Sam Sethi 0:00

If you add your show to YouTube, you are entering a Faustian pact. The Faustian Pact is a deal where a person trades their moral integrity, values, or soul for a temporary material benefit like power, money, or fame. That sounds about right in when you put your content up on YouTube, I think.

James Cridland 0:16

Sam Sethi's back and he's teaching us the classics, but is podcasting right to be building its business on other people's platforms.

Announcer 0:23

With James Cridlin and Sam Sethy. This is the Pod News Weekly Review with Buzz with Buzz Spratt. Start podcasting, heat podcasting.

Sam Sethi 0:35

Well, James, I'm back.

James Cridland 0:37

Ah, welcome back. Welcome back, Mr. Seth. We will talk later about what your life was like in Sunny Island. Or not so sunny island.

Sam Sethi 0:45

Not so sunny island, no. Congratulations first to Liam for taking my place on sweet. Well done, mate. It was very good listening to it. So thank you very much for doing that. And then I've got a little apology because we were going to have ACAST on, Greg Glenday, this week, and I missed it because of the time zone. Holiday head, that's what I'm putting it down to. So next week, sorry, sorry, ACAST.

YouTube to creators: get out

Sam Sethi 1:09

Let's kick off the show, James. Caveat MTOR podcaster beware.

James Cridland 1:14

Oh, we're starting the show with some Latin, are we?

Sam Sethi 1:16

Oh, we are, yes, you know, a week away reading Chaucer. You wrote about a podcast called The Parent Trap and something to do with YouTube kicking them off. What are they doing, YouTube?

James Cridland 1:28

Uh so it's a top ten parenting uh podcast, and it has been suddenly pulled from YouTube. We carried on Monday, apparently just yanked off by an automated tool. Sorry, I have a show title, Yanked Off by an Automated Tool. That is it. I can't point out listening. This isn't podcasting 2.0. We don't do this. Okay. Moving on then. Moving on. The channel was accused uh of circumventing a ban that uh uh really didn't actually happen. So very confusing. The the guy behind the channel, Ryan McDonoughhue, he ended up trying to get in touch with YouTube, got an automated response back saying no. I've seen chats that he's had with YouTube staff who said no, you've been banned and you don't have any opportunity for appeal. And so, yes, thrown off YouTube for seemingly no apparent reason, no strikes, no warning. The appeal was instantly denied. That is the reality of the of the automated world that we live in, I guess.

Sam Sethi 2:44

This is really the worry, isn't it, that the podcast community has about building on other people's platforms. You know, God rest his soul, Todd Cochrane, getyourwn.com. I mean, at the end of the day, you know, no strikes, no warning, no appeal. If you are going to get YouTube doing this and to a top ten, I wonder how many other podcasts have been taken off of YouTube and you know they haven't had the platform to come and talk about it, but they've just gone, I can't get back.

James Cridland 3:14

Yeah, no, I I I think that there's a lot of this. I mean, I had two other podcasters who contacted me after I had focused on the parents tap and said, Look, we've been thrown off as well. Now, one of those was from an email address that was something like, I really loveai at gmail.com, and turned out to be an AI-produced podcast, which was thrown off for reasons of AI. But, you know, I I I I'm I'm not clearly going to be, you know, the only person who sits there and says, you know what, I'm gonna cover every single podcast that uh YouTube has ever kicked off because I wouldn't be doing anything else. But there's clearly it's clearly happening for quite a lot of people, yeah.

Sam Sethi 4:02

Yeah, I mean the last few weeks we've seen them change the rules for you know the partner programme. You have to double the requirement. We've seen them with that crazy play count. Hovering is a play. Please, someone get them sorted over there. But I would say this: look, and if you add your show to YouTube, you are entering a Faustian pact. A Faustian pact is a deal where a person trades their moral integrity, values, or soul for a temporary material benefit like power, money, or fame. That sounds about right when when you put your content up on YouTube, I think.

James Cridland 4:36

Yes, I think so. I mean, you know, at the end of the day, you you you kind of have to live with the rules of these third-party companies like YouTube, like indeed Apple, and like various other things. I love the fact that we started with uh Latin and we're now on a German legend based on the historical Johann Georg Faust from 1480 to 1540. Stick with it.

Sam Sethi 5:02

You never know where we might go next.

James Cridland 5:06

So, yes, so I I think that that's very excellent. The thing here isn't necessarily that people are getting chucked off these platforms, the thing is that it it is all algorithmic, and the algorithm decided that that uh Ryan McDonough should be thrown off. And there is no reason why he should have been thrown off, and I can tell you that because as of today, YouTube has now reinstated the channel, saying after taking another look, we can confirm that it is not in violation of our terms of service. Now, the question is, would they have done that if they hadn't been the top story on a podcast newsletter that reaches 33,000 people? And the answer is yes, they probably would. But nevertheless, uh let's uh let's kind of ignore that bit. You know, I I that that is the concern here that actually this guy had to really push and really push very, very hard to get a human being at YouTube to turn around and go, oh, actually we've looked at it, and no, you're absolutely right. Anyone else would just have gone, oh well, we've been thrown off. Oh well, well, there we are. The one other thing I would say is his show has always continued on open RSS, and you've been always able to get his show on that platform, of course.

Sam Sethi 6:26

Yeah, and that I thought was the telling punchline to your piece that it still continues on RSS. As Adam Curry says, it's not open, it's just RSS. But the the thing I would say is, you know, we've been trying to define podcasts, and and there's been some great definitions of it. Don't get me wrong, you know, something for your ears while your eyes are busy. I still fundamentally believe it can't be a podcast unless it has RSS. That includes both audio and video, therefore, within the definition, within the alternative enclosure. But the way that YouTube, Spotify, and Apple are now requiring me as a host to publish content via a closed proprietary API and not RSS annoys me a lot. And I therefore think a podcast is only a podcast if it has an RSS feed.

James Cridland 7:17

Well, there we are. And on that bombshell. No, I mean, I I I have I have always said for the purposes of Pod News writing about you, are you an Apple Podcast? If you're not in Apple Podcasts, I'm not going to write about you. I mean, that that is the that's not necessarily a definition of a podcast, because I think that's a little bit too cheeky. But I think from a point of view of is this something that I might write about, I think the answer is yes, as long as you're in Apple Podcasts, i.e., as long as you have an RSS feed. There's no way of you getting into Apple Podcasts if you don't have an RSS feed. I mean, there is, but let's ignore that bit.

Sam Sethi 7:54

Well, is that true? Uh well, it is true to the extent that yes, you need an RSS feed in order to still get there, but the API requirement is a piece on top for the video stuff. For the video stuff.

James Cridland 8:06

And uh I I completely agree. Uh, but but there again, you can turn around and say an RSS feed will get you into YouTube as well. So, you know, there is a there is always that the audio, not the video. Again, yes, exactly. So I think I think RSS is, yes, absolutely right. And without being without being there, and without using that RSS feed is I think the point that I'm trying to make with that are you in Apple Podcasts. Without using the RSS feed, then you're not really a podcast. And there are plenty of people who are publishing on Spotify for creators but haven't even enabled the RSS feed, and they think that that's a podcast. It's not really. And I think you know, i if a podcast is it's available in more than one place, then that's probably the the easy answer. But uh yes, I would I would certainly agree. But in this particular case, yeah, you know, this this podcast has been available on RSS all the time. I deliberately call it open RSS because of the fact that it is open. I know that there is no closed RSS apart from private feeds, but the the point about RSS is that it is open and anyone can access it. And that's the point that I try and make every time I say open RSS.

Sam Sethi 9:23

I know I I I do the same thing. It's it's the delimiter to try and make people understand the difference. But yeah, I just thought I'd get it in before Adam pulled us up on it on Friday.

James Cridland 9:34

Yes, I know. Yes, I know. Well, the only the only way that he'll now bring it up, he's got an AI bot listening to this show. So the only way he'll bring it up is if is if we mention his name. So maybe what we should be doing in future is just, I don't know, using a code word, and then the AI bot

YouTube to creators: please don't leave

James Cridland 9:50

won't notice.

Sam Sethi 9:50

Let's move on, James. And a story that you you had in Pod New Daily, Bloomberg is suggesting that YouTube is not happy about its creators who are also posting videos on Netflix. You know what came to my mind, James, was toys and pram. They're throwing their toys out the pram. Why, James?

James Cridland 10:09

Yes, well, uh, so they clearly don't want some of their biggest creators to go to Netflix for some reason. And so therefore, they are talking about giving lots of money, according to Bloomberg, deals of up to $10 million, according to the Anklers. Like and subscribe. The company is talking to around 15 creators with that sort of number, to basically say, please don't go to Netflix and please don't take your your stuff off. But they're also threatening them by basically saying, We're not going to promote your shows to advertisers, we're not going to promote your shows in the algorithm, we'll you know downmark you if you are also available on the Netflix platform and so on and so forth. So there's a bit of there's a bit of coercion in there as well as a bit of as well as a bit of you know money. But yes, I mean you know, I I I can kind of see if you are YouTube, you might feel a little bit threatened by Netflix, but frankly, only a little bit threatened. I mean, how many how many podcasts have they got now from YouTube? I mean, they've probably got 30 or 40. It's not it's not big, you know, numbers, is it? I I have heard that you know the number one thing on YouTube has about a three percent share of all YouTube users. So it's it's you know YouTube has so much stuff on it that you know one person leaving is not going to harm YouTube particularly.

Sam Sethi 11:39

No, but I do think it is quality versus quantity, right? I mean that they're they're cherry-picking the quality ones that will drive or they hope will drive traffic to them. I mean I I I know that there are podcasts now on Netflix when I'm in the lounge, but I never go to look at them. So, you know, I've seen the rest is football, and I thought I'm not gonna be watching that. But I'm you know, I may not be the right demographic they're aiming for. But the the thing for me is where's the DOJ? Isn't this anti-competitive by YouTube going and saying we don't want this and we're gonna change our algorithm to downgrade you and and openly declaring it? I mean, what happened to the DOJ?

James Cridland 12:21

Well, yeah, I mean I I don't know whether that is uh you know, I mean, antitrust and all of that, but you know, I mean Netflix is quite big. People are allowed to compete. Uh, YouTube might be number one. Exactly. Netflix are you know, sort of number two or number three-ish. So they're they're quite big. I think you know, Ford is allowed to compete with Toyota, uh, and I don't think necessarily that that's a bad thing. Where it gets difficult is if your product is, you know, used by 80% and the next one is used by 20%, and your but you know, your background at Microsoft, you will know all of that, of course. So you know, and and so I suppose that's that's where the difference is here. But yeah.

Sam Sethi 13:05

I mean, I think it's quite weird, isn't it? We talk about it week in, week out, how YouTube is a company that pays for nothing, i.e., they get loads and loads of free content, and now they're crying about having people you know go to another platform and having to pay, that's what they they probably are most angry at. Having gone from free content, they're now having to pay millions to stop creators moving.

James Cridland 13:28

Yes. I mean they have paid for content in the past, but yes, I I know exactly what you mean. Dear dear, if only there was a song.

Sam Sethi 13:36

In the words of Justin Timberlake, James, cry me or ever YouTube and uh what goes around comes around.

James Cridland 13:42

Was that was that Justin Timberlake as well? Yes, it was, yeah.

Sam Sethi 13:45

So

Newsletters and podcasting

Sam Sethi 13:48

one other story I wanted to talk about, James, this week was newsletters. Now Tom Webster from Sounds Profitable wrote a post back in July which was the best real estate to own in podcasting is newsletters now. I'm sure you'd agree with that. He said 87% of subscribers to podcast newsletters have listened to an episode because of them, and 42% often have. And of course, they allow you to speak directly to your audience. Now, what we found this week is TikTok has started a newsletter. So they are launching the creator's cut, and it's there to help TikTok live creators understand what they can do with the platform. And I thought that was interesting that TikTok has started a newsletter. We know Substack and Beehive are two platforms that are focused on newsletters. Well, now it seems, James, ACast has done a deal with a company called Kit, which is another newsletter provider. Tell me more about this one.

James Cridland 14:46

Yeah, so I mean, as you say, you know, Beehive, Substack have added podcast features. Patreon has as well. Acast has taken a very different route to this and has basically gone to Kit, or Kit has come to them, who knows? But uh they will be partnering so that Kit does newsletters and all of that kind of stuff. And ACast does, of course, podcasting and podcast monetization and all that kind of stuff. So there's very clearly a good mix there and a good complementary relationship between those two companies. And so they announced a partnership that will basically offer, you know, slightly cheaper access to both of those if you're if you happen to be the customer of the other one, if you see what I mean, rather than you know, ACAST suddenly adding a ton of newsletter stuff, and indeed Kit adding a lot of podcasting stuff. So I think it's quite clever on one side. They've been, you know, both of them are avoiding another competitor in this space, but I think it's also, you know, probably the right thing to end up doing. Certainly, what I'm seeing from Patreon and Substack, for example, is that they have put very rudimentary, and indeed Riverside, they've put very rudimentary podcast stuff into their platform, but it's really not uh fit for larger publishers. You know, there's no IAB compliance, there's none of that, there's no DAI, there's there's you know, there's really not very much going on there. And so actually it makes sense for a specialist in this, ACAST, and a and another specialist in the newsletter side of kit joining uh together. So I think it's a clever plan.

Sam Sethi 16:38

I think it's a clever idea, but I think these days, is it going to be the all-in-one integrated platforms that win out? So bear with me. Is it uh the Patreons, the Substacks, and the beehives and the supercast who are host newsletter, video podcast, etc., etc. Or is it better to be uh multiple uh points of differentiation? So in this case A Cast and Kit, and then maybe ACAST doesn't deal with another third party. So it's not integrated deeply, but it has a connection. I don't know which way is going to work, horizontally or vertically.

James Cridland 17:16

Yeah, I don't know either. I mean, I I would I would very much like to use a kit of parts, a kit of different of different companies to pull together and get the best companies in each side. I think you know that that that's the way that I've always tried to find, you know, companies. Um you know, my email company is a company that does email, and that's all they do. And what I really don't want is a is a company that does email as part of another 12 different other things. But uh yeah, you could you could certainly argue very clearly the other way around that actually, you know, nobody wants to be dealing with 30 companies when they could just be dealing with one. So it will be fascinating to see which one wins in this particular case.

Sam Sethi 18:02

Yeah, I mean we when you interviewed Tyler Denk from Beehive, that was his big thing. You know, Beehive is going to provide the end-to-end solution for a single price point. And I wonder, you know, again, with A Cast and Kit, do I have to create a kit account independent like I would have done a Patreon account in the past? And would I then have to subscribe over there, create a user base over there? That then becomes you know distributed across. I don't know, I I haven't got enough detail, but if it's going to be me having to do multiple different sites and different accounts and different payments, then it becomes quite messy, I think.

James Cridland 18:40

Yes, I think so. And I think you know, perhaps that's where Beehive appears to be doing things right. Now, I I mentioned Patreon and Substat getting into podcasting but not really doing it very well. Beehive have done two things which are showing that they are very sensible and serious about getting into podcasting. Actually, three things that they're currently doing. The first thing that they're doing is they're uh jumping into IAB certification, which is great. So they are the very latest company to be IAB certified as of a couple of weeks ago. So that is excellent. The second thing is that uh somebody from Beehive, Ainsley, will be at podcast movement, and so you'll be able to talk to her, which is again excellent. And where are the people from Patreon's podcast team? Where are the people from Substack's podcast team? I'm not sure that they're going to be there, or at least if they are, we don't know about that. So there are two things there, and the f and the third thing, just on a purely selfish basis, but the third thing where you know that these people are serious about getting into podcasting, is that the very latest supporter of the Pod News newsletter is Beehive. So I think you can see that there is definitely something going on there, and and they are taking things quite seriously. So yeah, you know, that that's a good tell, isn't it, for a company if you're going to be wanting to be taken seriously. Well, you know, a good tell perhaps is to you know what, let's um let's see if we can support some of the uh some of the trade press. That's probably a good plan.

Sam Sethi 20:30

Now, if you're interested in reading more about newsletters and comparing them, Dave Jackson from the School of Podcasting compared kit to Substack and SendFox. He did that on the Pod News Daily. James, what was this one about?

James Cridland 20:47

Yeah, so he's he's actually done that in his newsletter, which is called Podcasting Observations, which is a paid newsletter on Substack. He thinks that Substack is becoming more and more of a platform than an email service, and there's all kinds of commenting and video on Substack, and also Nazis, so that's why I'm not on Substack, but you can see that there's certainly stuff going on there. But yeah, they were misunderstood. So great clothes. Well done, Hugo Boss. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Think of the motorways, the motorways, they were brilliant. Exactly. Um what did the German Nazis ever do for us? Auto bonds. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The AutoPods. Brilliant. Anyway, so so that's certainly worth a read as well from Dave uh Jackson, who is very excellent.

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Megaphone - trouble at t'mill

Sam Sethi 22:19

Let's move on, James, and Spotify's mega cock-up. What have they done?

James Cridland 22:24

Spotify's mega cock-up. Well, yes, megaphone appears to be well and truly broken. Now, there's been all kinds of things going on with people putting their ad campaigns into megaphone, and then megaphone messes them up, or megaphone takes them out, or megaphone does weird and wonderful things. And so much so that Flight Path has built, uh, as you will have heard this time last week, has built a new tool that basically logs into megaphone and fixes everything for you men multiple times a day to make sure that everything works. Yeah. Um and which is very bright and clever from the Flight Path people. But yes, lots of feedback from people who have been just really having a difficulty with megaphone over the last month or so. They've done quite a lot of technical changes on the on their end. And that's essentially meant that there are lots of bugs that seemingly aren't fixed, and nobody really understands what the bugs are, and lots of changed APIs as well. So one person says, one star Spotify summer, do not recommend. So okay, yeah, fair enough. While another one was basically saying, you know, we we've had i i uh complete outages of ad plays completely, ads repla uh ads repeating back to back and other stuff, and we really don't know what's going on. So yeah, it's uh it's it's most certainly not good. Now, what I should say is that I've approached the company for comment. Now, normally when I write something about the good folks at megaphone, I get an angry email within six hours saying, How dare you, you've got this wrong, you need to issue an correction, blah, blah, blah. I have now approached the company three times for comment and basically said, I think you should probably be saying something so that people won't, you know, completely kill you when it gets to podcast movement. And I've heard absolutely nothing back. So I I I don't know quite what that says, but uh it's not good news from the from the folks there. So yeah, not sure what's going on there.

Sam Sethi 24:40

Oh well, I'm sure you'll hear about it at Podcast Movement, that's for certain. Now moving

Podbean and gone

Sam Sethi 24:45

on, more bad news, James. Podbean and gone. What have they done?

James Cridland 24:49

Bad news, good news though. Podbean Podbean podcasters were given a shock last week because what they ended up doing is rolling out new filters to its download analytics that the company said were designed to identify and filter AI and crawler-related traffic. And what they actually did brilliantly is they got rid of all downloads from Apple Podcasts. Well done. Yes. So, yeah, no. So that essentially meant that there were lots of Podbean folk who were very, very upset. And they were saying, you know, our downloads are down to, you know, you know, less than less than 20% of what they were, and all of that kind of stuff. Of course, their downloads hadn't actually changed, it was just the numbers that they saw in the Podbean dashboard which had changed. So people were still hearing their show, it's just that they didn't actually see any of those numbers. So, yes, Podbean particularly hasn't been very good at communicating any of this stuff. But the good news is that they appear to have fixed it, they appear to have rolled back a change, and people are now beginning to see downloads from Apple Podcasts particularly appearing as valid again. So uh w whether it was AI vibe coding or not, we will never know.

Sam Sethi 26:08

So let me just get this clear. Have they just rolled back the filters to where they were, or have they rolled back and then rolled forward with a new updated feature?

James Cridland 26:19

Well, we don't yeah, we don't know. And you know, as I've said in the Reddit thread about this, where people got very angry that I was uh that I was saying, no, your downloads aren't down, it's just your numbers. Your downloads haven't stopped downloading, and they got very upset and said, the only reason you're defending Podbean wasn't really defending them, is that you take money from them. Well, yeah, yeah, have you seen some of the stuff I've I've written about Podbean? I don't I don't think so. So anyway, they they were getting very, very upset. But I think that any company will be on a relatively regular basis every week or so, every couple of weeks or so, changing those changing those lists, changing those bot lists, changing that what the referrers are, you know, and all of that just to spot more bad traffic. So I'm sure that things change all of the time. I'm sure that you know you will be changing stuff all of the time. It's just that they made a mistake in this particular set of changes, they have uh which they've fixed. So however they've fixed them, I don't know, but at least we know that those numbers are fixed and that people are now seeing Apple Podcasts downloads. Now, the the other sort of side of this is that so far as I can work out, and I logged into my Podbean account just to see, but as far as I can work out, you can't add third-party analytics like OP3 or others to your Podbean podcast. And perhaps that's something that the company may wish to change because that would at least allow some of the more vocal people to basically go, you know what, we we can see our free stats from OP3, or we can see them from PodTrack, which also gives you free stats as well. And perhaps that will be a good plan for them.

Sam Sethi 28:06

It is a game of whack-a-mole. I mean, you know, we at TrueFans use the OPOG bot list that you and John Sperlock and a few others put together. But you know, it's not comprehensive because it can't be comprehensive because you're forever having new bots appearing. I mean, we are currently going through a process of trying to identify what is just simply coming in as unknown traffic to us. We just have, you know, do we mark unknown as a bot? Well, it's not a bot and it's it's not a user agent that we can identify. So we are uh working out what we do with it, and it's very difficult. You know, if we if we marked it as a bot, then we might get users saying, Well, my traffic's dropped. If we don't mark it as a bot, are we overinflating their numbers? What's happened to this user agent that we were all talking about three or four weeks ago having a digital signature seems to have all gone quiet, James.

James Cridland 29:04

Yes, it does. I th I think, you know, that was something that yeah, it was just it it just looked like too many people were angry about it for some reason. And and so that hasn't that hasn't gone anywhere. It's a real shame because I think that that would have been a particular help for podcast apps to get paid apart from anything else. But uh yes, all of that has gone away too.

Sam Sethi 29:24

Yeah, I mean that as well. But I think you know, when you go back to Podbean, I have empathy with them, right? Which is you know, they're trying to look at doing the right thing for their users, putting in filters to prevent AI and crawlers, etc., to give them the right numbers. And you know, by mishap, they've included Apple, but maybe they included because it says Apple bot. So maybe somebody just took the bot word, right? I mean that's quite simple and something they may have done, I don't know, by the way. But it it's not going away, this problem. It's not going away. And we can bury our heads in the sand, you know, skip buttons will exist, analytics will get worse, and bots do exist. So what do we do?

James Cridland 30:10

Yeah, well, I I I mean the easy answer for somebody that wants 100% accurate analytics is to put all of your stuff on YouTube, and that's it. Don't go anywhere else. That's the easy answer. We have again a Faustian pact, if I can come back to that. Either we want 100% accurate stats, and in which case we go to YouTube and we take whatever stats that they give us, uh, because those are going to be accurate even though we're not quite sure what they are, or we use a technology like RSS, and that means that for some of those downloads, we won't know what what those downloads are. And you know, we we just need to bear in mind that you know we we have a choice to make either perfect stats, perfect attribution, but a closed ecosystem giving the keys of our industry to one company, or we go, you know what, let let's make stuff available on loads of different platforms, but we know that we're not gonna get as as brilliant stats that we actually get. Now, the the the the question really is, I suppose, how can we make those analytics better, but they're never going to be perfect, which I suppose is the thing.

Sam Sethi 31:22

Yeah, I mean it's a bit like the play discussion you had with Liam last week in the industry talking about YouTube having a hover now being considered a play, which is crazy, by the way. Oh yes. And they're keeping all the good stuff, the good data to themselves. I mean, it's you know, it is the closed wall, closed garden.

James Cridland 31:40

Yeah, yeah. No, indeed. But that's uh if that's a future you want, then that's a future we're gonna get. So

People news

James Cridland 31:46

yeah.

Sam Sethi 31:46

Moving on, James, then people in jobs, who's moving and grooving.

James Cridland 31:50

Yes, Ray Harkins has left Amazon's Art19. He was senior ad rep. He's off to another adventure shortly, he says. Uh ACAST has been hiring. They've hired Mark Bulling as VP of Product. Uh, interestingly, he is joining from WPP Media's Choreograph. So he is a dataman in the ad tech world, and uh he'll be working in London. Ricardo Neto has been promoted to managing director of US Sales. He's been with ACast for quite some time now, joining the company in 2023. Good news for Lower Street, Lex Friedman, not Lex Friedman, Lex Friedman, uh, is now Lower Street's fractional CRO, uh, which is good news. He will be at Podcast Movement if you want to say hello to him. And good news from PAVE Studios as well. They are very serious uh about uh this particular hire. A five times Emmy Award-winning producer, Jennifer Passavoy, is hired as their head of unscripted video. So certainly doing quite a lot of good things there,

Events

James Cridland 33:02

I think.

Sam Sethi 33:02

Moving on then, James, let's look at some events. Uh, you're flying to the sunny Big Apple. What's going to be going on there?

James Cridland 33:12

Yes, I will be in a couple of weeks. Actually, this time next week, I will be in Jakarta in Indonesia. No, she went of her own accord. So I'm looking forward to going there. Um for uh keynote for for both Radio Days Asia but also Podcast Day Asia. I'm actually um hosting the entire day at Podcast Day Asia and looking forward to doing that. And we will uh doubtless hear more from that event on this very podcast next week. So that should be fun. And then, as you so rightly say, to New York. Uh, the full schedule for podcast movement New York City is now published on the website and also on their swap card. You can see the schedule in their swap card without signing in. If you have bought a ticket, then you can sign in and you can see who's going. So there's a thing. Announcement's still to come for some of the keynote sessions, but all of the other speakers are there. I am up against Rob Walsh, which I'm very annoyed about because I can't go and see Rob because he's normally quite good value. So I'm looking forward to finding out what he said afterwards. But we'll catch up as well. But yeah, but that should be fun. So, yes, podcast movement in just a couple of weeks. Looking forward to that. Also, uh, good news in Ireland, the Sound Waves Conference has been announced for a second year. That's in a little a little town in Ireland, which I can't remember its name, but very fancy. Uh, it also has the All Ireland uh podcast awards there as well. It's in Adair. Where's Adair? You you've been to what you've been to Ireland, you should know. I've been to Ireland now, I know everything about it.

Sam Sethi 34:52

No, it's it's it's in the south of Ireland, though.

James Cridland 34:54

It's in Limerick. I'll I can tell you that much. I don't even know whether Limerick's in the south either. So there we are. Don't know much about Ireland, but still, but there we are.

Sam Sethi 35:04

But that should be a good closest country to us, and we know nothing about it.

James Cridland 35:07

Well done, but that should be a good event. And and you may have heard a promo for this earlier on in this very show. Uh, it's International Podcast Day on September the 30th. It's an international celebration of the power of podcasts. And I would like to know if you're doing anything special for International Podcast Day, September the 30th. You may be releasing some nice new data, you may be doing some nice live streams of shows or something like that. We would love to know so I can actually feature it on the day rather than a couple of days later looking a little bit stupid. Editor at podnews.net is my email address. Uh if you're doing something special, and if you've not considered it yet, well, consider it. You've got you've got just over a month. You might as well. So, yes, uh, International Podcast Day, September the 30th.

The tech stuff

Announcer 35:56

The tech stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland 36:00

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

Sam Sethi 36:06

Well, I just saw this story that piqued my interest. It was Apple Music's adding labels for AI-generated music later this year. The news builds on Apple's recent announcements about AI transparency tags for songs, and we we've heard Spotify doing stuff and YouTube. Is it Chinese walls, James, in Apple? I mean, will the Apple Podcast team do this, or will we just have to wait another year for a new feature?

James Cridland 36:32

Well, of course, the labels are coming from the from the uh music companies, from the music distributors, because of course uh Spotify's uh also doing this sort of thing as well. So essentially that just means that Apple will be showing these particular labels. Interestingly, by the way, all AI-powered music has just been banned from the Australian charts, is if anybody cares. But nevertheless, that's that's a thing which has also happened. Will it happen in terms of podcasting? Well, I mean, uh Apple already has rules, they're rules that that they don't seem to follow. I listened to an Inception Point AI podcast this week, and it was an Inception Point AI podcast or whatever their new name is, but it was an Inception Point AI podcast where they were doing a biography about somebody and the AI voice pretended to be that person. I mean, that is clearly against any of Apple Podcasts' rules, but it's still in Apple Podcasts, so they clearly don't care. So it'd be nice if if Apple took the rules that they already have and actually and actually, you know, made uh sure that that that uh they actually applied them, I think. That would be a good first step.

Sam Sethi 37:50

They go on holiday in August, they'll sort it in September, James, when they're back.

James Cridland 37:54

They're not on holiday, and I know that they're not on holiday because they've been sending me statistics and all kinds of things. So uh no, it's all it's all good. Right.

Sam Sethi 38:03

Now, Dave Jones, the podcast sage, he's been busy, hasn't he? He's been building some new endpoints. One of those is the person tag one, James. Tell me more.

James Cridland 38:13

Yes, so this is a very simple, possibly too simple, but a very simple person tag search, which is now integrated into the Pod News website as well. The first I the first time that I integrated it, I actually didn't do it very well. But it's much better now. So that's good because I've actually I've I've actually followed the spec. But yes, so uh you can now, if you're listening to Adam Curry, let's just say Adam Curry, just so that his uh AI bot gets him to listen to this bit. If you're listening to a show with Adam Curry, then you can click on that on that little search next to Adam Curry and it will go and query the podcast index search endpoint for people and find out all of the other shows that Adam Curry has been marked down as a person on, which is uh good. Now, a couple of drawbacks with it. Firstly, there are more than one person in the world called Dave Jones. It may be a surprise. So there is no way of pulling out more information than that. It'd be nice to basically go, I'd like Dave Jones, but this Dave Jones, please, i.e., this URL, perhaps. That would be a nicer way of doing it. The other thing is that this is channel only and not item. So if you have somebody on as a guest, then they're probably not going to appear in this uh list quite yet, which I think is a bit of a mistake. And I think the person tag, like the location tag, which we'll come on to in just a second, but the person tag should be here's the channel, and the item overrides that. If if the information is available in the item, then that overrides the default information which is in the which is in the channel, but that doesn't appear to have been the case here. So but it's a great start, and it's really good to be able to show the power of the podcast person tag. So hurrah for Dave for doing that.

Sam Sethi 40:08

Yeah, no, I um I think this is great. We had a look at the data set, and basically we're already pulling that information out, but I think it's great that it's been put into a separate uh endpoint that people can use separately if they want to. We've included this as a feature for I think two years. It's called My Podcast Work. There you go. Well, look, I'm just you know I mean you know, if you if you think about it in advance and you do it, at least I can show you a screenshot of it working, right? So I can prove money where your mouth is, is what I like to say. Yeah, very good. No, but the the point you made is like correct. If the item level, which we support, is picked up, then that supersedes a channel. And also in the podcast person, there is a guest tag. So if we pick up that you are a guest within it, then we'll put we'll label that as a guest rather than the host. So it's great, and I think you know, let's let's get more of us doing it. I think the thing two years ago when we did it, was there was just no data. There was nobody really supporting the person tag. So we were getting like three or four podcasts. So we never really developed the feature much further.

James Cridland 41:16

Yeah, yeah. No. Well, that that that's one excellent thing. The podcast person tag. Another excellent thing, of course, very close to my heart, is the podcast location tag.

Sam Sethi 41:25

Indeed. What's this podcast radar that Alberto's been working on then?

James Cridland 41:31

This is very good, and you may have heard Adam Curry getting very excited about it last week. Radar.rs.io is where you can find this, but there's basically a globe that you can spin and find a podcast which is either based near you or a podcast which is featuring something near you, which is very nice, or indeed anywhere in the world. If you zoom in, you can see individual shows, you can click points on the map to learn more, all of that sort of thing. And it's very smart and very neat. So hurrah for Alberto for spinning that up in less than I think in less than half a day, actually, now that the data is available from the podcast index. Again, it's uh channel information rather than individual item information, which is a bit of a a bit of a shame. It would be nice if it was a little bit a little bit uh you know wider than that. But I think Dave is doing a little bit of work on that to make that a little bit more visible. But uh yeah, it's a super good smart tool. Have you played around with it?

Sam Sethi 42:35

Again, really love it. Yeah, I mean, reminds me of Radio Garden. Do you remember that? Yes.

James Cridland 42:40

Well, uh funnily enough, funnily enough, I emailed Alberto a couple of weeks ago and I said, what we really need podcast index to do is we need them to produce uh a list of podcast locations because I would really like to build Radio Garden. And Alberto said, I will ask, went off, went off and then produced the whole thing. But it is, it's really, really good. And the one thing that I would say about podcast locations is uh you can put a building in there, a business in there, you can put a you can put everything from the state of Queensland to Brisbane City Post Office, you can put whatever you like in there, and that will really help people find your stuff in future. Because, for example, if you do a podcast with a pastor, as you know, somebody who used to be on MTV with big hair does, then don't just put the the city where you are or the town where you are, put the church, put the church, because then you can go in the future, you can go back and go, okay, show me all podcasts that are made by a Christian church. And uh you can get that information from the podcast location tag. It is an incredibly rich tool, but we We've been waiting for rich data set to actually exist. And I think we're beginning to end up seeing that. So yeah, it's really good. Well worth a peek. If you've not seen podcast radar yet, you really should. It's radar.rs.io.

Sam Sethi 44:16

I think what we're beginning to see is all the hard work from the people in the podcast 2.0 community is beginning to bear fruit now because I see them as building blocks. The person tag, the location tag, the transcript. All of these were fundamental building blocks that now you can start to build services around, which is what we've been waiting for. And of course, the lag was waiting for the data to be you know filled in once the tags were available. So yeah, I think this is really interesting. And I just have this little thing in my mind of Alberto after he spoke to you having a Julius Caesar moment where he went Venny Vidi Vici. I came, I saw, I conquered. So he built it before you, James.

Announcer 44:57

And now, unreliable trivia with Sam Sethe.

James Cridland 45:01

No, I'll I I I will do the unreliable trivia. This is this is reliable. Veni Vidi Vici is popularly attributed to Julius Caesar, as you so rightly say, who, according to Appian, used the phrase in a letter to the Roman Senate around 47 BC after he had achieved a quick victory in his short war against Pharnaces II of Pontus at the Battle of Zella.

SPEAKER_01 45:24

That was unreliable trivia with Sam Cethi. Trivia may not be truthful, but please check on facts before acting on them. No guarantees are given. Use this trivia with caution, especially in a pub quiz or a similar situation. Terms and conditions lie.

James Cridland 45:33

I did I did read that off Wikipedia. But yes, any seconds after me then. Right. Good. Very good. Yes. Any other radars? We've we've just uh spoken about a radar.

Sam Sethi 45:49

Yeah, I think this is really weird. I was I was doing the research for the show and I was like, oh, and podcasting and blah blah blah, and up comes radar. I thought, oh, it's just a story about what Alberta's done. You know, that's fine, move on. And then it was on TechCrunch, and I went, okay, well, let's see what their angle is on what Alberto's done. And it's actually not Alberta, it's another company. It's called Particle, and it's founded by former Twitter engineers who had decided to basically uh create a company or create a feature, sorry, called Radar, which makes podcasts searchable. And it's also usable by AI agents. Oh great. Anyway, the company introduced radar last Wednesday and it's a search engine that only transcribes the podcast audio. But I did reach out to their CEO, who I think will be on the show next week, James, just to talk about it. But yeah, um it's a podcast search engine that comes from the people who were formerly at Twitter.

James Cridland 46:46

Yes, and of course, uh Twitter was formerly Audio, which was a podcast hosting company. So it's everything is going round and round. Which is a lovely thing. Very nice.

Sam Sethi 46:57

Now, one of the other things that seems to be the derigor at the moment, we heard from Transistor adding an MCP interface. Audiogram is a new remote MCP service that lets Claude, OpenClaw, and other AIs, allows them to process available episodes to retrieve full transcripts. So we just talked about particle. It looks like everybody's adding an AI interface to podcasting, James.

James Cridland 47:22

Yes, indeed. Uh ListenNotes also adding some podcast API skills to help your imaginary friend understand how the the ListenNotes API works. I am surprised, although I kind of am also not surprised, but I'm I I would have expected Dave Jones to have done an MCP uh directly with the the podcast index by now. And who knows, maybe even to have to have stuck that behind some form of a paywall or something, I don't know. Because that to me seems like a pretty obvious thing. And given that Dave is working so much with AI tools in his day job these these days, I would imagine that he'll be pretty good at making it all work. So yeah, so I'm kind of surprised why they haven't done that yet. But who knows, they may be they may be getting ready to do that in the future.

Sam Sethi 48:14

I think with um rewriting the whole of Podping, I think he's a little bit busy at the moment, but other than that, yeah.

James Cridland 48:20

Well, yes. Well, yes, obviously. But no, so I think it it is interesting, lots of MCP uh services going up there, and of course, other MCP services from some of the advertising organizations as well. So um yeah, no, it's it's certainly a thing, isn't it?

Sam Sethi 48:37

Now, congratulations to Dystopia. They are the latest podcast host to launch and support Apple Podcasts, so they can now do Apple Podcast delivery by the API using HLS. They are saying that they have been doing video distribution for over two years, so they feel very comfortable in adding this as a new feature to their existing users. Yeah, very nice. Now, this isn't a weird one, James. Threads, the social media platform, has said that they're testing a new display for podcasts that would provide the listeners with a transcript of the discussion that is linked with the audio so that they can follow along. They seem to be looking at testing it in various different display formats. The idea being that they want to bring the conversation to threads around the audio. Now, we talked about Dave Winer with what was it, rss.cast or something like that? Which I can't remember.

James Cridland 49:38

Yeah, rss.chat.

Sam Sethi 49:39

Chat, that was rss.chat, yes. Yeah, and I can't get hold of it, so I've sort of got bored with that. But but it feels like this is another way of, dare I say it, cross-up comments eventually appearing.

James Cridland 49:52

Yeah, I mean, yeah, maybe. I mean, certainly anything that makes podcasts a bit more visible in social media is a good thing. And so this just automatically adds a transcript and to the clip of the audio that you're using. Weirdly, it's also got an Apple podcast logo in it. I'm not quite sure how that works, but it does look very smart. So yeah, so it's um you know a nice thing that that that uh threads are doing. Now, obviously, it's threads, so therefore not very many people will see it, but nevertheless, it's a good it's a good move.

Sam Sethi 50:27

Yeah, I I think they're only just using Apple. So I don't think unless going back to your comment earlier, unless it's in Apple, it's not a podcast.

James Cridland 50:34

I think in their case they could they took that literally and just went and worked with Apple and Yeah, I mean, you know, if if that's the way that they need to make it appear, then that would be, you know, I I I don't necessarily see an issue with that of but of just basically saying, look, you if you if you want the fancy thing to do to to work nicely, we've made it work nicely with um with uh Apple Podcasts. Does that mean that it's taking the transcript from Apple? And in which case does that mean that they've got some kind of of API access to those transcripts? There's an interesting question, and I'm not quite sure what the answer

Inbox

James Cridland 51:12

is either.

Announcer 51:12

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

James Cridland 51:21

Yeah, so many different ways to get in touch with us. Voicemail by using the link in our show notes or uh there's email as well. And Seth Goldstein, who is coming to podcast movement in New York City and says that he would like to catch up for a beer. I think what he means is he'd like to catch up for me to buy him a beer. He says, firstly, great intro for Liam Heffernan. Thank you very much. And also, Megaphone Spotify for creators has the worst customer service and they're really messing up DAI. So much so that I can't wait until my network hopefully gets off of megaphone to a more capable host. I push them towards true fans.fm. We'll see if it's a right fit.

Sam Sethi 52:01

No, it's not. No, we're not right yet.

James Cridland 52:03

Your DAI. No, I'm just gonna be honest.

Sam Sethi 52:07

Says the CEO. Uh yeah. No, I mean, uh I I don't like, I'm not one of these people who go, oh yeah, we're brilliant, no, we do everything great. And when when we're not the right fit, we don't do dynamic ad insertion yet. We've got that as our number one thing to do, but we're not there yet. So we wouldn't be alright.

James Cridland 52:24

So indeed. Seth is, as I say, going to podcast movement. He is he's already written down some of the some of the uh speaking things that he is that he is attending. So it's always interesting to see what some people are seeing and what some people don't want to see. He's definitely seeing, for example, the interview beneath the interview, a conversation about uh interviews, obviously, from the after chapter podcast, and also talking about uh programmatic advertising as well, which he's uh also going to be seeing. Seth, don't see uh in fact, you're you're going to watch Rob Walsh, are you? Opposite me. Uh so you're not you're not you're not bothered about my my talk then, Seth. You're off to watch Rob, are you? Okay. I'll fair enough. Fair enough, to be honest. I would as well. Uh so so anyway, looking forward to meeting him and and you, if you're going to the to podcast movement, please do get in touch through the uh swap card app if you are doing so. There are 24 power supporters. And uh why don't I say that I will buy any of the power supporters a beer if I if if I see you there, that that that makes sense. Uh there's a WhatsApp group where only power supporters can also get in as well. Uh, you can join that by becoming a power supporter at weekly.podnews.net, which is uh also where you can uh find out more information about this and uh and everything

Sam and James's week

James Cridland 53:56

else. So, what's been happening for you this week then, Sam?

Sam Sethi 53:59

Well, I got back from Ireland James in one piece. Yes. Didn't think I would get back in one piece, but I have, yes. Yes, it was very scary, but very very adrenaline filling, climbing the two highest peaks, Cartoon Hill and Mount Brandon, in the rain, climbing a one kilometre shell waterfall climb was not fun. I did look at my wife and swear at her quite a lot, I think, as I was on all fours scrambling up a mountainside. But no, when you get to the top, it's quite exhilarating. You you have a sense of achievement, but um boy, oh boy, it certainly pushes you to your limits.

James Cridland 54:37

Yes, current tool, by the way, in case you're wondering, highest mountain in Ireland, 1038 metres high. Gosh, is that high? Yes.

Sam Sethi 54:49

It's not it's not oxygen mask requiring, no, none of that. But but what you do get, I mean, we on the way back down, it's great, you get up to the top and then you go, Yeah, god, I've got to get back down now. Um no, yes, of course. Of course.

James Cridland 55:04

Uh what what is what is uh just just as a test? What is at the top? Across. I'm glad you said that. You you you've actually climbed it then. There you go.

Sam Sethi 55:16

Oh, it's a test. It's a test. Yeah, no, it's it's one of those things you come down and then you've got to come down a windy path. But the windy path basically is a 12-story sheer drop on your left hand side, and the mountains on your right, and you just walk this narrow path. And I have to say, I was not a happy boy doing that. I mean, your knees went a little bit wobbly at a couple of occasions, but you do get down, and eventually, you know, like three hours of winding down a mountain, your kneecaps and your thighs are burning. That's all I can say. Yes. Gosh, my wife likes doing this though, so I I assume I'll be doing more of it.

James Cridland 55:59

Yeah, yeah. Whether you like it or not.

Sam Sethi 56:02

Well, yes, happy wife, happy life. Yes.

James Cridland 56:04

Yes, yes. Have you have you been doing so? Obviously, you've not been doing anything at work, which has been nice.

Sam Sethi 56:10

I know, I haven't, but uh as usual, Mo does all the work, so it's fine. I don't do any of the work, I just pontificate and say what I think we should do. Which is fantastic, because I couldn't code for Toffee or vibe code. No, we we extended. I think the Tom Webster comment, which we talked about earlier, which was back in July, was timely. It was on our roadmap. I wanted to build out a newsletter function for TrueFans. We've not been very good at promoting, we've been just hanged down trying to build stuff. And I I realize that, you know, although we're getting good numbers, I think we need to now really ramp things up. And a newsletter is, as it we talked about earlier, a really good way of reaching out to your audience to keep them informed of what you're doing. So we've launched one called Fanzine, and you know, not not that original, but I like it, it's fine. The the idea is we're going to put out a monthly newsletter, but the bigger feature is we're going to extend that to all creators, and that's the thing I'm really excited about is being able to give every podcast creator on TrueFans the ability to create their own newsletter if they want as well. So good. Yeah, it comes back to that question, James, as I said before. I don't know. I mean, I've been banging the drum about creator portals for I think two years, you know, the whole idea of not just having a podcast, but audio, video, merch, newsletters, etc. blogs. I think when we look at what Beehive, Patreon, Substack, Supercast are all doing, they're the people I look at. I don't look at Overcast, I don't look at Pocket Cast, I don't really look at those standalone single function apps. But there is a great place for those and people will continue to use them. They're brilliant apps. I'm not knocking them. But I think the arrow of direction, if I'm right, and if I'm not, then guess what? True fans won't be here. But if I'm right, then I think creator portals are the way forward. Um and it's that vertical versus horizontal conversation which I don't really have an answer to. But is it multiple bits of things? So you use uh Overcast as your app, but you use BuzzSprout as your host, you use something else for your newsletter, you use something else for your ad platform, or is it the verticalization where you get everything in one application? Who knows? We'll see.

James Cridland 58:29

Well, who knows indeed? Who knows indeed? The proof will be in the eating. Uh the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. That's the phrase I was looking for.

Sam Sethi 58:37

Never said by Mary Antoinette, by the way. She never said it. I've already played your jingle. I'm not playing it again. Don't do that to my now. Uh, what's happened for you, James? I did note that uh, you know, I made Forbes a couple of weeks. Looks like you've made Forbes as well, mate.

James Cridland 58:53

Yeah, uh, yes, uh, Frank Rashioppi wrote about Spotify ad skipping in Forbes, which was very kind of him. I saw him face to face in a Eurowaves advisory board meeting, which is the first time that uh many of us have seen Frank Rashioppi, seen him actually face to face, which was nice. So I believe that he's coming to Podcast Movement as well. So that's so that's all very good. And also, uh Sam, I'm back on Twitter. No, okay, come on, stop. Go on, James, explain. So there's a company which is called Operation Bluebird, and they have gone, well, you know what? We you know, Twitter is a nice brand, and the X Corporation have basically said that they don't want it anymore, they're not using it. Some of those trademarks have not been renewed, so therefore, we will have that trademark and we will launch a social a social platform called uh Twitter, and it is called Twitter, it's got slightly different logos in there, and it's got and it's got yeah, and it's the same blue though, that it's the same Twitter blue. It it's pretty well, I bet you it's not. I bet you it's a slightly different colour because everything is very carefully slightly different. Twitter, not affiliated with X, which is what it's called, and you you know, and there's all kinds of fascinating things. The one of the fascinating things on it is that in order for you to get in, it costs $20 to get in, or you can pay $40 if you want to put a bit of money for them for their inevitable court case with Elon Musk. Yes. So you can so you can put $20 in or put $40 in. So of course I've put $40 in, haven't I? And that will enable you to you know get your username and and all of that sort of thing. So that I thought was interesting. So their gate is is essentially money, and they're uh you know, you can't sign up for free, but you can sign up if you put 20 bucks in, which I think is a very uh clever uh gate just to sort of calm things down a little bit. The other thing though is, and you can see on one of my posts, Sam, in the in the screenshot that I've uh shared, you can see that one of my posts has a weird 100 next.

Sam Sethi 1:01:18

Yeah, I'm just gonna ask you what that was.

James Cridland 1:01:20

Yeah, and so the way that they are doing the way that they are doing, and I I have so many reservations about all of this, by the way. But the way that they are doing moderation is that they are using AI moderation to check whether what you're saying is truthful and to check for certain things that you might end up saying, you know. So it'll uh uh check whether or not you're super grumpy and being rude about people, but it'll also check the truth of what that you are actually saying. It's using Gemini behind the hood. So quite what that means, who knows? It'll probably all go, it'll probably all fall apart and die. But nevertheless, and so the 100 there is that is a perfect score, basically saying that that particular post of mine was absolutely fine. There was nothing that the AI found that was wrong about it, and certainly in terms of checking against a a ton of other a ton of other tools, all of that is you know, all of that is fine too. And they say, We give you freedom of speech, but we don't give you freedom of reach. And the way that the the the that the thing works is that you can set it so that you can go, I will, I only want to see all posts with a 60 score or above, and it will only show you those posts of 60 score or above, which is a really clever plan. So if you want to see all of the crap, then you can see all of the crap, but otherwise, you know, you won't. Now, of course, is it GDR GDPR compliant? Probably not. Is it is it centralized? Absolutely it is. Um, has it learnt anything from any anybody doing another social network? No, not really. But I I was curious about the Vera thing. I did enjoy Twitter, so I'm just sort of curious as to how it all works. But uh, yeah, once you're in, it is virtually identical in terms of the Twitter experience. And by the way, it's called Twitter.now is where you go to sign up, Twitter.now.

Sam Sethi 1:03:28

I mean, that's very clever. I wonder who's behind it, and we'll have to have a look. But um as you said, I'm sure once Elon Musk wakes up, certain lawyers will be sending a cease and desist letter to these people.

James Cridland 1:03:40

So well, but only this week, Twitter X has sent a cease and desist to a couple of different companies, xcancel.com and knitter.com, which are two sets of people who are who've essentially been scraping the X website to get rid of any advertising and give you a way to you know have a look through X without actually being on X. And both of those have just been shut down. So clearly, you know, Elon is you know is cares about this. But yes, it's it's it's a really, really interesting, really interesting move. But yeah, they're a very, very small team. And I I just really like the idea of freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach. That's very that's very clever. Whether or not it works, I'm not so sure, to be honest. But you know, it's worth a peek anyway. So yes, so if you want to be there, if you want to get get a decent uh name on that service, then um then jump to it. Of course, I should have checked if I could have got James.

Sam Sethi 1:04:45

Yeah, I think it's I like this uh in their footer. Get early access. Early access is open. Get over your ex.

James Cridland 1:04:56

Yes, exactly. Very clever. It's very it's very clever, it's very neat. So um, yes, very good. And that's it for this week. All of our podcast stories taken from the pod news daily newsletter at podnews.net.

Sam Sethi 1:05:09

You can give us feedback using the BuzzSprout voicemail link in our show notes, or become a monthly power supporter like the 24 Power Supporters at weekly.podnews.net.

James Cridland 1:05:18

Our music is from TM Studios. Our voiceover is Sheila D. Our audio is recorded using CleanFeed. We edit with Hindenburg, and we're hosted and sponsored by BuzzSprout. Start podcasting, keep podcasting.

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