing venue, and it was a really, really fun day, but yeah, exhausted.

Sam Sethi 1:07:46

Well, look, as you've mentioned at South by Southwest, how was it? I mean, very expensive to go to £1,200 a ticket. So who was there? What was the event like?

Dino Sofos 1:07:54

It was good that you they approached us to run the podcast track and curate the podcast track with them. It's the first time Crosswires has done anything outside of Sheffield, which we can talk a little bit more about that. For people who don't know, Crosswires is, according to your very own James Cridlin, the world's biggest podcast festival. It's based in Sheffield. We take over the city of Sheffield. Eight venues, I think, this year. We're entering our third year. We did 25,000 tickets last year. So it's a big, big old festival. This year, it takes place from the 2nd to the 5th of July. And we have 80 shows across the weekend. So yeah, it's it's a really fun packed weekend of not just going to see shows but after parties, DJ sets, signings, meeting your favourite podcaster, and it's fully about the fans. As we know, like podcasts have got huge fandoms now. It's I think it's the new rock and roll. It's like going to see your favourite band. You want to go and see your favourite band with your mates and sing along to the words. And we're seeing a lot of that in podcasting now.

Sam Sethi 1:08:56

I think you're right. I mean, democratised TV, democratised radio, whatever you want to call it, everyone now has a podcast, but the people who have the big podcast really do have that loyal following, don't they?

Dino Sofos 1:09:08

And what we've seen at Crossed Wires, people are traveling for it. It's not a regional festival. It takes place in Sheffield, but 40% of our audience come from outside South Yorkshire. Like London's our second biggest city after Sheffield. So people are travelling for it. They're making a weekend of it. We had people flying over from Brazil, from Japan, and we've got these iconic podcasts that have got those really loyal fandoms. So Ellis and John this year are our headliners, Elizabeth Day, How to Fail. We've got Zoe Ball and Joe Wiley who are doing Dig It Live for the first time. Alice Levine and Greg James are there. So we've got the big household names, but we've also got these shows getting in touch with us wanting to perform. So year one, people don't know what it is. Year two, you're still having to sort of twist people's arms to get them on the bill. Year three, people like actively reaching out saying we want to do this. And then also from our partners as well. So we have some really big partners. The BBC is our main partner for the fringe, and Audible is sponsoring our headline venue. So when it comes to BBC Sounds, they came last year for the first time. We took over a disused department store, the old John Lewis, which has been empty for a few years now, and it's right in the heart of the city centre, right opposite our headline venue. And we put BBC Sounds in there for a weekend. So the BBC brought their biggest shows and talent and offered a free programme for the weekend so people can just apply for tickets and go and see those shows. We had queues around the block trying to get into those. Last year, John O'Wall from BBC Sounds and Johnny Kay, the head of Strategy at Sounds, kind of set up year one. Mo hit Backaya, the controller of Radio 4, came last year and he loved it. They looked at the room and we had some Radio 4 shows there, like Rewinder was there last year with Greg James and Michael Palin. And they had Gardner's Question Time Live as well. And the crowd was just so young and diverse and exactly the type of audience that the BBC are trying to reach. So Mohit said, you know, I want to come back and I want to have a Radio 4 venue. So there's going to be a second BBC fringe venue. Over three days, they are taking over the Montgomery Theatre, which is a kind of 400-cap theatre, and they are bringing like serious big beasts. So David Dimbleby, Nick Robinson, the Archers podcast with Emma Freud. They've got a new series about the World Cup with David Badil that's coming, you know, kind of like podcasting and broadcasting royalty. Then Woman's Hour is doing a live radio show from there, actually. So the demand from the BBC was like, well, let's double it and do twice as much as we did last year. So we need to extend because of that reason. And I think where we've got to with crosswires now in year three, the growth has been huge, is just sort of starting to consider what we do next, really. And I've traveled to the US and looked at what's happening in other countries, and I can't see anything like Crosswires. I can see a lot of B2B, but also podcast conferences that are doing shows or tapings, as they would call them, in the US. But Crosswires isn't really about that. Yes, we are filming shows and people do record their podcasts there. But if you look at Help I Sexted My Boss last year, was a full big Saturday night shiny floor production with choreography and crowd work and costume. It wasn't two people sat in armchairs having a chat. And I think, to be honest, I think that's what the audience expectation is now. Like people want to be entertained. If you go and see, we've got Danny Robbins bringing Uncanny back this year, and there is lighting and smoke machines and special effects. And I think that's the brilliant thing about podcasting, right? You can be entertained by just watching two people in armchairs having a chat and in conversation with. But increasingly we're seeing people really wanting to have a big night out, go out with their friends, go and see a show and then go to an after-party and have a few beers. So the logical step for us now, having sort of looked around and kind of going, well, I think we've tapped into something that isn't happening elsewhere, is where do we take it next? I think in the UK, yes, we talked about South by Southwest. That's great for us to kind of pop up there and co-curate a podcast track there. But actually for us, I think the prize will be expanding internationally. So we've just hired an MD, Ian Bushel, uh, a really great guy who's really experienced in the live event space and kind of scaling live events internationally. And we are yeah, actively having conversations now with potential partners in different cities around the world to see where crosswires could go next, which is really fun, really exciting, quite scary, but the opportunity there and the possibility is really fantastic.

Sam Sethi 1:13:30

Some people have likened you to the Glastonbury of Podcasting. I think you and I think it's more of the Edinburgh of podcasting, you know, that small venues, local, very tight. And when you talk about internationalising, you and I were talking off-air about it's not going to be New York, LA, or Sydney, but you're looking for cities and venues which are tightly knitted so that, you know, it feels very close between each event that you're putting on.

Dino Sofos 1:13:52

Yeah, the beauty of Sheffield and the reason we launched it here is that it's got world-class venues like the Crucible, you know, where the World Snooker Championships are, Sheffield City Hall, an abundance of theatres, the largest theatre quarter outside of London in Sheffield, and it's all literally a stone straw. You can walk between all the venues within minutes, seconds sometimes. And that's really important because what you don't want is people buying a ticket to a show going home. We want to keep them. We want them to be able to bump into Greg James or Danny Robbins or Elizabeth Day and see them at the bar and have a selfie with them and have a chat. We want that sense of community and that energy which crosswires really, really captures. So when we're looking abroad, I think New York wouldn't be right. I'm not sure Berlin would be right. So it's about finding those cities that have the venues, that have the footprint. And also what's been really important in Sheffield actually is the local government and the council getting it. So in Sheffield, the council have given us the keys to disused buildings, which is really fun. So you can go in those like iconic theatres, but we can also just do a pop-up venue in a disused space. And it feels like you're really taking over a city, and I think that is important. We don't want to just land somewhere, we want to work with partners on the ground to feel part of a place. And I think place is something I'm really passionate about, which is why both my businesses here in Sheffield, where I'm from, but we want to be rooted in place and we want to feel like we're part of something.

Sam Sethi 1:15:15

Now, you were talking about BBC Sounds, but you've also got something to do with BBC iPlayer. What's that?

Dino Sofos 1:15:20

Yeah, I think this is really, really significant, and we're really pleased to announce that we've struck a deal with BBC iPlayer, which is the BBC's TV streaming service in the UK, and they are going to be filming live shows at Crosswires across the weekend and putting them out pretty quickly. We're turning them around. Some of the shows will be on iPlayer on the weekend. And that is a combination of BBC shows, so the shows appearing at the BBC Fringe, so like newscasts and shows like that, but also commercial shows, so Dig It with Zoe Ball and Joe Wiley, and get a grip of the audio show with um Angela Scanlon and Vicky Patterson. So those shows will be filmed for iPlayer as well. So you know how for your listeners in the UK, when Glastonbury's on and you go on iPlayer and there's a Glastonbury channel, there's going to be a Crosswires channel this year, which is, I mean, this is year three of the festival, and I think it's testament to what we've created at Crosswires, but also just how fast this industry is moving. In that we've gone from talking about video podcasts and filming podcasts and the BBC and BBC Sounds is obviously, you know, like traces and cloak. They've had some really big vi visualised podcasts as they call them, but now it's gone to the point where they're filming and visualizing live podcasts at a commercial festival, which I think is yeah, really exciting for us.

Sam Sethi 1:16:36

Now, you mentioned that you've got another business, Persifonica. How's Persiphonica doing? I mean, you took on Digit with Joe Wiley and Zoe Ball, massive. You've got Dualipa, you've got a few other females in your slate as well. What's happening with Persifonica?

Dino Sofos 1:16:51

Yeah, I look, we're one of the UK's biggest and most successful podcast companies. I don't think we'd call ourselves a production company anymore. We are an IP business. We're creating original shows and growing our original slate of shows. So, yeah, you mentioned a few there. So we have Miss Me with Mikita Oliver, previously Lily Allen. She's been busy taking over the world with her latest album and tour. Jordan Stevens has replaced Lily as the presenter of that show. Dig It with Zoe Ball and Joe Wiley, which is a show we launched targeting a sort of Gen X female audience, hugely successful. Just last month we launched Bad Chat with Greg James and Alice Levine. Greg, the host of Radio One Breakfast Show. Alice hosted My Dad Wrote A Porno, one of the world's biggest podcasts. We've got political currency, so we've spanned genres, but we have sort of started to move into more entertainment shows. A huge part of our audience is female. I think that's a really underserved audience, especially when you look at what we've achieved with Dig It. There just weren't that many shows for 50, 60-year-old women. A lot of the shows that were out there for that audience were quite heavy. And I think there wasn't anything that was light and just great companionship and not sort of heavy interview where people are bursting into tears every five minutes. I mean, yeah, there are tears on Digit, but there's a lot of laughter too. And I think our approach at Persifonica, you mentioned Dulipa, Lily Allen, Greg James, Zoe, we pride ourselves on working with the world's biggest talent. But as you know, talent alone isn't the answer. It's about formats and production and knowing your audience and connecting with your audience and building communities of listeners, which is what I think we've mastered at Persifonica. The company has grown. We're completely bootstrapped. We own the company entirely ourselves. We've taken no investment and we've grown significantly. Our HQ is in Sheffield, but we also have a presence in London. Actually, recently we've signed a deal with ACAST for exclusive distribution of our original shows. So they are selling our ads, they're selling ads across our network alongside our in-house sales team. So we're also growing a sales team. So yeah, it's a big business now and it's going really, really well. And you know, video podcasting is something that we have embraced from quite an early stage, actually, Sam. And I know you have this debate a lot on pod news. I'm a regular listener. What is a podcast? And I've sort of have got a romantic view of podcasts. You know, when I was working at the BBC, I launched Brexit Cast and Newscast and Americast. I think there is a DNA of a podcast which is people getting around a table and having an intimate conversation and letting the audience in. And that DNA is what we've continued in all of our shows, even if they're filmed in full video. And I think what we've managed to do at Persophonica is retain that intimacy. So if you look at Miss Me, it sort of happened by accident with Miss Me, actually, but we we had a challenge and that Lily Allen was in New York and Makita was in London. And we didn't want to do the kind of crappy Zoom call thing. I mean, these are big stars, right, who take pride in their appearance and they don't want to appear on a grainy video call. And social media is such a huge part of that show and connecting with that 30-40-something female audience. So we kind of came up with a system to record 4K from their homes remotely on DSLR cameras, not on web cameras. And the sort of byproduct of that, of filming it in their homes, in Lily's house where she lived with her husband at the time and where Makita lived in her flat in London was that life was going on behind them. Pets would come in the room, Makita's grandma would walk into the shop, Lily's kids would be in the house, and you just created this connection with the audience. We're letting you into these people's lives. The parasocial relationship. Parasocial. And we recreated that with Zoe and Joe, so they record from their respective homes. But when people see it, they're like, oh, are you recording at a studio? Because it looks great. And like, no, there is no producer in the room with them. They lift their laptop up and we have complete control of their remote setups. So video is really important for us. I mean, I think you know, recently we've learned that social is the biggest discoverability factor for new podcasts. So I think video, when we launched Bad Chat, we launched everywhere on video: Apple, Spotify, YouTube. We have really good relationships with all the platforms there, and that's a really core part of our strategy. But at the same time, we are really passionate about the audio quality, about what the sets look like. So we actually work with a theatre set designer, a really incredible woman called Sarah, who has built this amazing kind of 90s retro office for Greg and Alice in the ACAS studio in London, which just is a mad world that they go and record the podcast every week and they feel comfortable and they can have fun in it. At the same time, we make a football show called Games Gone, the Steve Bracknell Podcast, which is the most nuts thing we've ever done. It's an always-on, unscripted football sitcom. And we record that every week. And Sarah has built a Football Sunday League boot room for us. So it's a proper set. You know, we're not just recording those wooden slap panel studios. I think it's important to create a sense of place and a world really for your listeners to dive into and your viewers to dive into.

Sam Sethi 1:21:59

So Zoe Ball and Joe Wiley have been two of my female heroes in broadcasting for forever. How many Glastonbrees have I watched with uh Joe Wiley? How many Radio Two mornings have I had with Zoe Ball? How did they, though, adapt to podcasting? I've always wanted to know these are Uber professionals who are used to radio studios, they're used to TV studios, but rocking up into your own home and setting up on your own and doing that. How did they adapt to podcasting?

Dino Sofos 1:22:27

I think you just have to listen to the shows to hear that they've done it incredibly. I think for Zoe it was probably easier because Zoe presented a breakfast show, so she was having conversations and interviews about relationships and life, and there was a lot of laughter in those conversations in the breakfast show, and it is a very intimate relationship with the audience. I think for Joe, presenting music shows where she's interviewing bands and musicians and then playing lots of music, to then switch to talking about family and the menopause, you know, it was an interesting one for us because we weren't sure how they adapt. And obviously, when we're developing shows, we always think about the combination of talent and how that's going to work, and it's really important that there's an authentic relationship there. And you never know how it's going to work. But honestly, the first time we pitched up to record the pilot, and I went to Jo's house and we set up a little a mic and a camera in her living room, and she sat on the sofa and crossed the legs and just went for it. And we were like, Oh my gosh. At the time we'd sort of bill dig it, it was loosely built around gardening and gardens. We didn't go full on down the gardening route, but there definitely was a thought that it was going to be a prominent part of the show. But from the first pilot, you know, they were talking about everything: family, health issues, menopause, aging, and it was just a revelation. And they've really taken to it naturally. And I think what's the really key measure of success on that show is just how engaged the audience are. And I think the key there is that the audience, as you say, like you, Sam, our predominantly female audience, but men listen as well, have grown up with these two women. They've been, you know, from the word on channel four, from live and kicking, you know, we we've literally grown up with these people. We had this um recently, there was this iconic photo of Zoe Ball on her wedding day in the 90s with a bottle of Jack Daniels wearing a Stetson. And these images are just like part of our kind of upbringing. We all remember seeing those on the front page of the papers. And nostalgia's a really big thing in a lot of our shows, actually. It's a huge part of podcasting generally today, actually, is connecting with your youth. But Zoe talking about that image and the backstory of that image was just like perfect for our audience. The social views and the engagement on that clip was huge. So, yeah, I think the way we approach shows at Persophonica is we think very carefully before we launch a show. We look at where there are gaps in the market, and then we think, well, right, so we want to do a show for that audience. What is the show? And who are the two best people or one best person we can possibly think of to present that show? And I think with our track record, the the shows that we've made, our relationships with talent and with with talent agents, we're in a really fortunate position that I think there is that trust, and people working with us can be very confident that we're gonna create a hit podcast.

Sam Sethi 1:25:17

So you talked about crosswires maybe going international. How about Persophonica going international?

Dino Sofos 1:25:23

Yes, we are an active development on some shows for the US market. It's obviously challenging for UK podcast companies to break into America, but again, I think the track record we've had in the UK, the success, the ideas, and when we look at some of the shows that we've made in the UK and how they could translate to a US market's really interesting. And we're represented by WME as a company, and they're you know recently went over to the States and had some interesting meetings there, and they were over at the podcast show, and yeah, we're constantly talking about talent, they're bringing talent to us, we're getting in the room with interesting people. But as I said, we don't take a scattergun approach to commissioning and to developing ideas. We we think a lot and and we think very hard and we put a lot of time and effort into into shows. But yeah, we are in a in a in a great position that we can self-fund and and and self-launch shows and IP. And I think that model's really interesting for the US market.

Sam Sethi 1:26:21

Last couple of questions then, Dino. We've just seen Netflix get into podcasting, we've just seen them do a hundred million dollar acquisition of Jay Shetty's show on purpose. Somebody like yourself running a podcast company, what does that say to you? You know, do you think uh we could have a show that does that? Does that even bother you or does it even register? You just business as usual, and if it happens, it happens, or do you think, hmm, there's a big pool of money lying there? Can we grab some of it?

Dino Sofos 1:26:49

Look, it it's definitely exciting, and there are shows that we make where so, for example, Joe and Zoe just uh did a show from the Chelsea Flower show, a digit special, and we put a lot of effort into thinking about how that looked for YouTube, and you could absolutely see shows like that working for TV. I think for me, it's really got to work for the audience for the listeners. Everything we do is about the community of listeners that we're building and what we're offering that in terms of membership, in terms of live events. We're building 360 brands here, they're not just podcasts, they are. I know lots of people talk about shows over podcasts now, but we're building brands, and not everything works for every show, right? So a newsletter might work for one show, not another. A Patreon might not work for one show, might not work for you know, might work for another. I think you've got to take the approach, like what is right for that show. We are seeing increasingly, we're just looking at the stats, and we're seeing increasingly people on shows like Digit watching them on YouTube on their TV in the living room. We know that that show is fascinating because we have so much feedback from those listeners saying this is the pod first podcast they have ever engaged with. And they're doing it straight away on their smart TV at home. They've bypassed. The podcast in headphones audio only model. So, yes, for a show like that, a route to television is fascinating for us. And we're having those conversations and we're really interested to see where that goes. But yeah, it's got to be right for the podcast and for the audience.

Sam Sethi 1:28:15

Right. So Tony Pasta from Goalhanger mentioned that they're making about a million dollars a month now for a membership. She talked about memberships briefly. You know, we've just seen Spotify announce that they're going to be bringing out memberships. YouTube has memberships, they talk about super fans now and monetising. You've got Netflix coming in, as I said, and you mentioned, you know, Patreon and Substack and newsletters and building a brand. Which platform eventually are you going to drive your audience to? Because you can't just do a shotgun, scattergun approach. You know, the lovely expression, wherever you get your podcast is great. But actually, at the end of the day, what you're wanting to do is create a branded portal around audio, video, merch, live, etc. etc. I mean, do you have a preference yet or is it all up in the air and you're just having a look?

Dino Sofos 1:29:04

Yeah, we're platform agnostic and we uh work really well with all the major platforms because you have to be where the audience are. The audience is everywhere. And we're experimenting a lot with platforms. YouTube is a fairly new platform for us. I think we've we've seen a lot of success with Apple. Apple's moving into video. As I said, BadChat launched on Apple Video from launch. And we really value those relationships and we work hard to make sure that the podcast is where people go. I mean, the other day somebody contacted us saying, I'm listening to Bad Chat on Audible. Like, now most people just forget that you can even listen to podcasts on Audible, right? So we'll take the audience wherever they are. But you're right, when it comes to subscription and membership, it's something we constantly think about how we add value to the audience. We've had a long relationship with Patreon on political currency. We have a two-tier membership system on that platform. I think the Patreon guy is brilliant. We get on really, really well with them. I think that platform is good from a UX point of view, about having your chat room on the platform and being able to watch the content there. I think for people who are not very tech savvy, I think that works really well. So we're talking to Patreon about our other shows that may be launching subscription models in the very near future. But it's also, again, it's about what we can offer to the audience, but also what the talent have capacity for. And I think the old saying, which is you only get out of it what you put into it. And that's absolutely the case with membership. And I think where we've made mistakes before in the membership side of things is launching one without a proper strategy of what that content's going to be. So we've pivoted on that. And before we launch one now, we really make sure that there is a value, whether that's bonus content, in-person events, getting closer to the host, which is what you know talks about the parasocial relationship. That's what people want to do. So the answer to that question is we're having some really interesting conversations with Patreon. But in terms of the other platforms, we are platform agnostic.

Sam Sethi 1:30:49

You know, now going back to crosswires, if I wanted to get tickets, where would I go? Are there any tickets left? It's so close now to the event. And we're talking a month away now.

Dino Sofos 1:30:57

Yeah, it's a month away. Tickets are selling out for events quickly. I think the BBC fringe shows like over 50% gone, and they only went on sale yesterday on general sale. There's a lot of pre-sale for that. Dig It, How to Fail, Elizabeth Day is sold out, bunch of other shows that are sold out, but there are still tickets available if you go to crossedwires.live. And look, I know the people listening to this podcast work in the industry. We're not an industry festival, but there are lots of podcasty people here around the side. There's a fantastic pub in Sheffield called Fagin's, and that is the unofficial kind of industry hub. And some really great conversations happen there. And I think it's also just a great opportunity for people in the industry to see who's listening to their shows, like to get in a room and you go, oh right. I thought it was all, you know, under 30 females, but actually there's a load of blokes in the room. Okay, interesting. So I think in terms of market research and just getting together and having some fun and coming to the great city of Sheffield, where you will be very welcome and we will look forward to hosting you. Please come along.

Sam Sethi 1:31:57

Congratulations on the growth and success of Persophonica. I've known you for a while now, and well done. And an amazing job as well with Crossword.

Dino Sofos 1:32:04

Thanks so much, Sam. Yeah, and congratulations with true fans. And you know I'm a longtime listener of Pod News. I listen every week religiously, and the newsletter's great as well. Thanks, Dino. Take care,

The Tech Stuff

Dino Sofos 1:32:14

mate. See you soon. Cheers, mate.

Announcer 1:32:15

The Text stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland 1:32:19

Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday in the Pod News newsletter. Um here's where Sam talks technology. Actually, um uh there will be an awful lot of talk of um uh of signatures and stuff, but I think first, Sam, you have an AI corner for us. How exciting!

Sam Sethi 1:32:36

I'd rather not. Uh it's it's a certain Mr. Cridlin who's been writing a lot about it, so I thought I'd put it all into one box. Um, it looks like Podpage, the uh podcast website company, has launched an AI-powered SEO assistant. Um, do we have to add AI to everything now when we have a new feature? Is that the is that the clue?

James Cridland 1:32:57

Well, I think basically everybody has found out um that they can um add lots more features uh using AI. Um so Podpage's AI SEO Assistant will help you tune your podcast's titles and descriptions. Um, there's also an AI ad tagging service from Stream Guys, so you can go back through your previous podcasts or your previous radio recordings because it's um uh quite similar to how Woshka used to work. Um, it'll work out where the ads are and get rid of those and replace those, uh, which is uh very cool. Um, there's an AI service from the podcast Haven, which will help you find topics to grow your show, which is quite nice. Um Beamly, um another podcast and content host, um, has launched a new podcast analytics dashboard um and uh stuff in there. Um no AI from Beamly, but um AI from Spots Now, um, a company who has um launched what they call an AI operating system for podcast advertising. Essentially, um, the AI does the complicated stuff of um of uh planning the media plan and the RFPs and all of that kind of things so that your salespeople can focus more on sales and less on the um technical stuff around um scheduling um uh all of the advertising campaigns, uh which is uh quite nice uh for them. Uh and then finally, um a scary thing uh called Compose, um, which has uh launched, which is actually probably very good for this show. Um you give it access to your podcast RSS feed, it then produces blog posts, quote cards, um uh nice pictures, um, you know, with us doing uh strange and weird things, uh I suppose, um, uh infographics, um, all kinds of stuff based on what we have talked about. It's quite nice um from that point of view. Um, so uh yes, I saw that and I thought that that's uh that's a neat little uh little uh trick. And the idea is that it will take one uh show and make a month's worth of content out of just one show. Um so uh there's a thing. So yeah, loads and loads and loads of new AI tools uh going on, of course, more in the Pod News newsletter over the last week. Um, but uh you can very much see that people are um uh throwing everything into the AI basket and seeing what sticks.

Sam Sethi 1:35:26

Now, this is a discussion. Uh this needs to be brought to air. Um James, you pointed out a few weeks back that we were uh or you were getting on pod news daily and someone spoofing your user agent, and then you said there's no way to have a secure user agent. On the back of that, we also had new explosive video and audio, and I noted on three founds how many bots were streaming the audio and video, how many uh minutes of time they're taking some code hours of time they were taking for themselves at the London podcast show in the podcast founders project. Um Tom Rossi, one of the co-founders of Botswal, was very concerned that you know they were gonna have a lot of high costs from bots streaming video, which is very expensive. Um and then there was a whole discussion around user age identification. Um Tom went away after the London podcast show and he's come up with an idea to improve client identification in the podcast ecosystem. He's suggesting a better way for apps that request downloads to be identified. Tell me more, James.

James Cridland 1:36:47

Yeah, and I think this is a really important thing. So there's there's a number of different things going on in this, and I think people have got um some people in the the podcasting world have got a little bit upset about some of the things that they think that this is there to do. Um so it's probably worthwhile just sort of stepping back and going, okay, what is Tom proposing? Tom is proposing that. Right now, at the moment, if you want to download a file, then your app, uh any app, will tell uh the podcast host what the app is. They will say, hello, I'm Apple Podcasts, I'm this version, and I would like this file, please. The problem with that is that that user agent, hello, I'm Apple Podcasts, um, is just whatever you want to write in your code. So anybody else can pretend that they are Apple Podcasts. I had somebody pretending that they were the the Pod News bot, for example, and so uh it looked as if we were accessing um a set of shows. We weren't, but it looked as if we were accessing a set of shows. Um so anybody can pretend that they are anything else, and that is a problem because it means that we actually don't know who is downloading or what is downloading a podcast file, and that gets much more complicated when you start talking about video because video is much more expensive. But that's a problem that podcasting has, it's a problem by the way, that website owners have. Um, so what Tom is trying to do is Tom is trying to make it so that you can't just write anything in that user agent, you write something which is provable that you really are the Apple Podcasts app or Pocket Cards or TrueFans or whatever it is. So that provable user agent is all that Tom is asking for. Now, there are a lot there are a lot of people who are jumping up and down and saying, but that means that you'll block apps that won't have that. I don't believe that that's going to be possible because I don't believe that 100% of podcast apps are going to use this anyway. Um, but I think it's quite similar to what we have in email. So in email we've got a thing which is called DKIM, and DKIM uh essentially is a um piece of uh security which proves that the email that you are getting from me, james at podnews.net, that email that you are getting from me is really sent by me. Um, and there's a bit of um of clever uh signature checking and uh all kinds of stuff, but essentially it it proves that it that it is from me using a public and private key. This is exactly the same thing that we need for podcast apps, and at the moment we don't have it, and at the moment that essentially means that any any anybody can pretend to be Apple Podcasts, or worse, a web browser, because nobody's gonna block a web browser in order to download files. Uh, and that's bad news for podcast hosting companies, it's bad news for podcasters, um, and and it would be nicer, wouldn't it, if that was a more dependable um uh number. So that's basically where we are in terms of that. Lots of people getting very upset about it, but I I I'm not quite sure why.

Sam Sethi 1:40:11

Well, one of the things that people are upset about is because if you're an app with no back-end server, then this might not work for you because it's a server-to-server requirement. And so Eric PP and and several other app developers have said then what if my app is just an app and doesn't have a back-end server, blah, blah, blah. So I think Well, yeah.

James Cridland 1:40:33

Yeah, I mean, I and I can and I can see, but but I think uh what Eric PP has jumped to is the implementation of it. And at the moment, um the implementation of it, I I can't what will work out a way that we would actually implement this. Tom's uh idea, uh, which comes from our sponsor by Sprout, um, is an idea that I don't think can work in a web browser. And so if it doesn't work in a web browser, it's dead from my from my point of view. It needs to work in a web browser. But the in but the implementation is different to the need for it. And there are lots of people who have this sort of religious belief that we shouldn't be tightening this kind of stuff up at all. And I think that that's the bit that I'm having trouble with. Yes, the implementation is probably entirely wrong right now. Um, but the implementation can come once we've actually, you know, agreed that this is a thing that actually we do need in the podcast industry.

Sam Sethi 1:41:33

Yeah, I mean I I also, you know, we we talk about people who are anti it. I mean, we have people who are pro it. Oscar Murray from Fantashead I said, I think something like this makes a lot of sense, some things we have to consider. Uh I was looking at additional people request um because you can't put it on your mobile app on the code base or because there may be other uses other than just looking at who's requesting it for uh for streaming content or video for um again, you're right, James. But I mean people are jumping straight to well, if this is the implementation, I'm out, as opposed to this is the problem, let's collectively put our heads together and see what could be the answer. And Tom being brave has put the first answer up. Okay, maybe that's not the answer, but don't throw out the problems as well.

James Cridland 1:42:24

No, I I I think it would be a foolish thing to uh to end up doing that. And well, we shouldn't forget, you know, I mean I think that the I think that people are putting their arms in the air and going, oh no, this is the this is the worst thing that could possibly happen to podcasting, because there is the implicit um uh suggestion that people would be blocking apps that don't support this. Firstly, I don't think that that will happen. But secondly, we block apps anyway. We block apps, we block IP addresses. We're all blocking stuff because we all have to, because there are bad actors out there. Um so I think it's naive in the extreme to say, oh, we should never be be blocking anybody that wants to download our stuff. We all do that anyway. So I I you know I think I think it you know some of it is coming from just a um uh a position of ignorance, and some of it is coming, you know. I mean, as ever with the podcast, um as ever with podcasting 2.0, there are a lot of people who are looking at this only from their own viewpoint and not considering the wider industry issues. Um, and uh there are an awful lot of people um putting their hands in the air and going, oh no, this is a really, really bad idea. Not very many podcast hosting companies doing that though. No, you know, because because actually it's the podcast hosting companies that really need this. We are under attack. Um, we that run podcast hosting and that run um uh websites, we are under attack this year more than we have ever been. The amount of automated uh accesses that our online systems are seeing has gone through the roof, through the roof. It's costing us so much more money. Um and all we're asking here is can you prove who you are, please? Not prove who you are from a person point of view, but prove who you are from an app point of view. That's all we're asking. I don't think that's a difficult ask, but um to some people it's it's um it's the beginning of the end of the open web. Um but we're doing this in terms of in terms of email anyway. This is what I don't I don't get. So yeah.

Sam Sethi 1:44:46

I mean, um just to um you know back up what you're saying. I mean, on TrueFans, we are now obviously a host and we are streaming uh uh HLS content and we are seeing numerous bots hit every episode since they're published. You get uh hours of streaming data being sent to those bots. So we looked at hours we couldn't implement something like Tom because you know that an industry-wide uh standard to be implemented for working that's another thing you're involved with as well, the opol um botless which is uh available for everybody. Uh John Spoiler runs it, I think you're involved with it. Um it's a good first step. It's not perfect. You're right, because anyone can speak for user agents. It's a good first step because those user agents are uh self-certified in the in effect or are on that list. We then can show uh uh at our admin level, if we want to block them, we will. And then at the individual podcaster level, we show which bots are streaming your content, and you as an individual can choose to block them. Now that may not be perfect and it isn't, but it's a good first step, I think.

James Cridland 1:46:05

Yeah, I I I think there's that there's um that is obviously a good first step, but the Achilles heel with OPOG is that you can s say, you know, if I want to pretend to be true fans tomorrow, I can't.

Sam Sethi 1:46:19

Well, I mean this was a it's not perfect, yeah. Right? I I I'm I'm I'm agreeing with you, it's not perfect and we don't have a solution. But I can't sit here going, oh well, if we haven't got a solution, do nothing. Um I think in fact you have a great article on Pod News Daily, you know, using a podcast app, you're not sure what your user agent is, here's a simple way to check, right? So you know you can go and work things out. And I think if we can feed back, you know, I'm gonna look to feedback to John, we don't know who this is. Can you add it? Can you check it? Can you help us?

James Cridland 1:46:51

Um rather than Yeah, but but again, but again, this isn't solving the problem that Tom is trying to solve. Uh uh, you know, we've we've had user agents for the last 30 years. What we don't what we don't have is any way of actually showing that that user agent is really what is accessing. Sure. If I wanted to if I wanted to do something bad with podcasts tomorrow, I could pretend that I am the Apple Podcasts app and download stuff. And no one is going to block the Apple Podcasts app. Um so so this is the thing. You know, using using user agents isn't isn't new. We've been doing that for the last 20 years. What what what's new here is we have no faith in those user agents actually being, you know, it's just an honesty box at the moment. Yeah. Um and unfortunately, it's uh unfortunately we are seeing that um you know honesty sometimes doesn't always work, sadly.

Sam Sethi 1:47:48

No, and as I said, it's not perfect. We're doing it as our stage one. We hope that the industry comes up with a better solution where user agents are certified or or you know, and then we'll implement that. But you know, here you go. Yeah, oh indeed. Last but not least, James. Um you I think you pointed out this might not be new, but it was certainly something that came up on the Mastodon chat. Um Twit this week in tech, which is Leah Laporte's famous uh network of podcasts, added support for podcasting 2.0. We all got very excited because we thought one of the OGs has added podcasting 2.0, but you then said, no, they've been doing this for a while.

James Cridland 1:48:26

Yeah, uh um they have been doing this for quite some time. I I was very excited, um uh uh I think even possibly even two years ago when um I saw the podcast person tag, for example, where you can see um uh who is in each of his shows and who the guests are and everything else, um, that uh that uh appearing. But yes, you know, um slowly but surely we are seeing more support of some of these uh tags. The person tag, he's supporting uh chapters and transcripts, as many people um are apparently supporting the episode uh tag as well, um, which um uh is an interesting one because that's not got an awful lot of s support. So maybe it's um a byproduct of the podcast hosting company that he's using, I don't know. Um, but great to end up seeing um, you know, somebody else supporting those um those additional uh tags and particularly the person tag, which is you know a great uh a great opportunity, I think, um, to um make it easier to find other shows that this person is in. You know, if you if you can do that, then great.

Sam Sethi 1:49:37

One of the things they they say they support is a tr transcript tag. So but they've implemented it in a really, really odd way because they put the uh link to an HTML page, which means it can't be included within the app or at least we have to make some changes. Effect within the app.

James Cridland 1:50:02

Well, and uh and unfortunately this comes back to um my longstanding uh grumble that podcasting 2.0 is way too complicated. Um they are supporting the podcast transcript tag absolutely fine. Because one of the ways that you can support the podcast transcript tag uh is to bung a website in there, um, a web page in there and link to it through text slash HTML. Uh and as we are hearing, it has made your life an awful lot harder because all of a sudden you you need to work out how you're going to support that, if you are going to support that in the first place. Um it comes it comes back to what I was saying a month or two ago, which is that that tag needs to be simplified and we need to take the HTML out, we need to take the text links out, we need to push people to use VTT only because VTT is the um you know is a great uh uh tool for all of this. Um and um and you know, and these and these other formats, we shouldn't have a specification that has four different formats, because then guess what? One person uses a format that would that we weren't expecting, and we go, oh well, he's doing something wrong. Well he's not, he's doing something absolutely perfectly right according to the specification that we have written. But it's just that our specification requires every single podcast app developer to deal with four different formats. Um but I get told off uh for uh saying this, um, and I got sort of you know slapped down when I wanted to make the tag much easier for developers to to uh to uh implement. Um so so it's a it's a bizarre thing, but at least at least we're now learning that uh it's a it's a bad thing to have four different formats in a tag when one would have done. Yes. Yes. Try to move on, James. Yes.

The inbox

Announcer 1:52:09

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James Cridland 1:52:24

Yeah, so many different ways to get in touch with us. Fan mail by using the link in our show notes or boosts or email as well. Um we share uh any money that we make uh as well. Uh and we uh thank you uh so much uh for uh doing that. Um what have we got, uh Sam? We've got uh uh I think we had a very angry, uh, very angry piece of fan mail last week uh from uh from somebody who was very upset that I said uh what a hateful person JK Rowling was. Um so best not say it again. Uh that would that would clearly be a mistake, wouldn't it? And I think that was the only one, uh in fact. Um so uh by all means, if you have any uh comments on the show, uh either um uh the best way, of course, is to click the uh fan mail button in our show notes uh from our sponsor, Buzz Sprout. That will let you um uh r record a voice note, and uh those are the ones that we really like. Um uh so go and use that or send us an email if you like, weekly at podnews.net. Uh you can be as grumpy as you like. Um and uh thank you uh as well to our many uh power supporters, including our latest one, James Preston White from Lean and Loaf. Thank you, James. Uh also uh John McDermott, uh Claire Wake Brown, um, David Marzell and sh and Cy Jobling, to name but a few. Um very much appreciate your uh support and uh thank you for doing that. Weekly at podnews.net is our email address. Weekly.podnews.net is our website address where you can uh join, and that's a great

Sam and James's week

James Cridland 1:53:56

thing. Uh so what's been happening for you, Sam?

Sam Sethi 1:53:58

Uh well we finally got it right. Uh we now have full OP3 support for podcasts that we host. I've checked with John Sperlock, he's very happy. I got a gold star. Thank you very much.

James Cridland 1:54:10

Um what do you mean by support?

Sam Sethi 1:54:13

Well, we add the prefix. So we add the OP3 prefix to the podcast that we host, not to everything that's on our platform, uh, but just the ones that we host. And so, you know, like all these things, uh I wanted to make sure we got it right. Sent it over to John. Thank you very much. That's good news. Um so that's good. So hopefully we can add to the pool of analytics and you know give a give our little three peak uh um we also did more work on our premium feeds of uh secure. Um so now we've implemented that in a broader way, so you can either do the podcast episode or at chapter level. Um we're also working on how this will work with uh that we host going out to say Apple or Spotify, which don't support this. So I I get a little bit more work to do, but we're getting there. So uh I thought you know again, something that's quite interesting for me. Um I think uh Justin Jackson's working on uh a spectral private feeds uh which are insecure feeds, in my opinion. Um so uh again, I I think we need a lot more to do. And going back to what Oscar Merry said about the extensibility of maybe uh uh signatures, um uh maybe that's the way forward. So there's a lot of stuff going on. All that's all I'm trying to say within this area of uh premium content, private feeds. Uh so watch this space.

James Cridland 1:55:42

Yes, indeed. And uh also in our show notes I notice a uh a concerning photograph of you in shorts. What's going on there? Concerning. It looks as if you're doing exercise there.

Sam Sethi 1:55:55

Award-winning. Yes, yes, uh it's part of the South Downs walk that we're doing, so there's a whole bunch of us, there's about 12 of us doing it. Um it's great fun. We just rock up, um, move our cars at one end, set of cars at the other end, and do 28 kilometres, let's say, which is the one we just did. Uh lovely countryside, um, and we have stupid long cats. So yes, South Downs. Nearly done, three more legs to go till we hit Eastbourne. Yeah, and we started in Winchester, so about a hundred miles.

James Cridland 1:56:28

Very nice, very nice. Gosh, that looks like uh that looks like hard work. James, what's happened for you? I uh I'm in uh I'm talking to you from Canada today. Um uh I uh they but they've given me a suite, which is uh which is very fancy. Um, but it's a suite in a in a hotel that would have been really quite impressive in about 1983. Uh so there is always that. But I'm in a place called Kelowna in British Columbia, and um uh I have a uh I have a balcony. I've never heard of it. I have a balcony here. I can look out to the lake, uh, which looks very pretty. Uh the sun is out, uh it's shining, it was a nice warm day. Uh yesterday I got on a uh Uber bike to cycle up to the pub. Um uh so that was nice. And um, yes, so um was it downhill on the way back? It was it was all flat, uh, so that was that was good. Um can't work out how to get the helmet out of the uh bike though. So uh although it came with a helmet, I couldn't work out how to put it on. Um so uh that's something for me to learn for later on today, I suspect. Um but that's all good. So uh yes, um here for a radio conference. So I've got my radio hat on, but also on Friday, uh hopefully Friday afternoon, catching up with Justin Jackson, who lives about an hour north of us um uh here. So um uh and I can kind of understand why Justin looks the way he does now, because he does live in the middle of the most beautiful countryside. Um it's uh it's really quite a place here. So uh yes, we I I saw the snow capped mountains at the end of the year.

Sam Sethi 1:58:07

He's nearly 70, you know. He's nearly 70 Jackson, he looks like a 30-year-old, it's amazing.

James Cridland 1:58:14

It's when he it's when he talks about his kids, and then you realise how old his kids are. And you realize, oh, you're not quite as young as I thought you were, Justin. So uh yeah. So I'm looking forward to seeing him on uh Friday um uh or today as you uh are listening to this. Um uh so that should be fun. And uh yes, that that that that's sort of that's sort of my life um uh here. Very much um, you know, it's it's always fun to uh travel and to see new places, and um it does look like a very nice day outside. So I'm looking forward to going out and and enjoying some of that. Anyway, uh that's it for this week. All of our podcast stories taken from the Pod News Daily Newsletter at Podnews.net.

Sam Sethi 1:58:58

Uh you can support this show by streaming Satch. You can give us feedback using the BuzzSprout fan mail voice link. In our show notes, you can send us a boost or become a power supporter, like the 25 Power Supporters at weekly.podnews.net.

James Cridland 1:59:13

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

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