SPEAKER_03 0:00

The podcast is seen as kind of a line item that's not really given too much specialist treatment.

James Cridland 0:06

Andy Maxwell from Earmax Media on the need for a specialist podcast media agency.

SPEAKER_02 0:12

Plus, we obviously have loads of um comedy podcasts of all shapes and sizes. We bring them all onto the stage and you can see them live.

James Cridland 0:20

Giles Gere from Cheerful Earful on the funniest podcast festival in the world.

Announcer 0:25

With James Kridlin and Sam Suthey. This is the Pod News Weekly Review with BuzzStrates. Start podcasting, keep

Amy Dugger's angry email/article

Announcer 0:36

podcasting.

Sam Sethi 0:36

James, James, James, what an interesting week you've had. Now, last week, let's set the scene. Let's set the scene, right?

James Cridland 0:44

Yes.

Sam Sethi 0:45

Couple of weeks ago, maybe even a month ago, the industry started to switch towards Apple's HLS. We had video, video, video, and we've seen that rolling out. And we'll talk more about probably that in this week's show as well. And then we had the idea of Apple taking a potentially, we don't know the number, a $1 CPM, which then led to a conversation about we should pay the apps. And I was like, yay, finally I get some money. And that then led to an anonymous initially email. Amy Douglas sent you an email. Right. What did Amy say?

James Cridland 1:21

What did Amy say? Well, Amy is basically uh I'm I'm a dreadful man, and the real issues for creators are that um podcast, I I think podcast uh hosts are are ripping creators off or something. Or or I I I couldn't quite follow it. And also um let's make uh let's make sure that uh everybody realizes that uh I get all of my money from the industry, and so therefore I'll never say anything mean about the industry, which uh if anybody has listened to this podcast or read Pod News for any amount of time, you will know is not the case. Um so uh yeah, so it was a it was a strange one. Uh a lot of people have said it's um been written with the help of generative AI. I don't know about that. Um, but certainly um I thought, well, you know, it's um it's a response. So um I thought I might as well I thought I I might as well carry it partially because I don't think that Amy was expecting me to.

Sam Sethi 2:18

Why is Amy doing this? She's saying it because she feels as the creator doing all the work to produce a podcast that she should get some money, right? Yes. And thinking that the industry is talking about us, the apps, getting money, or the hosts getting money, or everyone else in the industry getting money apart from the creator. And I think that was her bug bank.

James Cridland 2:38

Yeah, which is which is a ridiculous uh statement because you you you're earning money. If you want to sell advertising in your show, you can sell advertising in your show. Nobody is turning around and making money off shows that where the creator themselves doesn't make money. No one does that. I don't even think that that's an issue.

Sam Sethi 2:58

Well, taking taking that point forward, so all of the apps are consuming the RSS, which is why the creators want them because they want reach, but they're not paying for it. So is that consumption data plays, time, listen, percent completed, the ownership of the podcast creator or the ownership of the app?

James Cridland 3:18

What we've got at the moment is we've got, you know, somebody stamping their feet and saying, but I'm not making any money. Well, you know, if you're not making any money, uh it it you you won't suddenly make make money if you know that your podcast got 82 plays, for example. That's not going to help you make money. The way of you making money is to go out and sell it and and sell the advertising. And, you know, uh, and it really depends how you sell that advertising is how much money that you earn out of it. Jealousy will get you so far, but it won't necessarily help fix the particular issue. Now she goes on, she makes a number of allegations against people who work in podcasting. She says that people are keeping money uh from the creator somehow, but I I don't really understand quite what she's talking about. I've asked for information, um, she hasn't come back to me. Um, so uh I can only assume that that's just nonsense. And she then says, and of course, nobody's going to report about this, you're not going to report about it in the Pod News newsletter, because you take money from the podcast hosting companies and you take money from the the podcast advertisers. And uh yeah, just just you know, check yourself before you wreck yourself. Um, make sure that you've actually read what I've done uh uh over the past seven years because um I would imagine that quite a lot of people will will be going, yeah, he's not that polite to us, really. Yeah, I think our sponsors have called us out on the fact that we've called them out before. Correct, correct, yes, yes. There are a certain amount of people who think that they are owed a living by whatever industry they are in. And but the reality is, sorry, but you're not. Um, but the reality is you need to kind of understand what your industry is before you jump up and down and you know, and um make a big uh a big uh hullabaloo about it. Um and um, you know, Amy Duggar, who I'm sure is not, is not her real name, um, who has one of those email addresses on Gmail that ends with a number, I'm sure that, you know, she at the end of the day, uh because I don't know who she is, and because uh that name doesn't actually exist, um, I I can say that frankly she doesn't know what she's talking about. Um and um, you know, but nevertheless, I thought I thought it was an interesting counterpoint to the um to the point that I was trying trying to make of making sure that podcast app developers actually get some money out of all of this.

Sam Sethi 5:49

Yeah, I mean, look, I think what people want is the failed trickle-down economics model, right? Advertisers pay money, hosts take some money, creators get money, by the way, Amy. Apps now want some money, and eventually, and this is the mad one that I always put forward, listeners eventually get money. If I want to listen to your sales pitch and not skip, as Edison has told us, um, then I want to cut as well. It's not gonna happen, but but that's the idea of trickle-down economics, that everybody in the ecosystem gets a pay. Um, we'll see.

James Cridland 6:22

No, indeed. Uh indeed, and you can and you can well

Voicemail from Neal Veglio

James Cridland 6:25

see that. And of course, there are people who are happy enough to spend money on um on on podcast apps that don't um that you know skip the ads for you. Uh, here's um here's a voicemail from one of our power supporters. Uh, brilliant. It's Neil Vellio.

SPEAKER_00 6:42

Hi, James and Sam. Neil from Podnos here. Oh, don't all groat at once. I enjoyed your chat last week with Dan Granger and his suggestion the industry's being frustrating as customers, and I think he's oversimplifying it. Because 20 minutes later, you're both talking about some bloke in the UK vlogging an app that yanks the ads out for $2.99 a month, and people are obviously paying for that. Turns out the listener has an opinion on all this too, but they've just used a credit card payment to make it. And from what he was describing, it sounds like the advertisers got a year of meetings and a document, and listeners are getting sold all from this accord. The app developers get Spotify and YouTube in the room with them, which is a bit like inviting the two biggest meatheads to the anti-bullying committee. I'm not saying that the accord's a cack, but you can measure an ad to the end of its days, and it's still going to be an ad that someone's gonna pay to get shot of. So fix why people are paying to skip the ads, and then half your measurement problem evaporates just like that. Poof. Cheers, lads.

Sam Sethi 7:44

So, Neil, I tend to agree the reason people skip ads is because they're irrelevant to me. And if you want to use my time and attention, make it valuable to me. And advertisers actually don't want to pay creators, hosts, or all the middlemen. They want to reach the end listener, but they haven't got a mechanism yet to pay the listener directly. But that's I think the uh end goal, in my opinion. If you want my time and attention to listen to your sales pitch, aka ad, pay me.

James Cridland 8:11

Yes, well, good luck with that. Uh, lots of feedback though, from uh lots of people. I'll be retired before that happens, don't worry. So lots of people about the AMP Accords. Uh, Adopter

AMP Accords feedback

James Cridland 8:22

Media saying that it is an excellent first step and suggesting that it's a workable start. There are a set of suggestions that uh Glenn Rubinstein uh makes from Adopter Media. Um there is a bit of a relationship there in that uh he's an advisor to Podscribe who helped with uh AMP. Um the most consequential outcome of the Accords would be YouTube, Spotify, and Apple sharing granular consumption data, according to Right Side Up, who make a ton of interesting podcasts. And Stephen Goldstein from Amplify Media calls for the AMP Accords to be adopted faster. The download-built podcasting, now it's holding it back. Um, there was also some um quite acerbic feedback from um the folks at Podtrack, one of whom said the sun will rise in the West when Apple, Spotify, and YouTube share IP addresses and um and um device IDs for every podcast listener. And I have to tell you, I think that that that's probably the case. I cannot see Apple signing up to any of these Ample cords, possibly the play number. Uh, but the play number isn't the consumption data that the advertisers want, really. So I uh with that with that, you know, uh accepting that play number, I cannot see Apple sharing um uh mobile ad IDs and especially you know hashed uh email addresses and all that kind of uh stuff. And assuming that I'm right there and assuming that Apple won't share that information, the whole this whole thing is dead in the water. Whole thing is dead in the water. Okay.

Sam Sethi 10:08

I I would say uh I would agree with you with Spotify and YouTube. Why the hell would they take 100% of a closed market and open it up? They own the spam network, they own the subscriber, they own the content, it's free hosting. No interest at all in this, apart from, yeah, we'll play with your game and do 30 seconds, but the rest of it, it's our locked wall. Same with YouTube, they're not going to open it up. Apple, though. I I'm just gonna put an argument forward that they might because they have worked with the podcast industry for things like delegated delivery, they've worked with this new uh Apple API, they're doing the $1 CPM if that's the number. I think there is a quid pro quo. We will give you more of this data for more of them, the the money, right? Yeah, I think there is a possibility that they could play in the game because they don't want to be an advertiser themselves, they don't want to have the walled garden where they own it all. So I think Apple may be the one that will give consumption data back to hosts um to aggregate into their dashboards because they're playing well with the hosts right now, but the other two, not a chance in hell.

James Cridland 11:19

Yeah, I I mean I I can't even see Apple sharing information with hosts. They've had information for the last five years, they've not shared it back to the hosts yet. And also, um Sam, and I know that you know people from Apple um listen to this show and we get very nice feedback, and they are all very nice people. But I'm afraid that Apple's um uh analytics uh information is just bullshit, it's just nonsense. The average consumption, for example, of an episode of the Pod News Daily podcast, um average consumption 182%, according to Apple Podcasts Connect, which means that the average listener, the average listener, listen to the whole show and then listen to almost all of the show again. The average listener, not just one of them, the average listener, plus 29 listeners, according to um Apple's stats, 82 plays. It's a four-minute show. 29 listeners, 82 plays. Explain to me, explain to me in uh words that I will understand why uh four times the amount of plays to listeners or 2.8 times or whatever the figure is, um, and explain to me why people are listening to that show twice. I I just don't believe it.

Sam Sethi 12:43

Um well, because it's words of wisdom, you know.

James Cridland 12:46

Yeah, yeah. They're just it it it's just nonsense. And unfortunately, if 40% of the market is based on these figures, which are just nonsense, uh, and Apple have given no indication that that they're going to fix them, um, then you know, I I don't really know where we're going. Now, if all of a sudden Plays is 30 seconds per per listener uh per per episode, which would be the right way of doing it, um, which by the way isn't the way that YouTube is doing it, but anyway, um 30 seconds per listener per episode, that would be a really helpful number. But uh at the moment, Apple's number is just nonsense, it makes no sense whatsoever. As I say, all of the people that we know at Apple are lovely, and you know, and I'm sure that they're not doing this deliberately or or anything else. Um but these numbers are also nonsense. And um for the Ampere cause to turn around and say, we really want 30 30 seconds, ideally 30 seconds per listener because everybody using Apple Podcasts is logged in. So 30 seconds per listener per episode um as a play, that would be a really helpful number. And that uh my understanding is would associate very well with where Spotify is, you know, in terms of this, and that would be a really helpful figure. Of course, the downside of that is that the figure is going to go down, so um, you know, so all of a sudden um that's gonna be an issue, but I can't imagine that anybody is trading on uh on Apple's numbers because they're bullshit. So, you know, so there is that.

Losh Moodaley's video threshold

Sam Sethi 14:25

So we've had this person on the show before, uh Loshley. Losh Moodley, yes, that's right. She's written another really interesting post, James. Is video the future of podcasting? What did she say?

James Cridland 14:37

Yeah, she has um written some very clever stuff all around essentially what is your own video threshold? How much additional money, because it costs additional money to do video, what is your video threshold? How much more money do you want to spend? And where are you going to get that money back? Um, and um you know, I mean, some of the conversations in the Pod News Weekly Review Um Power Supporters uh WhatsApp are pretty clear that actually it's costing people much more to do video, and some people can't work out how to get the money back out of that. Um, and so actually they're not doing video yet because the math doesn't work. And so this um uh article I would highly recommend you go and uh read it. Podnews.net slash articles. Losh Moodley's um written this wonderful thing all about the hidden economics of the price of visibility. When does it make sense to add video so that it starts funding itself?

Sam Sethi 15:37

I think we're gonna end up, sadly, with a two-tier model uh for podcasting. I think the high-end podcasts will add video and that will accelerate their growth and and discovery and you know deepen the parasocial relationship, and they can suck in that cost because they're making it on the advertising revenue back. But I think the the mainstream of podcasters who aren't making money, the Amy Duggins of the world, uh are not going to add video to dip their toe into it, find that the cost of podcasting hosting, let's say $20 a month plus buying a D script or a Riverside license, plus now adding video, it's gonna get close to $100 a month and they're gonna go, we're not making money, pull back.

James Cridland 16:18

So I think it's and I I suspect that for most podcasters, actually adding video makes no sense whatsoever. The reason why people are adding video isn't because people want video. The reason why people are adding video is because it gets you in front of a brand new audience on YouTube. That's it. That is the one thing, and I think this is the difficulty that Apple has to still convince us all is to actually go back and say, okay, why should I be doing video? Because I'm not going to be earning more money out of doing video. It's going to be costing me an awful lot more. And can we actually see an increase in the amount of consumption happening on the Apple Podcasts app? At the moment, from everything that I've been seeing so far, the only increase in consumption that is happening is because Apple is spending a lot of time desperately promoting the few shows that are on video on that platform. But there are lots of shows that are being made on video which still aren't on Apple Podcasts in video, and I think that that tells you quite a lot about where we're actually going here. So really, I think people are uh very excited about video for good reason, and that good reason is it reaches more people. Um, my uh theory about video for the Pod News Daily uh is that I'm not gonna do a video version of that show, but what I am gonna do is I'm going to do maybe two, maybe three YouTube shorts a week uh on video of me essentially two camera talking about one of the big stories. Um and that's gonna be it. And it's gonna be, you know, 30 seconds, 45 seconds, whatever it is. Um, and that's gonna be my plan there because it it doesn't work as a video. Four minutes of you know, somebody talking in front of a in front of a camera is not is not you know particularly exciting. Um so I don't think it works uh in terms of that, but it definitely works in terms of here's a YouTube short that I can sling onto YouTube, that I can sling onto onto LinkedIn, onto the instas, um that um, you know, where I can actually highlight where we've got big stories where I can actually highlight those um and get uh perhaps a little bit more traction around those particular stories.

Sam Sethi 18:37

Yeah, I think a clipping strategy is really cool. I think you watch some of the other big shows do that, you know, you look at um uh pivot or or any of those shows that I watched, they generally have a clipping strategy.

James Cridland 18:50

Yeah, and I think and I think a clipping strategy is slightly different because you do need to film the entire show um and then take clips out of that. What I'm considering doing for the Pod News Daily is um not to clip anything at all, but to actually go in front of a camera, and I'm getting some nice graphics stuff. But yeah, to go to go in front of a camera and go uh and go, there's a really big story today in the Pod News newsletter, and this is what it is, and this is why I think it's interesting. Go and have a look, rather than you know, rather than a clip of the podcast, because I I you know again I can't necessarily see that working too well. Clips of the interviews that we do on this show, yes, absolutely. I think that that works that that works quite uh quite nicely. Um, but I think that's a again a different a different conversation.

Sam Sethi 19:41

Moving on, James. Come on, let's leave Amp alone for a while and let's move on. Um

Dave Winer's new social network based on RSS

Sam Sethi 19:47

co-inventor of podcasts, Dave Weiner, he's been busy inventing a new social network. What's he been doing?

James Cridland 19:54

Yeah, this is I think really interesting. Really interesting. So he is using a thing called a uh an RSS namespace to extend RSS so that RSS can also power a social network. He's calling it RSS.chat. Now rss.chat you can go and have a look at. You can't get a a um uh an um account on there because you know it's just an invite-only uh server. You can play around with demo.rss.chat where you can get an account for a little bit. Um, but anyway, it's basically it looks pretty well identical to a social network, except under the hood, it is properly using RSS. It's really easy, straightforward to write RSS um feeds for it. It uses pretty well all of the standard RSS stuff with a few extensions that he has uh worked on. And I'm there looking at this and going, this is what we need for cross-app comments. This is it, because we have an entire RSS feed that has the base post of an episode. It's called the podcast RSS feed. That's that's what it is, and so being able to use comments correctly, it uses a bit of RSS, it uses some WebSockets, it uses a couple of other things in there as well. To be able to actually allow anyone to leave comments um uh in there that are readable through RSS, I think is really interesting, really exciting.

Sam Sethi 21:34

I had a look at this because obviously uh you know you highlighted it. And so the way I look at it is right now the social interact tag allows me as TrueFans uh to publish to uh using the activity pub to Mastodon and sites like that. Um I know Fountain published to Noster. And so what you're saying here, I think, is that instead of using other prototype. Calls like the app protocol or the activity parv or Nostar, we're going back to native RSS. Now that's cool. My only question is do we need another social network?

James Cridland 22:13

I mean, I mean, of course, we don't need another social network, but we do know that there are many, many, many, many RSS readers out there already that would be able to read all of this stuff anyway. Um and so we we start with an install base which is rather significant, albeit not um not entirely um the full uh experience of this. Um but I just really like the idea of using RSS. I mean, you know, if you if you remember, it is something that I actually put forward um to use RSS feeds as comments anyway. Um, but I really like the idea of using RSS as as comments under the hood so that they all just work within podcast apps, um, and you know, and away you go. That's as decentralized as it could possibly be. Everybody's happy in terms of how the thing works. Um, and I think we then you know we can then move forward from there. Uh it the the whole thing seems to make quite a lot of sense. Now the difficulty is so far as I can work out, Dave uh Dave Weiner has vibe coded all of this. Um and Dave has seemingly vibe coded quite a lot of the software, but hasn't really documented how the system works quite yet. So I'm still trying to understand exactly how the thing works, but from what I can work out, it's a pretty simple, straightforward standard RSS with a few um with a specific namespace, you know, associated with it. Um and I I I think it might be just worthwhile um, you know, podcasting 2.0 taking a look at it because I think it sounds quite exciting.

Sam Sethi 24:01

Well, I think the extensibility of the social interact tag means that you know you can use it straight away without having to adapt the namespace further. So that's quite cool. Um, I guess it's down to Dave now opening up the invites and letting people into his playground. That would be nice.

James Cridland 24:17

Well, you can you can install your own. Um so you can install your own server, all of the all of the stuff is there to enable you to end up doing that. Now at the moment, that own server uses a chunk of uh Dave's own um uh code. Um, and so I think what would be helpful is to actually understand what the spec is. Um and there doesn't appear to be, as I say, anything around what the specification is there, but that is one of the reasons why um uh you know YouTube seems to work uh so well for podcasts, because you can leave comments, and at the moment, none of the uh of the independent podcast apps certainly allow you to leave comments on individual episodes. Um, and those independent podcast apps are 36% of all downloads. It's a big, big, big number. So if we if we can get all of the indie podcast apps, forget you know, YouTube, Spotify, and Apple, um and uh just take a look at the indie podcast apps, that is a considerable amount of podcast consumption that we can all of a sudden turn uh you know cross-app comments on in a relatively easy, straightforward way. And all you have to do is to be able to write an RSS feed, which is not the world's most complicated thing, and shove it onto a you know, shove it onto a static host somewhere.

Sam Sethi 25:42

Yeah, look, I mean, we'll have a look at it as true fans. Uh I mean if this is the elixir of the cross-app comments, then happy days. It might be. Yeah.

James Cridland 25:50

I mean, might also not be, but wouldn't it be fun for Dave Weiner to be actually working on cross-app comments within RSS um uh powered podcasting? Uh uh, you know, I mean that would that would be an excellent, uh, an excellent outcome to all of this. So yeah.

micro.blog adds video

Sam Sethi 26:07

Now look, uh, you know, wait for the London bus and two come along at the same time. It seems like microblogs is doing something. What are they up to, James?

James Cridland 26:15

Yeah, so this is micro.blog. It's a blogging platform which uh is written by a guy called Manton Reese, and uh he has always been very excited um about both RSS feeds and JSON feeds, and um also very excited about podcasting. He said in a blog post recently there are many exclusive audio shows that are not based on RSS feeds, and if left unchecked, this will eventually erode the interoperability and radical beauty of podcasting. Hooray for Manton Reese. So he supports uh Blue Sky directly uh already. Um, but one of the things that he has just added is video podcasting using the alternate enclosure. Hurrah! Um, so he's supported audio podcasting for a bit for about six months or so. Now he's supporting video podcasting as well using the alternate enclosure, uh, which is good news. Um, it'll also post video to YouTube and to Peertube as well. It also does fixes for podcast audio level and all that kind of stuff built into there as well. Um, all very neat. So um I think that's very exciting actually to see um what um Manton is working on. Um because uh you know when you post on micro.blog, you go everywhere. You get into Mastodon as well, you get into Threads, you know, Noster, uh LinkedIn if you if you have to, you know, Flickr, Pixel Fed, all of those things. So uh actually it seems like quite an interesting thing to have a look at.

Sam Sethi 27:50

Yeah, he's come up with a new term for cross-posting called posse, publish on your own site, syndicate elsewhere. Quite nice, yeah.

James Cridland 27:58

Yeah, no, it's uh it's a nice old thing. Um so yes, so and and I should say the alternate enclosure, um, podcasting 2.0 that is, and podcasting 2.0, we've had a few big successes, one of them, of course, the transcript. The alternate enclosure is also a big success because guess who else is is supporting it now? Um, you can see Pocket Casts beginning to support it. They've announced support for HLS um within the alternate enclosure. It's um rolling out, it's not uh available to everybody yet, but it is rolling out slowly. Um iHeart Australia, only yesterday announcing that video podcasts are now available in the app, which I assume means iHeart everywhere because it's the same app, um through the alternate enclosure, through um uh RSS. So um alternate enclosure being used by iHeart, by Pocket Casts, by a bunch of other people. And I think um I was reading something from uh Dustin, who is the um the developer for Castro, who's going to be turning that on as well. Um, so I I think there's you know, if if if we patted ourselves on the back for transcripts, I think we should be patting ourselves on the back for the alternate enclosure as well. Um, because that is a very, very uh I mean look how long it's taken to get there. It's taken six years, hasn't it? To actually get somewhere.

Sam Sethi 29:27

Yeah, young man when we first came up with that idea.

James Cridland 29:31

Yeah. But but my goodness, um uh that is a that is a really, really good piece of work, which all of a sudden um uh people are are really using now. So um yeah, so I think I think you know we should certainly be pack it be patting ourselves uh on the back. Not that I had anything to do with it to be honest, but uh, but you know what I mean. Um uh I think there's uh that there's a lot of other people that have, uh including Douglas Castle, Tom Barrasso, Andy Hubel, Justin Jackson, and of course Alex Gates, who is the main author uh of the spec. So congratulations, Sir Alex. Uh that's another uh tick you have on your bedpost or what whatever it is that you wish to um add this on. You know what I mean? Um no, no, he doesn't, no, no, and we shouldn't forget, of course, Podcast Addict supports it, Castomatic supports it, Curia Caster, Fountain, Disktopia, um, Pod LP, Podverse, and so on and so forth. Uh, and of course, True Fans. Um, so loads of people.

Sam Sethi 30:42

Yeah, we were the first, so we're off to the rest of them. Yes, yes, yes. Uh so uh thank you.

James Cridland 30:48

So, yes, I think that's all good. So hurrah for us.

Sam Sethi 30:52

Yes, well done, us.

EarMax - a podcast-first ad agency

Sam Sethi 30:54

Now, uh moving on, um we had a company called Earmax approach us, uh, a guy called Andy Maxwell, very lovely guy, had several conversations with him. They've come out of Australia from a company called Eardrum. Uh, and Andy and I were chatting away about what they're doing, and they're very specifically focused on the podcast market. You'll be very happy to know, James, that they agree with you that media companies are putting podcasting in the other box underneath the spreadsheet, and basically the podcast industry therefore can't measure the extent of its uh value. And Earmax is very specifically focused on what is a podcast and measuring uh for their clients that and not getting it mixed up with TV and radio and other things. So I reached out to Andy and asked him about who or what is Earmax, but more importantly, I started to also ask him about with this new uh idea of Apple taking a cut, um, who in the you know media advertising world is gonna pay for that? Is it gonna be the advertisers, is it gonna be the media companies like his? Is it gonna be the creators? We also had a wonderful conversation about where he sees video within the industry as well.

SPEAKER_03 32:14

So it's taken a while to actually get to this description, but we're a media agency specializing in podcast advertising. We work in Australia, we were founded in Australia, but have clients across both Australia and the UK. Our sister agency is Eardrum, and my co-founder Ralph Van Dyke, it's his company of 30 years. They and he are the most awarded audio creative agency on the planet. So, really, our offer is the combination of highly curated, sort of context-first media plans plus top-class audio creatives, whether that is 30-second ads, branded segments, or host reads. It's the combination that makes the channel so powerful when it comes to advertising. And that's all underpinned by measurement. So rather than just your typical, this is the reach, this is the frequency, this is the CPM, we go a lot deeper to really help our clients achieve the wider business objectives and pan out how we measure that and then optimize for future campaigns. So that's it in a kind of long nutshell.

Sam Sethi 33:19

So for a Luddite like me who doesn't really focus on advertising, what's the difference between you and a media agency or you and ACAST who sell ads?

SPEAKER_03 33:28

ACAST are some of the big players in the UK and they're all fantastic. But obviously, they only have access to their own inventory and they're only going to be incentivized to sell their own shows, obviously. The difference between us and a media agency is that there's not really any specialists within, especially the holdcos or other media agencies, where audio is a very small part of a wider media plan and the spend and podcasts fits within that. And often podcasts are sort of bundled in with a wider buy, especially if it's a holdco doing a deal with global, who might have out of home and broadcasts and digital audio. The podcast is seen as kind of a line item that's not really given too much specialist treatment, even though you and I will know that the podcast medium is the most intricate channel out there, and it needs that time and care with the advertising side as well. Otherwise, you're just going to piss off the people listening to it. So that's really what separates us. We specialize in podcasts, and it's kind of the front door to our business, where then a brand can expand into digital audio or kind of integrated partnerships with specific podcasters and creators that can span socials and YouTube and video and all the rest of it.

Sam Sethi 34:45

Yeah, James Cridlin, my co-host, often says it's very important for the industry to be able to define what a podcast is in order to not be lost on the spreadsheet in the other column. So, what is a podcast to you?

SPEAKER_03 34:58

A podcast to me is content that has to make sense just purely audio. If it's on YouTube, if you can't just listen to it, then I don't think it's a podcast, it's a YouTube show or a TV show. And I think that is definitely the correct definition. It needs to make sense in an audio-only environment.

Sam Sethi 35:17

Does it need to have an RSS suite?

SPEAKER_03 35:19

No, I don't think so. I think as long as it's made sense, you and I could be recording this now and you could put it just on YouTube as an audio file with a holding image. It's still a podcast, right? I could send it on the group chat. Technically, it's still a podcast as far as the listener is concerned. So I don't see why the tech behind it should really dictate what the definition is.

Sam Sethi 35:43

Okay, let's move on to the Amper Chord, which is Dan Granger, Oxford Road, trying to define what a player is, 30 seconds, define what a podcast is, and the metrics. Tom Webster, famously from Sounds Profitable, said that most metrics in the industry have been faith-based. I've called most of the metrics that advertisers get from podcasting as the Emperor's New Clothes, you know, downloads. It's the only metric we had, but I still thought it was a BS metric because auto-downloads inflate the numbers, people skip ads. The whole thing was, as Tom said, faith-based. Please believe that people are listening to your ad and keep paying us. The recent changes that we're seeing in the industry, and it's still in flux, it may take six months to settle down, but we are moving from a download-based industry to a streaming-based industry using technology called HLS. But ignore the tech for a second. The idea is that I can then measure accurately in six or ten second packets the consumption of the podcast. So somebody actually clicked play, somebody then listened for X minutes or hours, and the consumption percentage, as in if it was three minutes, but that's 100% of the show, like Pod News Daily, is relevant. Or three minutes of a one-hour show is again totally relevant if you know the percentage. So you as an agency focused on podcasting, are these metrics now what your clients are asking for? Are you getting the come on, give me better data, or are they just still happy with faith-based marketing? Yeah, 10,000 downloads, and we don't know if anyone heard the ad.

SPEAKER_03 37:16

I wouldn't go as far as saying they're happy with faith-based marketing because any client that we work with, we're educating them in debt on how this all works. So, you know, the download, as you said, it's not perfect, but it's been the best thing that we've had over the last few years. I think everyone working in podcasting for the last, let's say, five years, we all want the most specific, relevant data. And in an ideal world, yes, of course, we would have those kind of meta-level metrics where we can say this has been played for X time and this ad has definitely been heard. But because of the fragmentation of the industry, it's just not possible. And I think with AMP, again, of course, we all want what this is pushing for, but it relies on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube slash Google coming together to share the information from their players, which ultimately this could have been done three years ago. So I think it's a good thing the AMP is now more visible in the industry and possibly like the whole PR behind it might cause Google and Apple and Spotify to come together, who knows? But I don't think there's too much that will change in the next three to six months, to be honest, because we all want this. But the IAB have been trying to solve this issue for the last 10 years, right? And even already, there's a difference in between what AMP are suggesting in a play being 30 second and what IAB have spent years pushing towards where a download is one minute. What do IAB now have to take AMP's recommendation of 30 seconds just because the 30-second metric is probably slightly more relevant for YouTube, for example? So I think I'm still not clear after reading through the document exactly how all this will work in reality if Apple, Spotify, and YouTube don't all agree to share their data in the same way. And maybe you have more insights into that. I don't know.

Sam Sethi 39:20

I think you're right. Unless there's commonality across platforms, then the metric itself becomes irrelevant. And the problem we have is autoplay. Just like we had auto down, we have autoplay. I can be listening to a podcast and it's in my pocket, and then guess what? Yeah, autoplays the next one in my playlist. Oh, I didn't mean that. Stop. Can I get 30 seconds? Can I get to it before a minute? So I only think the play metric is just a one step further that says a physical human actually pressed the button that said play something for me. Yeah. But the autoplay becomes that problem. Anyway, outside of the play, I think if we can get to a point, you're right. And it may be six months, it may be even a year before we get universality across the industry. But total listen time aggregated on a creator dashboard that gives you a surety that a how long the person listened, but also within that, whether the ad was played and how long the ad was played for as well. So I think that's useful. Now, one of the other big conversations, and you and I had a chat about this offline, is video and the way that Apple has entered the market. And Apple are now saying very cleverly, okay, we're not gonna host the video, we're not going to even stream that. You, the host, can do that. A cast, simple cast, ads with audio boom, etc. And we will take a fee, and it's rumoured to be $1 CPM. Who's gonna pay for that additional cost in the revenue streams? Is it you, EMX, is it ACAS? Someone's gotta pay it, or does the creator have to pay more now to host?

SPEAKER_03 40:58

I think ultimately, in the end, the brand will end up paying more, right? These costs will just get passed down the line if the brand wants to go ahead with that kind of activity on Apple specifically. And again, this is where I see the kind of issues with AMP in that Apple and Spotify and YouTube all have different models. So it works in different ways. So anyway, without going into that, I think the the cost will likely be passed on to the brand. I don't see why the creator out of everyone should be protected 100%. But I think any network or media agency is obviously not going to want to take a hit. So it will just be look, brand, this is a bit more expensive because we can digitally insert video and it will become maybe a slightly more premium solution for digitally inserted video host reads, at least. I think the really interesting bit will be when it comes to doing digitally inserted 30-second ads programmatically at scale, because obviously I assume this will still have to work as an audio ad as well, just because someone might be switch off and listening. Just putting a TV ad in there that needs those visual cues is over reliant on that person 100% watching the ad. But also an audio ad produced by a radio show that's an ad fit for radio with just a holding page is going to be twice as jarring as it was before. So we need to find that solution with the kind of audio video, I don't know what the word is, but the integration of the both.

Sam Sethi 42:33

Okay, so Friends of the Show, Bumper, Dan Meisner, Jonas Boost have created a digital dashboard where they fundamentally are getting permission from the creator to aggregate from the big three. And they'd love to extend that further. That's fine. And that gives them some metrics for the creator to understand how they should improve their show or where pads were played. Could Earmax become also the aggregator of that data? Or would you just want a third-party service to provide you with it? So if you went back to your advertiser and said, we have this podcast and we ran a campaign across ACAST and Audio Boom and we did all these different places. And by the way, we've aggregated all of that consumption data back, and here you go, Mr. Advertiser, and they go, Wow, that is really truly unique. Because all I ever got before was this rubbish download number.

SPEAKER_03 43:22

Well, that's why our clients work with us, because when we brief a publisher, we are pushing for Spotify demographics more than just the kind of this show has 90% male, 45 plus. We want to know the exact splits because we're comparing this against so many different podcasts in the landscape. We have a lot of that information. And if we're working with independent podcasters and we're going to do a branded segment, let's say, I'm going to push for the consumption data because we need to make sure that this three to five minute branded segment is at a part of the episode that is still being consumed by the majority of the audience. So I think. All of this information that we're talking about is out there. It's just, do you have the time to dig deep enough to go and find it? And what we're building now, obviously, all of this information sits on shared drives and documents and emails and things like that. But we are starting to put it into a proper system, obviously, with AI developments, it's going to get better. And with our recommendations. So whilst we wouldn't be necessarily yet, anyway, becoming that aggregator and trying to sell it on behalf of the podcaster, it is something that our clients have access to and that helps one, our decision making in terms of what we recommend, but actually having proper rationale for why we're recommending it to a brand on a case-by-case basis, depending on the audience, depending on what they want from that campaign. And this is what we've been doing for almost three years now. It's just easier to systemise and use AI to start to help us really sift through it at speed.

Sam Sethi 45:01

So your client fundamentally is the advertiser of the brand, right? Your client isn't the podcaster. You're placing it within multiple platforms. I think one of the things we talked about yesterday that makes Earmax unique is that yes, A-Cast can use their own inventory, but you can go across multiple platforms for inventory placement. But are you getting back from the likes of A-Cast and the audio booms and the ads whiz of the world all the consumption data that you want? And are they getting it from the platforms?

SPEAKER_03 45:29

So typically, if we were to brief an A-cast, they're not going to give us consumption data per episode and per podcast. Maybe on special occasions, if the budget was big enough and it was a huge podcast, they might. I haven't actually got that far into it yet. And I think that this is definitely something that we could start requesting. And ultimately, they can ask the podcaster, can you share your consumption data? Or if they own the podcast, like for example, in Australia or let's say the UK, you've got Bauer and Global who have their kind of original shows. And so they own the podcast and therefore they own the back end data or they have access to that. They can share that. There's no reason they couldn't. It's just whether they would want to. If the consumption rates are all 100%, I'm pretty sure they would share it. And potentially this is something the Azirmax, we can start to drill down into and say, look, this is a great podcast because it's got that. And I think you mentioned Bumper, the other side of their business where yes, they help podcasters, but they also can help advertisers with this rating score of a podcast of yes, it's actually being listened to. Yes, the downloads are legit, and yes, the consumption rates are 90%. So we could start to look more depth into that, but it would be mainly for the long-term sponsorship of a show or where there's branded segments and a higher CPM. I think that would be where it's justified.

Sam Sethi 46:52

Andy, we could probably go into this. We're not going to fix the world today, but welcome to the UK EMX. Tell people where they can go and find out more about what you guys are doing.

SPEAKER_03 47:01

Yeah, so just on our website, uh EMXmedia.com or hit me up on LinkedIn.

Sam Sethi 47:06

Congratulations. Thanks, Andy. Speak to you soon. Thanks, Sam.

Announcer 47:10

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

Round the world

James Cridland 47:19

Right, let's go around the world. And uh starting in uh the UK, well, UK stroke US, weird stuff is going on at the diary of a CEO, uh, Sam. So uh the first thing is Thomas Seafried, who is um this weird sort of quack who is um talking about chemotherapy and radiotherapy being um uh being nonsense and not working as a cure for cancer and all of this. And apparently the real way to beat cancer is a ketogenic diet. Um it's utter nonsense, of course. Uh, and if you follow that without real medical advice, then that could actually kill you. Uh so um quite why Stephen Bartlett is giving this guy um uh another round, um, I really don't know. Uh the last time that he was on in December 2024, the BBC ran an investigation onto what Thomas Siefried was actually saying um and ended up being pretty unequivocal and saying, you know, this is just bad advice. And there Stephen Butler is again giving another role to all of this. Now, he would claim, oh well, we're doing on-screen fact-checking, and um uh he's just uh posted about that all over again. Those that on-screen fact checking is on-screen, so it means that anybody listening to the audio doesn't end up hearing any of that fact-checking. Secondly, um, there is supposed to be a link uh with more information about the independent fact check, which is, shall we say, slightly heavy on the AI. Uh, and uh that link um doesn't appear at all in the audio version, does appear in the YouTube version, but it's been badly copied and pasted, so it doesn't actually work. I've got a question into the PR uh company at Diary of a CEO to find out what is going on. So you've got all of that stuff going on, but also um Samloads of people leaving the company.

Sam Sethi 49:16

Yeah. I mean, look, it's hard to tell, right? Um I I I I think they are trying to do the Joe Rogan thing, which is uh is it click main, is it put stuff out, people talk about you because it's bad or it's good, it's all PR, good PR. I don't know. Uh I do uh well, until we hear from somebody or why they've actually left, and they're probably not going to be able to, because they've probably got golden handcuffs while they're leaving out the door, or Goodleaver uh responsibilities. So I i i it does worry me that um somebody with such influence or reach, I'd just say, can still um foster such negative information. And the question comes back to it when will government or industry do something to stop this? Because that's that's fun to me. If there is no rules and he's not breaking rules, then he will continue to do this because it will generate clicks.

James Cridland 50:15

Yeah, I mean, you know, I um I mean I don't I don't want to make Adam Curry's uh head explode by asking for the government to step in, but certainly um just you know just be uh a little bit more aware of yourself than inviting somebody whose claims have already been very thoroughly debunked to get somebody in again for another go, and by the way, to get him to promote his organisation, Thomas Seafried's organization, so that you give money to this guy, um seems uh utterly irresponsible. Um so I think that that is is very bizarre. The other thing just to sort of bear in mind is that all of the people who have left Diary of a CEO um appear to be leaving Diary of a CEO with nothing to go to. So Anthony Smith, who was their director of trailers, saying that he was excited and nervous about what's to come as I figure out the next steps. Grace Miller, uh, who was their head of failure and experimentation, I don't know what the future holds. Jack Sylvester, of course, leaving earlier this month. I don't know what's next, but I'm more fired up than ever. And Jem rather than fired. And Jem Erith, the executive producer uh of the Diary of a CEO, um, she left the company three months ago as well. She's just done the Inca Trail, that's nice. Uh, and uh, she's the fourth key staffer to have departed the company in recent months, and her substack is pretty clear that she has nothing to go to either. That should be ringing some bells somewhere. I can understand that the company is changing, the company is getting much, much bigger. I can understand that Bartlett has moved to Los Angeles, and so perhaps there is a different conversation there in terms of, well, I don't want to move to LA as well. Um, and so perhaps there's a little bit of that going on. But um, for all of these people to be leaving with net without anywhere to go seems just a little bit weird. Um, Stephen Bartler reckons that his company has 150 employees forecasting 500 plus hires across the UK and US in coming years. Incoming years? What do you mean by that? Incoming years. Um, but anyway, um uh so I think uh just a watching brief in terms of um diary of a CEO. It's not just me who's noticed this, there's quite a few people who have uh spotted this and just wondering what exactly is going on. Stephen Butler, of course, has just got a new job as um being in uh shark tank in the US. So he's in the equivalent of shark tank in the UK, Dragon's Den, uh and he'll now be in Shark Tank in the US as well, which is going to be very interesting, but also gonna sap up quite a lot of his time, one would assume. Also in the UK, this is some really interesting research. Uh Ofcom, which is the UK media regulator, has released a big bunch of research on the UK's media habits, lots of data on podcast listening in there. The word is mentioned 135 times in the report, so you can guess that there's probably quite a lot uh about that. One of the things that I found interesting, yes, YouTube, most used platform for any audio content, it says um only 45% of uh of British people think that there are too many adverts in the podcast they listen to. It's probably because quite a lot of the podcasts they listen to don't have any adverts in them at all, because they're run by the BBC and the BBC has no adverts. Um, but um, you know, there we are. Um the the one thing though that I've thought was really interesting 53% of the UK listen to what the research says is called speech audio. So speech audio, things like podcasts or talk radio, 53%. Now that number actually goes up for the peak um age group of uh people who listen to um uh talk. And that peak age group I thought would be probably 55, 64, that sort of age group. No, it's 25-34s. So it's right in the middle. And that's not just podcasts where we know that podcasts are quite successful, it's also speech radio as well, and audiobooks. 25 to 34 is the peak there, which I just thought was really interesting. That's not data that um yeah, that I would ever have guessed. So um definitely worthwhile taking a peek um at that. Uh Sam's Sam's taxes have paid for it. Uh so you should go and uh you should go and uh take a look.

Sam Sethi 54:49

Ofcom.ware.uk you say that, but the research came out this week. Netflix is now the number one choice for British viewers more than the BBC. Yes, of it now.

James Cridland 54:59

Evertos likely. Evertos likely is the figure.

Sam Sethi 55:02

Yes, but it's slightly enough.

James Cridland 55:04

Um 26% of people, and this is still the Ofcom uh uh information. 26% of people say that they turn to Netflix first if they're what if they want to find something to watch, and the BBC second, um, which is which is quite fascinating, isn't it?

Sam Sethi 55:23

Talking of Ofcom and talking about regulation, we were a few minutes ago. Both of us come from a radio background, and we had to uh comply with Ofcom regulations for radio. So no swearing, uh and related to declaring certain things and et cetera, et cetera, right? Would, could, should Ofcom take podcasting under its wing?

James Cridland 55:44

Oh no. Nobody wants that. Nobody wants that. Interesting.

Sam Sethi 55:50

Okay, I was just I was just asking for you know for a friend.

James Cridland 55:53

I mean, interestingly, uh actually, I mean uh there is one country that is taking it under the under their wing, um, and that's the Central American country of Belize, um, which is planning to require podcasters and YouTubers to get a broadcasting license. Um, if you don't get a license, then you will be fined 25,000 US dollars if you don't have one. But here's the rub, right? If you're a podcast host, you can be fined as well. If you are a sponsor of a podcast, you can be fined as well. So wow.

Sam Sethi 56:27

Are they trying to kill podcasting there or something?

James Cridland 56:29

Yes, quite possibly, quite possibly, because I'm sure that the podcast, you know, some of the podcasts there have said something mean about the the the Belize government. Um, but you can go and take a look at that uh new law if you like on the BBA's website, which is the Belize Broadcasting Authority, and you can comment on it till August 24th. They'll probably

Podcast Events

James Cridland 56:51

ignore.

Announcer 56:52

Podcast events on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland 56:55

Firstly, uh the podcast show in London has just made more sessions on demand. Um, so you can go and have a listen to the entire output of the studio stage. Was that uh one that we were on? I can't I can't remember. Yeah, we were, yes. Oh, right, heaven. Well, you'll be able to hear the version of that uh pre-the-edit. Uh so that'll be entertaining. Um, you can find a link in your email uh for that as well. Of course, um podcast movement in New York City is uh happening in uh early September, and uh I will be there. Sam uh won't be. He's got some ludicrous um uh excuse of some birthday or something, but anyway, uh I will be there. I will be there all week. Blame my parents, it wasn't my fault. And and uh uh I will be there all week, so I will be uh looking for um people to um uh share a burger and a pint with. Um so do get in touch. Um but

Giles Gear, Cheerful Earful

James Cridland 57:53

um something going on right throughout October, and this is exciting. It's the world's funniest podcast festival. It's coming back, it's a festival called Cheerful Earful, and it's in London, Brighton, Edinburgh, Melbourne, Dublin, and New York, and possibly even Belfast as well. It's got the largest lineup in the festival's history. I thought I would find out a little bit more, and so I spoke to the organiser.

SPEAKER_02 58:18

So my name is Giles, and I am the founder, which is a very grand word for just the person who set up Cheerful Earful Podcast Festival and our spin-off, which are the Golden Loebs Awards.

James Cridland 58:29

Yes, indeed. So the Cheerful Earful Podcast Festival is all about comedy, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 58:35

Well, I'm gonna stop you right there, James Quiddland. We actually say it's a festival of funny podcasts. Um, I'm sorry. No, no, I don't want to be controversial already, but yeah, it is. We obviously have loads of um comedy podcasts of all shapes and sizes, but we try, we say we're a the world's funniest podcast festival, a festival of funny podcasts. And what that means is we are sports podcasts, politics ones, sort of of every any genre that sort of raises a smile or a geffore on public transport. We bring them all um onto the stage and you can see them live. So when Joe Marler was doing his previous podcast with Crowd Network, that that's technically a sports podcast, but was very, very funny because Joe Marler is a funny guy. So we um had him as one of our headliners a few years ago. So it is uh we do have obviously comedians popping up big and small in your Brett Goldsteins and James A. Casters, but we keep it uh broad enough to try and make it financially sustainable. So yeah, we like to say the world's funniest podcast festival. Absolutely.

James Cridland 59:31

So you started life, um, not you personally, but uh Cheerful Earful started life um half a decade ago, which is a very fancy way of saying five years ago, uh five years ago, as a four-day festival inside a couple of pubs. Yeah. Uh what is Cheerful Earful this year?

SPEAKER_02 59:49

This year we still have that pub energy, and I think that's our bread and butter, and really important. Um, I mean, it particularly in London, we have a weekend of headliners at the Clappin' Grand, so that that goes to 700 seats, but I'd say our our soul and our bread and butter are those sort of pub energy 100, 150 seaters. This year, I believe I might be wrong, we've got eight, nine days in London. We have uh three, four days in Melbourne, we have three days in New York City, we very excitingly have a um the Ear Canal, which is a name that multiple people have said don't call it that, but we have shows in uh Brighton, um at Comedia and uh Monkey Barrel in Edinburgh as well, which we're calling the Ear Canal, just to increase accessibility, so not everything has to be in London. And then also, since I sent you the press release, James, we've had good old Dublin um will be happening as well. That's been confirmed as well. I mean, for us, particularly this year, again, half a decade ago, aka five years, it's a bit of a purple circus tent, cheerfully, for that we sort of plonk on top of venues for a day or two, both you know, in the UK and internationally, and bring that cheerful spirit and try and bring people's favourite funny people, favorite funny podcasts and creators all to one place, um, so they don't have to travel too far to see them. And I think particularly this year, we're just getting going with how that works. It's been Dublin and then hopefully Belfast will be confirmed as well. It's just happened fairly last minute in events land, and it's it's just really exciting. That that community, if anything, it's the the Dublin-based comedians and podcasters going, we'll help you, we'll help make this happen. We want cheerful over here kind of things. So I think it's a really lovely, we're global, yes, but this grassroots community spirit um that has grown up organically is I think what makes it really special.

James Cridland 1:01:39

So more than a hundred live shows, and I'm guessing it's even more than that now, with the addition of uh Dublin and potentially uh Belfast as well. That's a lot of people. Who are some of the people who we can um go and watch? And this is live live shows basically getting recorded, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:57

All live shows um that get recorded, some literally just do their their live show, their format, but some use the opportunity like bigger shows might do a Patreon-only show or some sort of special QA or a different format. So what we do is we say, look, we're sorting all of the just logistics, all of the faff, all of that headache. You turn up on the stage and just do your thing. Um, and I think I'll read out some big names because big names are always good, good, good things to do. But the the beauty of it is that we do have household names, indie juggernauts, and these sort of first-time performers, they all share the bill and they all get the same ticket split, the same love. It's not about just doing the big names, particularly because they have their own live show strategy anyway. So, like, what's the point? But there's some of our headliners this year, we've got Bud Pod coming back, um, we've got the socially distanced sports bar with your Ellis James's, we've got the Horn section um with Alex Horn, Et al. as well, um, this paranormal life, who are again a sort of massive, massive podcast, but um, but not potentially like household name comedians individually, which I think is what Cheerful specializes in. A really interesting one as well is Hell or High Rollers. So Hell or High Rollers um is a DD funny podcast from Mischief Theatre, the guys who set up the play that goes wrong 10 years ago or so. That I I can exclusively say on pod news was our fastest, um, fastest-selling show of the festival by a mile. It sold out 130 or so seats within three hours just to their Patreon. And to me, that shows the beauty of there are these massive, massive, massive shows that aren't necessarily getting the same industry attention because people don't see that. So we get this lovely collection of you know, um, all shapes and sizes sort of joining in and sharing the stage. So it's um there's there's there's sort of too many to to list, but obviously all on the website. But it's a real lovely melting pot. Um, and I really love, and I mean, you'll know this that the smaller shows and the independent shows are the ones that often shout loudest and proudest about being part of the festival. They're the ones that you know really enjoy that, and that's why doing it in other cities is important as well, to so they don't have to spend any money ideally, like all of their profits on having to come to London. Well, why not do it on their doorsteps?

James Cridland 1:04:13

Yeah, no, exactly. You've even got a show called The Podcast Nobody Asked For, which I thought was this one, but uh uh so that's all good. So what what what's involved in a in one of these um uh shows? Why would one of these shows do you know uh take part in the Cheerful Earful uh festival?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:35

If I had a lovely, pithy answer that was both humorous and heartfelt, I would I would insert it here. But I I don't know. I I think that for some people we we grow with shows as well. Like we did Trusty Hogs, Trusty Hogs no longer is you know existed, but we did Trusty Hogs in a 60 seater, then a 100-seater, then they did their final two shows with us in a 700-seater. So I think that yeah, because we've got that audio pedigree, we're not we we've got an a nice sort of um cross-junction, that's not correct the right word, but a junction of of audio love. You know, we're doing a multi-track recording of their show, giving it to them for free. We're taking lovely professional photographs of their live show, giving it to them for free. We're sort of adding on all these sparkly bits, as well as doing the sort of live event side of you know, having the stage there, having making vetoing the venues, making sure that the venues feel cheerful in nature and cozy and welcoming. And we're we're sort of hands-on um in a nice way, where if people are sort of piddling along at 10 tickets or 15 tickets, we go, don't worry, we're not gonna lead you in the lurch, let's see what we can do. There's a lot of guesting on each other's as well. So I think that the and and especially for audiences, people love being in. I mean, you know, the pod news people love being in the same room as you, James, regardless. But people love being in the same room as their favourite podcast, don't they? And so we offer that opportunity and it's It's almost like a a meet and greet or that sort of festival or think like the podcast show people just meeting your favorite funny, you know, and I think also what's quite unique is that we get m megastars popping up, and I'd love to take credit for booking them, but like James A. Castor popped up a couple of times two years ago, you know, The Birthday Girls, which is this legacy podcast, 10 years old. Um, you know, they've been there since the start. We've you know, and I said, Oh, by the way, who's your guest last year? They went, Oh, our friend Brett Goldstein. And I went, Flipping Nora. I I couldn't get past the first wave of agents for Brett Goldstein, and they've just booked him. So I think the magic of cheerful is yes, you go see the show, but you're not sure who's gonna pop up during the festival as well. So um I think I think we we we get a bit of an answer there. We also try as well and give as much of the ticket split, as much of the um revenue as possible to the axe, take away the faff, and then any not to get really boring, but any sort of commercial partners or anything like that, we curate in a way that is useful to the performers, especially with these easy shows and their workflows. You know, with the with the Golden Lobes, for example, Orphonic or one of our partners in the in the first year, I was endorsing Orphonic left, right, and centre, and then I got a show email B going, you know, Orphonic's changed my life. Brilliant kind of thing. It's amazing. You can do X, Y, and Z. So I think that our mixture of that podcast pedigree with live events, um, people feel in good hands.

James Cridland 1:07:26

That's great. And and uh yeah, and it's it's always good to be working with um sponsors and partners who you also believe in as well. So that's exactly so that's uh certainly a Updates.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:39

I won't name names, I won't give you a controversial headline just yet, but you know, I would be on a call with a potential sponsor and I'd say, Can you explain to me again what you do? And I wouldn't understand the nature of what they do. And I was like, Well, I can't legitimately bring you into the fold, and I don't know what I don't know what this thing is.

James Cridland 1:07:56

I can't say you've seen the same press releases that I I get sent every single day, and yeah, and you sort of talk yourself down with oh, and there are big people too. I mean, Alex Horn, uh, off of Taskmaster, uh, he's a pretty big name. So uh uh he'll he'll be um doing the horn section podcast on the 11th of October at the Clapham Grand. I mean that that's a that's a pretty big name for this year. If I if I was in the UK, I'd be I'd be hassling you for tickets for that one.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:27

No, we were very, very lucky, um, and I'm sure they don't they won't mind me saying, but again, what was really nice of this this is I'm not even gonna pretend it's not a humble brag. It is a humble brag, it's just a brag, but they reached out to us, um, their sort of sax player, I believe, on Instagram said, Who on earth are you? Our audience has been saying we need to get involved, kind of thing. So that was really lovely. That again, maybe I'm just a bit of a terrible booker and people need to force me into sort of action a bit more. But what was really nice is that they reached out um initially, and so you know, that makes life a lot easier. Um, and we get shows coming out to us and reaching out and everything. And I and I think that that's that's where we exist is when when we talk with big shows and they've already got their tours and their their strategy, and you know, the the lovely guys at Fain are sort of doing their sort of multi, you know, worldwide tour. We go, no worries, you're massive, you can sell out a stadium, do our 150 seater one in wherever, Edinburgh, and do it as a Patreon only thing, because then it acts as added value and an incentive for your audience to sign up to Patreon, which for you will lead to more revenue and blah blah blah kind of thing. So I think we can be sort of quite scrappy with how we how maybe not scrappy, but you know, we we think of a better word. But so yeah, we're very, very lucky like that. And we have a lot of um r returners as well. Some only do live shows with us as well, and and next year um we will be cheerful, we'll be sort of touring more podcasts just as a touring company, um, which is sort of our background anyway. So we see that sort of being fleshed out year-round as well.

James Cridland 1:09:58

No, it's uh it all looks uh really cool. Everything starts on the 28th of September in uh London, uh, Edinburgh, Brighton, and uh also New York City. I've heard of that. Um uh and uh Melbourne uh happens a little bit later in uh October as well, and of course uh Dublin uh and other places to be confirmed as well. Where would people go to find out more information?

SPEAKER_02 1:10:24

Well, if the redirect has been set up correctly, which the IT company that do it for me for a favor, do it for free, hopefully it will be, they head to cheerfulearful.live is the easiest way of doing it. Oh nice, and that will take you yeah. CheerfulEarful.live will take you, you can click on um wherever you need to go, whatever continent you're in, um uh find a show near you. Um and then also we've got all our venues listed there as well, and just uh show their lots of love. But um it it's very fun, it's very cheerful, it's very cozy. We we love doing it, and um yeah, it's um it's it's fav. So I know James, you're you're a busy boy. I won't mention what one day you've got free in the autumn. I I know that would be controversial, but if if it happened to fall over the festival days, we'd love to see you there. But you you very carefully cleverly avoid it every year. But I understand why, I get it.

James Cridland 1:11:14

Giles, it's uh wonderful to uh to uh have a chat and uh best of luck for this year.

The Tech Stuff

James Cridland 1:11:19

Thank you very much.

Announcer 1:11:20

The Tuck stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland 1:11:23

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

Sam Sethi 1:11:28

Uh so Ouphonic James, it now supports subtitles burnt into video. Tell me more.

James Cridland 1:11:34

Yes, I really must uh look into Orphonic a little bit more. Um comes out of Germany, of course, it does all kinds of stuff. Uh we use it on this show um because it is what Buzzsprout's magic mastering is. Uh, Orphonic will take the audio of this show, make sure that Sam is just as loud as me, uh, and also get rid of quite a lot of the ums and uhs, which it does automatically as well, which is very lovely. It will do video as well if you want to um go to the Orphonic website directly. Um, and it does um subtitles now, burnt into video. You can use whatever um you know, font face you want and all of that kind of stuff. It's very nice. Um word level highlighting as well, uh, and you can play around. I didn't realize that it's also got a uh a CLI, a command line interface, so you can actually build it into your uh tools when you publish something. And I was there looking at that and going, oh, that might actually be quite useful to get rid of a few of the things that I'm currently doing on my own uh my own computer. Uh, might as well uh give that a go. So anyway, um uhphonic is a nice uh tool put together by two uh awfully nice um uh Germans, Austrians, Germans, um, and uh it's well worth uh taking a peek. Orphonic.com is where to go for that.

Sam Sethi 1:12:51

Now, uh Pocketcast, we mentioned this a bit earlier. Uh it's gonna be available on the new Apple TV app. I mean there's a new Apple TV device coming out as well, allegedly. Well, Pocketcast is now gonna be available on the new Apple TV, and they will have it on the Android TV. I think what's really cool is um, you know, we should get Ellie back on, Ellie Rubenstein, who runs Pocketcast. And um, because you know, we talked about it a couple of weeks ago, they they've done the liquid glass updates, they're they're focusing on the iAIS 27 launch. It feels like it's all going to that one single point for Pocket Cast that when September strike October happens, when when all this hardware and software is released by Apple, I think Pocketcast will be prime in the seat with it ready to go for the new look and feel. So, yeah, well done to them. Yeah.

James Cridland 1:13:38

No, I think that's uh all good. And uh yes, my understanding is that it will already deal with MP4 video, and uh as they roll out HLS video, it'll deal with that uh as well.

Sam Sethi 1:13:51

So yeah, I mean, I think you mentioned it because you're on the beta for uh iOS 27 desktop, that it now supports video on the desktop natively as well, doesn't it?

James Cridland 1:14:02

Yes, it does. So um uh for macOS, yes. So um and it will support it on Apple TV uh as well. But um my understanding is that um the Pocket Cast's Apple TV app will uh shortly be supporting HLS through the alternate enclosure. So hurrah for that, which is a good thing.

Sam Sethi 1:14:21

Now here's an odd one. Uh Flightcast, uh Stephen Bartlett's uh co-founded company with Rox Codes. Um Rox posted on LinkedIn that he's now managed to get uh his servers to pull files uh at around 10 gigabytes per minute. So he says, even massive episodes finish in under five minutes. So I I was like, hmm, how are you doing this? And it seems it's like server-to-server pull. So I'm not quite sure uh how it's happening, but if it is what Rox is suggesting, that he's now got a file too.

James Cridland 1:14:55

It's just OAuth into Google Drive or Dropbox. Oh, okay. So instead of instead of uploading through your browser, which nobody wants to do because the files are massive, uh, you basically say uh you basically OAuth into your Google Drive or into your Dropbox or wherever else that you've um hosted your uh massive great big files, and you say this file, please, and then of course it can get it very, very fast indeed. Um it's a quite a smart um way of uh doing things. I've used those sorts of tools occasionally when I've been moving you know Amazon buckets from one place to another, um, uh just so that I'm not downloading it all on my home connection and then re-uploading it because that would be very, very slow indeed. So um, yes, but pretty cool from uh Flightcast. Uh Fountain also announcing support for Apple Podcasts video. If you're using the Pro Plan, you get video at no extra cost. Um, they say that uh Spotify video and YouTube video is uh coming soon. Uh TrueFans, I've heard of them. Um uh though uh video is coming soon in TrueFans as well. It's great.

Sam Sethi 1:16:01

Look, you know, uh well look ignoring TrueFans a minute, well done to Fountain for getting this done as well.

James Cridland 1:16:06

So Yeah, well done to Fountain for getting that done. Uh and I should also uh shout out RSS.com, who I'm an advisor to. Um they have a very nice, they've probably not uh properly announced it yet, but they have a very nice new um sort of homepage for their dashboard that has like lots of information about how much money you've made, how many downloads you've done. It's just really nice. It's a really smartly done new um uh tool. When it's uh ready to be uh promoted. Gosh, I hope that I'm not saying anything that I shouldn't, but when it's ready to be promoted, um then I'm looking forward to um uh talking about that a little bit more. But yeah, they've done a really smart job with that too.

Sam Sethi 1:16:45

Another company's popped up on the radar. Uh, you wrote about a company called PodView, which promises a podcast website with RSS, HLS video, and YouTube. But the striking thing was the company has a free tier and paid plans start at just as low as $5.99 a month.

James Cridland 1:17:04

Yes, um, I think the secret source here is that they link YouTube with um uh Apple HLS with um uh you know, with all of that stuff. So it's basically nice and easy to make sure that you can get your video onto that platform. I have to say, there are lots of these companies now. Castly is another one, Beamly is another, Podpage, of course, is the granddaddy of that, and Podpage, I think, has more functions than ever. Um, and um, I think that Podpage already does all of this in terms of YouTube and Apple video and all of that kind of stuff. So um, you know, so shop around.

Sam Sethi 1:17:46

Another story that um I think's interesting, worth people going to have a look at, is a company called atomizer.ai. Now I can't tell you any more at the moment because the founder has asked me not to, uh, but he will be on this show in the next few weeks. But atomizer's AI is basically a host, but also it is also uh all of the other AI stuff: video editing, audio editing, thumbnails, AI transcriptions, voices, etc. It's very cool. I have had a play with it. What's interesting about it, it's using the tokenization model from AI rather than a SaaS model. Um and that's so it's not a fixed monthly amount. It's you you want to use one feature, one function, uh, and it's credit space. So um again, that person will be on the show in a couple of weeks to tell us more about it when they officially launch. But if you want to have a look at it now, you can go to atomizer.ai.

James Cridland 1:18:43

Well, there you go. Uh Elon Musk is coming to save us. Hooray! X Money. No, he's not. X Money, brilliant. Um, rolling out to US Premium and Premium Plus subscribers. What's a premium plus subscriber? Do you have to be more of a Nazi to get that? Or how does that bit work?

Sam Sethi 1:19:01

You have to have a tattoo.

James Cridland 1:19:02

Yeah.

Sam Sethi 1:19:03

Yeah.

James Cridland 1:19:03

So um, I don't know. What is what is X Money? Do we know anything about X Money at all?

Sam Sethi 1:19:08

It's taking on Revolute and uh all of the online digital accounts. It's nothing to do with microp.

James Cridland 1:19:15

Is it a visa uh, you know, I can get a visa card through X Money or Yeah, that sort of stuff.

Sam Sethi 1:19:20

It's gonna be it's basically an online account where you will be able to use it, and he's just trying to get into that money uh area. It's a load of baloney. It's just it's PayPal redone, basically.

James Cridland 1:19:32

There you go. The immigrant who hates immigrants strikes again. But is suing the economist for asking the awkward questions now.

Announcer 1:19:40

Yes, isn't he just

Inbox

Announcer 1:19:42

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

unknown 1:19:50

Inbox.

James Cridland 1:19:51

Yes, so many different ways to get in touch with us. Uh the voicemail is the one that we like the most. Um, you can use the link in our show notes. You can use email too. And if you're a power supporter, then you get access to our super secret WhatsApp group uh where you can talk to other power supporters about what's going on in the world. You can become a power supporter at weekly.podnews.net. Um, some nice uh comments uh coming in. Um Martin Lindescog. Uh thank you, Martin, um, for sending us um a very nice uh boost. Hooray! One of the only people still using boosts. Uh, that's very kind of you. Um, I will continue to stream Satoshis for your podcast. An episode for 90 minutes will add up to about five or six sec, uh, which is about 50p um or 50 cents. I stream uh 10 sats per minute. Uh Martin, thank you uh so much. Um he he then says, what should we call it? Donating, giving back, sponsoring, tipping, etc. Oh, there's a long uh piece of history about uh what you should be calling it, but uh definitely not tipping.

Sam Sethi 1:21:00

Oh I'm I'm not I'm going the other way, mate. We we yeah, you can't beat them, name them.

James Cridland 1:21:06

A tip is a small amount of money. Uh that's always the issue, but um, but uh anyway. Uh and he's he he also talks about uh chicken wings, Sam.

Sam Sethi 1:21:16

Oh yes, my chicken wings uh pub crawl. Yes, I'll send you the list, Martin. No worries. Um yeah, yeah, just just accept that your stomach won't recover for two days, but other than that, you're fine. Yes.

James Cridland 1:21:28

And that nice Seth Goldstein. Uh great insights and interviews. Thank you so much, Seth. And thank you for uh sending through the amount that you sent through. I can only see £2.22 over here. But whatever it is that you sent through in terms of sats and things, that's uh very kind.

Sam Sethi 1:21:44

Yeah, we local we localise obviously to my account, so we localized it.

James Cridland 1:21:49

Yeah. Yes, no, indeed, indeed.

Sam and James's week

James Cridland 1:21:51

So, what has happened for you this week, Sam? Uh I went to see Bruno Mars final night at Wembley. I'm terribly sorry.

Sam Sethi 1:21:58

I'm terribly sorry. No, how was it? It was great. I mean, look, you know, um your t-shirt. Yes, exactly.

James Cridland 1:22:06

Yes, I you went in a podcasting 2.0 t-shirt. The Bruno Mars. Wow, there you go. And nobody knew what it was, yes.

Sam Sethi 1:22:15

No, there you go. No, it was great, and uh it was lovely because it was my daughter who bought me the tickets, uh, and so you know that's part of my start of my 60th birthday journey, although I'm not 60 for another month, but yes, uh, so that was part of it. So very happy. Excellent. Well, uh there you go. And I uh I just wanted to highlight something. Mike Dell from Blueberry's written a lovely post about 21 years of podcasting, the things I don't want us to lose, and I highly recommend people go and have a read of that. So Mike's a great guy, and I just thought it'd be good to highlight that for him.

James Cridland 1:22:54

Yes, it is it is definitely a um uh a thing.

Sam Sethi 1:22:58

So, James, uh moving on, have you been sacked? Have I been sacked? I mean, what's going on?

James Cridland 1:23:05

Yes, uh so I got an email um uh that was apparently from HR and admin of Pod News. Uh it said, Dear gentlemen, which I thought that that probably that's a flag already. Uh please find below the link to the current month's employee performance appraisals for August 2026. And there's a link that looks as if it's at staff.podnews.net, which it's not. Um, and then it says all names highlighted in red indicate employees who are due for termination. Your prompt attention to this matter is highly appreciated. The amount of um phish and stuff like this that I get is astonishing. But I tell you what, I think I would know if PodNews firstly had any employees, but also secondly had an HR department. Right. Um, so what I do love about it though is that I posted this uh email that I got onto LinkedIn um and um my HR person from 20 years ago has replied and said, it's not me. Thank you, Caroline. That's very funny.

Sam Sethi 1:24:06

Uh so I enjoyed check my junk mail as well just to see if you'd sack me.

James Cridland 1:24:11

So I enjoyed that uh uh very much. Um I have um uh made a made a mistaken uh uh change to the Pod News website this week. Um now that AVIF, which is a very good uh image uh format, uh much, much smaller than JPEGs or PNGs, now that Avif is a thing and is wide widely baseline supported, or whatever the phrase is, um I've been switching uh quite a lot of the images over to AVIF, which uh sounds very sensible, um, but unfortunately means that um my image server keeps on crashing. Um so I can't work out why, but there seems to be some kind of memory leak on it. And so um uh for the last six months it's been resetting itself every day just just to um make sure that the memory leak goes away. Now it's resetting itself every half hour, just so that I can keep the thing running. So that was a mistake, um but anyway, but hopefully, uh hopefully all of that will go away fairly shortly once the cache has been rebuilt. Um so that's been interesting. The other thing, uh uh Sam, you know, in on on a website you have dot well known and you you put but there's certain things in there. There is a dot well-known slash security dot text, which um quite a lot of people would recommend that you do, which is basically if you find a security hole on this website, here is who to contact, here's whether or not you run a bounty program or whatever it is. And so I put one of those onto the Pod News website about six months ago, and I've had a few um people kicking the tires of the PodNews code base and seeing if they can uh if they can break into it, basically. Thankfully, nobody has. Um a few people have found a few weird and wonderful things that they are convinced are bugs, and I'm convinced aren't. So that's so that's been entertaining. Um, but it's been it it's been, you know, um, I've had a few people who I've sent 10 10 US dollars to because they've found something that um, you know, like for example, if you typed in www.podnews.net, it didn't properly forward, and it should have done. And so thank you for pointing that out. Here's here's ten dollars. That's all I'm that's all I'm ever gonna pay you, but but but still, but there we are. Anyway, I had somebody who spotted something not on the main podnews website, but on the uh email uh server um that sends out all of the emails, and I've looked at that and I've thought, okay, well, what's going on there? And it turns out that they did find something that could have been quite spicy, um, and could theoretically have allowed anybody to download the source code of that web server. Ouch. Um yes, ouch. Now, in fact, in fact, in this particular case, it it didn't, but it could have done on some other websites. Um and in any case, the only thing that you could have learnt from the source code is the password for the database, which sounds scary, but the database is uh very carefully IP locked. So unless you actually had access through that IP address, then that would that would be a thing. So but even so, that was quite helpful. So hurrah for them. They've got slightly more than 10 bucks, but not that much more. Um, but um, yeah, so that was quite interesting. So I would recommend you sticking a security.txt into your well-knowns, because I thought that that was a smart thing.

Sam Sethi 1:27:59

Yes, and Claude Claude 5, everyone's gonna go and do their what's that feature that they've been very careful not to release, but they're now going to release where it'll do an analysis of your whole uh website for you.

James Cridland 1:28:12

Yes, exactly. Exactly. And I'm sure that a lot of these are now just AI tools. Um, but uh, you know, yes, I've had a number of people contacting me saying, Oh, you're not doing this, and you should be. And this is a and this is a high vulnerability. No, it's not a high vulnerability, you know. And so it's just like basically arguing the toss with these people, but also making sure that you know you don't take the take the mick too much. Um, but uh yeah, so that's been quite an interesting thing. Anyway, um that is it for this week. All of our podcast stories taken for the pod news daily newsletter at podnews.net.

Sam Sethi 1:28:47

You can give us feedback using the buzzprout voicemail link, which we love, in our show notes, or become a power supporter, like the 24 power supporters at weekly.podnews.net, fully expecting Amy Duggan to be a new power supporter next week, so that's good.

James Cridland 1:29:04

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. Start podcasting, keep podcasting.

Announcer 1:29:16

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