Announcer 0:00

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

Sam Sethi 0:09

I'm James Cridlin, the editor of Pod News. And I'm Sam Sethy, the CEO of True Family.

SPEAKER_04 0:14

The current model doesn't seem to be working for the average independent podcaster. And I think that is a huge problem.

James Cridland 0:24

Losh Moodley on earning revenue for independent podcasters, plus.

SPEAKER_00 0:29

Non-profit podcasts can actually have revenue. We try to help them figure out how to do that and do it well.

James Cridland 0:35

Richard Fawall from Vox Topica on revenue for nonprofits. And the Alliance for Podcast Measurement gets a new member and changes a definition already. This podcast is sponsored by BuzzSprout with the tools, support, and community to ensure you keep podcasting, start podcasting, keep podcasting with BuzzSprout.com.

Announcer 0:56

From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly

Simplifying podcast measurement

Announcer 1:00

Review.

Sam Sethi 1:00

James, let's kick off the show. You've done something really interesting. Last week we talked about AMP, the Alliance for Measurement in Podcasting, coming up with a definition of a play, which is 30 seconds. And on the back of that, Spotify immediately jumped on it and said, Yep, that's what we're gonna do. So it looks like we're gonna have an industry standard for plays being 30 seconds before we measure it. So the question is, does size matter? Does 30 seconds or 60 seconds really matter? And now you went off to talk to rss.com and find out the answer. What did you do?

James Cridland 1:37

Yeah, I did. So I was curious as to whether or not, because it would be easier, wouldn't it, if we could say that uh you measure a podcast 30 seconds of play or 30 seconds of download? Okay, so a play is obviously different to a download, downloads may not uh actually get played, but at least we can say, okay, either enough to play for 30 seconds or enough to download for 30 seconds. So I thought, what would happen if we changed the download threshold from 60 seconds to 30 seconds? So I asked Alberto at rss.com whether or not he would waste his time for a story for me and take a week's worth of data and calculate total downloads using that 30-second threshold rather than the 60-second threshold and see what the difference was. And they came back to me, which is very kind of them, and they basically say there's no difference. Your figures go up by about 1%. So really there's no change at all. So to me, that makes it much simpler to explain how podcasting is measured if we were to switch to 30 seconds for everything, 30 seconds for plays, and 30 seconds for downloads. Again, let me just stress a play is different to a download. But using 30 seconds for both seems to make a lot of sense, and it doesn't seem to make any change uh at all, which is nice.

Sam Sethi 3:03

So if it makes no difference, um we're happy to then go with the 30 second one, right? That's what we're gonna agree all on now.

James Cridland 3:11

Yeah, I mean, I mean, I I would suggest, I don't quite know how AMP is interfacing with the IAB, but I would suggest that the industry would be better served by simplification. Um, this is a recurring theme of mine, isn't it?

Sam Sethi 3:28

Complexity has failed, simplicity. I think it's it's a good thing to have simplicity.

James Cridland 3:32

Yes, no, exactly. So I think if we can agree on that 30-second threshold, and if the IAB wishes to, in version 2.3, which I'm guessing must be, being worked on, to change the 60 to a 30, then we then have you know comparable data, at least in terms of all of that. It's just less complicated to explain, particularly if it doesn't make any difference at the end of the day.

Sam Sethi 3:58

Now, if people are confused about plays, streams, downloads, views, listens, where can they go to find out more, James?

James Cridland 4:03

Well, I'm glad you asked. Uh, they should go to podnews.net slash articles. You will find in there a page which is all about understanding podcast stat. It's all been updated and it measures video and all of that kind of stuff as well. And it's a highly rated, uh, not by me, but by other people, highly rated article all about uh how to understand the difference between plays and streams and downloads and views and listens, uh, and also all of the data that you can get from all of the different platforms.

Sam Sethi 4:32

He also had a uh article link from uh Cody McLaughlin from the podcast TechStack where he's talking about this new play metric. So I thought I'd read the article, and it's well written and worth reading, I think. Um he goes on to say the metric that determines value is gradually shifting closer to actual consumption. So he's talking about the end of the download and the move more to play content. Um you and I have been talking about this. I think when I go back over the episodes for nearly three years, James, we've been talking about plays, listen time, and percent completed, which some people call consumption. So now that the industry's moving to this measure, um what we're now seeing people starting to talk about is attention. And I think we actually have to go beyond attention. I think attention becomes uh I think a little bit wishy-washy as a term, you know, it's like the attention economy. It's like, well, okay, what does that actually mean? Yeah. I think we need to get into actual measurement of that attention. So as podcasters and creators extend beyond just being a podcast into brands, I think, you know, when you look at something like Substack where you've got your newsletter, you've got your live events, I think we need to be able to measure not only how long you listen to a podcast, how long you watch the podcast, but did they read the blog and how long they read the blog? Did they buy tickets? Did they share the episode? I think if you combine all of that fan activity, and that's what I call it, you can create a brand score, possibly. I I don't know if brand is the right word, which is very simpler in my world to what the bumper score is, which I don't know how it's calculated. Yeah. But I think the attention economy is interesting as a term, but I think we need to now go even deeper beyond that into measuring actual activity beyond just the listen and watch time.

James Cridland 6:25

Yes, I I mean I think you know, actual activity is very useful and you know certainly helps us, I think. Um, you know, I mean again, I I think at at the end of the day we need to um be as simple as we possibly can. And I think certainly there is a big benefit in switching from downloads to plays, you know, of course. Um, but I think um in terms of uh in terms of adding additional things in there, then yes, that's you know obviously important. I mean, for advertisers at the end of the day, they just care whether or not their their ad was actually shown or played. And so I think from that point of view that that's really the information that we're going to get from uh some of the AMP specifications, assuming, of course, and this is a big assumption, but assuming that that implementation document is actually technical enough. There is quite a lot of concern, I think, in the industry at the moment about the lack of properly really technical people in that group at the moment. There are a few, but there aren't that many. So I'm hoping that the document that we get in July is going to be properly technical enough, is going to explain a lot of the little gotchas, which can totally change what a you know what a play actually is. Um, and I'm hoping that that is um the way forward that we um that we can move uh to. If it's just another, dare I say, sales press release, then I'm not sure that that's going to be particularly helpful to us. It needs to be a proper piece of technical work, and I don't know whether that's been done yet, I'll be honest. Pod News has learned a couple of things uh about that, which you might have seen in the Pod News newsletter yesterday. Firstly, it turns out that YouTube is involved in AMP. Um, if I can uh give the exact wording from uh Google, YouTube has been participating in the AMP-led conversations. Um, so that's interesting, isn't it? Because that then goes to show that you know I have been suggesting that YouTube probably uses a 30-second play. Uh and um if YouTube is involved in these AMP conversations, then that's a big deal. Where's Apple in all of this? We don't know. I have asked Apple whether or not they would be uh re-looking at their play count, and uh that's a concern because if if Apple can't be bothered to jump on board here, then that's one thing.

Sam Sethi 9:01

I don't know if it's not that they're bothered, they they're generally slower to the action, right? They I think they sit in the background and observe and then then they jump in when they think it's appropriate.

James Cridland 9:11

If that's the case, then great, but I've not really got any clarity as to whether or not they are even sitting in the background and watching. So um, you know, so that's a that's a thing. The second thing is that um AMP um uh rather embarrassingly for them, their original press release included a definition of a play which wasn't actually agreed. So their uh original press release said 30 seconds of content played, audio or video, once per user per session. And the once per user per session bit has been taken out. So all it now says is 30 seconds of content played, audio or video. Well, that is much more woolly than once per user per session. We don't even know what a session is, um, but that's even more woolly now. Um uh you know, as you know, the definition of a play in Apple Podcasts is literally somebody counting the amount of uh times the play button has been hit. So now we've got a much more woolly definition of play, and it's a definition uh that is going back on what they said in their press release two weeks ago. So that doesn't look great. But anyway, I've made the change in the original press release by using the HTML5 DEL tag, which uh shows deleted text within the page. Nice. So you can so you can see what it used to say. The other thing that we don't actually know is where does a play get defined? And this is something that I've not yet published in Pod News because I'm hoping that somebody knows the answer to this, and I'm probably going to wait until somebody tells me that I shouldn't be worried about this. But I went to Apple Podcasts on the web and I played 10 seconds of two video podcasts, and they're both HLS video, uh, one on Art19, one on Buzzsprout, our sponsor, who offer Apple Podcasts video at a very reasonable price, buzzsprout.com, and took a look at what the browser was actually downloading. If you play just 10 seconds of a video, how much is a browser downloading? Over 60 seconds. So a play defined as 30 seconds of content played, you'll never gonna know if it's um if you're just looking at server logs, you're never gonna know how much was actually played, because you'll only know how much was downloaded. Yes, it stops at about 1 minute 12 seconds for BuzzSprout. For Art19, it stopped at 1 minute 6 seconds. Both of those will count, by the way, as a play uh if you were to look at um the BuzzSprout server logs or the Art19 server logs. But if you were using uh instrumentation within a player, so you know Spotify's implementation or maybe uh in the future Apple's implementation, it wouldn't count as a play. That must be a concern, right? What do you think of that?

Sam Sethi 12:14

Yeah, well, I guess what they're doing uh and what we all do is we're caching it, right? We're pre-caching it. So it it's performance versus versus, you know, I in this case, attribution. Uh I think performance wins every time in my own.

James Cridland 12:31

Of course, yeah, of course. So that means that everything which is actually played, even for 10 seconds, will count as a play in terms of server-side logs, because there's no uh there's no un unless I'm missing something. So this 30 seconds of content played thing uh is relatively immaterial because it's any of the content played. It'll it'll download a minute's worth um and cash into the browser, um, which um uh should be uh relatively the same in terms of individual, you know, apps and uh things like that.

Sam Sethi 13:05

I mean we we talked about it last week. I said I didn't think the 30-second thing mattered anyway. It's whether you clicked play, yes, which is better than the download, which wasn't a play. So that's a step forward. And and you've got to add the second two parts of the equation, which is listen time and and percent completed. Those are the more interesting metrics once you've clicked play. That will think so. Yeah. Yeah, and and and I don't know if AMP's gonna go beyond that. If they're just gonna say a player's 30 seconds, end of story, move on, there we go, then I think that's a big failure. I think if they are um looking at the whole equation that advertisers then would want, because that will define equally within the ability of HLS to say, yes, this ad was played, but how long was the ad played as well? Those are the things I think advertisers really want, not just 30 seconds was played, move on.

James Cridland 14:00

Yeah, uh although how long the ad was played, you know, again, if you if you skip a 30-second ad, then you will never know that from the server logs.

SPEAKER_06 14:10

Yeah, true. Uh you know.

James Cridland 14:12

So you end up so it's it's all it's all fascinating. I I find I find all of this really interesting. What what I I'm sort of disappointed by is how cloak and dagger uh it all is, and how it's not open, and how we don't know really what's going on here. I think that that is um, you know, that that's not particularly helpful, but um, you know, but I'm doing my best to report on these things. Um but how embarrassing that uh AMP have had to walk back um one of their initial um and frankly, they're they're only um their only detailed definition in this of of you know having to having to you know walk that back because they they messed up somehow in sending us a press release.

Sam Sethi 14:59

Well AMP are claiming a big win already in their newsletter, which I get, which is basically after we met, Spotify adopted our standard. So very interesting.

James Cridland 15:08

Yeah. Well, we will see how all of that works. Uh feedback to weekly at podnews.net. Uh Neil Vellio sends us a boost, in fact, and sends, for me, play counts are as irrelevant as downloads and indicate reach, not engagement. It could work if it was a minimum of three minutes. That way, that's beyond most ad breaks and intros. It would also render 90% of shows redundant, so unlikely anyone will agree with me. Uh Neil, uh, thank you for that. If you've got um things to say, uh then use our fan mail link. Uh, even better, stick it in the voicemail. Uh, that would be super excellent.

Interview: Losh Moodaley

Sam Sethi 15:48

Now, in Pod News Daily, there was another interesting article, um, which I would say is shortened to Show Me the Money. It was related to AMP uh with this cross-platform proposal for measurement. Um, one of the writers that you have, Losh Mudaly, who said that it won't fix the money for independent podcasters. Um, she argues that podcasting costs are going up with the advent of video while the production standards are moving close to broadcast. But she says the monetization model has not changed, and she makes a number of suggestions of other ways to build revenue. So I thought the best thing, James, would be to reach out to Losh uh and get her on the show. So here she is. I asked her to tell me more about her proposal.

SPEAKER_04 16:38

I am in Jeffree Space, South Africa. It's a great surf destination. We are in the middle of winter, but it's a pretty decent day, and I'm in a place called Paradise Beach.

Sam Sethi 16:50

You sound like you're having a horrible time. I mean struggling through it all there, Losh. Thanks for bravingly surfing and lovely weather of Paradise Beach. Give me a bit of background. Who is Losh and what have you got to do with podcasting?

SPEAKER_04 17:10

Sam, so I am a sponsorship strategist. For the last seven, eight years, I've been working with all sorts of creators and helping them attend to sponsors, understand how the strategy behind going direct to sponsors, how to increase the income, how to package their content as assets. And so that's pretty much what I do. And I started going deeper into the podcast industry, and I noticed that there is this problem with a ceiling in the podcast industry, but with the middle class, so there isn't really much of a middle class, and then there isn't much earning potential for the podcast middle class. And so that got me really interested. And so that that's been a lot of what I write about. So I'm really focused on independent podcasters, and so in terms of downloads, we're looking at about 5,000 to 25,000 downloads per episode, if we base it on downloads, and that's actually surprisingly 1% of the full podcast population, based on my research. 1 to 1.5%.

Sam Sethi 18:27

So we've moved on in the last couple of months from the download to plays. One of the um groups that is trying to now metric for measuring podcasting for advertisers is this thing called the audio measurement podcasting group. And they've proposed a way to measure the number of plays. But you wrote a title which I thought grabbed me. Better podcast measurement won't fix podcast economics. What do you mean by that?

SPEAKER_04 18:53

Well, I think there's this sacred industry assumption in podcasting that has always been the more downloads that you get, the more successful that you are. And that isn't always the case. And I think we're going to start seeing it more and more because we do have rising production costs. And basically, if the only way to earn revenue is through CPMs, the current model doesn't seem to be working for the average independent podcaster. Um, and I think that is a huge problem because the industry up until this point has really emphasized scale and has really told podcasters to push more downloads. And the focus has been on downloads and getting the numbers instead of saying to podcasters, how do you build a better business? How do you build more sustainable revenue? How do you make the average middle class podcaster more profitable so they can have a good life with all of the effort they put in and all of the value that they're creating?

Sam Sethi 20:03

So when you talk to sponsors, advertisers, and people in that target zone, how do you convince sponsors that they should be targeting that group?

SPEAKER_04 20:14

I think it's based on knowing your audience and knowing how to package your audience and finding the right sponsor that sees value in your audience. And so for the independent podcaster, the strategy is completely different to what works for networks and ad agencies, which is the numbers scale game. Whereas for independent podcasters, you could have a show of 500 listeners who are decision makers in a specific industry, and you could do 10 times the revenue than a podcast that is doing 50,000 downloads per episode in a genre of general entertainment, for example. So I feel it's a case of knowing your audience and also understanding what sponsors are looking for. And I found that a lot of podcasters don't quite know that, or there isn't that much available information out there on what sponsors are actually looking for. And that at the end of the day, sponsors, if we break it down to the root, sponsors are looking to sell products, to get leads, to increase their conversion. And so I feel if you have a highly engaged audience that is able that takes action, and you are able to prove to sponsors that your audience who does buy, who does take action, can go into their pipeline, then it really is an easy sell for you once you have all of the case study information. But I do find that a lot of podcasters in the independent sector. Perhaps don't have this information, or they don't know how to position themselves, or they don't know how to position their audience. And so that's that's an issue. So they're not making as much revenue as they potentially could, if they took everything under their own control.

Sam Sethi 22:16

Yeah. So in the article in Pod News Daily that you wrote, you've got the strategic roadmap beyond CPMs. And the first one you say is view your audience as a standalone economy. Can you say more about that?

SPEAKER_04 22:29

If you view your audience as an economy and not as a download number, because I find a lot of podcasters are focused on 50,000 downloads per episode as a metric of success. But if you understand your economy, how they think, what motivates them or drives them, where they are in their decision-making process, and especially why do they listen to you? Like why do you have that connection with them? And you kind of understand your one-on-one relationship with the greater economy. There's so much more you can do to improve their lives through the use of sponsors. Because at the end of the day, we talk about sponsors and we talk about advertising, and we all want to switch off ads, but we all still buy products. And we all still love the products that make our lives better. And so if you know your audience, you know your economy, and you know what products are just a really natural fit, then I think you won't have a problem with sponsors. And as long as you're able to gather all of the case study information so you can prove your case of how well it worked for the sponsor, you can keep renewing year after year. You don't need to chase downloads. You just need to maximize your audience of 3,000, 4,000. But as long as you know your audience, you know what they want, and the most alliance sponsors in that little microeconomy of yours, then I think you can build a sustainable business out of it.

Sam Sethi 24:13

I agree. And the second thing you talk about is selling exclusivity, not inventory. Tell me more about that.

SPEAKER_04 24:21

Well, if we look at inventory and we look at CPMs, they're priced on scale and so they're discounted. And in that situation, you have many podcasters often say a random car ad is in their podcast, which really kind of creates this interruption and it depletes audience trust. But when we start moving towards the economy and things like exclusive experiences, and we look at your true fans, for example, you can start thinking along the lines of having things like VIP experiences or these exclusive experiences. Think of them as once-in-a-lifetime experiences that only you can provide because of the podcast. And how do you package that? And how do you start to monetize that? And how do you bring in the most aligned sponsors who also want to create that type of experience for your audience and will probably get a lot of publicity value out of that anyway? For the independent podcaster, I think it's a shift in thinking away from more downloads and CPMs, to how can I really create this world? And how can this world improve the lives of these people who enjoy me and we have a connection and they're with me and they tune in every week because of our connection?

Sam Sethi 25:47

Yeah, and I think we are all beginning to understand the term parasocial, which is this deeper connection. And in a world of AI, more human-to-human connection is going to be more important. Now, the third things you talk about in your report is scale outcomes, not audiences. Tell me more about that part.

SPEAKER_04 26:05

I think that goes into the fact that podcasters need to start thinking from business outcomes and start to understand things like conversion rates and that sponsors and advertisers are ultimately chasing sales, and that's why they're buying into your audience. And so what is the outcome that the sponsor wants, and where are you in the process to delivering that and then understanding how to best deliver that so that you can renew your sponsors and you can do really cool things like do a tour to your best cities with a sponsor on board and create more experiences.

Sam Sethi 26:49

Okay, and the final line that I loved you put in this report owners of trust, not renters of attention. What did you mean by that?

SPEAKER_04 26:59

Podcasting is a medium that has always been built on trust. But I don't think that trust is rewarded when it comes to independent podcasters and the value that they create. And so where I'm going with that is how long can independent podcasters live off the attention?

Sam Sethi 27:21

I think, in my view of it all, where we're heading is, you know, for the last five years or so of the industry, maybe more, the download's been the metric, and now it's the play count because we have the ability to measure the play count through the new HLS capability of streaming rather than downloading. And that gives two things. One, it gives an assurity back to advertisers about was their ad played, how long was it played for? So the metrics going back to advertisers is better. But also, as you're describing, it's not just being that CPM metric that we measure against, but it's brand extending the value of the individual podcaster. So that podcaster is connect to their audience, not on a singular podcast advertising, but as you say, adding value back, the exclusivities, the ability to retain sponsors, and at the end of the day, give those people who I suppose value your communication and your podcast other ways to connect. I think you've talked about premium content, live events, merch. I think that's where we're going. I call it creator portals. I believe, you know, we had portals back in the old days under Netscape and Yahoo and MSN, but they were brand corporate portals. And I now think we're going to individual creator portals. So you as an individual have your portal. It's your place on the web, and you bring all of your content and communication and your fandom to that place. And how you monetize that fandom then really is down to you. Yes, if you want to do advertising-based monetization, great, keep doing it if that's what you want. But as you said, host red trust with the audience is a higher value than just playing out an ad. And I think, again, where do you see this heading next then? Do you think that we will be moving more towards more premium content and paid communication? Or are you seeing the advertising model becoming stronger? Which way of the two monetization models do you think will be the stronger going forward?

SPEAKER_04 29:27

I I definitely think that we are going to move towards the individual, in line with what you're saying, and monetizing the individual and what the individual is bringing to the community. In whatever way you want to do that, and platforms and tools will just start assisting monetization of the individual.

Sam Sethi 29:50

Yeah. I mean, on my own platform, TrueFans, we are using user-based activity, the interaction with the content to measure fandom. So we identify super fans. So the the monetization isn't always a single currency monetization. So it's not like I'm buying your premium content, but it could be that the value that I'm giving you is I've shared your podcast with 10 of my friends, or I've made a comment, or I've interacted with you in another way. That is equally high value of a fan giving back content communication to the creator. And the creator can then reward them in other ways. It could be early access to content, it could be bonus communications that they wouldn't get, such as access to the newsletter first.

SPEAKER_04 30:40

I totally agree with you. And I think also ways in which your audience can own part of what you're doing, because you can also turn that into investment. And so you have these many investors that come from your audience, and you just you start and grow things. And I think we're heading in that direction when it comes to sports, in terms of fan ownership. I guess that's what we're looking at, and the passion that's behind fan ownership translates into the creator economy and once again ties back into the individual. The passion and the motivation that you bring to this community has a value to it, and that value can be monetized with the right platforms and with the right strategy and in the right way. And so I think there's going to be a whole lot of new future-based models that come about and new business models that actually work for the individual creator. Because the current model doesn't work for the individual creator.

Sam Sethi 31:48

Yes. Your role as a consultant to individual podcasters is where your business is heading. So if somebody wanted to get hold of you, Losh, where would they go?

SPEAKER_04 32:00

You can find me on LinkedIn at Losh Midley. And I think that's pretty much the best place.

Sam Sethi 32:07

And what sort of way do you work with clients and how do you engage with them? What's your strategy, I guess?

SPEAKER_04 32:15

I get to know the podcast. We understand their audience. That's where I come in. And we package their audience in the best way for sponsors. And at the moment I'm working with independent creators. I do a, I call it a strategy sprint to help them understand who their audience is and how to package it. And so that they can go into the market and find sponsors. Because I think a lot of creators, when they think of sponsors, they think in terms of the big brands. And that's not always the case. It could be a local brand in your hometown that's willing to take on a Euro sponsorship with you, and they love supporting local. So, so that's one of the things I do. I do offer a strategy sprint where we understand the audience, we understand how to package everything so that you can go out and you can sell. So I provide everything that you need to go to market and productize the podcast. And then I also work with B2B podcasts where I sell on their behalf to related sponsors.

Sam Sethi 33:28

Look, I highly recommend everyone go to Pod News Daily. Uh, look up Beyond CPM, surviving the new measurement era. It's a great read. Well done. And yeah, if you need to get hold of Losh, look her up on LinkedIn. Thanks a lot, Losh. Okay, off to the beach you go again. Surfboarding in your hand. Lucky you.

SPEAKER_04 33:48

Great chatting. Thanks, Sam.

Announcer 33:50

The Pod News Weekly Review will return in just a second.

PodBiz

SPEAKER_02 33:54

Hello, and welcome to PodViz, the money behind the mic, a podcast about the business of podcasting. I'm Norma Jean Balenke of NJB Media, podcast and media strategy, marketing, and audience development.

SPEAKER_01 34:06

And I'm John Kiernan of Podhouse Productions, your one-stop shop for everything podcast production, from ideation to editing and recording, and so much more. We're your co-hosts on this journey into this world of podcasting as a business tool.

SPEAKER_02 34:19

Whether you're launching your first show, scaling a podcast network, or building branded content for your company, PodViz breaks down the strategies, techs, and mindset behind podcasting success.

SPEAKER_01 34:29

We're bringing you insider tips, real talk with industry professionals, marketing tactics that actually work, and all the lessons that we've learned in the trenches.

SPEAKER_02 34:38

Plus, we'll tackle the big questions like where's the money in podcasting, monetization, growth, SEO, and of course, how to stay human in a data-driven world. So if you're ready to go beyond the downloads and build real impact with your podcast.

SPEAKER_01 34:52

Let's get down to pod news.

Spam, spam, Spotify spam

Announcer 34:54

The pod news weekly review with BuzzSprout with BuzzSprout. Stunt podcasting, keep podcasting.

SPEAKER_05 35:02

Spam eggs, sausage and spam. It's not much spam in it. I've got a penny spam. Why can't we have egg bacon spam and sausage? It's got spam in it. Not as much as spam eggs, sausage and spam.

Sam Sethi 35:13

James, uh spam, spam, spam. No, this is not an episode of Monty Python. Um, this is uh basically Spotify's under a little bit of fire um after they've done something. What have they done, James?

James Cridland 35:26

Yeah, so uh we reported on this last year. Um CNN did some um investigation into Spotify, which was linking loads and loads and loads of spam podcasts that were selling drugs, essentially. So you would search for the drug that you wanted to buy on Spotify. It you would be taken to a podcast which was published by somebody that had a link that you could click to go and buy that drug. That's an interesting way of using Spotify. We've covered, of course, um sex workers and people like that using podcasting in the past as well. That kicked off an investigation from US Senator Maggie Hassan, and uh their investigation was uh released uh last week. And that is fascinating. There are a few sort of really interesting things. Uh firstly, Spotify removed 3,500 accounts in 2025 who were doing this. 3,500, but they didn't report a single account to law enforcement because why should they? Secondly, Spotify doesn't track any use of links in episode descriptions, so you can put whatever you like in there, and Spotify don't even know how many people are clicking on it, which seems a bit of a uh blind spot to me. So um, so there's a thing. And thirdly, some of those shows have been on the platform for four years, uh, which is uh quite a thing. Um, it's not just uh Spotify, iHeartRadio had them, Amazon Music had them, ACast's Podchaser had them. Interestingly, Apple didn't uh by the looks of this investigation. Um, so that is a thing. Um they seem to have pointed, uh the investigation seems to have pointed to Jellypod, which is an AI-generated podcast tool, which is uh making some of this uh stuff, presumably because it's free. Um I don't think that this is a Spotify issue. I think this is an industry-wide issue. I think it's something that we should be working together to combat. And it seems to me that uh the podcast index is one way of already um getting there a little bit um, you know, a little bit further in terms of their pro their problematic feeds list. And what I would hope is that the industry actually gets together to fund a method of, you know, spotting the obvious spam to uh at least flag that obvious spam, not to automatically remove it, it's up to the individual um uh podcast uh directors to do that, but at least to have some method of flagging that, which I think the podcast index uh is very good at doing, um, so that we can actually spot things like that in the future. Would you be up for that for uh TrueFans?

Sam Sethi 38:16

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we've got a couple of things there. So we already support the podcast index spam API. So whenever there's a report of a podcast, we remove it from our index, we do that automatically. That's quite nice. So thank you to Dave Jones for doing that work for us. Um we also going back to what I said earlier about the attention economy and tracking activity, we actually are building an equivalency to Apple's timed links. Um, but going broader than just supporting the Apple uh in the transcript, that's something we're doing. I won't talk more about it, but what we are tracking is an activity of that link out so we can measure how many links were clicked out. I wonder whether we can extend that in any way. I haven't thought about it until now, into bad links out and reporting it. I don't know if that works, um, but it's something off the top of my head. But I think there's a case, yeah. I you're right. I don't think this is a Spotify problem. I think it is an industry problem. I think it also goes back to the worrying conversation people have about bad apps and bad AI bots and how we're going to report those as well. I think it's all in the mix. I think, you know, people are gaming the system fundamentally, and and how do we stop them gaming the system? And how do we stop bad actors within the ecosystem? Um, no answer to the question, by the way, but I think we can see what. Well, there's been suggestions, haven't there? You know, Alberto from RSS.com suggested an AI tag. Um, we've had Dave Jones from the podcast index doing the spam API. Um, are these just micro solutions to what is a bigger, bigger problem?

James Cridland 40:05

Yeah, I mean, uh, you know, that may be it. I I I I think that AI is a separate thing, actually, here. Uh, I don't think that AI is necessarily the issue. I think that the issue is the spam. And, you know, uh to my knowledge, that there isn't even any checking on whether or not a podcast has any audio in it. Um, as long as it's got an MP3 file, and that might be two seconds long, then that's all that actually matters for it to be listed in Spotify, for it to be listed in most other podcast um uh, you know, services. So I think um, you know, that's obviously an issue as well. But uh really interesting. Of course, some people will be jumping up and down and saying, GUM, we had GAM. GAM was that thing, if you remember, where you could be dinged if you mentioned um uh naughty words enough, and then advertisers wouldn't automatically advertise in your show. Um, I think that this is a little bit different, um, but certainly one of the things that I would be suggesting is that um there is an overall score in the same way that we have a spam cop score for an email, um, but it's still up to each podcast directory as to what they want to do with that. Um, and um, you know, and that I think would be helpful. But um, yeah, that's sort of uh where we are, I guess, on that.

Sam Sethi 41:26

Now, uh, you you say that isn't an AI thing. Okay, let's

Another new AI podcast company

Sam Sethi 41:30

move on.

James Cridland 41:30

Well, we're talking about AI, there's a new AI podcast company, flooding podcast directories, which hundreds of shows, and whisper it, it's not actually that bad. Uh, it's a company called Fastcast. If you do a search for the Daily News Now, or you can do a search, I mean, I can do a search for Brisbane uh news now, for example, and and it appears. Probably won't be one for Cookham, the little village where you live. Um, you and Chris Evans and and you know everybody else. Um, but I bet there would be one for you know for Reading uh or for uh what's that what's that uh what's the bigger Maidenhead? Marlowe, yeah, yeah. So um possibly not Marlowe, but possibly, you know, you might um you might get to um Maidenhead or that sort of thing. There's certainly one for London, uh, you know, in there. Um they're actually not that bad, I have to say. Um they're all hosted by uh an AI voice. He's flipped, he's gone to the dark side, people they're actually hosted by an AI voice called Cory with the story, which nearly works. Um they're about two minutes long. They all say at the beginning, uh it's Cory with the story with your AI-powered um uh blah blah update. Um, so they're all very clear that they are AI powered, um, and that's absolutely fine. I thought it was interesting, they are currently marketing uh those particular shows uh for sponsors, and they're basically saying, you know, we are appearing really, really high in the Apple Podcasts list. Um, you can be focused on, you know, uh within Apple Podcasts um for stuff that people are already searching for, and they give a couple of examples. Um, I think that they're doing uh something I'm I'm not sure that I necessarily agree with it, but I think ethically it is much, much better than our friends at Inception Point AI talking about our friends at Inception Point AI. Uh in an interview which has just come out on podcast advertising playbook. It turns out that the interview is about three weeks old. We learn that uh Inception Point AI have decided that um if they're making a show which is about three minutes long, then they're not going to mention at all that it's with AI. Really? Um yeah. Wow. Uh yeah, they they don't they don't seem that that is is important. Um now, um, let's be fair Apple Podcasts specifically says that you have to. To say that it's AI. But Apple Podcasts don't care about making sure that that is actually enforced. So all of these shows are still in there, even though they're below they're below three minutes. And Inception Point AI has made the decision that they're not going to bother saying that they're AI generated. The reason that they give is Siri doesn't say every single time you invoke her doesn't say I'm an AI voice. So I think that that's dodgy as anything, but still, there we are.

Sam Sethi 44:36

Well, well, can I just say that's wrong? Because you still have to trigger it. So you have to say hey S, right? Or hey A or hey whatever. So you are invoking it to and therefore you have cognition that it is an AI. I agree.

James Cridland 44:54

I agree. Heather also asked, um uh, is it is it uh a concern that Inception Point is flooding the podcast space with so many episodes that it could be quite difficult for people to find content that's been created by a human. And uh Janine Wright uh responded, um, well, if we had better search capabilities, then that really wouldn't be an issue, would it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um I think she's just gaslighting us. I I genuinely think now that she's that she's just gaslighting uh because that is uh such a disingenuous answer. But I'm I'm sure that she knows what what she's doing, and as a former lawyer, um I'm sure that she means no harm. Because all former lawyers are excellent. And uh yes. Yes. Uh and indeed current lawyers, if any are listening, uh they're they are also excellent as well. All lawyers, you're you're all excellent. So there we go.

Sam Sethi 45:50

Um quick question though. Is the Fastcast company uh flagging in the metadata in any shape or form that they are AI? So are they using any way that we as a platform could then label that as AI ourselves?

James Cridland 46:09

In fact, they're on their own platform. So they should be able to do that if they wanted to.

Sam Sethi 46:13

I was gonna say who hosted them, but if they're on their own platform, then they've got to.

James Cridland 46:16

No, no, they are they are on their own uh on their own platform. Um but um they've they've um they've referenced the podcast um namespace, but they're not actually using any of the podcast namespace tags.

Sam Sethi 46:31

Well, to be fair, the AI tag isn't actually an approved tag right now.

James Cridland 46:36

So uh it isn't actually an approved tag. And in fact, if we're going to be strictly accurate, there isn't a podcast tag. No, it's a txt. Um there's it's just it's just a use uh a use of TXT, which I'm I'm I'm not sure I agree with.

Sam Sethi 46:49

Anyway, so I saw an interesting report uh in uh Capwing, which said that nearly 60% of videos recommended to new TikTok accounts are AI slop. And I only mention that that it is a siren call, I think, to podcasting. If we don't fix our AI slop problem, I think we all end up exactly in the same place.

James Cridland 47:11

I would agree. I would absolutely agree. Yeah.

Sam Sethi 47:14

Okay. Now,

Interview: Richard Fawall, Voxtopica

Sam Sethi 47:16

uh one uh company that I haven't come across uh is called Vox Topica. Now, Vox Topica is for non-profit organizations, they produce podcasts, and uh Richard Fall, who is uh the CEO, um reached out to us and said, Look, we'd like to talk about what we do and how we are different to commercial podcasts. So I thought, great, let's find out a little bit more. So I asked Richard, tell me first of all, who or what is VoxTopica?

SPEAKER_00 47:46

VoxTopica is a full-stack podcast agency. It was founded in really in 2019, sort of out of a consulting firm that I had founded. And we are designed to really help people in nonprofits, government agencies, trade associations, and the general mission-driven world have success in podcasting.

Sam Sethi 48:10

Why that narrow niche? Why most agencies look for high-end profitable podcasts, everyone and anyone come to my door? You're literally describing a very specific niche. Why that niche?

SPEAKER_00 48:21

It's a good question. There's a few reasons. One is that's very much my background over the last 35 years working in organizations like that and working for organizations like that. But a bigger reason is that it's a very underserved niche within the podcast industry and within the podcast world. As you know, and I'm sure all of the people listening and watching this podcast know, podcasting is very democratic. Almost anyone can get involved and get started and make a podcast. And it offers an incredible opportunity to mission-driven organizations, nonprofits, and whatnot, to reach an audience in ways that they can't with any other medium or media. So we felt it was important to make sure they were doing their best work in the medium. And we decided a few years ago, originally we were sort of doing what everybody else was doing in podcasting, like corporate work and branded work and individuals and true crime shows and all of those different things. But right around the pandemic, we decided that market was being terribly underserved in the mission-driven world, and we decided to focus pretty exclusively on that.

Sam Sethi 49:28

So, how do you differentiate and help your clients?

SPEAKER_00 49:32

The key things that we help them do is understand, first of all, the landscape that they work in, which is very different than commercial podcasting. Nonprofits are sort of governed by budgets and timelines and bureaucracy, just a whole lot of bureaucracy that they have to deal with. There's not a lot of education in the podcast world on sort of how to deal with those things. So we help them understand that's the landscape they're dealing with and to communicate effectively within their organization about what podcasting is and how it can help them, using the language that is really better understood by the nonprofit world. So instead of talking about downloads, we talk about engagement and reach to an audience you're trying to reach. And instead of, for example, consumption rates, we talk about depth of the message, because that's language that they use in this environment. And so bosses and directors and executive directors understand that better than talking about downloads and consumption rates. That's just one example.

Sam Sethi 50:33

Yeah, the download is dead. I mean, it's gone. Right. It is the dead parrot, right? So it's now all about the number of plays, and as you rightly say, it is the listen time and the consumption rate. So when you get a client come in, what is their brief to you to measure success? Is it just more listen time? Is it more plays, or is there something else that you say, look, in your specific podcast, this is what we're going to give you as a success metric?

SPEAKER_00 51:02

We spend a lot of time talking to clients about what their goals are and how those goals for the podcast are aligned with the mission of the organization. So if you are, for example, a healthcare advocacy group working in cancer or some other illness, what's the mission of the organization? How can a podcast help you and your organization achieve that mission? And then we design the show around that. Oftentimes it's driving people to a specific website or getting them to take some action ultimately by either joining the organization or sending a message to an elected official about funding some research project, those types of things. But it's very much geared toward both defining those actions and then measuring those actions and almost never has anything to do with revenue.

Sam Sethi 51:50

So given that they're nonprofits in the main, advertising can't be part of the mix, premium content can't be part of the mix. So it's a cost center to them. Or is there another way that you make it into a revenue generating?

SPEAKER_00 52:04

That's an excellent question, because we talk about mission-driven podcastings and we often compare them to commercial podcasts. But nonprofit podcasts can actually have revenue. So subscriptions do work sometimes for nonprofits. If the quality of the content and the value that it's providing is high enough, it there's nothing wrong. And it and nonprofits do say, hey, pay us $10 a month for this podcast, right? Help us keep putting this on. And of course, if you are familiar with nonprofits or that particular nonprofit, like giving them money is part of what you do, supporting a nonprofit that way. So we do talk about that sometimes with our clients, but ultimately for the most of them, they don't want to go that route. It first of all, it's an extra layer of complexity. And second of all, sometimes it just doesn't feel right to them. So we build in other metrics and we try to keep their costs as low as possible, right? Most of the time, they're making chat shows because chat shows are the cheapest shows to make. They're not often doing narrative documentaries. And so we we try to help them figure out how to do that and do it well, mainly by understanding what works in podcasting, which by the way, works what works in podcasting for nonprofits in terms of making engaging content is exactly the same as what works in commercial podcasting. So we want them to understand that. And oftentimes the mistakes that they make are that they come in thinking, well, great, we're just going to turn our newsletter into a podcast, or we're just going to, you know, go over the last white paper we've done. And one of the things we have to help them overcome very often is the thing that you have to remember about your podcast is that it's only going to be listened to by people who listen to podcasts. And so we've often spent a lot of time helping them understand what are the basics of how podcast listeners, how podcast audiences behave, the way they consume, the way they choose what podcast to listen to, to help them understand that their white paper isn't going to make an interesting podcast. But they can take what's in that white paper and make it very engaging if they think about the audience first.

Sam Sethi 54:12

Would you let's cover some hot topics? Would you take, for example, that white paper and use something like an AI-driven voice, notebook LM, and turn it into a chat show type podcast? Because that could actually make it a little bit more exciting. And that's a low-cost methodology of turning a white paper to a podcast.

SPEAKER_00 54:32

Probably not. In part. So let me clarify. There's an authenticity. There's an authenticity that nonprofits really hold near and dear. So using an AI or LLM generated voice for the podcast is something we find they push back on. However, using AI to read that white paper and draft a script that makes it more engaging is something that makes a lot of sense for nonprofits. It saves time, it saves effort. And then, of course, a human's going to go through and sort of DAI the language sometimes, as you often have to do when AI writes things. But that does save them a lot of time. It does make things a lot easier for them. And of course, if they are making the podcast internally, if they're not using a production company like Vox Topica, then certainly all of the AI audio cleanup tools and tools that will write show notes, a lot of nonprofits find that very valuable and useful and helps them save a lot of time and money.

Sam Sethi 55:37

So video is the hot topic as well. And where or when do you advise your clients to go from an audio to a video solution?

SPEAKER_00 55:47

That's an excellent question. We used to tell our clients a couple years ago, we would say, it's too much effort, it's not worth the budget, it's not worth the time, we know where you are. Don't worry about it. In the last, I would say, nine months to a year, we have started telling all of our clients, let's talk about how we make a video component to your show. It's become easier, it's become less expensive, and as we all know in podcasting, it's simply a great way to grow your audience and reach more people. So most of the shows we do, as I said, are chat shows because that's the easiest and simplest thing to do for nonprofits. A few years ago, everybody was nervous about that because we were doing everything remotely and they were like, ah, nobody's gonna like that. We can't do in studio. And now we're just like it. That is not a problem anymore. Doing a descript or riverside remote recording and putting that out is absolutely acceptable to the podcast audience. And so don't let that hold you back. And the costs have come down to the point where we can do a lot of video production for our clients without significant increases in their costs.

Sam Sethi 56:55

So you've got the audio, the video. Do you use clipping? Because one of the strategies that I've seen a lot now is clipping. I've never seen a Joe Rogan or listened to a Joe Rogan show. I wouldn't want to, A, but B, the clips are just sufficient to get a taste of what he's on a right. And same as a diary of a CEO. So do you advise your clients also to go down the clipping route as well?

SPEAKER_00 57:19

We do, but we're selective about it. One of the great things about podcasting, of course, is that it is an intimate platform. You can go into a great deal of depth. So for clients who are essentially explaining a white paper, right, we want to keep their clips to a minimum because the audience that they're reaching, and oftentimes when we're working with these clients, the audience is extremely niche, right? It is people who work in a very specific kind of healthcare or very specific kinds of industry. And so the podcast is an opportunity to go in depth in a way that nothing else they do can do. Somebody can listen to, can learn everything they need to know about a white paper on their commute rather than sitting down and having to read through it. For other clients, it makes an enormous amount of sense to do clipping, particularly when there are key points they are trying to hit in every episode. So for those clients, we support and help them do a significant amount of clipping, do a significant amount of posting. Interestingly, we find that a lot of our clients come to us who've never done podcasts before, and they come to us specifically because they want to do clipping. Like we want to make a show so that we can develop and release clips from the show. Like this is to support our social media program. And we often have to say, well, if you're gonna do that, we might as well make the best possible show because we're still gonna release it as a podcast. So let's talk about how to make the best show because the best show will give you the best clips. But it's interesting that in the last year, I would say, last six months, we've had a lot more people coming to us saying, hey, we want to really up our social media game. So we want to do a podcast.

Sam Sethi 59:02

So what's next for Foxtopia? Where do you go now?

SPEAKER_00 59:06

Oh, well, what we're really focused on this year and next is helping the podcast industry itself understand how valuable the mission-driven part of the industry really is. Like frankly, it gets forgotten. There's not much content at the big podcast conferences that is geared toward people who aren't chasing revenue, but are chasing the right kind of listener. So we're really working to educate the industry about how valuable and important this audience is, helping brands who are into podcasting or want to be into podcasting understand that there may be some sort of white hat opportunities to partner with nonprofits and put out mission-driven content that their brand can be applied to instead of just, you know, lead gen kind of branded content or brand awareness kind of brand content. There's work to do in the nonprofit space. And there's two other things that we really focus on. One, we do a lot of work in sort of the public affairs space, politics adjacent. So we do every year a we do research on how podcasts influence voters and voters' decisions. So we'll have our next survey coming out in August. And then our big plan is to really start taking what we've learned about nonprofit podcasting and doing more research around that. For example, there's no really good accounting of how many of the millions of podcasts out in the world were produced by nonprofits or were produced with a mission-driven purpose. There's no way to know that, right? There's no differentiator in the space. So we want to spend some time really trying to understand how big a market is mission-driven podcast, how much of what's out there is dedicated to a mission instead of revenue, and help the industry understand that and help our clients and nonprofit organizations understand that to make sure that this is a respected part of the podcast industry.

Sam Sethi 1:01:05

Now, if I wanted to come and work with Voxtopia, where would I go?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:10

Ah, you could go to our website, voxtopica.com, V O X T-O-P-I-C-A.com. You can reach out to us there. You can also download a lot of our research that we have done, both on voters. You can download what is our most recent release, which is called the Framework for Mission-Driven Podcasting. It really helps nonprofits and other mission-driven podcasters understand how to succeed in podcasting in ways that you can't get if you just, you know, Google podcasting and learn how to get a good mic or how to get sponsors or things like that, right? It's really geared toward mission-driven goals. So you can download that from our website and you can always reach us at hello at voxtopica.com.

Sam Sethi 1:01:51

Nice. Richard, thank you so much. Will you be at any of the upcoming shows like Podcast Movement or Podfest or the London Podcast Show next year?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:03

I will definitely be in London next year. We are still determining if we can be in New York for podcast movement and the business event. I'm trying to work that out, but the schedule happened to conflict with something else that I have to do. So I'll either send someone if I can't go myself, but expect us in New York and certainly expect us in London. We never miss a podcast show in London.

Sam Sethi 1:02:24

Perfect. Richard, thank you so much. Take care.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:27

Thank you, Sam. Great to be here.

James Cridland 1:02:28

The excellent Richard Fowell from Vox Topica. They are a supporter of the Pod News Daily Newsletter, as can you be, podnews.net slash

Round the world

James Cridland 1:02:37

support. Yes, let's go around the world now. Uh, shall we? Uh uh Sam, where shall we start?

Sam Sethi 1:02:42

Canada, the nice Americans.

James Cridland 1:02:44

Yes, let's start in Canada. Why not? Um, podcast in Canada reaching more Canadians than ever before. According to Triton Digital, they are actually quoting the Signal Hill Insights um piece of work, the Canadian podcast listener. Anyway, it's gone up to 46% a month, which is the largest single-year increase. And if you are an English-speaking Canadian, that number goes up to 49%, because they are slightly less popular with the French-speaking uh Canadians. YouTube is the most used podcast platform in the country, which you would um assume would be the uh the right thing, certainly in terms of reach. Apple Podcasts, though, the number one RSS-based podcast app. So 49% of all new episode downloads went to Apple in uh Canada, which I think is uh pretty good news. Um the iHeartRadio app accounts for 3%, uh, which weirdly is one of um which is you know one of only a couple mentioned. I think it's uh iHeartRadio, I think Overcast is also 3%, and then it says Apple, and then it says over. But then it goes into demographics um in terms of um uh you know Apple Podcast users uh unsurprisingly are far richer than users of YouTube. Uh so it's a good uh it's a good read, it's uh well worth a peek. You'll find it at the Triton digital website.

Sam Sethi 1:04:09

It's not surprising those numbers. Anyway, did I say that out loud? Did I say that out loud?

James Cridland 1:04:16

You'll get your arms and legs pulled off.

Sam Sethi 1:04:18

Uh oh well, I won't get invited to breakfast anymore.

James Cridland 1:04:22

Yeah, which is more than I was.

Sam Sethi 1:04:24

Yes, they don't think I'm a journalist. It's fantastic.

James Cridland 1:04:27

Yes, I was yes, sadly. Uh sadly, Apple aren't gonna feed me. Uh but moving on, um uh uh Edison Research uh at SRS uh released some new data. It's data that is very close to my heart because it's data that I asked them for, and that is the total amount of podcasts which are listened to every single week. And that number has gone up. It's gone up 5% to 812 million hours each week. That is a lot of podcast listening, and it's this number that I think we should be quoting all the time. This should be our main figure just to prove how much podcasting is still growing. Let's stop quoting the uh the amount of people per week that are listening to podcasts, because that's going to stop growing at some point quite soon. Let's quote total amount of hours each week that are consumed with podcasts.

Sam Sethi 1:05:26

And that Well, now we also are talking about listen time and plays. Correct.

James Cridland 1:05:30

That should work. Yeah, correct. So 812 million hours each week. That's a tremendous number. In case you're wondering how that's grown over the last 10 years, it's up 386%, uh, which is um wow, uh nearly nearly four times uh the amount of time spent with uh podcasts. So um, yeah, it's uh really good uh number. Uh you'll find more numbers, not that one, but you will find more numbers in the podcast consumer 2026, which is now available as a Free download as well.

Sam Sethi 1:06:01

Now, staying in America, Loughlin Murdoch from Fox has bought Roku for $22 billion, James. Why has he done this?

James Cridland 1:06:10

Yes, so if you remember, we were talking about James Murdoch the other week, uh, who has bought uh bits of Vox Media, and I called him the good Murdoch. Well, this is Loughlin Murdoch, uh, and uh he owns uh Fox News and other things.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:25

No, no, do not say the one thing I thought you were gonna say. They have a lot of lawyers. No, no, no. I just said this is this this is this is a different Murdoch.

James Cridland 1:06:35

Um, so he owns uh Tubi, uh, of course, already, which has done a number of deals for video podcasts. He owns uh Red Seat Ventures, which owns a number of podcasts as well as podcast membership company Supercast. Um, now he owns Roku, um, who I notice have just come into the Australian market. They haven't been here before. Uh so that's interesting seeing. But yes, so uh if you have a Roku set, and I believe that Roku is very popular in the US, it's not that popular in most other places, but really popular in the US. Well, that's owned by Fox now, so you can imagine that you are going to be seeing a little bit more Fox One on there, a little bit more uh Tubi and other things on there, and that might be good news for podcasting if you're that sort of person that likes that sort of thing. Um, so uh hurrah.

Sam Sethi 1:07:26

I think it's worth watching. I mean, they've been clearly on an acquisition strategy with a plan at the end.

James Cridland 1:07:32

Yeah, no, indeed. And um lots more details from Ugov. Ugov are uh releasing all kinds of stuff at the moment to do with podcasting because they've done a lot of research into the podcast uh landscape. There's um details if you want to see them about uh British podcast um consumption, uh, where they're taking a look at individual genres and things like that. You'll find the same for the US and for other countries as well on the UGov website. We interviewed Cliff from Ugov last week. Neil Vellio um uh sent us a uh a note um through uh the fan mail link, and he said youGov, for which any kind of measurement has about the same level of credibility as a Stephen Bartlett ad read for a health-based product. Oh, Neil, let it go. Let it go.

Sam Sethi 1:08:24

Did Stephen not give you the job, Neil?

James Cridland 1:08:26

I just won't go. Let it go. Anyway, uh awards and events, uh the Asia Podcast Awards open for entries. Um, you that you will get your award announced at Radio Days Asia in Jakarta in Indonesia in early September. I'll be there. Uh so uh if you uh feel that you want to enter $200, gosh, to enter, then uh Asia Podcast Awards are what you should be searching for. Um there's been some winners in the Tribeca Festival um with uh four audio award winners um for that. And Mercury Podcasts has been um uh uh uh uh inaugurating, that's the phrase. Uh Mercury Podcasts has been inaugurating people into their uh hall of fame, uh their indie podcasting hall of fame. There are three people in there Ariel Nissenblatt, uh, Emma Turner, who runs the Independent Podcast Awards, and as of last week, they surprised Mr. Mark Asquith from Captivate um uh with the third award. That's it for this year, apparently. There will be more next year. Um, but uh good to see those three people being recognized for their work in terms of that.

Sam Sethi 1:09:43

Yeah, I spoke to Liam. He said he was gonna fly over to Australia to give you one, but the cost was too high at the moment, so there you go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you and Mark are you having your your battles of you know who's gonna be in which hall of fame.

James Cridland 1:09:56

I know exactly. Well, yes, I I was the I was the only British person in the podcasting hall of fame for three minutes, and then Mark got one. So, yes, exactly, exactly right. Um, and uh uh the podcast movement, uh, which is in New York, New York City. Um, that is um uh tickets are now available uh on sale for that. Podcastmovement.com is where to go. You can also um put your name down as a speaker. There is a call for speakers which is going on right now. You've got until the end of June to put your name down. Uh I've put my name down for one thing so far. Um, you can go and uh find that link on uh podcastmovement.com as well. One of the interesting things that I discovered, because I've just booked my flight and my hotel. Uh, firstly, um uh if you live in a dollar country, it's very easy to get confused between US dollars and Australian dollars. It turns out I paid uh US dollars. Ouch, that was much more expensive. Um, but anyway, um, but the second thing is um uh having a look at the map um where the venue is, um, it's a bit of a walk away from public transport, but that's all okay, I guess. It's not uh that far to walk really. But one of the things I noticed is that the Daily Show studios are two blocks away. And uh last week tonight, uh that studio is also a couple of blocks away. And I discover that the last week tonight studios also films Have I Got News for You, the American version. Um so and now, of course, I'm now trying to work out how I can um uh avoid yet another iHeart Party uh and go and watch and go and watch uh the Daily Show being filmed. That would be fun, wouldn't it? Um so if anybody knows, uh I would love to know.

Sam Sethi 1:11:46

Um just don't go to the American Have I Got News for Years.

James Cridland 1:11:50

It's all right, actually. It's all right. It's it's it's it's got better. It's got better. Okay, it's got better slowly but surely. Okay. Uh so uh yes, there's a

The tech stuff

James Cridland 1:11:59

thing.

Announcer 1:11:59

The tech stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland 1:12:03

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

Sam Sethi 1:12:08

Just a couple of real sort of snippets that I saw. YouTube's adding DMs. Uh, they have had this in the past. They're adding a new messaging icon to the YouTube app. Uh, recipients will need to accept the relevant chat request before a sender can share a viral video. It will be limited to users over the age of 18. I don't know why they're doing this, but they have. Um, threads has now reached 500 million active users. Um, so hurrah, I still don't use it. Um, but there you go. But weirdly, the European Union has been promoting a brand new European social network called W. That's it. Not X, just W. W. Brilliant. W. And it's out of Stockholm, Sweden. Uh, and um von der Leyen, the uh EU preme minister, president, whatever her title is, leader of the house, um, she's been promoting it very heavily, uh, which is very odd. But yes, it's called W, and you can sign up for it now if you want. Who's gonna bring out Y and said as well? Yes. A platform I don't really use. I did use it a little bit during COVID to watch a couple of music artists do live sessions, Twitch, um, part of the Amazon network. Um, they've given now creators certified uh badges so they get more trust. Um, we talked about Spotify having verified badges. I think YouTube will probably have them if they don't have them already. Um, I think you know, these are just ways of getting people to certify. Does this help in any way, James, with people in let's say the podcast world? Can we apply it to what we do?

James Cridland 1:13:54

I don't know, maybe. Uh I I guess it depends how the certification works and uh whether or not it's a paid thing, whether or not it's uh, you know, um uh it works in the same way as um the Spotify one, which is uh the algorithm will decide. Um so I don't quite know. It does say that there is a short educational program that teaches you how to run sponsorship campaigns successfully. By completing the certification, you earn a visible badge on your creator profile. So maybe it's um maybe it's a different thing. Uh but uh yeah.

Sam Sethi 1:14:34

Interesting. But Twitch, Twitch weirdly, I never never never come across it, I never really go to it anymore, but but I think it should be bigger than it in terms of in my attention span. It should be bigger because it's got live events, and I I I think I often feel like it should be doing more to reach me, but I I never come across it.

James Cridland 1:14:53

Yeah, yeah. I d I I don't really know yes enough about uh uh Twitch. I think I've used it once for something. Was it the Ambys the first year? I think the Ambies was on Twitch.

Sam Sethi 1:15:05

And you can buy coins on there and you can pay people and all sorts of things, right? So and it's live as well. I just think, yeah, it feels like it's one of those things that Amazon bought, stuck it in a box, and just left it alone, and it sort of evolves slowly. Yes, bizarre. Another platform that I've never heard of, uh called UScreen, has helped creators earn over one billion dollars. It's a membership platform. Um I've not come across it, James.

James Cridland 1:15:35

No, me neither. But if they've earned if they've helped creators earn over one billion dollars, then brilliant.

Sam Sethi 1:15:40

I only mention it because you know we talk about Tubi, which till about three months ago hadn't really come across my radar, and now it seems to be everywhere because of Fox and what they're doing. Um, we talk about you know um Memberful and supporting cast, you know, having been bought as well, and we talk about um other platforms, you know, Patreon switching, your Substat going. And then I think Twitch could be, you know, again, I think Amazon could do so much more with it, given what's happening uh with member-based platforms. And UScreen's another one that I guess I have to add to the list of what are they doing next?

James Cridland 1:16:18

Yes, now of course Twitch is one of those brands which has been banned in uh Australia and will be banned in the UK. Um, so um uh because the UK is blindly following the Australian uh plan of um banning uh social media for uh people under uh is it under 16 in the UK or under 18? I don't know.

Sam Sethi 1:16:40

Uh 16, 16.

James Cridland 1:16:41

Yeah, yeah. So uh really blindly following the the Australian one, which by the way has had absolutely no uh no impact whatsoever here.

Sam Sethi 1:16:50

So sales of VPNs, that's where you want to buy your share.

James Cridland 1:16:53

Sales of VPNs, that's clearly what you want to buy. So uh yes, and of course, uh they're now talking about banning VPNs, so good luck uh on that. But still, there you go.

Support this show

James Cridland 1:17:04

Now, if you enjoy the show, then uh please um become a supporter. Uh all the best people are people like John Spurlock or Martin Lindescog or Will Clark or Ralph Estep Jr. Uh you can do that at weekly.podnews.net. You've heard from uh some comments from Neil Velia, who is also a uh supporter of ours. Um weekly.podnews.net is where to go for that. Sam and I uh share it. It doesn't go to the rest of the massive pod news empire um because this show is weirdly not a pod news show, I know.

Sam Sethi 1:17:37

Um so it is really, I just hang around.

James Cridland 1:17:41

I mean, it's just it's just uh yes, trademark license. Um so uh uh if you want us to uh support us, then uh please do weekly.podnews.net uh is the thing to do. Um thank you so much to Star Tempest, um, who has been uh supporting us for a long, long time. Um uh uh he or she um has uh recently uh stopped doing that, but we'd just like to say thank you. Uh it's very kind of you, and thank you for supporting us. You can also uh send us streaming sats if you're still doing that uh through your podcast

SPAM OF THE WEEK!

James Cridland 1:18:15

app. And now it's time for a new feature, Sam.

Sam Sethi 1:18:18

Well, I'm hoping it's not a new feature because for this week only, hopefully. But go on, James, what is it?

James Cridland 1:18:25

It's a new feature, spam of the week. Yes, it's a new feature where I read out a spam email that I have been sent uh in the week um just for fun. Uh this week uh it is from um castlesbrook.com. Uh it says in the email address, although this person has got a totally different uh name uh at the bottom of his email of Ali Wandy, whoever Ali Wandy is. But anyway, it says, Dear sir madam, I hope this message finds you well. My name is Ali Wandy, and I represent Al Tayyibath Fish Trading Company, a company specializing in frozen food and seafood products. Having learned about your company, we're interested in reviewing your product offerings. Hey Ali, sorry, we don't sell fish. Unsubscribe.

Sam and James's week

Sam Sethi 1:19:14

So, what's happened for you, Sam, this week? Uh I can't beat that. I can't beat that. So um, what's happened for you? We we uh were measuring as TreeFans the number of plays. Um uh I did wonder with my CTO how we were measuring the play at what point uh in terms of seconds and counting. So we've just changed that to 30 seconds, which is great. So we're gonna just apply the same metric.

James Cridland 1:19:41

And that's and that's 30 seconds where the um uh where the user has got up to, not 30 seconds of downloads. Exactly. Yeah.

Sam Sethi 1:19:49

Excellent. The other thing we uh did, and we haven't decided, and I was gonna ask your opinion here, really. Um one thing I hate is with Apple Podcasts, you can leave a reviewer rating even if you've never listened to the show, right? I think that's wrong, wrong, wrong. You should have to have had some involvement in listening before you can leave a rating rating.

James Cridland 1:20:09

How about how about a play? That would be useful, wouldn't it? Yes.

Sam Sethi 1:20:12

So what we what we have currently at True Fans is you have to listen to 10% of the show before we enable the re review or rating function to work. So all of these um review review and rating um stars don't turn up until that 10% threshold's been met. And then we were just chatting, should we change that back to 30 seconds though to match the play count rather than 10%? And I didn't know whether you thought that was a good or a bad idea.

James Cridland 1:20:47

Yeah, I mean, I think if you if you've if you've played it, I mean I like the idea of of 10% as well, to be fair, but I think if you've if you've played either 30 seconds or um or 10% if it's less than thirty no, not 10% if it's less than 30 seconds, if you've played the I don't know, the whole thing, if it's less than 30 seconds, um then I think that yes, I I mean I I think it makes sense to allow reviews and ratings for people who have actually consumed the show, not as you say, not not through drive-by people who've just realized that they don't like your name and so they're gonna vote uh vote something down. Exactly.

Sam Sethi 1:21:24

So yeah, that's the two little things we're working on. We're working on a lot of other little things. Uh I talked about timed links, we're trying to work on a feature there, but we'll let you know more. Very nice. Now, have you been out walking? I have. We did another 28 kilometres of the South Downs. Um, so we went through Devil's Dyke and Fulking. Yes, another lovely named town. We went through Cocking last few weeks ago, and now we're at Fulking. Yes. Wow, that's F U L K I N G. So please don't mark this as explicit. That's very good, isn't it? Wow, gosh. Yes, so that was lovely. And we're about to do the Seven Sisters, that's the last leg. Um, very nice.

James Cridland 1:22:06

And have you uh have you rubbed rubbed shoulders with any Nazis recently?

Sam Sethi 1:22:10

Yes, my wife keeps taking me to Nazi rallies. I keep asking her, has she not looked in the mirror and seen what colour I am? But um so there's me hanging out at the launch of Nigel Farage's new book, and then you can see the photo I took with James, you'll be proud, my meta Ray Ban sunglasses.

SPEAKER_06 1:22:32

Oh, great, great.

Sam Sethi 1:22:34

That's what you need. I couldn't get a camera out because you see, in the James can see a picture of the one I took in the background, a big burly chap who's their security bloke. Um, and of course, if I'd taken my iPhone out to take that photo, he would have then uh come and had a word with me. But he wasn't smart enough to work out that my sunglasses could take photos.

James Cridland 1:22:55

Uh it's interesting. I was listening to one of my favorite shows, uh, which is a show um uh called Mildly Informed, and it's a show with uh Chris Skinner and Richie Firth. Um Chris Skinner uh works at Sony uh music podcasts, and Richie Firth works at um at Absolute Radio in the UK. Um and it's a good little show, and I I I quite I quite enjoyed it. And and they review things um to uh just sort of see um you know see what the what the um what's happened in their life and they and they review things, um, which is uh quite uh smart. And so one of the things that they were very excited about uh this week in the this week's episode is the ref cam on the World Cup. Have you seen that? Yep, yes. Yeah. They look uh they look amazing, right? Don't they? They've got they've got a ear pad in uh an earpiece in one side and they've got this sort of camera in the other side. They look pretty good. They're not HD, but they look they look pretty good. Do you know how much they are, according to this podcast, by the way? Do you know how much they are? Thousands. Yeah, take a guess. Two and a half thousand dollars. Seventy euros. Oh seventy euros, that's all they are. 70 euros, so that's amazing, isn't it? Um so uh yeah, so they uh obviously um uh say that these are amazing, um, and they give them five stars. And then um Richie starts talking about uh Ray-Ban sunglasses, um, the the meta Ray-Bound sunglasses, the the perv glasses that you have.

Sam Sethi 1:24:38

Yes. You wait, they're getting better. Facial recognition coming soon.

James Cridland 1:24:43

And he starts talking about that, and he says, um, and he says that you know, somebody um somebody came up and started talking to him at work.

SPEAKER_05 1:24:51

To begin with, I didn't realize that that's what they were wearing. Um they just looked like normal glasses, and that is probably down to Ray Band. Um it was a day where you probably could be wearing sunglasses, so there was nothing about it that was making me uh flag that there was something going on other than the conversation. The conversation admittedly, it was in a it was in a work environment for me. So I'm used to the performative element of things, and and weirdos, not me. But the conversation was weird, they were being a lot more demonstrative in the way they were talking, almost performative in the way they were talking, almost trying to like control the conversation. I wasn't and I wasn't enjoying it, I was thinking you're a bit of a twag. Um and then I spotted the little lens in the corner of the glasses, and immediately I realized they're streaming, they're wearing those meta things, um and I didn't say anything, but immediately I just froze in what I was saying, and I did in my mind kind of think, are you Belen?

James Cridland 1:26:16

So uh yeah, so um just because they're streaming something doesn't mean that what they're streaming is actually worthwhile watching could be absolute nuts. So uh yeah.

Sam Sethi 1:26:25

Yeah, sometimes uh you can do that through WhatsApp, which is quite cool. So you can literally talk to somebody on WhatsApp and then switch to basically a POV view where they can then see what you can see. Um it can work sometimes. I wouldn't record that way, I wouldn't certainly but the SDK is open and I suspect they're gonna be it's gonna have an app capability. It's already got CAM. Yeah. I can see podcasts coming into it. I can.

James Cridland 1:26:55

Yeah, super icky.

Sam Sethi 1:26:57

No, no, I think I think the they got caught out and and right I mean surely there should be a little red thing that blinks away. It's it's a no, it's a white light that that shows you recording. So I think that's there's a white light, is there? Okay. So it shows you recording. People did try and block or disable that white light, which is a bit naughty. Um, and Facebook now detect anything that covers that white light and then stops the recording. So that's clever. Yeah, it doesn't allow that. Um, but they have got facial recognition in beta, and I think they're the only platform that could do it because the way it should work is my social graph is my permission. So if you and I are friends on Facebook and you and I have agreed, then if I walk into a room and I see you within reason by facial recognition, should say, Yes, you're part of my social graph across WhatsApp, Insta, or Facebook. Oh yes, yes. Come on, James. Come out the 20th century. Come on.

James Cridland 1:27:56

Anyway, uh anyway, Chris Skinner ends up uh reviewing the meta. AI glasses. Uh, and he says, I haven't used them yet.

SPEAKER_06 1:28:03

I haven't used them yet, so it's so I I I I feel I can't give him a one star without trying it, but it's so it's a it's a two-star review from me.

Sam Sethi 1:28:12

No, no, you you you can't no move on anyway. Talking about not wearing glasses, you were on TV and not wearing glasses. What were you doing?

James Cridland 1:28:25

Yes, I was on TV again. Um uh radio things going on uh here. Uh it's very weird because they um uh I'm in this tiny little room in TV station at the top of the mountain. And uh yes, I'm in this tiny, this tiny little room, sort of seeing the network feed of this uh show, and um yeah, and they and they um it's very difficult to get notes because you can't have notes because then people will see that you're looking down at your notes. So um that's quite weird. But anyway, yes, I was interviewed again um about that. The thing that I though that I thought was really interesting and just worthwhile bearing in mind, this is an Australian nationwide TV show. Okay, it's on nine, one of the big four networks here. And I got a text from a French telephone number, and it was the producer of this show, and she said, sorry, I'm texting you from a French telephone number, um, but I'm currently remote working. She's producing a national TV show, and she's in France at the moment. How cool is that? How cool is that? So I thought that was fairly amazing. Um, there was also a clip of um somebody on um on a Qantas plane who had been uh who had been flown over to Toulouse to have a look at the new Qantas um aeroplane that is going to fly non-stop between London and Sydney, uh, which you'll be able to do in the next couple of years. Um so that was a any quicker though. I mean that was a big yes, it's four hours faster than the than than the current options, which all stop in Singapore. So yeah, so that's that's a pretty good thing. So um, yeah, so that was that was fun as well. Um and uh yeah, so there was all of this all of this um clever stuff going on, but um uh very impressive. I've just realized, of course, why that person was producing the the show from France, she would have been in Toulouse. So I just worked it out. There you go. There you go. That's worked it out.

Sam Sethi 1:30:34

But I was gonna say, I've got a solution for your notes and not looking down. Yes. Glasses with heads up displaying change. Come on.

James Cridland 1:30:42

No, we're not little notes in front of you. For not wearing your two stars. And the only other thing that I'm still waiting for is my solar panels to be installed. You may remember that I've been talking about these for the last couple of weeks, uh, saying how exciting it's going to be for solar panels back on my roof again. Um, still waiting. They've been um uh and uh the first time it was too it was too rainy, the second time they've realized that there's quite a lot of work involved. Um makes me slightly concerned. Um and uh and and then they turned up for two hours on Thursday, and they turn up and they said, Yeah, we're we're only gonna be here for two hours because um we've got a mandatory first aid course in the afternoon. And I'm I'm they're thinking, really, really? But anyway, so it was this is this the people who went on your roof without scaffolding. These are the people that went on on my roof without scaffolding, and one of them slipped, and then they thought maybe we shouldn't be they need first aid. Well, I mean, I mean sometimes first aid is not really what you need. You need more like more like uh you know how to cope with a sudden death. Um, but anyway, yes, so uh so that was so so that was all good. So tune in this time next week for more information about whether or not the solar has actually been installed. You're here next week, aren't you, Sam? I am, I'm here next week, and then I'm away for a week. Yes, we have a super secret special guest, um special guest Sam. Right. So that's going to be so special, we haven't told them yet. No, joking. We have told them. Oh we have told them, and they said yes. Uh so that's gonna be very exciting. Um, and they do a competing show to this one, so that doesn't really seem to make an awful lot of sense, but still, there we go.

Sam Sethi 1:32:23

Oh, you can't have Rob Greenley.

James Cridland 1:32:25

Anyway, that's right, Sam. Uh we we've had Rob Greenley in the past. Um so so no, we're not gonna have Rob again, we're gonna have somebody else.

Sam Sethi 1:32:34

I was on this show last week, still the episode still hasn't come out.

James Cridland 1:32:37

You were, you were. I've seen some clips of it on Facebook. Yeah. But I haven't seen much myself. And they went, they had Rock's Codes yesterday. Yes, that's right. Uh weird. Weird that that that that that that that that's his name, and he's he's ended up being uh somebody that codes. Anyway, uh that's it for this week. All of our podcast stories, of course, taken from the Pod News Daily Newsletter at Podnews.net. We should rewrite this bit.

Sam Sethi 1:33:04

You can support this show by streaming search. You can give us feedback using the Buzz Brout fan mail link or voicemail link in our show notes, and you can send us a boost or become a power supporter like the 24power supporters at weekly.podnews.net.

James Cridland 1:33:17

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

Announcer 1:33:32

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