Welcome And Unreliable Trivia

SPEAKER_00 0:00

It's gonna be really exciting.

James Cridland 0:01

I think that this is gonna be a really great first swing. This week, Brian Barletta on Podcast Movement New York City and what to expect.

SPEAKER_04 0:10

Plus, the goal I've had is to make sure that no one part of our business is too big.

James Cridland 0:17

Martin Boitosh on ten years of Podmasters. And do people really trust AI more than humans?

Announcer 0:25

With James Kridler and Sam Sethy. This is the Pod News Weekly Review with Bud Sprout. Start Podcasting, Keep Keep Keep Podcasting.

Sam Sethi 0:38

The country's in the morning. We we lost to Argentina last night. Yes, that's soccer. I just found out, by the way, soccer is a British word invented in the 18th century by Oxford University. Nothing to do with the Americans.

James Cridland 0:53

Well, there you go. There you go. There's a thing. Who'd have thought it?

Sam Sethi 0:56

You know, like we say rugger, you know, for rugby. They used to put ER on the end of everything. It was a trendy term that we're doing at Oxford. And they took an association for football and they called it a soccer, and then it became soccer. That's where you get the word from. Anyway, trivial pursuit. Moving on.

James Cridland 1:16

Yes. Well, that's fascinating, Sam.

SPEAKER_02 1:18

That was unreliable trivia with Sam Sethy. Facts before acting on that. No guarantees are given. Use this trivia with caution, especially in a pub quiz or a similar situation where terms and conditions lie.

SPEAKER_05 1:28

Right. So uh where are we going?

Sam Sethi 1:31

Let's get back to podcasting. Anyway.

Podcast Movement Heads To NYC

Sam Sethi 1:34

Um talking about America uh uh and talking about New York. Podcast movement's coming to New York in September, James. Tell me more first.

James Cridland 1:43

It is. Uh it's really interesting. So it's a full week's worth of stuff. There's a sounds profitable business summit uh first during the start of the week, and then the end of the week is podcast movement, um, the podcast movement that we know and love. Um, and um all kinds of changes this year, not apart from anything else. I mean, it's going to be in New York City, um, uh, which will be very exciting, but also public voting for some of the speakers.

Sam Sethi 2:13

Yeah, I think that's a really good way of getting some new voices, some new people into the audience, often it's sponsored or big companies. So great idea.

James Cridland 2:24

Yeah, yeah. No, I think it's uh really good. Um, all sorts of selections um and speakers there. Uh, and um there is also a selection committee. One of the problems you get, of course, when you ask for lots of votes is it turns into a popularity contest. And so maybe that doesn't necessarily give you the full diversity that you want as well. So there is also a selection committee of which I am on, uh, as well as uh many other people who are uh running uh organizations and uh running uh conferences particularly. Um so I think there's been quite a lot of uh thought put into that.

Sam Sethi 3:00

Yeah, the voting is open until July the 21st. So you've got still time. If you want to go and vote, you need to visit podcastmovement.fider, f I r dot I o to review and vote for your preferred sessions, which I've already done a few. It's great.

James Cridland 3:18

Yeah, no, it's uh really good. I hope you voted for me. I would like to talk about the history of podcasting because I think it's important. Um, but you ended up catching up with um the president of uh podcast movement, a president we can all believe in, um uh Mr. Brian Barletter. And uh you started by asking him what the plans were for September.

New York Audio Week Explained

SPEAKER_00 3:40

Vacation the whole month. I'm taking it off. Okay, that's fine. We're taking on it's our swing at an idea of New York Audio Week, right? I think New York is an incredibly accessible place for almost everybody to get to. I do want to admit that London seems to be a greater central place for a lot of people. You guys luck out there, we get the Australians out there for everything, but we thought we'd throw our hat in the ring at moving podcast movement to a better time. I think during August, it was the end of the school year, the last vacation, the first week of school, or sorry, the end of summer rather. And so we wanted to move it more appropriately and in New York a little bit more central than kind of the transient nature, it's been there, so that it can attract both people who can fly in from anywhere for the creator side and really kind of create the first event by podcasting, calling in everybody in the buy space collectively as peers to come and close that audio gap. So we are running five days. It is two days, Monday, Tuesday is the Sounds Profitable Business Summit. Then we have a Wednesday, which is the IAB Podcast Upfront After Party presented by Sounds Profitable. And so that will be open to everybody who has tickets for anything during the week, who is attending the IAB upfront, or reaches out to us and has a good reason why they can make that and not the others. 2,000 person capacity. We're about to book some live content and get to announce that soon. And then Thursday, Friday is podcast movement. It's our take on putting it back in the hands of the creators. So the 199 tickets covering two days, at least a thousand tickets sold. We're aiming between 70 or around 70-ish total panels, half of them selected by public vote, half of them by committee vote. Um, and so we're trying to see what happens when we kind of hand it back to people. So that's our big swing on it. If anybody has a line on Mayor Mamdani, we'd love to get it officially sanctioned as New York Audio Week. But until we get that introduction, that's our unofficial call for it.

Sam Sethi 5:30

Sorry, he's my cousin. I'll call him for you. No problem.

SPEAKER_00 5:33

We're all related to that. Molly will tell you. Any connection I can get.

Sam Sethi 5:38

But look, let's go back to the actual event. Sounds great. Five days, New York. With the panel that you've picked, their industry-based panel, James Cridlin's one of them, of course. Lauren Passell that I know is on there. That's a great way of doing it. I think the voting up's a great way. One of my biggest bug bases, not just with the podcast movement historically, but with the London Podcast Show and other events, is it is often top-down, and the topics that are talked about are often still advertising AI driven. There's nothing really that the bottom-up crowd wants to hear. Sometimes the new latest thing that people want to talk about is missed because it's sponsored from the top. Now, the other thing is being in New York, of course, you've got all the ad agencies there. Was that the primary reason for New York for you?

Public Voting And Speaker Diversity

SPEAKER_00 6:20

Look, I think on the creator side, being able to set the price at $199. And Thursday, Friday, the podcast movement is the core, the heart of podcasting. There are plenty of talks from ad people there that want to teach in that. I would say it's you are looking to work professionally in a space. You're you already are working in the professional professional space. You want to uplevel your skill or you want to educate people. That's what podcast movement means to me, and that's what I want out of it. And so I think that New York is incredibly accessible. I mean, even flying from Portland, Oregon, I have a choice of airports. I can go to New York, Newark, JFK, LaGuardia. I'm able to decide where I want to stay. And we really utilize that. And we drove down ticket prices. I believe at 199, it's the cheapest podcast movement's ever been. We haven't participated in any early word specials. The price doesn't go up, which it absolutely loses, it hurts us financially because there's no FOMO drive, but I'm okay with that. I want, I want to be there for the people. So I'd say that I'll be honest, the main drive for why to allocate the whole thing there is to get access to those ad buyers. That is really important because that the Monday, Tuesday, is going to financially offset the ability to make Thursday, Friday a silo. Your comments on the committee. This is our first swing on it. Sounds profitable as a trade association, as providing consulting and assistance. If any of our partners were like, Brian, I need help. Can you fly out for a pitch? I can go do that tomorrow and I can iterate on that every single day. Podcast movement and the event side of what we do takes years because I can't run three events in a month to learn from the last one. Everybody's got event fatigue as it is. So our first swing here, we asked a bigger pool than we got a response back from. Some people are just busy, but my dream with these people is they're representative of awards, other events that have a lot of style to them, and newsletters that we think are representative of the space. And what we're gonna do with them is we're gonna take out the top 30, 40 that were selected publicly. And then we're going to remove a minimum bottom threshold, the ones that just didn't get enough attention, showing that the person wasn't really driving towards it, right? They weren't promoting it. They, the audience, the general public didn't like it or find it. And then that middle grouping are gonna be handed to the committee with the goal and the directive of for them to find ones that really are underrepresented in multiple different ways. Exactly what you said, right? Talking to who they represent outside of podcast movement, who they represent in their core role in podcasting, and really trying to elevate those voices. And so, yeah, we're taking that swing, but New York helps us financially offset it because Monday, Tuesday is very much subsidizing Thursday, Friday.

Sam Sethi 8:52

When will the final agenda come out?

SPEAKER_00 8:56

Early August, the beginning of August. So I believe we got less than a week left at the time of recording this, and I think it's Monday or Tuesday next week that we end voting, public voting, then we move it over to the committee. And I believe the committee has a little under 10 days to go through everything. So we very quickly have to sort through there, create a little bit of a buffer. And one of the things is that we're not allowing people to speak more than once. And there's a handful of people who submitted three solo talks that are all in the top 40 right now, which is very cool. It means they're able to mobilize their group. We're gonna have to bring that to them and say, which one would you like to pick? The others, we're gonna figure out other ways to encourage them to do them virtually and promote them and make space for it. But over two days with a thousand people in the audience, I don't think it is responsible to give people more than one time to talk. I don't think I'm not that interesting. There are other voices we should elevate.

Sam Sethi 9:46

So we're talking that's the bottom up. What's the top down? His keynote who's gonna be some of the other highlights that people can look forward to.

SPEAKER_00 9:54

Yeah, so we are able to say confirm that we're in talks with Apple and YouTube, who's fully confirmed to be at both the business summit and that event. Apple, we had them at Self by Self West, they're a big part of that there, and we are finalizing things with them on that end. We have some other great conversations out there, some that are those are these only things that I really get to program for the podcast movement thing. So while the platforms are really powerful on that end, one of the other things I've done is I've challenged a plat a publisher with the big creator to kind of what does it look like if that big creator is on stage with some up-and-coming creators, right? What type of conversation could happen up there? And so we're excited about that. We'll hear back on that soon. I think that I don't know if we're gonna call them necessarily keynotes or if they're more like featured or spotlighted ones, right? Like things that deserve a little bit more attention, maybe things that are not as scheduled heavily against and kind of have less more opportunity for everybody to dial in for it because we'll be using the headphones again. And I want to share someone who didn't enjoy it. The headphones allow you to not be interrupted by conversations around you when the space is tight on that end, and it allows you to, as you're transferring between spaces, you're gonna be able to dial into all each of the five stages from anywhere in the building, which is really fun, right? But yeah, I can confirm those ones so far. We're working on the list. I would love to the thing I've learned about events is that it's slow until it's overwhelmingly fast. And so it went from a lot of tentatives to a lot of can we confirm everything? And it's gonna be really exciting. I think that this is gonna be a really great first swing. I'm very proud of it, but I want everybody to know that it's nowhere near its final form and we are already keeping notes on the things we want to improve for next year.

Sam Sethi 11:34

So if I wanted to get tickets, where would I go right now?

SPEAKER_00 11:37

PodcastMovement.com. They are $199. They're a thousand total for sale. We do have to cap it, and we are not changing or increasing that price, but I want to share that it positively impacts us if you do buy your ticket in advance. Of course, it also makes it easier for you to guarantee you're coming there and be able to book your travel and everything there. So people do what you need to do, but I would appreciate if you're intending on coming, patriot purchasing a ticket sooner than later.

Sam Sethi 12:03

Right. Now, look, that's great, and I can't wait for that event. I would be there, but it's my 60th birthday. I'm sorry, I am not coming to New York just for you. I apologize.

SPEAKER_00 12:12

We gotta, it's work life balance, man. I am all for that. That's why we moved it. A lot of people had young kids going back to school, the last vacation, going off to college. It was it's not something we can ask of people, but maybe we'll get a video in from you, or maybe we'll have everybody sing happy birthday to you. But that's I'm all for it. There's always next year.

Sam Sethi 12:29

Yeah, there was

Lower Ticket Prices Without FOMO

Sam Sethi 12:30

always next year. Now, look, let's switch tack a bit. Sounds profitable is your baby. How long has it been going? Just for a heads up. How long's Sounds Profitable now? Wow, congrats. I seem to see you everywhere. If it's not south by southwest, I'm getting LinkedIn videos from Cannes, I'm getting you're at the London podcast show. What is the strategy for Sounds Profitable? I know that you've got your members and you've got your consulting element. What is the overall arching goal though for Sounds Profitable? Where do you see it going?

SPEAKER_00 12:58

Yeah, I think podcasting is the center of all media right now. I really believe that. I think that the definition that AMP has coming out, and I know we're going to talk about that a little bit. I really like it, right? And I think that everybody's afraid of podcasting going to video, but I actually think that audio is going to invade other formats. I think the thing that we're going to start to see is can I listen to that movie? Right. I think everybody's attention span is split. And I make the comment that it took me forever to get through the last season of Stranger Things because I would sit down with my phone and I'd realize I lost track of what happened on the TV, and clearly it wasn't important enough for me to put down my phone, or I would have started with it off. I think what we're seeing is I don't know if our industry was ever in control of itself, right? But I think that we were all going in the right direction, the same direction generally. And I think we still are. And I think that what we're looking at is this convergence between audio, video, influencer, creator, rights holder, Hollywood, you name it. And podcasting can fit into all of it, right? I think people are going to describe things to be more like a podcast. And I think that our goal with Sounds Proper is now more than anything, is to be the connective tissue for as many people as possible, people in the industry to out, and people within it already to each other, providing opportunities that are financially responsible. Every event that you see us at Can Lion, we posted the details that we brought our videographer out there for less than $4,000 for two weeks' notice from Texas. And so that's very affordable. And in fact, I spent less at Can Lion than I spend at podcast show London, right? And there's just opportunity there. So a lot of what we do is we buy space, we buy stages, we buy passes, we buy access, we negotiate discounts at events where we believe the podcast industry should show up and we raise the bar so that someone who is not confident enough to be out there on their own has a place where if they go, they can still get at least minimum value out of it. And that's really important to me that we give people the opportunity to take that swing and that risk. And that's why you'll see me and Molly and Tom at all these events. In the same week that me and Molly were in Cannes, Tom was at VidCon presenting on the stage there. So we're going to a Web Summit later this year. We had discounts for our partners there. And then the other part is the media aspect of it. I think a lot of people have the really important things that they want to say, but they don't know how to frame it. And sometimes they're not confident enough to say it themselves and continue to build up that baseline. So a big part of bringing Molly on board to run communications and way more than that is in helping people shape their own message and all that. And so we're doing some PR for some of our partners and building up marketing. The video and audio assets are great ways for us to help them look good and put their best foot forward. And I think that's really going to be the future. I think, I think I have a lot of opinions on a lot of things. And I think I get to talk to all the right people and I get now to help them say them because ultimately I'm not the one spending the money. Ultimately, I'm not the one building a platform, driving an audience, building a show, or any of those things there. And so in the places before where I could say the thing and rally the troops, I think now what I'm focused on doing is educating, connecting, and talking about it and making sure that we're highlighting the people with strong opinions and helping them be as effective as possible. And all of this has been done at the $500 a month for our trade association. We don't do contracts, we do ask for a three-month minimum. But there's over 220 partners now and it continues to grow. And I have no intention of changing that price. And I have we are in conversations with as many companies as possible to provide benefits and perks for our partners and continue to grow that value. I think our goal is support. As much as we can, we want to, instead of us leading, we want to empower our partners to lead with our support.

Sam Sethi 16:38

One of the things that James has often talked about is the IAB. I'm not a fan of the IAB. I'll be upfront about it. I think they aren't serving the podcast industry. I think they're serving themselves, but that's my opinion. James has often said that we need a podcast standards board. Is sounds profitable heading towards becoming

Sounds Profitable As Industry Glue

Sam Sethi 17:00

that in some way? Are you going to be the voice that represents the podcast industry across we're currently struggling with what is a play? Is it 30 seconds? Is it one minute? And this group from Oxford Road has put forward a proposal for 30 seconds, which again I'm not a great fan of because 30 seconds can be a mistake. But anyway, if that is what a play is, that's what a play is. But is the role of sounds profitable, maybe through what you've just said, to be the voice for the podcast industry?

SPEAKER_00 17:31

I think maybe the shape or the conversation, right? The way we aggregate and come together and feel like we can talk about it would be the goal. Look, I want to looking at trade associations and event companies, right? Here's some candid information. Podcast movement last year before they acquired us lost a good amount of money on both events, right? But they were an event company, everything they did was in silo. Two events, you had to make profit or you made money or you didn't off each event. This year, with running South by Southwest, we lost a little bit of money, like a very little bit of money, and podcast movement on a silo, but sounds profitable is up bigger than it's ever been, and we're spending and investing more. We expanded our research, we're doing all these things. We have this luxury that we are not just one thing. We have this ability to set the prices on what the market will bear, provide the services that the people want, and not focus on what we need to make to bottom line. I would very much like to make a profit in New York, but we are in a world where we're prepared to break even or lose a little bit of money to prove the point and to do right by the industry. Organizations like the IAB can't do that. And I think at the end of the day, I don't envy them. They're always gonna be bigger than podcasting, and I think that's valuable. So we are having great conversations with them. We'll be doing even more with them. The idea of auditing things, that process is not fun to manage. There's very little margin for them. It goes mostly to the auditing companies when people are certified or their attention because most of these people are running. And same with event companies, right? At the end of the day, they're gonna sell on average more sponsor panels and more sponsorships that are going to help them make more money and they have to increase that 10, 20% every year. So I don't think we're ever going to put out a standard that people are gonna be certified against or anything there. But when video became a bigger thing, we grabbed 30 brands and we grabbed our 30 buyers, agencies and brands, and 30 of our partners, and we went to the head gum offices in LA and had the whole day kind of just talking through what's going on. And I think that is the place that we want to be. We want to be that conversation. And when somebody raises their hand and says, I'm ready to advocate for this, I'm going to put in that time. Like the group with Oxford and AMP did, they built this thing up and they are it's really exciting where it's going. We want to empower people to do that because I do believe that it needs to be led by people who are impacted by it. And your comment about the 30-second play, I just want to highlight for a second a download, a 60-second download, like can take three seconds, right? Because it's the 60 seconds of content has been delivered to your device. 30 second play is 30 seconds of consecutive consumption. I think it's very interesting to see an advertising agency come up with 30 seconds of play, because that number is only ever going to get smaller. You know, uh consumption of hours on radio, right? Like that number got smaller for how many minutes of tracking before they give you the credit for the hour. So if we move to 60 seconds, is that because we just want to say 60 seconds on both download and listen, even though they're vastly different things, right? Or is it because we want to be stricter on it?

Sam Sethi 20:32

Yeah, I mean, well, the problem with both of those, right? The downloads are a r relevant number. It means it got added to someone's device, but it doesn't guarantee the players, like Dad Meisner says. 30 seconds, 60 seconds is not enough to say that anyone actually listened to any of that show or has any value in understanding that show. Um, it doesn't tell advertisers anything either. I still think the three metrics we need to focus on are total time less and total number of plays and percent completed

Standards Talk And What Counts

Sam Sethi 21:00

or consumption. And those are the metrics that we need to stick our hats on. This 30-second thing, I really don't get why we're even focused on it.

SPEAKER_00 21:08

Yeah. I think Steve Raises at Sinewave and the team at Bumper are really great at advocating these new metrics. And I think it's really important. If your job and your goal is audience development or how much people you're how many people you're reaching, the download shouldn't be a metric that you focus on primarily, but we need a lowest common denominator for advertising. So is your show effective? Is different than what are you able to make financially off the show? Those are two separate things. And I think that the more effective you are with those numbers that you talked about, the metrics you talked about, even if you're getting them only from Apple and Spotify and you're not getting the web plays and all of that, ultimately the stronger those numbers are, the more you can advocate for being billed and sold in a different way to those advertisers. They are open to that. I do agree with you that download isn't enough, but it's what we have.

Sam Sethi 21:54

I think with HLS, we've moved beyond it, right? With streaming.

SPEAKER_00 21:57

I think we can. So we can move beyond. It but let's think about it this way we just fragmented it more, right? You have Spotify's video metric, you have YouTube's video metric, now you have HLS video, which is only on Apple Podcasts Live right now, but it's in so many different apps, it's going to be available, right? Amazon Music, Amazon Prime Video, Tubi supports it, Netflix infrastructure-wise supports it. We don't know if we're all get access to that. iHeart is working on it. There's all these really great ways on it, but until that's a substantial number, that now that's another fragmented number. So our three different metrics. Now you add an RSS with download, that's four. The thing to highlight there is that HLS can be counted as download, can be counted as ad delivered. So that's lowest common denominator. It it consolidates HLS and RSS together. Now, I believe there's a future where Spotify as an app follows Apple's progress i path. I think they're closer to that than YouTube. And I think it would make them an insane amount of money, right? Right now on Art19 or Series XM or Simple Cast from CSXM and Trident Digital and all that, they're not making money from those people serving ads. But if Spotify supported HLS, they would overnight and they would be able to inject it in there. And absolutely you can get more metrics. But again, it's lowest common denominator, right? There's what the audience development people need to do, and there's what the ad sales people need to do. And ad sales, the biggest thing to focus on is that we lament the lack of attribution. We lament not good enough analytics. We lament all of these different things. Everybody can't lie in this year. Everyone said, How do I do more in podcasting? Last year they said I love podcasts, but I don't spend in it, right? We have to ask ourselves at what point we are wasting time fighting for something that we're not going to necessarily get exactly how we want. And if how we push that towards how do we fund more things? How do we creatively present things? How do we build and grow things? I mean, I would say growth, honestly, if we took all that time talking about measurement and attribution and everything and put it towards how do we successfully grow podcasts with real technology and knowledge, I think we would not have to have that discussion because we would be able to show that we're getting a bigger audience very easily.

Sam Sethi 23:59

I think you're right. Growing and showing that we've got a bigger audience, got more influence, got more time and attention, the listen and watch time. I think all of those things enhance podcasting and make the advertising industry set up. But I still think as an advertiser, you want to have a guaranteed knowledge of did my ad get played and how long it got played for. And I still think with the move to HLS, that is going to give the assurity back to the advertiser that actually, yes, this is my consumption of my ad rather than the metrics that we provide them today, which I think are still too lightweight.

SPEAKER_00 24:34

I don't disagree with you, but people still buy billboards, people buy digital out of home. Um, influencer campaigns directly from the influencer with no impression or click or anything like that. There are other ways to determine if things were effective. And I am so with you on that. But even I cut my teeth on digital display and mobile mobile display and all of that. And the tools that work there are better, but they're not perfect, they're not accurate. You can't tell eyes on screen, right? Like when I was younger and I would put on cable television and all that, and commercial blocks would come on, I would leave the room. You can't tell all those things. And in a world of multiple tabs and multiple devices and multiple screens and attention span and everything, I think that you are absolutely right. We can't tell that. But I don't think I don't think the financial cost to accomplish that will offset the financial gain of knowing it. And so I'm excited for us to get there. This isn't for us to stop pushing for it. It just don't let it be a roadblock. It's never been a roadblock. Our industry is growing faster than it's ever grown before. We just it's just don't let it take the wind out of you, right? The people who are complaining about it are still spending more

HLS Video And Platform Power

SPEAKER_00 25:40

than they've ever spent.

Sam Sethi 25:42

So moving on from that then, Netflix, as you mentioned a few times, has got into this, and we're seeing the BBC get into it now and their video podcasts, etc. Haven't we just seen this before with Spotify's exclusives with Joe Rogan and Call Me Daddy? We've now got Jay Shetty with a hundred million. Are Netflix doing the same thing? And isn't that the first sign of madness doing the same thing that didn't work last time? Are Netflix just going to be uh six months from now going, well, that was an interesting experiment, half a billion spent? Or do you think that Spotify was too early and Netflix now got the right time? And this is the future. Exclusive content to exclusive platforms.

SPEAKER_00 26:24

We're now two or three announced shows on Netflix that are not being pulled from YouTube to be able to exist as well, right? Like I think they're making some of the mistakes they could have learned from Spotify. I think they understand a lot of the metrics a little bit better. Look, I turned on the Netflix app until recently, there was just a folder that said podcast, and that sucks. I'm never gonna click on that, right? But the second it starts showing in the marquee the same way, it's just a show, right? And so Netflix has this inertia. And the second that they start saying to people, yes, you can distribute through HLS your show to our platform under these advertising terms. The dollar CPM that Apple is charging to serve HLS interstituls is one thing. But if you have an MCN on YouTube, it's what whatever they believe they could have sold that ad inventory for, you owe 45% of that for uh for the Netflix could follow that, Spotify could follow that, all that. They could sell the ads for you and take a big, bigger cut. They can let you sell your own ads. Maybe that might not happen. But I think that I don't think we'll see Netflix pull away from it. I think that the model that Spotify built with how do you move away from paying for licensing rights and provide other content and keep those subscribed users will be really interesting. Really, a really strong advertising business and a really strong subscription business. So it'll be interesting to see when we get away from these exclusive individual contracted deals and they have a general upload your content to Netflix, what those types of terms are. And I think that will be coming in. I don't know, I believe that they're strategizing on how your, you know, this podcast that we're on right now could be submitted to Netflix. All of those things to be determined, but I I think they're on a good path for it and they're competing with YouTube.

Sam Sethi 28:12

Yeah, no, 100%. I agree they're competing with YouTube. It's whether Apple and Spotify can keep up with them.

SPEAKER_00 28:19

I think that's because if everybody supports HLS, imagine a world where I can have my podcast on RSS, Apple podcast with HLS, I can have it on Netflix, I can have it on Amazon Prime, Music and Prime Video, maybe Spotify adopts it and all of that. What I believe that the power in this, and I think that Apple with HLS video is an audio of it, is they've changed the game. Creators and rights holders now are in charge. They get to choose where they distribute. So imagine a world where Mr. Beast or Mark Rover decides that they need a distribution platform now, and they put all their content on there. And now it's both age, it's HLS, which the lowest common denominators download and add delivered because you can factor that in. They can look at all of their inventory together, they can sell it all by that same metric. And I agree with you, that's underselling it in certain areas. But then they can go to YouTube and they can say, YouTube, but you're so closed off on this. If I add everybody else up that uses HLS and RSS as a download, that's more total reach than I have on YouTube. My advertisers are demanding the things and access I can get over there. Maybe there's a world where YouTube opens up to HLS because if the hosting platform becomes the center, which is so wild, we were moving away from that. We were absolutely looking at the death of the hosting platform until Apple did this. We just said to the biggest creators, the biggest rights holders, Sony, as like a rights holder, why are you uploading Spider-Man to all these different platforms? Why aren't you building a plat like a your own server that you already have and letting people call you for it? So I think we're gonna see some really big shifts. I think that this is the start of the creator entrepreneur on the technical side. I think I'm really excited for it.

Sam Sethi 29:53

Yeah, I'm I'm a firm believer. Upload once, distribute everywhere. That's all I have.

SPEAKER_00 29:57

And I think Apple just endorse that.

Sam Sethi 29:58

Yeah. And I also think that's through not just the audio or video, but I think clips as well. I think you can upload clips and distribute to social media everywhere, right? I think the role of the host should and will get bigger if they deliver on that once-up deliver everywhere motto.

SPEAKER_00 30:16

Imagine if social media took HLS too on that end, on clips, and then you could aggregate it all from the hosting platform. I mean, the costs are not trivial. Video got as big as it did on the internet because YouTube subsidized it, right? We're looking at a world where creators need to invest in themselves. That is going to make it harder to do some of these things, but it's also going to give them more opportunity to have more ownership and more rights and responsibilities to it. So I'm all for it. It is in a direction that I never would have dreamed that happened. And I was very thankful that Apple decided to launch that six hours before I got on an 18-hour flight to Australia.

Sam Sethi 30:49

I love the fact that Apple adopted HLS. I'm less than happy that it's in a proprietary API. I think they could have done it through RSS. I think they could have used the alternative enclosure. There's many things Apple still need to do. But yes, I agree with you that I think it's a good step forward, but I don't think it's the utopia that we wanted.

SPEAKER_00 31:08

I want to challenge that real quick. Okay, so if I actually, you know what? Your platform, right? True fans, um, are you set up for Spotify? Does your RSS feed get ingested by Spotify?

Sam Sethi 31:20

It does, yes.

SPEAKER_00 31:22

Do you have pass-through?

Sam Sethi 31:23

No, and we know that we don't have pass-through.

SPEAKER_00 31:25

So, so what is the difference between RSS and HLS in that scenario? So, pass-through for everybody listening, pass-through is the idea that Spotify will allow, if you don't have pass-through, Spotify calls the RSS feed once when it updates and caches the content. That means the hosting platform can call an API and get the Spotify data, but not RSS calls, not dynamic ad insertion, not all of that. You have to sign a contract with them, but you have to build dynamic ad insertion, you have to prove that you have paying customers that support it. And it feels like they're moving away from certifying any more people on that. So that when we talk about the open nature of RSS versus which has no governing body versus HLS, which is created and governed by Apple, but both are open source. The open nature of it is the decision for the hosting platform and the podcast app to adhere to those open specs, but none of them do. Like RSS, you even sign an agreement with Apple and they build, they choose what they do and don't take from that feed. So I just I really want to harp on that for a second. That I don't think there one is any more open than the other. I think what's happening is these major apps that have these relationships with the customers that we all want to get in in front of, we're going to see them 100% lock down and making contracts and handshakes on a technical level, how they communicate for the people that are getting the bigger attention span.

Sam Sethi 32:42

Okay. Now, one of the things that I think the big two problems I see, right? One is we're seeing the likes of Patreon, we're seeing the likes of Substack, we saw what supercars bought by Red Seat Ventures, we've seen many of these what I call creator portals, brand portals, appearing, right? You can go onto Substack now and do audio video live, you can do your blog, you can do events, you can even do merch. But fundamentally, that is the path forward for podcasting itself. Is we've seen the likes of Scott Galloway, we've seen the likes of Media Hassan. So we're not talking about small independent podcasters, although they could do it as well. We're seeing the big boys do it as well. They're bypassing really uh the Spotify, the Apples, the YouTube as platforms, as distribution or discovery platforms on the road to the endpoint destination. What are your thoughts on creator portals?

SPEAKER_00 33:37

I love it. I think when YouTube kicked off

Creator Portals And New Monetisation

SPEAKER_00 33:40

subscriptions a little less than a decade ago, right? Whenever it was, and people tried to do their own individual things, it just it was the wrong time. And so I'm so happy when people try it again. I mean, I'm never gonna use the Patreon app to log into and listen to the five, six feeds I want there. I'm gonna pull them out of it. And so that's the biggest thing. Is it's not me having a subsec app or anything like that, it's me picking a specific creator. And I think that the people need to bet on themselves. If you're gonna buy a mattress that somebody's selling as an ad, then you should be willing to buy a t-shirt that person is selling, or buy their ebook, or buy their course, or uh any of these things here. I don't even know if I would consider talking about more of my stuff as an ad. I think that would consider that content. You're listening to me, why not get more of me? I am all for that. Subscriptions and everything there. I think that it's short-sighted to remove all ads from subscriptions. I think people need to be reasonable about that. Remember, that's an audience you convince to buy in. So maybe sponsorship instead of announcer at ads or anything there. But I absolutely believe that there is no future where a creator can be a business and rely solely on ads not sold by their team. And even the best teams need other solutions. So I believe subscriptions, I believe live events, I believe merch, I believe all that. I mean, we did the numbers with Fourth Wall, who's a partner of ours for on the merch side, and the average t-shirt price, the margin generated from it is I think $13. You obviously can set your own on there, but that's the price. If you sell one for every thousand downloads, that's a $13 CPM, right? That's really competitive with some of the third-party ads that you can get. So why are you not doing that when it doesn't technically eat up an ad slot? Why are you not reminding people that you have bonus content on there? Chris Plant at post games. I love exactly how he does it because he has a show in three acts and he'll say the middle act is for subscribers. And I think it's I think there's an art to what that extra thing you're getting is. And it can be as simple as I want this to exist and I want more of it, or it can be as complex as I want that extra content. So critical. I think it's still in its early stages, but I think that's it's gonna be a massive part of the future of the creator economy and podcast economy.

Sam Sethi 35:47

Final question, Brian. Who else do you see entering this market space? I mean, you know, we're watching the decline of late-night TV in America, Jimmy Fowler, and various other shows that are closing down. We've seen radio stations closing down, but we have seen the rise of companies like in the UK Global, which has got podcasting and radio. Is there an entrant that we're missing? We we've talked about Netflix, YouTube, Spotify, Amazon. Is there somebody that's on the horizon for you that you think they could be a new entrant into our space?

SPEAKER_00 36:19

Well, one thing I do want to plug is that we kind of jumped over it the for New York, right? Our five days is three events, right? But the business summit is the one we didn't talk about, and some of this is going to be the conversation there. And I apologize to hijack on this end, but we've we're actually gonna be announcing very soon, and you guys will be the first place to that we announce it with, is that we've decided that the business summit is the tickets that are for sale because all the buyers, brands, agencies, holding companies come for free. The tickets that are for sale on the sales side on or on the vendor side and all that are only gonna be sold to sounds profitable partners. We made that tough decision because we believe we provide amazing service and value as a partner. All the content is going to be freely available afterwards, but we're putting such an emphasis on getting the right buyers in the room and the right networking and aspect there. So it is so easy to become a sounds profitable partner that we are really focused on making sure that we're doing right by those people that support us, the 220 companies and growing every single month. I don't think there's any one direct app that people are spending a lot of time on that I'm expecting to get in the space the same way. I hope that some of them that have struck out try again. But I think we're entering a world of fragmentation that'll be really interesting. I can't wait until we get pitched the cable bundle again, right? I think everybody's trying to reinvent all these things, right? That's why I love Apple TV, like having an Apple TV device because it feels like it aggregates all my stuff in there, all my subscriptions, and it can search through everything in there. I think every single streaming audio and video app should make room for through HLS, I would prioritize, for podcast content. Whether they gate it and they they determine who gets to get on there versus an open fire hose. I think that it's just it's such a killer opportunity for everybody there. But no one directly stands out as a destination that a lot of people spend time with. I think there's some that just don't make sense. I I watch a lot of HBO, I'm watching The Pit right now, and I can't imagine a world where it benefits them substantially because they really focus on that premium, that higher price here there. But Disney, imagine a world where you can create a free account on Disney Plus, and it only gives you ad-supported podcasts, audio and video podcasts, right? Especially in the kids' space. The kids space is so undertapped right now, and maybe that's the area of expansion that in a world where I have to create an account and identify who I am, and that's the cop-a compliance and all of that that you need for a lot of kids' content that Disney believes. In podcasting, we've proven that it's successful and it's acceptable legally, but that would be a massive win overnight. There's times where I choose to not renew Disney because there's nothing on it I want to watch, but my kids consume a lot of kids' podcasts, and if I had the ability to put it on the TV a little bit easier than finding it on YouTube, which not all of them are on, that could be it. I I would say I think I'm gonna expect more and more platforms to ingest it. I think we're entering a world where everything's a little bit fragmented.

Sam Sethi 39:07

What does success at the end of September

Buyers, Business Summit, And Success

Sam Sethi 39:10

look like for you then for the event?

SPEAKER_00 39:13

Yeah, look, I'm so fortunate to get to do what I do. And sometimes I feel like I'm Tinkerbell. I only exist because all of you guys believe that I exist or matter in this space. Because who am I, right? I'm somebody who cares about the space, who gets to talk to people, connect to people. I've worked in different parts of it, but before this, I was a background product manager who was a little too loud a little too often and got let go. I am in a great position where I can risk everything, every day, to do right by the space. And with South by, the worst case scenario was the headline reads guy bets company that the podcast industry will show up at South by. Nobody shows up and he closes his company. That newspaper clipping would be really great. While he can help us get that in the New York Times print edition, so I can put that on the wall. You know, we tried. So what I'll say is that, like, I'm never gonna be satisfied with what the events are because we can always do better. I'm gonna continue to figure out how to iterate on all that. Right now, I would say we are close to a place where everything that we have set up, both the people who are attending, the people who are presenting, uh, the people who bought tickets, very, very close financially for this to be break-even, which is really great, which means that we don't have to falter and compromise. Exactly like why we chose not to open it up to non-partners for the business summit, because I don't think that's gonna sell a hundred more tickets. And if and of those hundred companies, which ones of them shouldn't be a sound's proper partner? Like, why don't we have that conversation there? You know, for the creator summit, uh, the podcast movement of it, podcast movement, we need to rebuild that trust. And so as someone who was on his way out from attending these events, as someone who is re-prioritizing his spend and budget at these other events, as long as someone says, I'm this was worth it, it can be better, and I'll give it another shot next year. That's the success I'm looking for. And maybe a little bit of FOMO, right? Like we, you know, maybe maybe a few posts of people regretting not going. Um, that would that would warm my heart. But I think um I think we're in a good spot. I don't think we're gonna tank the company over it, but I'm ready for the deluge of feedback afterwards. I think that Tom's gonna turn off his email afterwards and it's all gonna go to me.

Sam Sethi 41:24

Congratulations. Look, I think the event is gonna be great. I'm sad that I'm not going, but I have a very good excuse this time. Remind everyone one more time, if they want to get their tickets, where will they go?

SPEAKER_00 41:35

Yeah, podcastmovement.com will get you information both about the business summit and about podcast movement from the Thursday, Friday. All I want to stress, all of the content will be published for free. No ticket is required after the event. We are working on getting that as fast as possible. You would not believe how long it actually takes to edit and process and upload and everything, 70 plus videos and all of that, and make sure it's done right with captions and everything there. So we ask for everybody's patience. But podcastmovement.com is where you can find more information. Soundspropo.com is where you can get the newsletter and follow along there. And if you are interested in attending the business summit, which the goal is a minimum of 200 people on the buy side attending for free, a maximum of 400 tickets sold with two per partner company. So even the smallest companies are on the same footing as Sirius XM, iHeart, ACAST, all of these big companies. Reach out to us. I would love to talk to you about partnership.

Announcer 42:29

Brian Balleda, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 42:32

Thank you.

Announcer 42:32

The pod news weekly review with Buzz with BuzzSprout. Start podcasting, keep podcasting.

AMP Accords And Measurement Friction

Sam Sethi 42:40

Let's move on, James. Oxford Road. We've been waiting and waiting on this new AMP alliance. Uh, it's an alliance for measurement in podcasting. Um, Dan Granger from Oxford Road put out a uh post this week, I guess. Nobody will be thrilled about it, not even me, and I help write it. Doesn't sound positive, really, James, to me.

James Cridland 43:04

No, I mean I was looking at that and going, oh, blind me. Um, I think the point that he's trying to make there is that um it is uh there as a piece of work which is uh the product of compromise and cooperation. Um uh and uh you know as we'll hear from uh others later on in this very show, uh I think that you actually sometimes do need a bit of a push um to move forward in some of these things. But uh yeah, um a really interesting post uh there. Now we get that um document uh next week. I think it is uh Thursday uh of next week. Um, and it will do a couple of different things. Firstly, it will talk about the definition of what a podcast is, and I think that that's a massively important thing, as I've uh you know, witted on about for a long, long time. Um, really important to get that um uh organized, but also it will talk About the types of analytics that we want to get from podcasting. They've been talking about how bad downloads is. They reckon that consumption data is much better. The problem with consumption data is, of course, it doesn't necessarily fit too well with OpenRSS. So it'll be really interesting to see what that goes into. I know that there is some technical detail, not a full technical spec of how you implement it, but there is some technical detail in there. So very much looking forward to seeing what people think of it and to find out a little bit more about it. What's your um sort of thought about uh downloads versus uh plays?

Sam Sethi 44:47

Well, I think it's a move forward. I mean, don't get me wrong, I think the download was historically the only metric we could use, but I think it's an awful metric. Um I think uh plays is the next natural step forward, but I think the 30-second marker is is um, I just think it's a waste of time. I mean, you can't measure the value of anything in 30 seconds just because you know somebody clicked. Well, they may not even click, it may just be a rollover. But I mean, I I just don't know. I I go back to what we've said consistently. Time less and percent completed, you know, those are the metrics that matter. Because 30 seconds doesn't tell the advertiser that the ad was played. So you've not got any further than the download, right? So as an advertiser, what do I gain from this? I don't think I gain anything. And the 30-second number seems to be uh um a way of inflating the play count, like the download count. And I just think it's an awful metric.

James Cridland 45:48

Yeah, I mean, I think that the play metric is one thing, but I suspect that what we will see from the AMP um paper is that we will see a bit more in terms of consumption um throughout an entire show, as you say, um, to actually know whether or not somebody has consumed the ad, whether or not somebody has fast-forwarded through the ad. Um I suspect that there will be, you know, a bit more in terms of that. The question, I suppose, is who's going to implement it? Um, and where does the value go? Because I suppose one of the issues that we've got in the podcast industry is that there are lots of podcast app developers who are weirdly cut off from the entire economic chain of podcasting. You've got people making money from podcasting who are the podcast hosts, like our sponsor Buzzprout. You've got people making money from podcast advertising, you've got people um uh making money um uh from, you know, not just selling the podcast advertising, but also, you know, producing shows. And then you've got podcast app developers who seem to be completely cut out of all of that. So I'm interested to see whether AMP um understands that bit and interested to see, well, what can we do uh to make sure that if podcasting continues to be a massive success, that the podcast app developers end up sharing in that success. I mean, and as a podcast app developer, you probably would agree with me on that, I suppose.

Sam Sethi 47:26

Yes, 100%. But I think you know, we talked about it a couple of weeks ago. Adam Curry is talking about uh splitting the funding from uh the advertiser with the app or host developers as well. Um the ecosystem needs to have a way. And look, we go back to the problem of how do we split the monies and then it's programmable money, blah, blah, blah. At the end of the day, app developers are not making money. Um I I'd say uh anyone who thinks they're gonna be surviving on premium app subscriptions is is cuckoo land. I don't think there's gonna be enough people to keep businesses going. Um I think that's why Fountain and TrueFans moved into hosting, really. Um moved on the other side of the fence.

James Cridland 48:13

But I mean what I'd also say is even if you are even if you are earning, you know, $2.99 from a podcast app listener every month, it still doesn't matter whether or not that app listener consumes 30 seconds of of a podcast or 300 hours of uh of a podcast. And that's the you know, so the issue that we've got as an industry is we keep on banging on about podcast discovery is rubbish and nobody's finding new shows. Well, you know what? That's because podcast app developers don't earn any money if you discover new shows. If you use your podcast app three times more than you were using it last month, podcast app developers don't earn any more money that way. And maybe they should. Maybe that would drive quite a lot of innovation in terms of how people find shows, um, what people, you know, choose to end up um, you know, uh um uh uh uh tuning into, but what the user interface is. And at the moment, I suspect that the user interface is so moribund at the moment in pretty well all podcast apps, because people don't share the money with the podcast apps in terms of, you know, if you listen twice as long, you should get twice as much money. And that doesn't seem seem to happen. I think the closest that we got was with streaming sats and that and that sort of thing, and that has pretty well died a death, as I'll talk about later. So I think um, yeah, I I think it's really interesting. So I'm hoping that AMP sees that and does something about that, um, particularly if AMP is going to be asking podcast app developers to send more data back to podcast analytics, you know, companies and all of that.

Sam Sethi 50:03

Yeah, well, let's see what they come they come out with. I mean, I guess we're preempting something that hasn't been released yet. But you know, it doesn't and it doesn't bode well when the person writing it is not looking forward to it either.

James Cridland 50:16

Well well, and maybe uh maybe he's yeah, uh I mean it'll be interesting to see how it all worked. This time next week on the Pod News Weekly Review, we will be speaking to Dan Granger, the Oxford Road CEO, and also to Giles Martin, who is um also works for Oxford Road and has been really deep into the nitty-gritty of um the AMP Accords. Very much looking forward to speaking to Dan and to Giles, and that will be on next week's show.

Sam Sethi 50:45

Now, related to this, James, McGillan AI has said 30-second ads seem to work better than 60-second ads. What are they talking about?

Why Shorter Ads Might “Win”

James Cridland 50:54

Well, this is possibly good or bad news, depending on who you are. Um they did a piece of work with audio agency direct results. Um, and um uh yes, and they've worked out because of course Magellan AI are a very good uh audio attribution company, they seem to have worked out that 30-second ads work better than 60-second ads. Now, what that doesn't necessarily mean is that um a 30-second ad sells more units than a 60-second ad. What that probably means is if you halve the amount of money that you are spending on ads by turning it from a 60-second into a 30-second ad, then you don't halve the amount of sales that you make from it. So maybe the amount of sales only goes down 30%. And in which case, 30-second ads work better than 60-second ads, but you see what I mean. It's not necessarily saying that they actually sell um more. Um, the downside I get of this is that as a result, the agency direct results turned everything from 60-second ads to 30-second ads. So they basically halved the amount of um of spend that they were making with um podcasters. And uh that's um possibly not what what we want to hear. So, of course, um it works better for them in terms of ROI, but that's about as far as it went. So um, yeah, so be careful what you wish for, I

Podmasters Ten Years Of Lessons

James Cridland 52:17

guess.

Sam Sethi 52:17

Moving on then, James. Um, a good news story here. Um, Podmasters, uh, it's celebrating its 10th year, and you got to interview one of the founders.

James Cridland 52:28

I did. I got to interview Martin Boitosh and I uh spoke to him about um what uh running Podmasters has been like for the last 10 years, um, and also found out some really interesting things about how that company has been earning money.

SPEAKER_04 52:45

So my name's Martin Boytosh. I'm the co-founder of Podmasters, we're a podcast production company and network. I suppose we kind of do both as we produce and and own our own shows, but we also work with talent and we also work with clients to make to make shows.

James Cridland 53:00

And it's Podmasters' tenth year this year. Uh so what have you learned in the last 10 years?

SPEAKER_04 53:06

It's it's interesting. When we so I started Podmasters with my co-founder Andrew Harrison, and our background is we met in magazines. So I was the uh commercial director for the music labels at Q Magazine, and he was the editor. Uh and we got on very well, and after he left, we said, okay, one day we'll work together on something without any kind of plan. Um, and then one day he came to me and said, Let's what about podcasting? I was like, okay, well, let's try podcasting. So we were trying things, we had a podcast called Big Mouth, which was a essentially a culture show for for Andrew's tastes, uh, which didn't do much, which was doing like about, I don't know, a thousand listings a week or something. And this is this is back in 20, yeah, this would have been very beginning, so 2016. And then one day he said, We should do a podcast about Brexit. And I said, Well, okay. So it went from one day, this is a terrible idea and it will never happen, to the next day, well, everyone wants it, so we should all believe it. Uh, and it left a huge gap in uh the coverage that I guess people like us felt that it was still a bad idea and that the vote the next day would have completely changed. So Andrew put together to this kind of dream team of panelists that he'd come across on Twitter and various places, and he put it together, and the first episode immediately did 10,000 downloads in its first week. We said, okay, we're probably onto something here. And then from there, we we've I always say we're building the car as it's going down the hill, really. It's you know, we're we're figuring things out. Uh it's a lot of instinct, a lot of luck, a lot of mistakes have been made over time, of course, but glad to say we're still here 10 years on, probably in the best position we've been.

James Cridland 54:51

So the Brexit show was called Romaniacs. Is is Romaniacs still still going? It is.

SPEAKER_04 54:56

We we didn't we we kind of didn't think it it would, because obviously once the cause is done, we thought people would move away. But it turns out that what people really came for was the chemistry, the vibe, the presenters. So it morphed into a new show, which is called Oh God, What Now, uh, which summed up summed up the kind of the feeling you had every morning you woke up and looked at your phone. But it's interesting in the last few weeks we've seen an uptick in listens and views um as people are starting to come back to it. So I think we're very much a cyclical show in that sense, but we still have a a pretty big audience, a very decent patron, and very passionate fans who are who are really engaged. So it's a great show. It's our flagship show, it's the one we're you know we're most proud of.

James Cridland 55:41

And what are some of your other big shows that you that you run at the moment?

SPEAKER_04 55:45

So we have uh a variety of shows. We have Talk 90s to me, which we launched last year, which uh with Miranda Sawyer, which is all about looking back at the 90s. Uh Andrew's background is he used to be the editor of Select magazine and Mix Mag. Uh Miranda used to work for him at Smash Hits, I believe. I'm probably getting my history wrong there. Yes. So they've known each other for many years. Miranda worked with us on a show called Paper Cuts. So we thought, you know, what's the what's the open door for us to push there? So it's obviously it's 90s culture, but we wanted to do it in a way which was journalistic rather than just like, oh, wasn't the 90s great, oh Mr. Blobby and Noel Edmonds, you know. This is about looking at the time and really diving into the you know the great stories and everything like that. And I I would say the last couple of episodes, the last few episodes are really they summed it up well. Um, we did uh an episode on Paula Yates, obviously, uh who was married to Michael Hutchins, uh, and that has absolutely flown. That's probably been the biggest episode of the year so far. So we're finding these pockets where it does really well. Um, other shows, we have a daily news show called The Bunker, uh, which has been going, I mean it's just over 1800 episodes now. So, again, we do everything from weekly shows on video to daily news shows to monthly shows for clients like Saga. Uh, that's actually twice monthly. Uh, we do a show called Experiences Everything, which is um successful. Yeah. Oh, have you? Oh, brilliant. Well, it's been so successful for them that they mention it in their annual report. So we must be doing something right.

James Cridland 57:17

There you go. Well, you must have done something right. Well, I I was gonna ask because typically um companies like yours will make podcasts for brands, they'll make them, they'll make your your own podcasts and then you'll work with talent uh as well.

Building A Balanced Podcast Business

James Cridland 57:30

What what's the biggest part of your business? What's the biggest part of Podmasters?

SPEAKER_04 57:35

The the goal I I've had is to make sure that no one part of our business is kind of too big. Um just so if things change, you can absorb any shocks without it being terminal to the business. I think this is why we've never really just been a commissions business, and for a long time we were just a owned and operated business, just a network, uh, and we've branched out in many ways. So I would say, you know, when I describe it to people, we we kind of split three ways. We make our own we're owned and operated, so we only eat what we catch, so to speak, and that's that's been really, really good for us because it means that we can apply all those lessons for everyone else. Um, we then you know work with talent in what we call CoPros, where we do everything from build the show from scratch for them to um doing monetization and marketing deals like we do with Finn versus history. And we're we're actually I've signed probably about four or five comedy shows now. I think there's huge potential in UK comedy, especially, and we're we're partnering them with good advertisers, which works well for the audience. So that's been becoming quite a nice symbiotic relationship, but again, that's more helping them put a foot in the kind of podcasting world where they may not have the experience. And then the final part is working with clients like saga, like the University of Lews, like London Records, which we just put out, uh, where we apply all those learnings, but they own all the content. So um I'd say it's it's a pretty even mix, to be honest with you.

James Cridland 59:08

Now, your website says you have studios for hire, and you've got a shot of a fancy studio with lights and cameras and all of that. The saga podcast, I watched the Paul Merton uh one, and that was in video as well. So, what's your strategy with video?

Spotify Video Revenue Reality

James Cridland 59:24

Are all of your shows video enabled now?

SPEAKER_04 59:26

It's interesting, not all of them are. Um, I think from a monetization perspective, when you look at how the return that you get from video via Spotify, it can be really great. Um via YouTube, sometimes it feels like you're starting from zero on every episode that you put out. So you're always having to fight with YouTube's algorithm and thumbnail, you know, it's a lot harder to do it. Whereas if you build an audience on Spotify video, that can be really um lucrative. You know, some of the shows you have, and uh that's you asked about where's the big the biggest kind of source of revenue. Spotify video has become our biggest source of revenue for some of our shows.

James Cridland 1:00:09

Right. Gosh, I've not heard that from others, so that's really interesting. That's really interesting. You must have found the secret source then.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:16

I don't know if we've had any sort of secret source, so to speak, but I would say that the main thing for Spotify Video, if your shows, and this is gonna sound very obvious, but it's not only plays, but how long people are watching your shows for. So if you're making the kind of content that people are sticking around for, then we see really good RPMs, and that's so how I measure it, obviously from an advertising point of view, you see a CPM, so how much people pay to advertise, because people aren't doing the same. I calculate Spotify as an RPM, so revenue per thousand views or however you might calculate it. Um we see at if I look like for like audio versus video, our audio RPMs, so how much we get per thousand downloads might be twenty to twenty-five quid. We've seen on Spotify over 30 quid from just the video part. So they are paying a very good premium for people to who sit there and watch the content.

James Cridland 1:01:17

Very good.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:18

So it works really well. Have you played with Apple Podcasts much? No, not yet. Not yet. It seems so our shows are are kind of hosted, we we kind of host in a few places, mainly A-Cast and Megaphone. Uh I think we will look at that with A Cast probably in the next few months, because I know they're still in beta.

James Cridland 1:01:39

Um yeah, once once they've opened it up a little bit, a little bit further. I believe it's invitation only right now, isn't it? So yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:46

Yeah, the interesting thing is it's the cost is the thing that everyone's talking about. The cost of posting video on Apple and how megaphoneslash Spotify just don't pass on that cost, but Apple R, and that's becoming a bit prohibitive. From what I hear, I don't know.

James Cridland 1:02:04

Well, uh worth worthwhile keeping uh keeping eyes open uh on that, I would have I would have thought. Um one more question about pod podmasters. Um you you mentioned uh if I was a good interviewer, I would have uh I would have picked you up on this on this instantly. But you mentioned lots of mistakes over the last 10 years. Tell us one of those mistakes.

The Mistake That Nearly Broke Them

SPEAKER_04 1:02:28

Uh well, okay, you know, I'm I'm happy to kind of share this stuff. We at the very beginning, when Megaphone first came into the UK, uh they approached us to join them. This is 2021. And uh they offered us a guaranteed deal, uh, which was great. So guaranteed for impressions. And we had that deal for probably three, three and a half years. Yeah. And that made us a lot of money for sure. That was very good. Uh when that deal expired, when they stopped doing guarantees, my approach was well, let's grow out of this. And what we should have done at that point is go, let's cut everything that we that doesn't make us any money. Yes. And not cutting nearly nearly sent us out of business. Right. Nearly sent us out of business. To the point we had to make some quite deep cuts, let a lot of people go, sadly. But we now have probably a much more healthy business, much more stable business than one which we're seeing growth. So two years ago was our, you know, we lost money, and last year we we made the highest amount of revenue and decent profit than we've ever made. So it can really zigzag like that.

James Cridland 1:03:44

Yeah, and and I think it's you know, it's something that I'm planning to dive into in the next couple of weeks in terms of making sure that all parts of the podcasting chain make money. Uh, because that's an important uh side of it as well. So uh and I guess talking about that, next week we'll hear from AMP, who are the Alliance for Measurement of Podcasting, uh super secret group of superheroes who are um planning, firstly, a definition of a podcast, and secondly, some thoughts around analytics and plays and consumptions.

Defining A Podcast And Fixing Metrics

James Cridland 1:04:15

Firstly, Martin, when when people ask you what is a podcast, what is your what is your answer?

SPEAKER_04 1:04:22

That um how how would I describe it? I guess it you could say it's a conversation, but it's not because it can easily be a documentary as well. And you could say it's audio first, but it's not because it's video as well now. Ah, but you can still be you can still be audio first with video though, can't you? You can, you can. I think that's very important. I don't think any podcasts should be video first in the sense that they can't be experienced via audio. Um and that's very important to us. That's one thing we do. It should work across all levels because still the majority of people listen to podcasts that we see. So I would I'd think it's um I think podcasting is an idea, not to be too wishy-washy. Um you know the what what you see with the likes of the fellas who do most of their stuff on YouTube, and you might argue they're YouTubers and inverted comers, but most of the stuff they do is a conversation with us sitting around chatting chatting to each other. So I think at the moment we are in a there's an inflection point, and I think if we say it's a podcast, it's a podcast. It's kind of like we will it into existence. So if I tell someone that something we do as a podcast, it is.

James Cridland 1:05:35

So that's a way of thinking about it, isn't it?

SPEAKER_04 1:05:38

That's that's the best answer I've got for you, I'm afraid.

James Cridland 1:05:40

Uh what do you think about analytics plays? Do you have the data that you need to run a successful podcast business? Um, are advertisers asking you for um additional data that we simply can't give? What what are your thoughts there?

SPEAKER_04 1:05:55

I think, well, first of all, just to go back to the the AMP thing that you mentioned, I think it's It's a really good, really good move, and I'm glad it's being driven by Oxford Road and advertisers. And the reason for that, my background before podcasting was uh on the commercial side, I ran a programmatic sales network for big publishers. When advertisers drive change, it tends to happen. When it if you rely on the incumbents, the publishers, everyone like that, will never decide on the right things to do. Ultimately, if you look at it from an advertising perspective, it has to work for the people spending the money. Um in terms of and I'm excited to see what they come up with, and I think it will whip the industry into shape a bit, so that's good. I think um from a measurement and analytics point of view, it's still quite poor. And I think the the reason for that is everyone gives you different numbers. So our two biggest, well, our three biggest platforms, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, no one measures things the same way. Correct. And so how can you give a unified view?

James Cridland 1:07:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:03

On top of that, as well, with with advertising at the moment, let's say Spotify video, there's no ads, but we're allowed to bake in ads. So what you've gone back to is a pretty rudimentary system of uh advertising again where we have to forecast what we think we're gonna get and bake in the ad. And if you do get it, then great, but you might over-deliver, and if you don't get it, well then you might have to deliver a brand new ad instead of dynamic. Uh dynamic delivery is there, it's available to everyone, it's not an advanced technology, and yet, you know, we're not employing it. So I think there's still a long way to go, but we need a bit of um unified measurement and approach to advertising.

James Cridland 1:07:44

Well, it'll be interesting to see what the uh paper says next week. Where do we go to learn more about Podmasters?

SPEAKER_04 1:07:50

Uh so if you go to podmasters.co.uk, I wish I could say our website was better, but it's not. Uh that's still a very much a work in progress. Um, otherwise, I'd say check out our shows across all podcasting platforms, most of them are under our brand name. Um, and uh yeah, or you can find me on LinkedIn, happy to answer any questions. Martin, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. No worries, James. All the best.

Sam Sethi 1:08:15

So,

Apple Video Costs Versus Spotify

Sam Sethi 1:08:16

James, that was a good interview with Martin. I there was a couple of bits that I found really interesting. One was he's earning a lot of money from video podcasting on Spotify, which, as you said in the interview, we haven't heard from anyone else about that.

James Cridland 1:08:29

No, um, that was fascinating and earning more money for a while, earning more money from Spotify video than from any other source, which I thought was really interesting to hear. Hence why potentially he's a little bit nervous about talking about Apple Video, because the economics of Apple uh video is very different to the economics of Spotify video. Um, but I thought that that was fascinating. I've not heard other people turning around and saying, yeah, the Spotify uh partner program for video um is our biggest money spinner. So great to hear him talking about that. And also really interesting to hear um his, you know, his mistakes and you know where he messed up. And you know, I think it's um fascinating to hear um somebody actually, you know, put their hands up and go, I wish we had done X and Y. So um yeah, no, really, really interesting, I thought.

Sam Sethi 1:09:27

I thought I found the part as well where he talks about um Apple video passing on the cost to the creator. And Brian by letter in my interview with him, we talked about how Spotify should change from its current model to the Apple model. But Martin seems to be saying that no, as a creator, this is a better model for me because the costs are not being passed on.

James Cridland 1:09:51

Well, yes, of course. Of course. I mean, you know, Spotify is essentially subsidizing the video hosting uh for those shows and then passing money back. Um, and so of course it's going to be better for him. I think uh, you know, potentially better um for the podcast industry if there is some um, you know, Apple aren't passing on the cost. All that Apple are doing in this particular case is that they're turning around and they're saying, if you are making money out of video in Apple Podcasts, then we would like a cut of that, please. Um, because we have invested in our podcast app so that it deals with video because you asked us to. Now, wouldn't it be interesting if all podcast apps were to do the same sort of thing? If we've agreed that Apple Podcasts, and we seem to have agreed as an industry, that Apple Podcasts can take some money out of uh any advertising that we take, um, then perhaps Spotify should be doing it that way. And perhaps podcasts should be doing it that way, and perhaps TrueFans should be doing it that way. I you you know, that that to me is a potential way of actually helping podcast apps. So, um, but I think it's a different conversation to the conversation about, you know, what would happen if this uh show was in video. Um, you know, Buzzsprout would mean, you know, Buzzsprout would be paying much more for the hosting of this uh of this show. I mean, you know, we're never gonna be in video anytime soon. But if we were, you know, what does that mean for um how the economics of um of podcasting works? So, you know, um who knows? Who knows what the deal is there? Let's move on.

Do People Prefer AI Voices?

Sam Sethi 1:11:40

Um, this is a really weird one. Um our AI overlords are going to rule okay, is the way I've titled it. Because Edison Research has come out and said that audiobook listeners prefer AI narrators over human voices. Not something I thought I'd ever read soon.

James Cridland 1:11:58

No, no. And I think um, so firstly, Edison Research, very good research company. I've done some work with them, they're very good. Um, however, when you have a look at this study, firstly, it's paid for by a company that makes AI voices. Just bear bear that in mind. That m that that, you know, I I totally trust Edison Research to do proper research, but just bear in mind who's paid for it. Um, the other sort of side of this is that um there are a couple of different things. Firstly, they have um compared a human voice with AI, what they call multicast narration. So that's different AI voices for different characters in this book that they were reading out. Um so are they comparing like with like? I don't know. Um is this saying that people prefer AI narrators? Possibly not. What this might be saying is that people prefer lots of different voices reading a book than one man uh doing all of the voices for all of the characters. Perhaps that's what that's saying, I don't know. And I think it's interesting you've got that followed by another piece of research from a company called Differentology. Well, that's the research company, but the company who they conducted that for is Azereon, which is an advertising company, and they released some figures saying that AI-generated voices can be good for brands, especially if the accents match the part of the country where you're from. And what they're basically saying is that either you have a uh human being with my boring London accent, right? Or you have a regional accent matched to where the listener is. So if you're in Scotland, you hear a Scottish accent, if you're in Newcastle, you hear a Geordie accent. Um, and that regional accent happens to be AI, which do people like more? Well, they like their regional accent more. Um so again, I think both of these pieces of research, they're fascinating. Not sure that both of these research, that both of these pieces of research say that um people prefer AI. I don't know.

Sam Sethi 1:14:16

Um yeah, but so we haven't passed we're not passing the Turing test right yet.

James Cridland 1:14:23

No, I don't think, not quite yet. Um uh I mean does it mean, you know, well what does it mean? I th I I think it possibly means that AI voices are getting better. Absolutely. Um, but I think with both of these pieces of research, it it's not testing an AI voice against a human voice. It's testing more than that. And I think it would be interesting to see some more research about actually a flat AI voice versus a flat human voice, um, to actually see whether, you know, what what the view is there. Um, one person in the Pod News newsletter also commented that um the AI voice was louder than the human voice. And actually, you would be surprised how many people think louder equals better. Um, I ended up doing a lot of research in you know, bit rates for DAB broadcasting and all of this kind of thing. And every time you gave somebody something that was louder than the previous thing, they always said, Oh, this sounds better, just because it was louder. So I think that there are um there are questions to be asked, but fascinating research, which is why I why I covered it.

Sam Sethi 1:15:31

Bit more research as well, because there's a company called Clutch that released a survey about podcasting that said conversely, 46% of podcast listeners would reject podcasts that are AI hosted. So it depends whose report you read, I guess.

James Cridland 1:15:45

Yeah, yes. Well, it depends whose report you read. And also what that says is that 54% of podcast listeners don't mind podcasts that are AI hosted or AI generated. So I suppose, you know, I suppose where where where do you go there?

Sam Sethi 1:16:01

Okay, yeah, you can spin that. I can get it. Um Janine's gonna be loving this, isn't she?

SPEAKER_05 1:16:09

Yeah, exactly. Exactly right.

One-Off Premium Episode Purchases

Sam Sethi 1:16:14

Yes. Now, um iVooks have done something very interesting. They've created a option for premium content on their platform for a one-off payment rather than a monthly subscription. What are they doing, James?

James Cridland 1:16:26

Yes, and this is probably music to your ears. Um, so yeah, uh, you know, monthly subscriptions are fine, but some people just want to buy a particular episode to listen to. And so the um and so Ivox or ivooks, depending on whether you're English or Spanish, um, they're a Spanish language podcast platform and they've launched a one-time podcast purchase option as a new monetization option within its app. They've tested it, it seems to work, um, it seems to work kind of um uh kind of well, so uh that is good.

Sam Sethi 1:16:59

Yeah, I had a quick look at it, as you can imagine. Not a lot of detail. Um they use PayPal as the mechanism for payment. I'm worried, I I I want to dig deeper, so I'm not gonna say um it's good or bad. I mean I like the idea clearly. I think um, you know, in TrueFans we support the same concept and idea. I worry that this is actually just buying a private um episode feed, um, but it's not secure. So if somebody just wanted to go around the back into the RSS, they could probably get it. Which the as I said, the devil's in the detail, and I can't find the detail from iVooks, so I can't confirm or deny whether they're encrypting the episode before purchase or not. Um, or it's just in the RSS and they're just putting a purchase option on the front end.

James Cridland 1:17:45

So I mean, I I I suspect that uh given that it's their app, um I I suspect that it's just whatever they want to do within their own app, and there's no sort of open open ecosystem here quite yet. But um yeah, be in interesting to see.

Sam Sethi 1:18:00

I like the idea though. Yeah, I think people want to buy individual content, they don't want to go and have uh move over to Patreon, buy something, come back. I think there's too much friction there in our purchase.

Finding Safe Kids Audio Content

Sam Sethi 1:18:13

Now, here's another story that I found interesting because it's something that I don't really think about, but I should more. It's a company called Sound Carrot that are um working with children's audio. Tell me more about it, James, first.

James Cridland 1:18:27

Yeah, I I don't know too much about Sound Carrot. I know that it was one guy who um basically said, look, you know, you can search for kids' um uh content on podcast apps, but there's no delineation. I mean, kids kids' content for a 10-year-old is very different from for a three-year-old. Um, and there's no curation that's gone in in any of the big podcast apps, and so therefore Sound Cara ended up doing um its own classification of open podcasts. Um, and um they've just recently redone their website and it looks um all brand new and everything, and it's uh and it's very uh smart. But I think, yeah, you know, there is real opportunity for uh audio for uh kids, for younger audiences, and um and I think he's spotted something, which is basically that actually, you know, the the big podcast apps don't really work uh in terms of finding content like that. What you really want as a parent is you want to go, okay, this content is going to be fine for my five-year-old girl. And you know, at the moment there's nothing that really gives you that other than sound carrot. So I thought that uh yeah, it was a really good idea.

Sam Sethi 1:19:39

It's when I read it, I thought, yeah, we don't do anything, we we we don't even consider it. Um and that's yeah, that's bad on me, but yeah, nice idea. Well done, Tristan. Yeah, no, indeed. Zipping around the world,

BBC Numbers And Podcasts On iPlayer

Sam Sethi 1:19:52

James. The BBC here in the UK is having a few problems.

James Cridland 1:19:56

I should say. The British Broadcasting Corporation. Uh, yes, so they've just released their um annual report and accounts, which is the closest that you'll get to a financial shareholder report for the BBC. Um, I focus on what that means for uh their commercial business because that's kind of important. So BBC Podcasts outside the UK um are drawing 515 million downloads in the financial year, um 116 million listeners. So they're doing some pretty good numbers. Um I can't see whether that is up or down from last year. You would assume it's up, um, but I can't necessarily see that well. Unchanged year and year is uh around the commercial revenue that they have made in total. Now, this isn't commercial revenue just from podcasting, this is commercial revenue from you know selling top gear, selling bluey toys, um uh selling, you know, ads on the BBC News channel in the uh in America, uh, all of that stuff. But interestingly, um that amount of money, which is um 2.1 uh billion pounds or 2.8 billion dollars, um, that hasn't changed year on year. And actually, they have given less money back to the public service this year because they've actually made less profit. Um, so again, the there's a bit of a worry there uh in terms of that. They're earning slightly more money from the license fee in the UK, but we know that that's probably going to go away. Matt Britton, the new boss of the BBC, has called it a busted flush, um, which is a very good uh a very good uh phrase. Um so that's um so that's a smart thing. But uh yeah, um I I find uh you know the future of the the BBC really interesting. And isn't it interesting that the BBC is actually making less money this year than it did last year outside of the UK? And what does that mean for what the future of the uh of the of the company is?

Sam Sethi 1:21:58

Governments in the UK have talked about getting rid of the license. I mean, people are uh voting with their own feet, as we said, but um I do not want the BBC to become a paid subscription channel. I think that would be awful. That's like the NHS becoming like the American insurance system. Awful, awful.

James Cridland 1:22:15

Well, I think I think the m the the um the way that the BBC is going to be paying for itself in the future, it sounds as if there is quite a lot of talk going on about making it um a levy on people's uh either on people's internet bills or on people's electricity bills in the same way as as you get in Greece, for example. Um, so that might be one of the one of the ways. Um uh it might then also mean that if it's a levy, it might then mean that if you run a big house, um you know, uh if you have um, you know, nine nine bedrooms, Sam Sethi, and four cars and uh and a driveway and everything else, then you will be then you'll be paying more for your TV license fee than you know than a single mum. And I and I think that that's absolutely right. Rubbish. Sorry about that.

SPEAKER_05 1:23:11

So sorry about that. Just the way that it goes, yes.

Sam Sethi 1:23:17

Oh can I vote not to watch the BBC if that ever comes in? Anyway. No, talking of watching, um, we know that crosswires, the uh great event that Dino Sofas and his team put together was on the BBC I player. But I notice now that the BBC are pushing more and more, both in adverts on BBC stations telling us about it, but also uh in content. And the BBC I player now has the Wayne Rooney podcast on there, and it has several other podcasts on there as well. So they're really going down the same Netflix sort of road that we talk about.

James Cridland 1:23:56

Yeah, I think you know, uh we're gonna see more and more of this, you know, um uh whether it's New Zealand, whether it's um uh here in Australia, where there have been some podcasts added to some of the commercial uh streaming uh companies um in the UK, in various other places. I'm sure that we're gonna end up seeing, you know, a lot more of this sort of thing, a lot more of, you know, podcasts that they have bought up because it's cheap TV for them. Um the question, I suppose, is what that means, you know. If you're on the BBCI player, it means that there won't be any ads in these shows, uh, which you should just sort of bear in mind. Um, I think that, and obviously that changes the way that the um that the economics works. And similarly, you know, Netflix is going to make those changes as well. There may be also differences in terms of exclusivity. Um, so for example, switched on pop launched on Netflix this week. Um, that's now video exclusive to Netflix. Um, it used to be available on YouTube, it isn't anymore. And so that's been the typical uh route onto Netflix. But what I find also fascinating is that um, and I've never heard of Alan Chicken Chow, but Alan Chicken Chow produces a show called Alan's Universe on YouTube, and Netflix has done a deal to also take it on Netflix. So it's still on YouTube, but it's now on Netflix as well. If that's good enough for Alan Chicken Chow, why is it not good enough for podcasters? That's what I don't fully really understand. So there's um maybe Alan Chicken Chow is just better than any other any other podcaster or or anything else, but I'm so going to go look up Alan Chicken Chow after this show. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, I mean, uh, you know, I g I I understand he does very well on YouTube Shorts as well. So um yeah, there you go.

Sam Sethi 1:25:52

Is he the chef? Is he the the funny chef? I don't know. Anyway. I don't know. If he's not, he should be. Now, um with a name like Chicken Chow.

James Cridland 1:26:01

Yes, yes, all right, granddad.

Sam Sethi 1:26:06

Hey, coming up to my 60th, leave me alone.

Awards Season And Event Listings

Sam Sethi 1:26:09

Now, um four months ago, uh Tony Schneider took over the interim role of CEO. He's now the official CEO of Blue Sky. I don't know if that's good or bad news.

James Cridland 1:26:21

There's a thrill. Why is he called Tony with an eye if he's a man? Great, thanks.

SPEAKER_05 1:26:29

I mean, why? But why? Is he he or is she?

Sam Sethi 1:26:32

We don't know.

SPEAKER_07 1:26:33

Well, I don't know.

James Cridland 1:26:34

Ah, well, well, we'll have to find out, won't we? Um let's go find out. Yes. Uh let's just have a quick no, it's a no, he's definitely a he. He's definitely a he. Uh so yes, I mean I can't see a picture, but I can't see a picture, but uh in gadget call him he. So uh why why he spelt his name wrong? Uh we don't know. But anyway, let's move on uh quickly. Uh tons of awards and events going on. Uh the sonar awards uh in uh Australia um are open for entry. Um they have a special price uh for uh indies of $75. Um they have asked if uh if I should be entering um maybe this show. So who knows? If if it's $75, perhaps I might. Um but uh you can learn more about that sonar.com.au, and that's sonar with two R's because you know why make it easy? Uh the New Zealand Podcast Awards also open uh as well. You'll be able to um uh start entering in early August, uh, which is good. The Marketing Podcast Network Awards, which are global, um, are going to be uh happening um in uh well, they're going to be um uh giving all of the awards away on July the thirtieth, which is very exciting, live from London and in the uh US as well, I I think. Um so that's uh pretty good. Do we know any of the judges, Sam?

Sam Sethi 1:28:04

Yes, Seth Goldstein, one of our PAL supporters. Gordon Gunster, the organizer. Oh, and yours truly, yes.

James Cridland 1:28:11

Oh, very good. Very good. Excellent. Well, well done, you. And uh uh tickets if you want to go to an event. Um the Resonate Podcast Festival uh is uh an exciting event. Not the one in the US, but the one in Cape Town in South Africa. Um they are on sale. Uh it's a festival for narrative audio. It'll be held in mid-February 2027. I hear that Cape Town is amazing. Uh, it would be in the middle of summer uh at that point. Um, so might be worth uh might be worth going. I have uh tried to make myself um you know very exciting to tell the organizers they've not got the hint. So uh I may have to um I may have to relook at that.

Sam Sethi 1:28:55

If you need anyone to carry your luggage when you get the invite, let me know. Um I love Cape Town, yeah.

James Cridland 1:29:02

I've never been. I've been to Joe Burg three times now. I've never been to Cape Town. I would like to Cape Town. Yeah, yes. Oh, I'm sure I'm I'm sure. I'm sure. So uh yes, really would like to go.

Announcer 1:29:13

The Tuck Stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review.

Buzzsprout, Spotify, And Alternate Enclosure

James Cridland 1:29:18

Yes, it's the tough you'll find every Monday in the Pod News newsletter. Here's where Sam talks technology. Exciting things happening at our sponsor, Buzz Sprout.

Sam Sethi 1:29:25

The BuzzCast official podcast from Buzz Sprout, the third largest podcast host in the world, is going back to Spotify, James. What I thought they say they would never do it.

James Cridland 1:29:36

Why are they going back? Yes. Uh uh, so there was a 10-minute show. It's a bit like this show. It was a 10-minute show that ended up being 20 minutes long. Um, but uh Kevin Finn ended up doing um uh part of that. And really, he was basically saying, look, you know, we've we're working with Spotify now, they're decent, we think that they have um much more of an open mind in terms of open podcasting now. Um, they've apparently fixed some lock-in issues that um Pod News highlighted in May, and Spotify got very shirty with me highlighting, and I don't think I've spoken to me since. So there is always that. Um so I think that all of that is pretty good. Um uh it was an interesting uh show to watch, actually, because um or to listen to, or to watch. Um uh Alban was uh on there, and Alban was saying, you know, he still finds the advertising a little bit icky um because you know you are giving up quite a lot of personal information um when you're listening on uh Spotify, knows a lot about you, um, and it could potentially feed that back to um some of the algorithms that choose advertising. So, you know, I don't know. Um, but um, but yeah, but they're uh sounding more positive about uh that I can only presume that that means that um uh that uh Buzzsprout customers will be able to upload video to Spotify automatically relatively shortly. You would assume that that um is going to be uh happening. But um yeah, so that was sort of one side. Um, and the other side is the side that I thought that you would get very excited about. Go on. Um that that they're testing the alternate enclosure. Indeed. Yes.

Sam Sethi 1:31:22

My word, yes, well done, finally.

James Cridland 1:31:24

Which is excellent. So you can uh see the alternate enclosure in again the Buzzcast Um podcast, and you can see, and that essentially means if you don't know what the alternate enclosure means, that essentially means that other podcast apps, potentially apps like uh Pocket Casts, uh Amazon Music, iHeart Radio, um Um uh TrueFans and others um can access the video at the same time. So um that's pretty good news, I think.

Sam Sethi 1:31:51

Yeah, it's been one of my bugbears that you know uh Justin Jackson at Transistor did a good job, but you know, ACAST still don't support it, and so all this great video they're producing for Apple just gets lost in the a you know Apple only environment and it's not available anywhere else. So the alternative enclosure will be great for not just um video, but also you know, you can have multiple different audio versions in there. So yeah, no, it's good.

James Cridland 1:32:18

It's great, great news. No, I think that that is that that is all good.

Sam Sethi 1:32:22

Now we also spoke last week to Ryan Williams at Carl Curious uh about podcast annotations, which I sort of liken to Apple's time blinks. Um we had some feedback again. Nathan Gathright was saying that I love structured data as much as the next nerd. I wish this idea the best luck, but I'm convinced that using LLMs to derive data from transcript will remain the purview of players, not feeds. Um weirdly, Adam Curry also came in on the back of this. I haven't put the clip in here, James Ross, but uh he was also saying that you he sees LLMs as well as being the way for on-device uh abstraction of data rather than tags. And I'm like, sorry, didn't you come up with the namespace? Um but yeah.

James Cridland 1:33:09

Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, look, I I I come at I come at this on a very uh I come at this uh basically saying, please can we copy what Apple did with transcripts? They have LLMs that do all of the transcripts. If you can't be bothered to do them yourself, but if you want to do them yourself, if you want to put additional data into your podcast feed, if you want to add all of this stuff, then please respect what the creator wants. And if the creator can't be bothered, then by all means fill it in with an with a fancy autocomplete system, which is all that an LLM is, it's a fancy autocomplete system. By all means fill it in with that, that's fine. But um, yeah, but I I would much rather that the creator is given the opportunity to um do something good first. So um that's that's me basically.

Sam Sethi 1:34:05

Yeah. Um and I've got to uh quick apology to John Sperler because I misinterpreted what he said. He was he was not agreeing with Nathan that the LLMs will be the way forward. He was saying fundamentally that uh I'm I mischaracterised what I he'd said. Um I don't think we should leave it up to LLMs at all. Uh but in practice it's going to be the app crawlers that chop podcast art, mark them up using hard work and drive for differentiation, not the publishers themselves with any sort of standard format. So he's sort of saying that at the end of the day, it might not be an AI LLM, but there is a way that we will still have to mark the metadata up. So yeah. Um I don't know. I don't know the answers right now.

James Cridland 1:34:47

Um well we will see, but I uh you know it's fascinating times, isn't it? You know, how much do we leave up to the um to the uh uh technology and how much do we cut the human being out? I think are two separate conversations to have.

Sam Sethi 1:35:00

Now, Podpage, uh Dave Jackson being there as well, um, announced uh an automatic SEO boost tool. What's a boost tool?

James Cridland 1:35:10

Yeah, they are doing all kinds of stuff, um, Podpage. Um, so they've done uh pretty well four things. Um they've done an automatic SEO boost tool, which is basically it optimizes your titles and your descriptions um to make it work better in terms of um uh in terms of SEO, um, which is uh which is very uh smart. So I think um I think that's a that's a very clever thing. So they're doing that. They've launched episode alerts by email. Really simple, straightforward thing. Email is um one way, uh I I I've heard people say it's one way to get rid of the uh to get rid of the algorithm. Um uh as a as a professional emailer myself, it is not a way to get rid of the algorithm, it's just a different algorithm that you need to get through. But even so, um, I really like that idea of uh email episode uh alerts. Um so you can just email automatically your listeners to say, hey, there's a new episode out, uh, which you might want to go and um and uh have a look at. Um and then uh two more things that they're launching, um, new content writers. Um so um things that will automatically um things that will automatically um uh sit there and write stuff for you, write an about page, write blog pages and stuff like that. And then finally, um new templates as well. So um your pod page uh website can look even more different to the rest of the uh shows out there. Um so they're doing a bunch of really interesting things. Um I think it's a fascinating company to uh keep an eye on. And if you don't have a podcast website of your own uh and you're not with uh our sponsor that has a fantastic um podcast website that you can just turn on with a click of a button, um then you should probably have a look at um the Podpage website. It's um pretty uh it's pretty smart, I think.

Sam Sethi 1:37:10

Yeah, one of the companies that I think will be bought pretty soon. Um not by who, I'm not sure, but um yeah, you can't see it staying standalone for long. Uh talking about their email alerts, um we do that as well with TrueFans, and that's great. Um, but sometimes it doesn't work very well. Um I had a lovely person tell me that uh in the email that uh uh my app was totally shit and uh uh called me Seth and then um basically um uh get me off this app and I went fine, no problem at all. I'll delete your account and um no worries at all. He then came back with a new one saying you should make your app more like Overcast. I said, No, no, Overcast is great, please just go and use it, don't use my app, right? I think he got a bit annoyed that I said that. Um basically said that uh I then allegedly sent him a nasty email. Um and I think if anyone knows me for any period of time will know that that would not be me, right? Um so I mean if he'd said, hey, you're sending me too many emails, I don't know how to turn them off, can you help me? I would have jumped on a call, I would have done anything to help the person, I would have pointed out, sent to the screencast. Um it wasn't, it was just basically your app is shit, how do I get off it? And so I just thought, you know what, I'm not even gonna try to reach out to you, mate. I'm just gonna delete your account and tell you that there are other great apps out there, please go and use them. And then I said, you know, um, he then sent me another email and I said, Look, yeah, if you want to build your own app, please do. It's not, you know, beyond the realms of man, please go and build your own app. And so he wrote a blog post about it. And I just find it weird. You know, if you start off asking me nicely, I've got a problem. Look, I know that you know we're not perfect. Far from it. I mean, we're we're two scrappy people trying to build an app, competing with large multimillion dollar companies, and I think we're doing okay, we're not brilliant, we're not bad. Um, we do some clever things and we do some stuff that doesn't work, and we try and fix it, right? And that's just the way all entrepreneurs are. Getting an email like that doesn't worry me. It's just one person. If I got a million, I'll probably stop doing it. But the point being, you know, tell me you've got a problem, give me some feedback. I love feedback, good or bad. Um, I'll take it, right? And if it's bad, I'll try and fix it, and I'll try and work with you to understand it. Yeah, there are days that change.

James Cridland 1:39:36

Well, I have to say customer support is a there's a special skill uh in terms of uh customer support. Uh, because my goodness, there are some people that um whatever you do, you can't uh you can't please them. Um if you if you uh if you do work in customer support, or maybe you lead a support team or you're just looking to be better uh in terms of customer experience, um, there's a podcast that I would recommend, Sam. What's that one? Uh and it's a podcast from our sponsor, Buzz Sprout. It's called Happy to Help. It's a customer support podcast. It's hosted by Buzz Sprout's head of podcaster success, Priscilla Brooke. And um, yeah, it's a great uh show to have a listen to because she does dive into uh all of this um to really help with that, to help with uh help articles and to help with um how to reply to people and what you should be measuring and everything else. So uh heartily recommended.

Sam Sethi 1:40:32

I love the last part of his post. He doesn't know I'm the best kept secret of podcasting. Thanks, John.

James Cridland 1:40:41

Love it. Yes, no indeed.

Sam Sethi 1:40:43

Now last last couple of things.

iOS Beta, CarPlay, And New Networks

Sam Sethi 1:40:45

Uh iOS 27's coming out. Uh the public beat is now available. I know you've been on it for a little bit of any good?

James Cridland 1:40:51

Do you like it? Yeah, no, it's good. Um, it's most definitely worthwhile if you run um if you run either Mac because it fixes a lot of the frustrations and the ugliness of the previous version. Um so on the Mac it's probably best, but also on iPhone it's also pretty good as well. New Siri when it works is great. New Siri when it doesn't work is is awful. Um and uh now that it's available as a public beta, um uh l let's just try this. Uh with my uh Apple um uh watch, uh I'm just going to say to it um set a timer for 10 minutes. And this searching apps, it says reviewing results.

SPEAKER_09 1:41:41

I can't set a timer on your Apple Watch right now.

James Cridland 1:41:45

Oh, brilliant. Uh so uh another genius from Cupertino. Um but it is a beta and it will get better. Um the one thing that I've noticed on the accent, James.

SPEAKER_05 1:41:56

Uh yeah, well, yes, of course it does, because you know, cause because that's where I live. Oh come on. Keep the The Queen's English, please.

James Cridland 1:42:02

The one thing that I would say if you're a podcast listener is um good news for you because you can get video uh on the uh Apple Podcasts app on macOS, uh, which is uh w which is nice, and clearly we will never do video for this show. Um, but also um uh the uh if you're a podcast listener in the car, Apple CarPlay now allows you to um uh skim through uh the podcast that you're listening uh to by you know grabbing the uh the scrub bar and pulling across, which you've never been able to do in CarPlay before. Um and so it's an it's a pretty obvious one. The one thing that they've um got rid of, I think, is the display of chapter titles. So um that appears to have gone. But um anyway, it's worth a play. Um you can uh fiddle around with it in your um in your uh Apple device and uh worth a peek.

Sam Sethi 1:42:58

Uh and finally the launch of a new podcast, vodcast, and created development company called Podrafinia. I only I only include it because I like the name of the company.

James Cridland 1:43:07

Yeah, the name of the company is great, isn't it? Podrafinia.

Sam Sethi 1:43:10

I mean, it's got to be an old school brit, hasn't it, behind that company?

James Cridland 1:43:14

Well, uh I think it's three Americans, uh Elvis Duran, who's a big um who's a big uh radio DJ in New York City, um, and then um uh two other people who I don't know looking for Larry. I don't actually know who that is, uh, and a company called MCM Studios that will run the studios um uh for this uh in uh Manhattan. But um uh yeah, it's you know you know it's I I always find it fascinating seeing launches of new podcast networks and thinking, okay, well what does that mean? Um, you know, what's going on there? But uh yeah, so um worth a peek at Podrafinia.

Voicemails, Boosts, And Community Notes

Announcer 1:43:49

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

James Cridland 1:44:02

Yeah, so many different ways to get in touch with us. Fan mail by using the link in our show notes, boosts, or email, and we share any money that we make uh as well. Um now interestingly, you say lots of fan mail. Oh, did you? Yes, okay. Oh, well, there we go. Because the one thing that I was going to say is that the amount of uh streaming sats that we've got, um the amount of um boosts and things like that is down to pretty well zero. We're getting some from true fans. Um so far in July, given that it's the 17th of July today, um, we have had um you know some streaming sats and some boosts from TrueFans. We've had one boost from Podcast Guru, and that's it. Nothing from Fountain, nothing from all of the other places. So uh I think streaming sats is um going away quite fast now, which is a real shame because I thought that it had real legs. Um, but uh it seems that uh true fans is the place keeping it alive. Um so thank you for that, Sam.

Sam Sethi 1:45:07

Just about, just about anyway.

James Cridland 1:45:09

Voicemail, which is um the stuff that we like uh the most. Um we've we've got one of those, haven't we, Sam?

Sam Sethi 1:45:14

Yes, Seth Goldstein sent us one.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:16

Hey James and Sam and Seth from Philly, a power supporter, a proud power supporter. Woo! Um was gonna mention they keep forgetting to mention that the MPN, the Marketing Podcast Network Podcast Awards, are happening on the 30th of July at twelve noon Eastern time online. And if people are interested in attending it live, they can go to MPN MPN awards.com and register for free to attend the first annual awards. We're gonna do this every year, and hopefully you guys will be there too, and we'll get some press coverage, hint, hint, hint. You know, keep up with the great work, love the show, love sending you guys that because you guys are worth it.

James Cridland 1:46:06

Take care, guys. Bye-bye. Seth, thank you so much uh for that. And yes, uh, covered in the Pod News newsletter, covered in this very show earlier on uh as well, and much uh appreciated. Thank you for being one of our uh power supporters. We've got 24 of them, um, and we're very grateful to uh each uh of you as well. So um, yeah, that's um that's uh really good. So thank you, Seth.

Sam Sethi 1:46:30

Okay, and we've also got some comments back with SATS support as well, or in or money basically. I think the USD stablecoin should be backed by real money. Um, it's backed not by real money, it's backed by US Treasury bonds, but uh he thinks gold and silver. Um China and um Russia got most of that, so not gonna happen. What would happen with the digital euro, central bank digital currency? In the meantime, I'm happy to update my wallet on TreeFans with Satoshi's, Pied by Stripe, connect to my bank account, and he's sending us a Liberty Boost with a super comment of 1776.

James Cridland 1:47:06

Martin Lindescock, that was. Thank you so much, Martin. Uh, much, much appreciated. Uh, another one from Seth here saying, uh, it's strange that the US doesn't have a big podcast festival. Yes, we were talking about this last week uh because of the success of um of Crossed Wires, of course. Um Seth says it's also a much bigger country, so finding a good location where lots of people can attend is tough. I can tell you one thing, Orlando ain't it. Yes, I would agree with that. Nobody wants to go to Orlando. You did. Um so uh yeah, well, I did, but I had a I had an award to pick up, so that was that was probably why. But anyway, um he says uh I think podcast movement, now that it has a permanent spot in New York City, uh, might be the closest. Well, maybe, Seth. So uh I think that that's worthwhile bearing in mind. Um and something from Claire Wait Brown.

Sam Sethi 1:47:58

Yes, if I'd spent three months in South America, I don't imagine I'd want to come back to a job at Diary of a CEO. Uh, like the idea of Power Supporters WhatsApp group. Yes, I'll get it done.

unknown 1:48:09

Yes.

James Cridland 1:48:10

Oh yes, yes, yes, we should get that done.

Sam Sethi 1:48:13

Yes, I'll plenty from do that now.

James Cridland 1:48:16

Yes, and plenty from Neil Velio, which um in a uh in a typeface which is so small it's very difficult for me to read. Oh, right. Um, but uh he basically says uh lots of exciting things and talking about diary of a CEO uh all over again. Um and uh yes, I think we should probably leave the diary of a CEO to um to Jamie East to talk about rather than to uh to uh anybody else. Um he also uh says you went to a Boy George gig and then wondered why you were disappointed, Sam.

SPEAKER_05 1:48:49

Oh Neil, come on.

Sam Sethi 1:48:51

I didn't really go to the gig. I I basically crashed the gig and then expected him to do his hits and not David Bowie and Bob Marley. I mean, that's that's the only thing that annoyed me about him.

James Cridland 1:49:02

Yes, yes. Well, there we are. Well, that was last week. What have you been doing

TrueFans Experiments And Final Wrap

James Cridland 1:49:06

this week?

Sam Sethi 1:49:06

Um, I've enjoyed Matt Cundal. He's been doing he's he's really knocking out the park with some of his sound-off interviews. He had Justin Jackson on this week, was a really good interview. I enjoyed that. Um, and Rob Greenley has interviewed Leo Laporte. Um, again, really like Leo, so that was fun to listen to. I don't know if you heard either of those.

James Cridland 1:49:25

Yeah, Leo is Leo is is excellent. So I should go and uh take a look, uh, take a listen to uh Leo on the new media show. That's right, Leo. Um that would be good to uh that would be good to have a listen to.

Sam Sethi 1:49:38

So you know we keep talking about Road being an Australian company and that maybe they should think about sponsoring the show or at least doing something with us. I tried to connect with Road and failed. I tried to join their affiliate programme and I basically got back a lovely letter saying thanks for your interest in the Road affiliate programme. We're sorry to say that your application wasn't successful. Thanks a lot, Road. Yeah, love you too.

James Cridland 1:49:58

Yes, they're a strange old. Strange old company. They don't want to talk to me at all. The only time that they've talked to me over the last year, they've tried to get me to sign an NDA. That's not how journalism works. So yes, who knows? Who knows what they're trying to do there? Anything exciting with uh with uh TrueFan?

Sam Sethi 1:50:18

Just experimenting again. Um, I like doing that, as you know. Um one of the things uh we have are RSS feeds, and we've got all the namespace tags. That's great. Um, we've extended those with things like publisher feeds and pod roles, and we as TrueFans copied the format for publisher feeds for publisher events, and then we did the podcast blog. So in TrueFans, in your podcast page, you get blogs, events, merch. And so I I wanted to be able to give creators the option when they host with TrueFans to configure that RSS feed in any which way they want it, so they can add or remove tags, but I also wanted them to be able to remove or add their publisher feed, remove or add their events, and whenever they make a change to their feed, we do a pod ping out, and so they in effect are republishing their feed to whatever app is uh taking their podcast feed. So yeah, these are the super feeds that I've been trying to build for a long time, and we're gonna experiment with them. But it's a way to customize your RSS feeds from a UI interface as a creator.

James Cridland 1:51:26

Well, it all sounds good. So worth a worth a peek and uh let's see how how all of that bit works. But yeah, no, very good. What's up for me, James? Uh uh more more solar news. I know that everybody's very excited about my new solar system. Um, but uh yes. Did you know that your house has a fuse on it? Um I didn't, but um, every house has a fuse on it, and it's a great big fuse. Um it's a fuse, um uh, well, it should be a fuse that is uh that that is a 63 amp fuse in this country. Uh it isn't. It's a f uh the the the fuse that I had was a fuse that was only 50 amps. And what that essentially meant is that um earlier today, when um my uh solar system was getting very excited, filling the battery from the grid, charging my car from the grid, doing all kinds of exciting stuff, it pulled more power than it should have done and blew the fuse in the house. Oh so I had to so I had to call the electricity people out to replace the fuse. I basically said, we've not got any power and I don't understand. Um, and it turns out that uh yeah, we had uh two small fuse and now we've got a bigger fuse. So um I had no idea. The things you learn, the things you learn. Um so that was uh that was entertaining uh to uh learn. But apart from that, no, everything has been has been, you know, as normal, just sort of ploughing ahead, getting stuff done, get trying to get rid of my cold, which I've still got, as you can tell. Um, but you know, having lots of uh lots of medicine uh for it, so uh so that's all good. Um but uh yeah, and um just looking forward to um going to uh New York uh as much as a man can look forward to going to New York in uh early September.

Sam Sethi 1:53:23

Yeah, well, you know, I mean that is your next trip. I mean I think New York under Mandawi um is gonna be fun. Go you'll be it'll be great. Go and see the Knicks.

James Cridland 1:53:35

Go and see the Knicks. Very much look, I'm not not going to go and see the Knicks, but I am very sports, sports ball. Um but I am very much looking forward to um going and seeing, you know, as many people as I can. Uh and uh yeah, it should be a good uh it should be a good time. So uh there we are. Looking forward to that and looking forward to various other things as well. Uh and that's it for this week. All of our podcast stories taken from the Pod News Daily Newsletter at Podnews.net.

Sam Sethi 1:54:01

Uh you can give us feedback using the Buzzsprout fan mail link for voice or for text. In our show notes, you'll find that link or become a monthly Passporter like the 24 Power Supporters at weekly.podnews.net.

James Cridland 1:54:15

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

Announcer 1:54:27

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