SPEAKER_00 0:00

Through this whole process, it was not wanting to exit something as much so was to continue to build. And what ACAST had in place was just so fitting for what we were trying to do.

James Cridland 0:11

Acast buys backyard ventures. We speak with both CEOs.

SPEAKER_04 0:15

Plus, my topic, yeah, what excellent shit. The global trend of podcasting. And whether or not it applies for Asia.

Announcer 0:23

We're a podcast day, Asia in Jakarta with James Crizzle and Sam Safety. This is the news weekly review with Boston Scraft.

Greg Glenday and Matt Cisneros

Sam Sethi 0:38

James, well, here we go. Now we've been trying to get Greg Glenday onto the show for a couple of weeks now. He was busy a couple of weeks back and then my fault last week. Well, I'm very excited to say that Greg is joining us today. And Greg's going to be telling us all about, I think the main thing I want to get from Greg is what's the overall strategy? They've become profitable, they're buying backyard ventures, they're partnering with Kit, they're taking on new people. It all seems very positive. Greg, hello, how are you?

SPEAKER_03 1:11

Great to see you. I'm great. Thanks, Sam.

Sam Sethi 1:13

Now, Greg, you've been a very busy company in the last few months. One of the things you've been doing is acquiring companies. One of those companies is Backyard Ventures. And we're joined as well by the founder and CEO of Backyard Ventures, Matt. Matt, hello, how are you?

SPEAKER_00 1:30

I'm doing great. Thanks for having me.

Sam Sethi 1:32

Now, before we get Matt's view of it, Greg, why did you go and buy Backyard Ventures?

SPEAKER_03 1:39

Great question. I think, you know, if it's one word, it would be synergy. If it's two words, it would be synergy and culture. You know, a funny story. And I know you had recommended to me Thomas Reedman's book, Thank You for Being Late. I think our story starts with Matt and I both being an hour early for a meeting in January. We were supposed to meet with a bunch of advisors and lawyers. And literally it was a 9 a.m. meeting. And both Matt and I went to the coffee shop downstairs at 8 a.m. And we had an accidental get to know you before the meeting. And all he talked about were the people, the culture, you know, what it's like to work there, what it's like to work in our industry, the reputation they have. And that's the same thing we were trying to do on a different scale, you know, coming from Sweden and Europe into the US versus coming from Austin and heading east. So we hit it off as people and human beings first. And then with business strategy and culture, it felt like this would easily be one plus one equals three. All the stuff they were focused on, I think if we looked in the mirror, we could get better at. And all the stuff they were thinking about building for the future, we had been building for a few years. So we sort of like, man, he could really accelerate our hypothesis here together. Matt, we've never talked about it, but that's how I felt. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:50

I absolutely agree. Through this whole process, it was not wanting to exit something as much as it was to continue to build. And what ACAS had in place was just so fitting for what we were trying to do. And so, as Greg said a minute ago and alluded to, this was not just a, okay, we now have an inventory and move on. There's culture, there's people, there's just complementary skill sets on both sides that are going to allow us to really build faster.

Sam Sethi 3:15

So let's take a step back. What is Back Young Adventures? Give us the what it is, first of all.

SPEAKER_00 3:21

Absolutely. Well, I would say the same way that Zappo says they are not a place to buy shoes, they are a customer service destination. That is what we are for our clients, right? So creators first, it is always thinking about what is best for them and ultimately revenue will follow. And so that started with just podcasts, right? Two podcasts in 2019 with the goal of just doing that as well as I could with a background in media sales. And so as that progressed, we got into other avenues, right? YouTube, newsletter, social media. Some of that was within my background and skill set, and some of it was dependent upon demand. And when that demand came, once again, it's creator first. And so we did not want them to go elsewhere. We wanted to have the solution for them. Fast forward to today, fully operating business that now fits into ACAST with the model of creator first service relationship management and ensuring that we're doing what's best for our clients.

Sam Sethi 4:16

Would you define yourself then as a creator portal? Would you prior to the acquisition by ACAST has considered your competitors to be Substack, Supercast? Who was your competitor in the main?

SPEAKER_00 4:31

So I think you can look at it a couple ways, right? Anybody who's selling media, I guess, is technically a competitor. Anybody in the podcast space that's looking for advertising dollars or partnerships, that's competition. But I truly didn't see it that way. I thought there's plenty to go around, and if we do it really well, I think we gravitate toward success and others will see that. And so as Greg mentioned earlier, the culture and the people and just generally the direction that we were going, I never looked up and said, what are other people doing as much as I said, how do we continue to scale in the manner that we see fit? And ultimately all the chips fell correctly and it worked out. So could have failed, no doubt. But I think just having the vision of success as to what we saw was advantageous for the industry and our clients is what ultimately made us win.

SPEAKER_03 5:17

I would say the biggest risk on the deal, Sam, was when the mix beat the Spurs, because I'm a Nit fan and he's a Spurs fan. So that was some tense, there were some tense times there. So sorry, Matt. It's okay.

Sam Sethi 5:29

I'm gonna ask an entrepreneur's question of you now. Okay, and feel free to say no response. But you were doing 16 million in revenue and you were required for 20 million. Normally it's 5x, 6x acquisition numbers of your revenue. So how come? How come 20 million only?

SPEAKER_00 5:49

I'd say that a couple things. One, without tech, you're not necessarily getting the multiples that you mentioned. And second to that, I'm sure you've read most of the articles. There and there's a good stock component with that number, right? And so I truly believe in this stock and our ability to continue to grow there. And so, you know, I'm not departing after this interview and never in this industry again. I'm in this to build and continue to grow. And that's just in an expedited fashion now. So money is great and all, but I'm 41 years old and I'm not complacent, right? I want to continue to grow. And so more is gonna come, right? If we continue to do the plan that we have in place aside, like we're gonna be successful in, you know, with success, money comes. And so I don't see it anyway, but advantageous for both parties.

SPEAKER_03 6:31

Can I add to that? I think, first of all, for any of my investors listening, I hope you listen to Sam's questions. We got a great deal. So we believe that. But also, in fair, Matt really did the calculus for Matt, and this was really important to me. He wasn't doing the math on what's the biggest outcome in summer of 2026. He was doing that plus what's the brightest future for Matt and his team and the people. And again, I think he has zero turnover since founding the company. Like people start there and stay. So Matt's looking for like what's next and how do we do this together? And I think taking four or five years to build a company and sign 200 shows, that was a lot of work. And, you know, it's sort of daunting to say, okay, now is the next 200 also five years, or together, do we solve a lot of this together? So, you know, we're kind of like mocking arms and moving forward together in this. And we're not having Matt set sail after the transition. This is like really important that he and his team stick around.

Sam Sethi 7:23

Absolutely. Matt, very quickly, how big was the team that got acquired? What is the size of BlackCount Ventures?

SPEAKER_00 7:30

There's 18 of us divided up across sales, ops, finance accounting. So it's not a huge team. As Greg and the ACAS team have told me, they're like, man, you guys do so many jobs. But that's kind of the only way we know how to function, right? Whether anybody wants to say they're an expert in this industry or not, it is still new. There's nothing that is just defined in stone from 50 years ago. And so as we were grinding along and seeing everything ahead of us, it was do we have to hire 20 more people to get to double, triple the revenue, or can we integrate? And so that's where the integration came.

Sam Sethi 8:01

Greg, let's let's take a step back. Earlier this year in July, you announced the Q2 results. I'm glad to say that you are now fully profitable. What has been the driver that's driven that growth to profitability?

SPEAKER_03 8:17

Yeah, I think the success we had in 25 and so far in 2026 kind of started in 2024 with a lot of alignment work that we did into the beginning of 25. So, you know, I think sometimes companies like ours, we're all in a new industry. Think about how many things have changed, how many companies have, you know, sort of shifted strategy over the last three years, even. So this is moving at light speed. So for us, you know, we got really focused on what do we do? What are we good at? We stopped doing a lot of things, and you could catalog all the things that we shut down, where it's like, you know, sometimes you have to say, you know what, that's not our lane. And it's actually made us better partners with people like Apple and Spotify by not trying to do everything for everybody. We focus on infrastructure, people, technology, being the best place for independent creators. Matt's creators are actually in our sweet spot. We believe that podcasting is a meritocracy. Yeah, I hate to say it, but there's a lot of big shows that will remain nameless aren't listening, or their audience is maybe 85% smaller than last year. So people vote every day and you have to earn your listening. These aren't licensing deals. So we look at those shows and we say, man, that is 200 shows like that. I would take that over a big show that's maybe a little more unwieldy or isn't necessarily a podcast. This is our sweet spot. For us, getting focused, we're able to move a lot faster on that. So I think it was alignment. I think we have great people. Next week, we're gonna make a huge announcement, a big hire that I think will be interesting for the industry. So I feel like we know where it's going now. We have all big brands that are super interested. They know podcasting works. It's like all of those objections that we heard for the last few years, those kind of became everybody's roadmaps. And I think we've solved enough of those problems that the industry is ready to take off. Obviously, there's crazy macro stuff going on, but I still think we are underneath the chop on the water, and I think we're below the storm. And I think podcasting is going to continue to grow. It's exciting. This is probably the most exciting time in the 20 years the industry's been emerging. It may be emerged now.

Sam Sethi 10:08

So, look, I was fortunate enough to be invited to the ACARST offices in London when you started the video studios. You obviously opened them in the US as well. So you were ahead of the sort of hiatus that we've been seeing in video. You were also one of the first partners for Apple. So talk to me about how video is now integrating and affecting the revenues within ACAST.

SPEAKER_03 10:33

Yep. The short version is, again, strategy and alignment. We made a couple of hard decisions early on that we weren't going to take the bads of gold from one particular video platform and say all of our stuff is there, because that's not the spirit of podcasting. You can get it everywhere, it's up to the user. The relationship is between the creator and the audience. So we really believe that. So by sticking to our guns and not sort of putting all into one camp, when we came to a secret Apple meeting last summer and they said, hey, we want to build this with people like you. And we said, Yeah, that's great. And it didn't have to be exclusive. So we believe video is sort of uh an evolution, like we're seeping into video, if not a pivot. The podcast pulse research that's coming back now that we present every year around now. So it's coming up for podcast movement. That's coming back that more people this year than last year in our survey do both, right? Audio and video. So we think this sort of multimodal bet that we're making is the future. And you know, listening is never going to go away. People are always going to do both, and that's what makes our medium really special. So I'm glad we were early, and I think that was the right bet.

Sam Sethi 11:39

So, how are you giving back feedback to your creators? Famously, Apple will give us data, but Spotify and YouTube obviously aren't giving us pass-through data. Are you, as a cast, as a preferred partner, getting this data now?

SPEAKER_03 11:54

We are, and we also have a lot of our own data. And we were talking about the skip story and all those things. Like we do 500 surveys a year. So, year to date, we've already done 500 surveys ourselves with our audience. We spend a lot of money on research for ourselves. So we sort of know where things are going. Video is not for every show. We have some shows where we're saying, hey, it's actually not helping. For the most part, it's better, and most of them want to do it, but not everybody. So we're providing guidance, we're telling them when it works and when it doesn't. Not every episode has to be video. So we're being very open-minded, testing and learning. And ultimately, our creators, unfortunately, our report card is their revenue. So as long as that's in a good place, we're not going to get a lot of complaints while we test and learn.

SPEAKER_00 12:34

Sam, I'll add one thing to that. I'm sorry. At the end of the day, your creators are your equity, right? That's how you grow. And so if they trust you, then you can continue with them, right? And so it's simply in this, like if we're educated in what's going on and we can tell our creators this might be best for you and this isn't, we allow them the opportunity to grow with us, right? And so because things are changing, we have to be nimble. But on top of that, like staying educated in having those relationships with your creators to trust you to make those calls for them or at least educate them is very valuable. And that's why we're building this.

Sam Sethi 13:07

You mentioned it, Greg. Spotify skip ahead. This is not being received very well by the industry. It makes sense for people like me as a user who pays Spotify. I give you money, I don't want ads. I pay Netflix, I don't get ads, I pay Prime, I don't get ads, I pay YouTube, I don't get ads. So it doesn't feel like they're doing anything wrong for the consumer who's chosen to pay. But for platforms like yourself who have partners who have ads within their platform, what is a cost response to Spotify?

SPEAKER_03 13:42

Yeah. It's funny, sometimes it's nice to have a skirmish where you can kind of sit there and say, we're taking all sides and no sides, and uh, you know, joking. I'm actually doing a panel with uh uh client Christina Rubino from Brightside Up about this. And it's her topic, and we're gonna do 10 minutes in a couple of weeks on everyone take a deep breath and relax. She's representing the advertiser that she's telling her clients, don't panic, we're gonna get you the results. Also, there's been a real shift when I go to these distant from the podcasting events, but the real the advertising events that are sort of, you know, the NA or the MMA or the IB, these things that are sort of generalist, most people are telling about outcomes and how great podcasting outcomes are. So the idea that you can skip as has always been there. You know, for us, we had a couple of creators that were really upset, and we had to take that seriously. And we said to Spotify, hey, we've become great partners with you. Our relationship's never been better between these two Swedish companies. But hey, we've got to let you know, we've got to back up our creators. If they want to take a break, if they want to pull their content down, we've got to do that. And they understood. I think they probably weren't ready for all the backlash. I can't speak for them, but I think it was probably not intended the way it was received. But, you know, that's like we're all moving fast and making quick decisions with the info we have. It hasn't impacted us. I think it also shows that nobody has full market power, right? They proved that with the exclusives years ago. But if one company does something and the audience and the creators don't like it, they can step away from any of these platforms. And I think that's kind of a cool thing for our meritocracy.

Sam Sethi 15:11

Talking of platforms, we've got new entrants coming into the market, Netflix, Disney, Paramount. How's that in terms of your strategy within ACAS? What do you sit down exec level and say, how do we get involved in those platforms?

SPEAKER_03 15:28

It's how do we? But we start with should we? You know, I'm not sure they understand what a podcast is. And I think we kind of have to weather the storm of, you know, a giant MG for someone like Amazon and Netflix is a percentage rounding arrow point. For us, we take it seriously and we want them to make money. I think we could do a whole episode on I'm gonna start a cold war against the whole MG process because I don't think it's good for anybody except lawyers and agents, and they've all heard me say that. And that's not sour great. You know, if I were a creator, I'd take the biggest check too, but it doesn't mean it's good for the audience. Sometimes it's not good for brands and all those other things. So I think the new entrance, it's great if we have creators that want to distribute and it makes sense for them. We want that to be open. Again, we want to be agnostic. So if there's a place to reach an audience that makes sense, they should do it. If it hurts their business in other ways, we devise them against it. So I think, you know, the jury's out. I think the way most people I know, the way they use Netflix is very different than professional user-generated content like a podcast. I think they're used to this is a little more curated and this doesn't quite feel like Netflix. So so we'll see. It's definitely changing. I think uh kind of like Walmart coming into a place, I think a lot of big companies are seeing gold, you know, they see oil and they're coming into the space to say, oh, this looks easy, let's try and do it. So I think we're gonna wait them out. It's not as easy as a lot of them think. We'll partner where it makes sense and we'll fight where it makes sense.

Sam Sethi 16:49

Okay, I've got two more questions. You're signing up a lot of exclusives. Is inventory now the next battle between platforms like ACAVST, Ad Squares, Audio Bim? Are you having to get these exclusives in order to have the inventory to deliver the advertising platform that you want to?

SPEAKER_03 17:09

No, you know, and part of that was, you know, and I think I heard you mention that, like, well, of course, you know, Matt's got great inventory. We think we can raise sell-through rates on our side with his team and what they know how to do on YouTube and newsletters and all that, we can raise revenue per show. And then vice versa, we think we can help because he's got inventory that we could probably utilize through self-serving programmatic that they haven't done as far along. So, yes, but I also think we have a long tail. I'm desperate to get more money into smaller shows. And I've said it to you a million times, but I think a thousand small shows with niche audiences that are so passionate. I think if you can find a way to make that easy, that's worth more than one big show with the same size audience. I truly believe that, but we have to make it easy, and that's kind of our mission. There's lots of inventory in the long tail, and we can only raise rates so much on the big shows that should push that in. So that's what we're focused on, and I think we've got years of growth if we keep doing that right.

Sam Sethi 18:04

So you mentioned newsletters just now. Obviously, Matt, you have the newsletter capability, but you've just done a deal with Kit, Greg. What's going on? You got one greedy man. What are you doing? You got one, you want another one now.

SPEAKER_03 18:18

Can't stop, won't stop. No, we have uh, you know, it's I've got to do something during Swedish summer. So we just like do these deals. But no, Matt, Matt honestly is I've already learned a ton from their team around how they monetize newsletters. We did that preferred partnership with Kid was in the works. But really, if you think about Matt's gonna be like a catch-all for a lot of things, but he's gonna be our global general manager for newsletters, like running all of our strategy. We've been curious, but we don't know how to do it, and they've really figured out how to make that a market. So we're excited about that because again, that's inventory that's offline, that's created, that you know, there's no ceiling to that, and live events, you know, we can go for a long time on those.

Sam Sethi 18:54

Matt, you you've got a long experience with YouTube. YouTube, a bit like Spotify, has recently disappointed the industry quite a bit. YouTube put in skip aheads and that disappointed people because it was a surprise. It wasn't a conversation conversation. There was something called the AMP group, which Oxford Road led, which was to try and get, you know, standardized analytics around play counts, and then left field, suddenly YouTube say a a player's a hover, a player's zero seconds or one second. What's it like to work with YouTube and what do you think they're doing when they are changing the analytic numbers? So they fundamentally, in my opinion, inflate the numbers falsely to advertisers. So, Greg, will Backyard Ventures be kept as a brand name or is it going to be just rolled into something else?

SPEAKER_03 19:41

It's officially ACAST Austin. So it is our beachhead in what I think is one of the most important podcast markets in the world. You know, you think these things pop up. You know, there's a couple in Germany and Miami, and Austin is definitely it also will save us some money on meeting space for South by Southwest. So that was another synergy. And then I think their brand does mean a lot and they built something from scratch. We love the cactus. So we've done some fun kind of mashup stuff with Backyard and A-Cast for their office. But it's for all intents and purposes, this is because it's a synergy play, they've become ACast Austin, which we're excited about.

Sam Sethi 20:13

Okay, now let's move out. Are you doing really well in Europe? You're doing well in North America. How's the Far East in Australia?

SPEAKER_03 20:20

That's great. Our team there, led by Henrik and Guy, they're so far away that they kind of run their own thing, but they pop up with the most amazing. They've made, I think, some of the most important signings this year. They've really pulled in all different types of personalities and have been growing. We also have a couple of employees that are focused on Singapore and all the growth there. So I think AIPAC is going to become, you know, I could see us next year having, you know, the Americas, Europe, and APAC is kind of the three places that we really operate in 2027 and beyond. So they're doing an amazing job. I always use this example, but great content in Australia is really portable to the UK and the US. And, you know, Tony and Ryan just did a sold-out tour of Australia, but they're popular here. They're a top 200, top 100 a time show in the US. So I think it's pretty amazing. You know, again, it speaks to the uniqueness and portability of our medium. There's really never been anything like that.

Sam Sethi 21:13

So we're talking about English language, but where are you in international language?

SPEAKER_03 21:18

Yeah, you know, it's tough because every time they build something, the technology is like, okay, are we ready to do this in Swedish? Are we ready to do this in German? Are we ready to do this in French? So it's something to think about that it puts up sort of natural language borders. But our teams really had gotten good at figuring out how to do that and when to do it. We've been investing in Germany. We bought a couple of companies there last year. We've got Nina as our country manager who's doing an amazing job. So we'll do that. It just takes a little bit of extra focus because you know you've got to do everything sort of bespoke for those regions.

Sam Sethi 21:48

So you talked about a big hire coming next week. Shame we couldn't get it today, but okay, you got a big high coming next week.

SPEAKER_03 21:54

LP will kill me.

Sam Sethi 21:56

Oh, no one's listening, LP. Come on. Anyway, but you've also taken on Mark Bulling as VP of products. So what's Mark's role gonna be within the company? Obviously it says product, but specifically what's he been targeted to do?

SPEAKER_03 22:12

Yeah, I shouldn't have undersold that. You know, Mark is ACS is a unique company, and we've had mostly homegrown product people, which is good and bad, right? It's pretty amazing and that they don't have some of the bad habits that you develop in old school tech. But Mark is somebody, his reputation is amazing. And really, I I shouldn't have undersold him because I think he is a big hire. You know, the idea that somebody who worked at Apple and understands that marketplace, worked at Facebook, so understands that revenue is important, you know, that's where the Facebook guides pray to is the revenue alter. So he understands that. And then he did a lot of data work with WPP. So the idea that he's been at a hold co, it's sort of if we could create an AI product person in a lab, it would be Mark's LinkedIn profiles. So we're really excited. He's a couple of weeks in. He's been spending time kind of paying attention while he was waiting out his start date. So we're really excited about Mark and having somebody that just a fresh set of externalized with our great internal homegrown people, I think is going to be really, really perfect. So we're excited about that. And we put him in the UK on purpose to kind of bridge the gap between our engineers in the Nordic region, a lot of the sales and commercial stuff that's happening in the US. So those have become kind of our three beach heads.

Sam Sethi 23:20

So you said the buzzword bingo, you said it, I didn't, you said AI, I didn't. Everybody can drink now. Fundamentally, where is AI with ACAS and I mean, where do you see it fitting into what you guys are doing? One of the big things that came out recently was the EU directive around labeling AI. How are you dealing with that? And then where do you see creators within the ACAST platform using AI?

SPEAKER_03 23:44

Yep. Again, that's so funny. So I stepped on the Spotify skip landmine and the AI landmine. I tripped both of those wires for you. So with AI, we're actually, this is another one where I think we made an early bet, and I think we got lucky. I'm not taking any credit for this, but our engineering team has a really good machine learning AI experience level anyway. So we've been using that on our products for sort of making connections easier, product matching shows to demographics. So all of those things have been happening. We set a pretty bright red line that we don't want AI creators. We just don't believe that that's what people want from companionship. I think the Daily Stokes, for example, that's a relationship that one of Matt's shows has with that audience. Nobody's looking for a synthetic version of Ryan. And I think we will use it for ad creative here and there. We will use it to make things easier and faster. We're gonna be honest with the audience, and I think that's what people want is transparency. Even from when this stuff started coming out, even from London Podcast Show to now, I feel like there's been a bit of a backlash on AI content itself. It's just slop and everything. It's you know, sure, maybe for information, scores, and things like that. Sure, I'd be fine with that. Stock market stuff, updates, but I don't want to have a relationship with AI through a podcast. I think there's plenty of other places to do that. So we're I think we're in the right place for where it's going.

Sam Sethi 24:59

So I started off by saying it's been an exciting, probably 2026 for ACAST, and you've done a lot, you've grown, you've got profitable, you've acquired, and you've grown the team. What's the overall strategy, Glenn, then, leading into 27?

SPEAKER_03 25:14

Yeah. So we are very focused on making ACAST the best place. And when I say independent creators, you see there's a lot of people sort of saying, Hey, wait a minute, why am I a W-2 employee for this media company? And I'm doing a podcast where people are tuning in to hear me. And I think we've already had some of those migrating over. So we're gonna focus on making the water really warm for independent creators. This is the best place where you'll have the best tools, you can make a lot of money. We've got scale, we've got salespeople that are bringing you deals. So we want that, then focus on the audience, and the audience brings us the brands. We've already, we're working at a really high level with the hold codes. And I think, and I'm not to be too flippant, but I think we're trying to represent the industry there. I don't think we're not gonna do a whole lot of ACAST deals with PG and Unilever. They're going to be podcasting deals that we think we would love to take a slightly unfair share if we can. But if we can make the tide rise for everybody, I think that's really important. So we're spending a lot of time there focused on our industry, not satellite, not local radio, not streaming music, not other things and podcasting. We are just focused on this. So, you know, I think our team, I think, is pretty lean for how big we are and where we are in the world. And I think a focused team in a new industry moving fast, it could be really, really dangerous. So we're we're excited about 2027. We gotta get through Q3 first, but we're excited about 2020.

Sam Sethi 26:33

So let's wrap it up there. About one last thing. You're in podcast movement in New York. What can people expect to come and see, Greg, if they come along to listen to what you've got to say? Sure.

SPEAKER_03 26:44

Well, maybe we'll say a few controversial things and always make it spicy. But uh, you know, the main thing is I got a preview of our podcast pulse annual research study yesterday, and I'm so excited about it. I think it's gonna be, you know, as it's we're starting to put it together, it looks amazing. I think people are gonna be really excited about the insights. Again, it's not ACAS specific, it's about the industry. And so we'll have some new tidbits there, we'll have some announcements, we'll talk about the hire we're gonna announce. Mark Bowling will be in town, it's gonna be amazing. So I'm so psyched that it's in New York, and I think, you know, pulling it all together is really, you know, it's buzzing. It's really exciting for everybody. The IEB also has the creator front that week. There's a lot going on, so it's gonna be a fun week.

Sam Sethi 27:22

Matt, it just leaves me to say congratulations on your acquisition into ACALS. Thank you. And Greg is always great to see you. Catch up with you very soon. Take care, guys. Thanks, Sam. Thanks, Sam.

Announcer 27:32

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

YouTube links with Amazon

Sam Sethi 27:41

YouTube announced something I think is quite interesting. It's had YouTube for shopping creators for a while, the ability to link or affiliate link to product. But I think they've just done a deal with Amazon now, which I find interesting. Now in his 2026 letter earlier this year, Neil Mohan, the CEO of YouTube, said uh YouTube is focused on making its platform a premiere shopping destination. Now we've talked about in the past the Kelsey Brothers having a Kelsey Clubhouse on Amazon. I always thought if you're going to do a merch store capability, having Amazon as your I don't know, product catalogue and delivery is a really cool place. I mean, think of the marketplace and size of Prime. Now, YouTube integrating their shopping for creators with Amazon to me seems like a really smart move. What are your thoughts before I give you mine?

James Cridland 28:35

Yeah, I I think it's um I I think it's definitely a clever thing that YouTube are doing. It's uh eligible US creators only. And the difficulty with the Amazon affiliates deal is that uh Amazon might be a global organization, but their affiliates deal isn't. And so therefore, you if you sign up to the US affiliates deal, then that's all you can sell. And if you if somebody comes and buys something in Canada, well, tough, you're not gonna earn any money out of that, which is always a little bit of a strange one. But putting that bit aside, I think, yeah, you know, YouTube seems to be leaning in a fair amount now to earning revenue from lots of different ways. And this is clearly one of them, and I think it's going to be very interesting how how it all works.

Sam Sethi 29:20

Now, in the past, you've told me that you know advertising within podcasting, one of the ways of measuring the success is the attribution of product purchase, right? And I think actually adding a merch capability. One of the things that people love about podcasting is that they have a high, deep trust of the host that they listen to. Generally, that's the reason that people go back to them. And so product recommendation from those hosts, I think is a great way that the creators and hosts can make money. I know. If you, for example, said that my favourite mic is the Shaw MV7, blah, blah, blah, and this is the one I use, I guarantee if we had a merch store link, a number of people would buy it, just s purely based on your recommendation.

James Cridland 30:06

Yeah, I think that's certainly true. The question is, how much money do you earn from that sort of thing? And is that a good replacement to uh advertising, or is that just an addition to advertising? And I think from my point of view, I don't necessarily see the money in these deals. I think if you are an affiliate and you're talking about a wonderful Shure microphone, then in 10 weeks' time, when you're thinking about buying a new microphone and you just go to the Shure website and you buy a microphone, well that's fine. But I haven't earned any money out of that, even though it was me that got Shure on your shopping list, so to speak. So I think there's quite a lot of issues with it. But, you know, I mean again, there's no harm in having yet more ways of earning r revenue from some of the content that you make.

Sam Sethi 30:54

Well, I think this is uh akin for me to Apple's timed links. You know, Apple are adding affiliate links fundamentally to Apple product through the transcript. And I wonder whether we can extend what YouTube are doing to actually create an ability to have affiliate links within the transcript, within the chapters. Again, I just think it's another way possibly for podcasters to not rely on advertising as their sole means of monetization, but also to diversify it.

James Cridland 31:25

Yeah. No, I think it's interesting. And certainly, I mean, you know, the the uh the proof will be how much money you you can actually make out of this sort of thing. But I do think it's uh well worth doing, yeah.

Sam Sethi 31:37

So I started playing around, and uh one of the things that YouTube does is it sets the bar very, very high, I feel, for becoming a YouTube partner for this deal. So you have to have 3,000 qualified watch hours, you know, and again 4,000 qualified watch hours if you have 1,000 sub. So again, the the bar I feel is quite high. I don't know why. Maybe they just don't want too many tie kickers, they just want to set a level of quality. Don't know, but it feels very high. So I then went and played with the Amazon affiliate codes and the Amazon store, and it was quite quick actually for me to create a store straight away. I created one, uh I haven't put any product into it yet, but Amazon.co.uk forward slash shop forward slash Sam Steffi. And I can then link that if I want to into my podcast. Now I could put it in my show notes, I could put it anywhere I like. One of the things that me as CEO of TrueFans, very quickly, we've created a new tag that we're proposing to the podcasting 2.0 community. It's a call podcast storefront. That name can change, it could be merch, I don't really care, it could be shop. That'll be the community to decide. But what it does allow you to do within the RSS feed is have that URL and I've based it on the funding tag because I think that's a really simple tag. So you can actually then have a shopping cart icon on your page with links to whatever affiliate you want. It could be the Amazon store, it could be stick a mule, it could be Shopify, it could be anything else you want. I think we as the podcasting 2.0 community need to address this in some way and have some capability to add a similar feature.

James Cridland 33:19

Yeah, I mean if if there are lots of podcasters that want to do this, then yes, absolutely. I suppose the question is how much does it change from just having a link in your show notes to having a specific button? And I'm not quite sure what the answer to that is, but uh yeah, why not? Why not add one of these sorts of things? Yeah.

Sam Sethi 33:40

I only think the button makes it more prominent. That's all I mean it doesn't change it. Yeah, you're right. The show notes with a link. Got it. It was just the idea was it's just a little bit more front and centre, that's why I did it.

James Cridland 33:51

Yeah, yeah, no, indeed.

YouTube and AMP

Sam Sethi 33:53

Let's move on, James. YouTube. Now you've been talking about it. I was away, but you've been talking about the YouTube play. Uh, and Dan Granger last night posted on LinkedIn a response. I don't know if you saw this at all.

James Cridland 34:07

Yeah, yeah, it's a it was a good response, and he basically said, you know, YouTube's announcement felt a bit like a kick in the pants, to be honest, because it just came barely a month after the AMP Accords had been unveiled, and of course the AMP Accords were supposed to be making a standard measurement for podcasting, and then all of a sudden YouTube stands up and says, Well, you know, this view uh figure that we have, we're just gonna change it, and the change is just gonna be from the first frame, and so of course, you know, that was just a weird, um, a weird thing directly after the amper cords, which YouTube were involved with, and and so Dan was basically saying, Look, you know, that really hurt, the timing really hurt, but there is a silver lining, and the silver lining is basically this really shows that we need a standard metric, which I think is Dan most certainly manufacturing a silver lining out of um out of stuff that isn't necessarily silver. So, and he says, you know, YouTube's decision was the best advertisement for AMP I could have asked for. But I think certainly it it's a frustration. Dan Meisner from Bumper has discovered that the new YouTube play metric essentially has doubled the numbers that you see in YouTube. So, of course, the YouTube engaged play still exists, which is apparently, although it's not quite the same, but it apparently is nearly the same as the old play figure that we had, which most people say is something to do with 30 seconds, although YouTube has specifically said no it isn't. So, you know, who knows what's going on there? But you know, YouTube has essentially double all all of its numbers, that's exciting for them. And Dan is, I think, putting inflated word you're looking forward to inflated. Well, I mean, you know, and doubled.

Sam Sethi 36:00

So yeah, but falsely doubled is what I'm saying.

James Cridland 36:04

Yeah, and uh, I mean, particularly for us, it means that if your mouse hovers over the thumbnail in the you know, in YouTube main on the front page, and our podcast starts playing, well, that uh i is a view, apparently, even if you're not gonna hear any of it. I mean, uh, you know, it's bizarre, but clearly YouTube want more numbers, so you know, there we are.

Podcast Day Asia

Sam Sethi 36:29

Now, James, where are you in the world? Come on.

James Cridland 36:32

Well, I and you may hear quite a lot of background noise of of of cars and things like that. Earlier on, you would have heard a call to prayer, which seems to happen quite often, especially at four o'clock in the morning. Thanks, did you make it? Did you get there on time? So I am in Jakarta in Indonesia, which is very exciting. It is, my goodness, humid out there. But yes, it's I've been here for the last couple of days and will be here for a few more. Here for the Radio Days Asia, which is a both a radio conference but also a podcast conference here. I'm looking after the podcast day, and uh yeah, it should be a really good, a really good time. Give me some highlights, what's gonna happen? Well, yes, highlights indeed, because we're recording this slightly earlier than we would normally, but uh, I tell you what, I won't even give you some highlights. I will give you some some after the event highlights of what did actually happen, because I took my microphone around to learn a little bit more about what everybody was talking about.

SPEAKER_01 37:35

Hi, I'm Sarah Taproff. I work on growing your podcast audience if you give me money with Headliner.

James Cridland 37:42

Well, that's an excellent thing. Uh, you've been here at uh Podcast Day Asia and also Radio Days Asia. Uh, you've been here for the last couple of days. You've got a radio background as well as a podcast background. What did you think of the whole thing?

SPEAKER_01 37:54

I really like Radio Days. I think that it's one of the best international conferences. And I think it has a really strong way of bringing people together from different markets, from different languages, from completely different contexts and like radio podcasting creators of all types, you know, legacy media and really cross-pollinating ideas. Like I've heard it several times today where people have said, Oh, I want to try that in Indonesia in Indonesia, or oh, like that that would actually work really great in Japan. And that is that is why I love these types of events, and I love you know participating and helping organize and facilitate as much as they'll let me.

James Cridland 38:41

Yeah, and you and you organized much of the podcast day and you did an excellent job, and it was made very easy for me to just stand there and uh coast off the back of that. What what were the things that you saw which were sort of most interesting on on over the last couple of days in terms of the podcast side?

SPEAKER_01 38:59

I was really impressed by First Story, which is a a hosting platform that does hosting and monetization and also direct support, but they are localized to each kind of national market in terms of their user interface and also their where are they based? So they're they were founded in Taiwan, and so that's their biggest market, and then they're kind of translating that success to the Indonesian market now. And yeah, I think I think that you know being able to offer direct support from listeners via the Indonesian national QR code is not something that you that a different hosting provider, I'm not gonna name names, but you know them, is capable of doing, but it's actually essential here.

James Cridland 39:45

Yeah, it that that was really interesting. I took a picture, I sent it off to Sam because obviously, you know, w we've been talking about monetization for a long, long time. And uh realizing that not very many people here have a visa or a MasterCard, but obviously have access to, you know, some of the wallet apps that they have here, you know, I thought that that was a fascinating thing. I also was interested in the speakers from uh Japan that we've had really talking about the the importance of video and and everything that they've been doing there, and you know, and pointing out that the number one show in Japan carries no advertising, which I thought was really interesting.

SPEAKER_01 40:20

What is it? What's the show?

James Cridland 40:22

It is called Cotton Radio, C-O-T-E-N Radio, and it's a bit like the rest is history, but it's got 10,000 m members who all pay six dollars a month. And uh yeah, so uh you know, all of those sorts of monetization things I thought was really interesting. And he was he was also there talking about another podcast that he worked on, saying that clips and video clips are just as important now as the main show, and saying that the clips are the show. So I I saw I saw a bit of that which I thought was uh was uh really interesting. But yeah, it's it's a wonderful sort of mix of different markets in different states, I think, here, which I I always find really interesting. There was a guy from Vietnam as well in a beautiful jacket. Did you see him?

SPEAKER_01 41:10

The Kang show.

James Cridland 41:11

Yeah. Yeah. And he stood at the end and he said, you know, Vietnam, we're we're very behind in terms of podcasting. We're just we're just getting into it. You you you have the best opportunity because you know what didn't work and what did work, which I thought we which I thought was really interesting. Uh Sarah, where next for you? Where are you are you coming to podcast movement or anything like that?

SPEAKER_01 41:31

This is the close of my very long conference season, actually. So I'm gonna hang out on an island for a little bit, and then it's almost right back to work to start Radio Days Europe press.

James Cridland 41:45

Wow, okay. Gosh, gosh. Well, I'm gonna hang out on an island in two weeks' time, Manhattan Island. Hey!

SPEAKER_01 41:50

Amazing.

James Cridland 41:51

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 41:52

Um, but uh really, really good to see you.

SPEAKER_01 41:54

You too, James. Thank you.

SPEAKER_04 41:55

Hello, hi, my name is Guangjin, and I run OneNot Media. We specialize at taking narrative audio audio dramas into video.

James Cridland 42:02

Now, is this your per your first radio days and podcast days, Asia?

SPEAKER_04 42:06

Oh no, it's actually I think my second or third.

SPEAKER_05 42:09

Yeah, and you're all based in Singapore. Yes. What were you talking about? Wait, what oh, what's my topic?

SPEAKER_04 42:15

Yeah, what were you talking about here? Okay, okay, yeah. My topic here was actually to share the global trend of podcasting and whether or not it applies for Asia. Should I share more?

SPEAKER_05 42:26

Yeah, I mean, does it apply to Asia? So, good question.

SPEAKER_04 42:31

Good question that you ask. Thank you. When it comes to dubbing, actually subs seem like the better path.

James Cridland 42:37

Subtitles, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 42:38

Yeah, subtitles. Subtitles for Asia seems like a better path. AI is actually very interesting. I think in the rest of the world we are seeing more apprehension. I think Asians tend to be viewing AI less of a devious entity, and as long as we're respectful towards our audience, it seems like adoption is fairly positive.

James Cridland 42:57

Yeah, no, I saw that, and I I I've seen both you showing data around that, but also a number of other people as well. So it's gonna be an interesting time in the next couple of years where lots of AI in this part of the world, not too much AI in the US or or Europe, perhaps.

SPEAKER_04 43:13

Yeah, that's so true. But that's what we know now, right? We are sure maybe two to three years' time when safeguards are better, or maybe the perceptions change, we might start to see a change in attitude.

James Cridland 43:26

Yeah, no, indeed. Anything else that you've uh seen over here in the last couple of days that uh you know we've we've obviously spoken about what you said, but uh who else have you seen? I think James Cridlin looks good in a suit.

SPEAKER_04 43:39

Okay, okay, okay, okay. What else is in particular really, really interesting? I think so many.

James Cridland 43:46

What do you think of the guy? In that country, which of course is a very visual country. We saw somebody from Super Long Form, yeah. We also saw Roman. So he was talking about the clip is the show. And basically, you know, yes, there's a one-on-one show, but he's actually making tons of clips from it, which I thought was a really interesting thing.

SPEAKER_05 44:15

And then Rom was talking about TikTok's long form punks, which I looked up ten minutes long. Ten minutes. It's quite crazy, really.

SPEAKER_04 44:22

Ten minutes is the long form. But yum, yum yum. I think it's it's true for us, actually. We'll still create our own TikToks as well. And I think organic traffic, come to think of it, is actually quite strong by the TikTok.

SPEAKER_05 44:35

It's really good to see you again.

James Cridland 44:36

We'll be seeing you at Podcast Movement.

SPEAKER_04 44:39

Yeah, in one and a half weeks' time, we'll I'll see you on the 19 hour flight after in New York City.

SPEAKER_05 44:46

Let's begin. I will see you on the 20-hour flight from uh from Auckland, New Zealand. Really good to see you, Grinchy.

James Cridland 44:53

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good to see you. And if you want to learn more about Radio Days, both Radio Days Asia and Radio Days North America and Radio Days Europe, then go and search for the Radio Days Europe podcast. It's called RD, and it is out now wherever you get your podcast. The first guest is me. So that's exciting.

Sam Sethi 45:12

Excellent.

One-click solution from Buzzsprout

Sam Sethi 45:13

Now, our sponsors, Bozsproud, have been busy. They've got a new one-click submission for podcasts. What have they done?

James Cridland 45:21

Yeah, this is really interesting. So they have discovered that over 70% of active podcasts aren't in the directories that they could be. Because quite a lot of people have set up a few directories. They didn't bother setting up all of them because it's quite quite a big hassle. And so actually, they're not in as many places as they probably could be. And so what BuzzSprout have done very recently is redesigned its directory submissions process to add your podcast to 16 directories in just one click. You press one button, it goes and it adds it to 16, which is very cool. It's been there for the last two weeks, and the company says that more than 5,200 BuzzSprout podcasts have added at least one directory where they weren't listed before. So that can only be good news for all of the podcasters there. But I thought that was that was really interesting. There was a long debate in the podcasting 2.0 show last week with Adam Curry getting very upset about the lack of education that was going on in podcasting and how podcast hosting companies should be educating people how RSS works and all of that kind of stuff. I think this kind of proves the opposite, really. It proves that actually it's a d deeply complicated thing to actually get into a bunch of these podcast directories. And if you can simplify it with just one click, then yes, it's not really the whole ethos of OpenRSS, and you know what your OpenRSS feed is, and you plug it into you know X and Y and Z. It's not really the ethos, but my goodness, it it certainly helps. So I thought that that was that that was very interesting. By the way, Adam said that he didn't mind OpenRSS. Yeah, there you go. Didn't mind that.

Sam Sethi 47:14

The phrase that pays. Yeah. Now I will give you the good, the bad, and the ugly of what this has done. The good is for true fans, we've seen a lot more podcasts being registered. Fantastic. Thank you, Buff Sprout. The bad is the uneducated.

SPEAKER_08 47:32

Why am I in your directory? I don't know. I never put you here, blah, blah, blah.

Sam Sethi 47:37

So lots of support calls to do with that. Followed by, do you understand what RSS is and how it works?

SPEAKER_08 47:44

No, I do not. And I don't care. I don't want to be.

Sam Sethi 47:47

Right. So I think there is an education part still. I think the work that we do with the uh podcasting 2.0 metadata, the namespace, is critical to the future of podcasting. And I think I go back to my point. I think we seem to deprecate the conversation around RSS too often. And that means that when you say, oh, look, we've put chapters or transcripts or other metadata tags, people don't know where they are and how they get delivered. So I think RSS within the conversation of podcasting in its entirety needs to be front and centre. And I think Adam's right. Education, education, education.

James Cridland 48:28

Yeah, yeah. That's really interesting hearing that because uh yes, I I get those sorts of things every so often. Occasionally I get legal threats, uh, actual legal people, lawyers uh sending me long, complicated things, and and it's uh do you not understand how RSS works? It's it's just that's fundamentally it. And that is fundamentally it, you know, you're absolutely right. So uh yeah, there's a there's a an an interesting side of it that I hadn't thought about. But yeah, so very cool. Um you can give that a go now on the Buzzsprout dashboard. I do also notice that RSS.com quite recently, I'm an advisor to them, and they also added a new sort of dashboard when you log in. And again, it sits there and it says, Oh, hang on a minute, you're not in the iHeart Podcast directory, and you should be. And so I suspect that that's going to be happening for quite a few podcast hosting companies as we move forward.

Sam Sethi 49:24

I think one of the expressions that I've been using is upload once, distribute everywhere. Not my expression, not unique, but I like it. And one of the things that I've been thinking about and looking at is how we can also uh do clips from podcasts and distribute to social media everywhere. Um again, removing that task. Uh we'll talk about it a little bit later when we talk about headliner and we talk about vertical clips. But I think in the essence, I think hosts can also look at taking AI and grabbing the best part of the podcast, presenting that back to the creator and saying, This is a clip you might want to consider, yeah. And then providing the social media endpoint. So not just the podcast directories, but integrate so give me my threads account, give me my X account, give me my LinkedIn if I want, right? And let me choose in the same way I choose directories, let me choose social media and auto-post. So I think for me, that's the next stage of where I'd like to see podcast hosts go, not just the full audio video, but also the clipping as well.

James Cridland 50:38

Yeah, yeah. No, indeed. It's uh I I I do find it all all really fascinating, you know, in terms of that. And it's and it's definitely a thing that uh yeah, we just need to keep uh keep an eye out on.

Round the world

James Cridland 50:50

Well, let's go around the world. Australia is the first place that we should probably go to. A couple of very interesting things happening in in Australia. Firstly, audio internet advertising growing, of course, as you would expect, 6.6% in the financial year of 2026. Financial years in Australia end at the end of June, just to confuse you. But the market grew to 353 million Australian dollars, which is about a quarter of a billion US dollars. Podcast advertising, much smaller though. There's a lot of money in streaming ads in radio stations, rather a lot less in podcast advertising, so it's only 30 million US for the quarter, but that's up, you know, 13% year on year. So that's good news from Australia, but also some really interesting news from Australia. There's a company here called SCA, Southern Cross Astereo used to be known as. It's the largest commercial radio company in Australia. For a long time, they used OmniStudio as their podcast hosting company. In fact, they used to own shares in OmniStudio when it was first starting. And they have just announced that they have switched. They have partnered with Flightcast to power its podcasting distribution, including video. It is probably Flightcast's biggest customer, apart from Stephen Barclay himself, of course. So more than 150 shows are going to move on to Flightcast. You know, Rox Codes, who we've spoken to on the past in this show, has done some fantastic work. And really interesting to see all of a sudden large companies moving everything that they've got over onto Flightcast, partially because of the uh video, of course, but also I suspect partially because listener really want a bit more, a bit more movement, a bit more uh innovation in their podcast hosting platform. Rocks is very quick at coding stuff, whereas arguably Omni Studio, the pace of change there, because it's so much more of a big company, has rather slowed down. So certainly I was talking to somebody this the this morning over over breakfast about this, and you can see how excited SEA might be because they can move nice and fast again. So some really interesting things going on uh here in Australia. So let's move on to uh the US and Triton and RCS have announced well, this is interesting, this is a most definitely tail wagging dog here. They've announced programmatic audio advertising, just like we've got in podcasting for broadcast radio. So broadcasters will be able to monetize traditional radio advertising with the same automatic workflows used in podcasting. So basically, you're on the radio, you press the button, and the systems automatically work out what ads it should uh end up playing out. One of the things that wasn't in the in the press release was, of course, that Triton and RCS are both owned by iHeart, and iHeart run 860 radio stations across the US. And I think you can probably see from this why you know you might wish to move away from Triton if if you wanted a little bit more innovation, because very clearly iHeart Media, they've got 860 radio stations, it's gonna be whatever they want on this platform. And you know, if you're a smaller radio company with only you know 30, then uh probably these companies aren't going to listen too much to the feature requests that you have. But some fascinating moves there from Troyton and RCS.

Sam Sethi 54:27

Okay,

People news: Audacy closes Creator Lab

Sam Sethi 54:28

James, let's move on then. People and jobs, who's moving and grooving? Who's getting fired?

James Cridland 54:33

Well, yes, and it really is a case of who's getting fired because Odyssey is closing its podcast hosting and monetization service, Odyssey Creator Lab. They'll be closing that on November the 1st. So you've got a couple of months to get your podcasts off there if you're hosting, but you're probably not hosting because so much as so far as I can work out, there are only 426 shows on Odyssey Creator Lab in terms of actually hosting. So there's not an awful lot of shows that need to be moved there. You could also take part in Creator Lab if you were hosted somewhere else as well. But yeah, that that was really interesting. They launched it in a big, exciting thing at Podcast Movement Evolutions in April in 2025. And uh yeah, and it's sort of, you know, here we are, 18 months later, and uh it's basically gone away. Unless you have a look at the website, in which case the website doesn't say that it's going away, so which is a bit of a bit of an overlook, but I'm sure that they will fix that. But yeah, so as we see more podcast hosting companies appear, it it is fascinating to see that this one is just going away.

Sam Sethi 55:40

Yeah, go back to that ROX code story of Flightcast and and Triton. It looks like the older, let's say, legacy hosting companies, if they're not nimble, are going to get removed and the new ones are gonna replace them.

James Cridland 55:53

Yes, yes. No, indeed. Indeed.

Events

James Cridland 55:55

And a couple of events to talk about. Of course, podcast movement uh in New York City. There's a few new keynotes which have been announced. Tom Webster giving a preview of the podcast landscape 2026. Tink Media's Lauren Passell and Ariel Nissenblatt are explaining WTF is a podcast in 2026, which is inaccurate because Mark Marin has stopped doing that podcast. See what I did there? Tickets are available on the podcast movement website, which is very cool. They're also doing something quite nice in Times Square. I'm not quite sure how they've managed this, but sponsors and attendees will get their logo on a billboard in Times Square. What's the betting? It's the Amazon Music Billboard, which is the big one down there. But uh, yes, so if you are going to Podcast Movement, make sure that you upload your logo through the swap card app. And you never know, you might see your logo in Times Square. This the logo for this very podcast might be up in Times Square. Will I be there to take a photograph of it? Probably not. But it would be nice, wouldn't it? But it would be but it would be nice. So yeah, so that's so that's going on to Ariel Nissenblatt also doing a podcast walking tour on the Wednesday, which I would have liked to have gone to, but I can't go to because I'm going to the IB up fronts as well. Rather sadly, alongside Podcast Movement this year, there is another event going on in a place called Woods Hole in Massachusetts. I I've never heard of Woods Hole. Have you heard of Woods Hole, Sam?

Sam Sethi 57:28

No, I've heard of Woods Stock, but not Woods Hole.

James Cridland 57:31

Yes. Well, this is where an event called Transom25 is taking place at the same time as Podcast Movement. That is a scheduling snafu, isn't it? It's um all about uh audio storytelling uh run by Transom. They've sold out of all access festival passes, so you can't go even if you wanted to. Ira Glass is speaking there and various other people. So, yeah, so but what a strange thing to put that up against podcast movement. Maybe it was just purely that they'd already sorted out their dates, and maybe it's actually podcast movement that's up against this thing. But uh, yeah, so that's all going on. And the London Podcast Festival taking place from today until the 13th of September. Ticket starting at 11 quid, if you want to go and see some things. It's in King's Place, just up the road from King's Cross, if you want to go and see some uh podcasts getting

The Tech Stuff

James Cridland 58:23

recorded.

Announcer 58:23

The tech stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland 58:28

Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday in the Pod News newsletter. Here's where Sam talks technology. What have you got for us, Sam?

Sam Sethi 58:35

Well, congratulations to Pocketcast. I'm looking forward to interviewing Ellie Rubenstein, the the head of Pocket Cast. She's over with you, James, in New York, but after she comes back, she's on the show. They're they're pushing stuff out. So they've now put Pocketcast onto the Apple TV and Justin Jackson. I keep wanting to say Justin Timberlake. Justin Jackson. Uh I'm sure you've been right now. Every time I hear the word Justin, I go Jackson. No, Timberlake. Timberlake. Um video podcasts finally get a screen worth watching them on. Browse discover from the big screen when you're after something new. So um I haven't got an Apple TV at the moment. I'm waiting for the new one to come out, but I assume it works on the existing Apple TV as well. So yeah, if you've got it, try it, download the Pocket Cast app and see what it looks like.

James Cridland 59:26

Yes, indeed. And of course, any day now, you'll get Apple Podcasts in video as well on your Apple TV that is coming out with the new TV OS release, which I think is likely to happen next week, if not the week after. We've just had another beta, so but it's uh very, very close now, apparently. So, and that means that you get video on macOS desktop and you also get video on Apple TV as well, which is uh a smart thing.

Sam Sethi 59:57

And today, as we record, which is the first of September, Tim Cook has stepped down as the CEO of Apple. He remains executive chairman, but uh yeah, well, yes, CEO at Apple.

James Cridland 1:00:09

Indeed, and not just that, but Phil Schiller has also taken the the decision to step back from a few things. He steps back from organizing the big events, and he's also stepped back from running the Apple App Store, which is interesting timing. So that's gonna be that's gonna be fascinating. What with all of the EU stuff going on about the about the app store, and then of course, Tim Cook's last day as well. Yeah, it's gonna it's uh it's an interesting to see what happens with Phil Schiller and whether that means changes for the Apple App Store.

Sam Sethi 1:00:47

Now, sticking with Apple slightly, Neil Murdy, friend of the show, the CEO of Headliner, said on LinkedIn, I don't often post. I'm finally coming up for air from a busy summer, long overdue for a shout-out to the team at Headliner. We've managed to build product partnerships with all the giants in podcasting, clips with Spotify, then automation with YouTube, and now video and audio templates with Apple. And yeah, I thought, wow, that sounds interesting. It is actually on the Apple.com domain. It's podcasters.apple.com if you want to check it out. Very cool, Neil. I haven't played with the clipping yet, it only came out yesterday for me. But what do you think, James?

James Cridland 1:01:26

Yeah, I I think this has been out for a I think this has been out for a couple of months actually, but through Apple podcasts. But I mean, a brilliant thing. And you know, anything like that to help podcasts get out there is really is really useful. Clips, you know, obviously are an incredibly useful thing just to help people find a particular show. So yeah, I think it's uh I think it's really good.

Sam Sethi 1:01:49

Yeah, I think as we've talked about earlier, I think, you know, upload once, distribute everywhere. I think clips are going to be extremely important. I know that we've got Hubhopper on in a couple of weeks' time as well, who've integrated with Headliner and done some very clever things with clips. I think we're gonna see a lot more in the latter part of 26, early 27, where clipping strategies. I mean, you're doing something you talked about for Pod News Daily as well with a clipping strategy, didn't you?

James Cridland 1:02:19

Yeah, I mean, so occasionally if we've got a a big, big story, then I'm now doing a little bit of video of just me talking to camera, saying, Oh, here's a here's an interesting story that you should go and have a listen to. That I think is for Pod News Daily much more interesting than just, you know, me sitting reading a script for four minutes. I can't really see how that's going to make that particular product better. Whereas a clip which is, you know, 40 seconds long, which appears in LinkedIn or in Facebook, that basically says, hey, there's an important news story t today, I think that's probably an in an important thing. So yeah, playing around with that sort of thing. And also, you know, obviously playing around with, you know, video for this particular show as well, because of course, you know, we get video now on all three platforms through the Buzzsprout dashboard. So that's quite helpful. So just sort of playing around with that and seeing and basically seeing what happens, yeah.

Sam Sethi 1:03:19

Now, Steven Goldstein, the CEO of Amplify Media, wrote a post a couple of weeks back, 4th of August. And I I I read it because it was an interview with Hernande Lopez, but I really couldn't see how we would bring it into this show as a conversation. But I've gone back to it. It's called Is Podcasting Ready for Vertical Video? Now, uh I have been working with Claire Waite Brown, head of podcasting here at TrueFans, about how we can integrate this because both Riverside and D script allow you to export vertical video. And vertical video, I think, is a really interesting format. It's the way that we hold the phone. So we're doing video today, and side by side, two heads talking has generally been the way of podcast video. But actually, I think we're gonna see the orientation to be one above the other, this vertical video format. And Hanan Lopez just did a vertical media summit, and he's saying that there's a massive market. For example, Reels is on pace to become a 50 billion a year business. Instagram is doing, you know, lots and lots of content this way. YouTube reported 200 billion daily shorts. He's very excited, Hanan, is about this vertical format, and he says it's not just clipping a video from your desktop or from another format into a vertical, it is actually producing it in this format from the beginning.

James Cridland 1:04:48

Yeah, I I suspect if you were to have a look at the podcast alternate enclosure tag, I would suspect that there is a way of adding vertical video into that as well if you wanted to. And that to me makes quite a lot of sense. I think if you're watching Sky News in the UK on the Sky News app, then Sky News itself is automatically made into vertical video for you, which is very clever, the way that it the way that it it all works. When they've got, you know, two people on camera, then on the TV they're next to each other, and on the mobile phone that they're they're on top of one another. But it just works flawlessly because the software is built to do that sort of thing. And and so I suspect that you can probably do that automatically with quite a lot of video editors, and maybe that's the right way of doing it to produce a video, a vertical video as well as a horizontal one.

Sam Sethi 1:05:46

I'm I'm certainly experimenting with this. I think there's something in here for the way that content is delivered, and I think we should as podcasting start to look at this format as well.

James Cridland 1:05:57

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sam Sethi 1:05:58

Now, Substat, we talked about that. Talk about them from time to time. They've got a Substack Collaborator tool. It's called Creator Match, alongside a number of other new hosting tools that they're releasing. The matching feature connects creators with others who share their interests. Do you think this is a useful feature, James?

James Cridland 1:06:18

Yeah, I think it is. I mean, it's very similar to guesting on a podcast. It's very similar to, you know, all of that sort of thing that we've been doing in podcasting for quite some time, sharing individual shows and feed drops and all of that sort of thing. So great to see Substack but basically offering the same sort of thing, helping you find people who write stuff which is adjacent to yours and seeing if they can, you know, grow their, grow their platform a little bit more. Of course, you know, that that's a very, a very proprietary thing for Substack to do, and you need scale in order for that to work. But it's uh quite a nice plan, I think.

Sam Sethi 1:06:58

Now, uh, friend of the show, Frank Rassiope, has a good newsletter called Earworthy. And this week the guest was Angela Hollowell. She writes and has a podcast called Honey and Hustle. And I thought I'd read it. It was a long post, but what I found really interesting was creators don't just need a paywall anymore, they need distribution, they need retention, they need relationship infrastructure. She was talking about why she thinks Substack is eating people's lunch and why she thinks Patreon is not going to be the platform of choice. I think she's saying that the secret source of Substack is email and the way that it does it. It's worth a read. So if you've got time, check it out. It's on Earworthy, and I yeah highly recommend reading it. Now, James, you posted something on Mastodon that I found funny. Uh it was about creepy crawlers, and and I just thought the term creepy crawlers was a lovely way of looking at how AI is stealing our content. What was this one about?

James Cridland 1:08:01

Yeah, this is a fascinating uh thing. It's basically somebody that runs a website which is a website a bit like GitHub, and he is just getting so much AI tools, just going onto that website and scraping it and doing just just using up so much resources. And he calls them creepy crawlers or he calls them locusts, which I think is a very good phrase uh for them. But one of the things that he he has pointed out is that right now there are AI crawlers not just operating on you know the bad people's machines, but also operating on maybe even your television. You know, somebody has installed a backdoor into a bunch of uh TV apps and stuff like that, and while your TV streamer box isn't being used, well it sits there and is being used by an AI, you know, bot network and grabbing stuff from lots of different uh places. Really, really interesting. And I mean, just the amount of random AI-related stuff that all website owners are having to deal with at the moment is absolutely fascinating. I got an email only yesterday, Sam, telling me that I was paying another seven dollars for yesterday's hosting because basically one AI crawler had helped himself or herself to a hundred and something like a hundred and twenty five million images from my website. And I'm just like there going, Why why are all of these you know tools just just basically helping themselves to as much stuff as they possibly can? Of course, we know the answer, but yeah, really, really interesting. And the cost for all of this is a real cost to all of us, so yeah.

Sam Sethi 1:09:56

Yeah, we we we have got to fix this. I mean, we're seeing it in our in our analytics how much bots are scraping. It's ridiculous, it really is.

James Cridland 1:10:07

Yeah, yeah.

Sam Sethi 1:10:08

Now, lastly, two stories that I don't even know what they mean, James. So I'm just gonna read the thing and just turn to you. Podscribe has added a modelled attribution for YouTube shows without accompanying RSS feeds, the service blends observed attribution from an audio campaign with video consumption data. I read that sentence and went, wow, I have no idea what it means.

James Cridland 1:10:31

So if you have a podcast and it's also available on YouTube as this show is, then although an attribution service like Podscribe, it can't really see into YouTube, but it can see a bit, and so it can kind of understand, okay, we know that you've got an ad here. We know that you know, X amount of people visited, so we can work out that given your YouTube stats, another X amount will visit through YouTube. So it can basically make stuff up to work out what the total estimate of you know of people using that advert is. Because Podscribe can do that for a podcast that exists, what Podscribe has now worked out is a way of just as long as it knows what the ad says and how the ad works, then it can probably work out, it can probably estimate the amount of extra visits you're getting from that YouTube link. So it's uh a lot of very careful estimates based on the consumption data that it has to basically work out whether or not your advertising is working or not, which is quite useful. So yeah, it's but you know, all of these things that we need to, you know, hoops that we need to jump through just to get some numbers is always fascinating.

Sam Sethi 1:11:51

Okay, this second story, again, I get the first part of it, the second part, no idea what you're talking about. So a TuneX is a new iOS podcast player that lets you follow people. Great. True fans has done that since day one and so have many other acts. So well done. Not just shows. Welcome to the party. The tool promises interviews, yes, I think most do. Not just passing mentions, I'm not sure what that means. And you can read transcripts as well as listen. Well, I listen to the transcript, it's called the audio podcast. Now, one intriguing feature same name, stranger, stay off. Appearances are weighted against who the person is rather than just a matching name. Dave Jones Rejoice. What I didn't get the second part of that, no idea.

James Cridland 1:12:34

Right. So, and the reason why I put Dave Jones in there is that Dave Jones is quite a well-known name, and there are lots of people called Dave Jones, and it just so happens that there's the Dave Jones that we all know from Podcast Index and everything else, and then there is a different Dave Jones who does a fair amount of podcast hosting, and he's a financial expert somewhere in America, somewhere. And so, what this tool apparently will work out is if you have chosen to follow Dave Jones from Podcast Index, then it looks at what this Dave Jones is talking about, looks at what the other Dave Jones is talking about, and goes, Oh, well, this clearly is not the Dave Jones that that Sam wants to follow. It's a different Dave Jones. So even though they share the same name, we know that he's talking about something completely different, and so therefore it's not it's not the right thing. Which I thought was quite clever. I thought was quite a clever thing, gets over the fact that there are lots of people with the same name and would hopefully fix a little bit of that if you just want to follow the Dave Jones from Podcast Index, or indeed the Dave Jones, the financial expert, then you can probably do that with a little bit more accuracy. So I thought I I thought it was pretty good.

Sam Sethi 1:13:50

Okay, I get it now. Okay, thanks. Hurrah! Hurrah. Yes, yes. Uh don't say slow.

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James Cridland 1:14:06

Yeah, so many different ways to get in touch with us. Voicemail by using the link in our show notes or email too. We're recording very early this week for complicated timing reasons because I've got a couple of busy, busy days coming up. So no fan mail uh this week. But thank you. If you do want to send us some uh fan mail, then weekly.podnews.net is actually not a place where you'll find a fan mail button, rather annoyingly, but you will find one in our show notes. So that's probably where you want to go. You can also become a power supporter in there, and that's also a good thing. You can join the super secret WhatsApp group and all kinds of things. So pop along there today, and we would really appreciate

Sam and James's week

James Cridland 1:14:44

it. So, what's happened for you this week, Sam?

Sam Sethi 1:14:46

Well, I remember an eagle-eyed journalist named James Cridlin pointed out that my company, TrueFans Technology, was going to be dissolved, and I was like, Yes, you've spotted it, James. Uh so TrueFans Technology, which was the limited company name, I set in motion three months ago to be dissolved, and there was a reason behind it. It's now called TrueFans FM Limited, but I also wanted to change the SIC code, and that is um Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

James Cridland 1:15:16

What's the SIC code?

Sam Sethi 1:15:18

So the SIC code is a standard industrial classification which the UK government uses to define businesses. There's oh, I don't know how many, hundreds of them. Right. Formerly, we had a really awful one. It was something to do with, I don't know, technologies and audio, and it's very abstract to what we were doing. Now, in May, Audio UK worked with the UK government to come up with two new classifications that companies can use. One was 59212, which said podcasting and other sound recording activities. It covers production of audio podcasts and mastering of recording. So lots of podcast production companies like MessageHead, you know, for example, or uh Persifhonica would use that now as their SIC code. And we've chosen 59222, which is the podcast and other audio publishing activities covering publishing and audio-led business models, which seems much more akin to what TrueFans is doing. So, yes. So the company is now called TrueFans FM Limited, and we have the SIC code of 5952999, which I think is much more appropriate. So there you go.

James Cridland 1:16:28

Yes, very nice. Gosh, there's a thing.

Sam Sethi 1:16:31

Took a bit of time to do. One of the downsides is, of course, that Google then said, Well, this is no longer TrueFans Technologies, and they closed my account on my Google Play console, which I wasn't expecting. So I am now putting that back today, and so yes, the Google app on will be available for TrueFans later today. But gosh, uh the fun and games you sometimes get unintended consequences, as I say. I'm very excited. The Apple say they're unveiling the iPhone 18 Pro Max and Ultra on September the 9th. Uh, just in time for my birthday. So thank you very much.

James Cridland 1:17:10

Ah, well, there you go. And is the iPhone Ultra, is that the one that we think is going to be a folding phone finally?

Sam Sethi 1:17:16

Yeah.

James Cridland 1:17:16

Yeah.

Sam Sethi 1:17:17

I haven't seen the price yet, so who knows? I might not be getting it.

James Cridland 1:17:20

Oh, well, yeah, it'll be, it'll be, yeah, it'll be thousands and thousands, I would have thought. Yes.

Sam Sethi 1:17:25

The question is, is it over two and a half? Because that might be my uh budget. If it goes into the three something, I might have a trouble asking the wife for that one. So yeah.

James Cridland 1:17:35

Yes.

Sam Sethi 1:17:39

Well, it's my birthday present. Oh, well, yes, I suppose so. Yes. Can you just get me a birthday present for three grand? Doesn't really sound good.

James Cridland 1:17:48

Nice.

Sam Sethi 1:17:49

And today, as we record, is my daughter's 22nd birthday. So happy birthday to Ella. And um, we're off to dinner in Harrods tonight.

James Cridland 1:17:57

Oh, very nice. Gosh, I didn't even realise that Harrods did dinner, but I suppose it does.

Sam Sethi 1:18:03

Yes, uh we get a discount because my daughter works at Harrods, she's one of the marketing people there in the Fashion and Beauty. So we go, so we're all gonna have a family gathering up there, and then she's gonna use her staff discount.

James Cridland 1:18:17

Well, there you go. Well, there you go. Indeed.

Sam Sethi 1:18:19

So, James, what's happening for you?

James Cridland 1:18:21

So, uh what I normally do when I come to anywhere new is I uh take a radio because I am that boring. And so I took a radio and I was flicking around. If you're a radio futurologist, you can't be seen without that. I mean, you know, I kind of have to. So I took a radio and I was flicking around on the radio, and I found a radio station called called Paddle Corner FM.

Sam Sethi 1:18:42

Nice.

James Cridland 1:18:43

And it's a radio station which is specifically run by a paddle court, and that paddle court has a number of different paddle uh fields, courts, whatever. It's also got a sauna and it's got a place for food, and uh I happen to know all of this because the only advert that you hear on this FM radio station is is that basically telling you all about paddle court. So I I noticed that, so uh frankly, you should be here in Jakarta because you could, you know, do all of your paddle excitement. And then I noticed as I was out for a walk earlier on today that there is one of the apartments that you can that you can rent just down the the road from here comes with its own paddle court. Wow so yeah, so it seemingly Indonesia has gone paddle crazy. So so there's a thing. But it's been uh it's been a fun, it's been a fun week. I mean, it is so hot and humid here, it's ridiculous. And Indonesia is the infrastructure here, isn't quite as you would expect. So there's quite a lot of you know, walking down the pavement, for example, or the sidewalk if you're in America, walking down uh that is not an easy experience because you are literally there. You're trying to work out whether you're gonna get run over by the motorbikes, which are also on the sidewalk with you, whether you're gonna fall into a hole because there's just just like basically sewers underneath and great big holes if you're not careful and you'll just fall straight into the sewer, all kinds of stuff going on. So it's it's it's a yeah, you really need your your wits around you. But yeah, but I've enjoyed it, I've enjoyed it uh so far. I'm hoping to get a little bit of free time on Friday. So and I plan to go up to the old town and see a little bit of that. But yeah, but it's uh an interesting place to be.

Sam Sethi 1:20:36

No game of paddle for you then?

James Cridland 1:20:38

No game of paddle for me, my goodness, no. Uh the the the humidity outside is just ridiculous, and it's in just incredibly hot as well. So yeah, so no, but it's been good. So yes.

Sam Sethi 1:20:52

They they there was a report in the UK newspaper this week that paddle is the new Tinder. Oh. This woman is running paddle singles nights now. So um, literally, you know, all single people go down to the paddle courts and then they play multiple games, and it's a way to break the ice rather than sit there with a pint or a glass of vino trying to uh talk to somebody. You go and play paddle instead now. That's the new way.

James Cridland 1:21:17

Well, there you go. Yeah. Thankfully, I I will not need to do any of that. Nor I, as my wife pointed out to me very clearly. Yes, no, exactly. And that's it for this week. Uh, all of our podcast stories, of course, taken from the Pod News Daily Newsletter at podnews.net.

Sam Sethi 1:21:34

Uh 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, which we thank them very much for.

James Cridland 1:21:45

Yes, we do. Our music is from TM Studios. Our voiceover is Sheila D. Our audio this week is being recorded using a super secret thing that we can't talk about. We edit with Hindenburg, and we're hosted and sponsored by Buzz Sprout. Start podcasting, keep podcasting.

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