Announcer 0:26

With James Kribl and Sam Sethy. This is the Pub News Weekly Review with Buspread. Start Podcasting, Keep Podcasting.

Interview: Everywhere

Sam Sethi 0:38

James, this week I think the show's all about people, people, people. Let's start off with a new company. It's called Everywhere, and it's from a friend of the show, Andrew Goldsmith, who formerly was obviously at Adelicious and then Audio Boom. It's a new company he started with, a guy called Mike Wooler and Craig Eastwood. We have all three of them. And I started off by asking Andrew, what is everywhere?

SPEAKER_04 1:06

This is something that obviously Mike, Craig, and I have come together to launch. It's something that's been at the back of all of our minds for quite some time, actually. This is not a reaction necessarily, but a decision to really step into the changes that we've seen happening around us for the last not just months, but last couple of years, maybe three years, where we've all got backgrounds most recently in the world of podcasting. Myself and Craig at Adolicious, and then most recently after the acquisition by Audio Boom and Mike, BBC, Inter Global and ACast and DG. What we've seen is that the world of podcasting sits as part of a bigger ecosystem, the creator economy, if you will. And we're discussing this for quite some time. Some of the frustrations and gaps that we see with both the creator trying to monetize their content across multiple platforms, because that's what's been happening. And obviously, you've got the brands that are trying to make the most of accessing that audience. And you know, timing came together for the three of us. It seems like a really good time. I'm not saying it was perfectly planned, Sam, by any stretch, but the timing's really good because debate rages as to what's happening in the creator economy, what is a creator, and how the brands really maximize the opportunity that sits with these people. Podcasters from our world have been creating content that sits beyond what we would all consider to be a traditional podcast for quite some time. Audio to video into just social live events, etc. And the frustration that we can see sitting in the middle is that you've got multiple people involved in that ecosystem. You've probably got multiple monetization partners, and you've got media planners and buyers that are probably having to go to different partners to kind of create a seamless campaign or still buying in a channel. And we're here to try and fix that.

Sam Sethi 2:54

Cool. So you mentioned two other people, let's bring them on. Mike Wooler, Craig. So hi guys. Mike, everywhere really is addressing the fact that podcasting has grown out of just a pure audio medium into, as Andy said, a cross-platform medium. What do you see as your role then within everywhere?

SPEAKER_03 3:15

As Andy alluded to, I've worked across content in various guises, purely editorial when I was at the BBC, making content, ACAS and Global, working with hundreds of creators, making podcasts, but also video content, social content, and more recently DMG, which is a big legacy of publisher, which is working out how do we monetize and commercialize content across multiple platforms. My role within everywhere is focusing on creators, working closely with the creators that we bring in, the ones that we want to bring in, and making sure they're happy on the voice of the creators for the business, I suppose, is probably the simplest way to put it. You know, we've come together as a trio because we all bring something unique to the business that none of us could have done this on our own without with the other two, essentially. So I think we're a really well-matched team for the mission we've come up with in the planning of the launch of this business. Yeah. They're a great bunch as well, I will say.

SPEAKER_01 4:05

Craig, what's your role within this then? So my role is a mix for everything. I'd say leading on the operations side. I also have a lot of experience in the US market. So we'll be leading our US sales. And my past pre-adolitis was head of planning at Radio Work, so the media buying side. So I know how campaigns are structured or what the agencies are looking for. And that will be my input here.

Sam Sethi 4:32

You've just kicked this off. You've been planning it over the summer. Have you got your first creators? Have you got your first campaigns? Are we going to hear some announcements shortly? Where are you within the cycle?

SPEAKER_04 4:44

So, yes is the answer to that, Sam. So we have creators that have joined the network. We will be making announcements over the near weeks in terms of who they are. What we can say it's a real blend. We have got what we would call pure play podcasters, we've got YouTube channels. We're talking at the moment, in terms of dividing the channels up, we're talking to pure play social media creators. So it's genuinely doing what we expected and hoped that it would do, is it's appealing right across the board. Since launch last week, the uptake has been incredible. We've been surprised a little bit by the types of businesses that have proactively reached out to us as well. Both from a this is incredible timing, this is exactly what we've been looking to try and fix, or what we've been working on strategically, through to we didn't know this was an opportunity. We need to talk to you because this is going to be a brand new thing for us. And that's a mix of creators themselves all the way through to big legacy publishers, funnily enough. So at the moment, what is this weekday number five or four for us? No live campaigns yet. So we're right at the very beginning.

Sam Sethi 5:58

And what differentiates you between that and a traditional media agency? If I was a creator going to a media agency who wants to omni-channel, could I not just go there? So what differentiates everywhere from traditional media agencies?

SPEAKER_03 6:13

That's always one of the key things that the media agency wouldn't act as your sales house in market. That's effectively, if you wanted to boil it down to in a nutshell, what is it that we are doing? Is we are providing commercial infrastructure for creators. Those that are at a level where they've got a really valuable audience but aren't at the size yet where they can hire in a gigantic commercial team. We are there to support them and help them make money. Whereas a media agency will be working with media agencies on their behalf, effectively. That's the probably the biggest.

Sam Sethi 6:42

So if you're a brand coming to everywhere, what is the goal? Is it that you've got great creators that they can go across multi-channel? Mike, you talked about working with creators. Craig, you talk about working on campaigns, but which is the chicken and which is the egg? Which do you need first?

SPEAKER_01 7:00

You do need both, definitely. I guess what we're saying is that traditionally people have bought specific channels. There may be one team within the media agency that is buying the podcast, there's another team that's buying the YouTube, there's another team buying the socials. What we are saying is that we will work with all of those teams and the partnership teams to build something everywhere the audience is for that creator, and so that you're not leaving any part of that audience who are really engaged and love that creator and listen to what they say, you're not leaving them on the table. And at the same time, we're not suggesting that people run 15 different clients at any one time because you might have a podcast where you have five brands, you've got a YouTube, but there's five other ones, and the audience becomes skeptical about how authentic those brands are and how authentic that message is, which is obviously a huge thing at the moment. Now, while we're saying it's possible to run everywhere, we're not taking things off the table where you can run just a podcast campaign. That is all available as well. But what we are providing is that extra option.

Sam Sethi 8:14

Andy, so isn't this what companies like Audio Boom, where you came from, AdSwiz, ACAST, isn't this what they do already?

SPEAKER_04 8:23

Everyone has limitations in, I suppose, what they have access to from a creative point of view and what their contracts actually state they can do. And this is the nub of the frustration that exists on both sides of the industry here is that we're not here to replace any existing monetization partner. What we are is a unique type of monetization partner. So ACAST, a fantastic business, very big, very successful, is starting to try and move away from a pure play podcast to ad monetization business. It's embracing the world of video, but ultimately the market is incredibly fragmented and it's frustrating if you're a creator to maximize your audience, is what Craig's just suggested. And ACAST run into issues around that. Audio Boom, from our experience, had the same limitations as well. Not because they weren't capable, but because the market just wasn't set up to, or they weren't set up to monetize the market in exactly the same way. So when we were there, when we worked, Mike's been at ACast as well, when you're working with brands, the brand always wants to talk to the audience. That's what they want. And that audience is increasingly following that creator across every single platform. And the problem that we've got is that ACAST is limited in how much of that audience it can provide, same with Audio Boom, same with any of the other monetization partners. And for the brand, it's frustrating because they want to put a seamless campaign together, but they're having to go to two or three different partners in order to stitch that together. So we're here to solve that problem in the middle. There's no doubt that people will start to look at the model potentially, but the experience that we bring, the reputation that we have and the contacts that we've got is are incredibly unique. So I think that the world has shifted, and I think that what we realize is that we're here to, as I say, not necessarily fix the market, but make it seamless for brands to talk to creators, audiences, and for those creators to really maximize what they already provide.

Sam Sethi 10:22

Mike, what's the revenue strategy then for you guys? How do you work with creators and brands? You're an intermediary. Do you double dip on both sides of the coin?

SPEAKER_03 10:32

We don't double dip, so we're not taking agency commissions, much like the competitors and previous employees of ours that you've mentioned, we take a revenue share. That's our main and only revenue stream. So we take a revenue share of the revenue that we make for our creators. So ultimately, if we don't make our creators any money, we make no money as well. So that's the only way we'll do it. So you better know we're going to be working as hard as we can.

Sam Sethi 10:55

Okay. Answer me this question: how do you measure success within the campaign? Because obviously, we've seen some really weird things from YouTube recently. A hover is a play, a play is a zero-second entity. We've got, you know, first-party data locked into channels. We don't have any of that reporting coming out. You're going to be an omni-channel everywhere platform. The idea, I hope, is that you have a unique dashboard that will give me a holistic view of all those channels. How are you getting the data though?

SPEAKER_01 11:25

So we have something in the works that we'll be able to really be late to date. But essentially, we will have access to those various channels through their APIs to bring the data that we need. Our focus is on the genuine performance rather than those metrics that change by every channel. As you say, YouTube is the latest one to throw a spanner in the works with that. But yeah, we're focused on actual performance delivery that the brand sees, and we will be investing in-depth qualitative studies to show how those campaigns work with our first partners.

Sam Sethi 12:04

Andy, Spotify added a skip button. They don't like ads, or they don't like your ads, they just like their own ads. Is that a big problem?

SPEAKER_04 12:13

It's clearly on everybody's lips at the moment, is what's happening with some of the major players in this market. I think look, my own personal opinion on this is that Spotify's main revenue source is its premium subscribers. And it would argue, and you probably can't argue back, that Spotify's main priority is its own performance and performing at a business level for its own shareholders. It is a huge frustration for us on this side of the industry. I've been assured by them that there will be no impact in terms of campaign deliveries and playouts. But obviously, what we're very keen on, we are talking to an awful lot of people on the hosting side and campaign delivery side of this industry to ensure that those that we work with deliver maximum performance back to the creators. So it is a concern. There is no doubt about that at all. I think the reason why everywhere then becomes more important is that we're unlocking that audience everywhere, not just on single platforms. What you're seeing with Spotify is exactly what's going to continue to happen, right? The reason why we are thinking and we believe an incredibly powerful opportunity for creators is because platforms will come and go. Platforms will change the game, platforms will change what they measure and how they measure for their own reasons. Creators are so fluid, they will move to the next big opportunity. Their audience will follow them there. We are genuinely platform agnostic, and I think that's what sets us up, not just now, but for a future, we don't know where the next platform's going to be, but you can bet your bottom door if creators are there, we're following them. And that's uh say Spotify and their current performance and behavior is a bit worrying, but it doesn't stop creators being able to maximize their performance, and that's where everywhere comes in.

Sam Sethi 14:02

Mike, Andy talked about new incumbents in we've seen Netflix enter the market space. Are you addressing Netflix? I don't think it's an open platform yet either. I think it's another closed platform. No. Cherry-picking creators to join them. I mean, again, how do you address this? I guess what you're trying to do is say to creators, we're maximizing the opportunity for you for brand reach and capability, but gatekeepers are shutting the doors.

SPEAKER_03 14:30

Yeah, and I think it's a really important point to make. Ultimately, we're here for the creator. If a creator has an opportunity to license their content to another platform which takes inventory away from us, that's not our place to jump in and say, hey, don't do that. We want a slice of the pipe. We don't own the content of the creators that we work with. We do not take IP in their content. This is their content. We are their commercial partner. We, as a business, there are worlds where if Netflix and other platforms were to open up their platform to creators, of course, yes, we would like to be there and we would make sure that we were. But in the current position, in the way things are organized and there is no advertising inventory available on those platforms for us currently, we wouldn't be touching any of the licensing money that those creators are getting from those platforms either. But you know, like I say, in the future, if those platforms open up to advertisement and we're able to sell into that on behalf of our creators, of course, yeah, we'd be there. That's why we're everywhere. There's a new incumbent platform, as Andy mentioned, we'll be on that too. That's the goal.

Sam Sethi 15:31

Craig, you mentioned being very skilled in the US market. Is everywhere going to be everywhere? Are you going to be in the US market from day one?

SPEAKER_01 15:40

Yes, we will be in the US market. I'm out in New York next week to meet with a lot of partners. So, yes, the UK is obviously we are three Brits, and that will be our main market. But yes, the US, Australia, everywhere that our creators take us. We mean that in both senses, every channel, every location.

Sam Sethi 16:00

Andy, so if people want to know more about everywhere, where would they go?

SPEAKER_04 16:05

Obviously, drop us a line individually or collectively. There is a page on LinkedIn. You can find us there. You can get us on our emails, so it's Andy at Everywhere Creators, and then it's Craig at and Mike at, or we have the website, everywherecreators.com. Our story is on there. You can contact us through the website as well. We are very much open to talking to anyone and everyone that wants to hear or learn a little bit more. And we're excited. You know, I joked with the guys Tuesday last week we launched, and I think I had five meetings in this week. It's now 18. So we're going to be very busy, but in the best possible way. So please, if anybody does want to know more, please just drop us a line. Or they can find us through you, Sam.

Sam Sethi 16:45

Well, I'd say, chaps, congratulations and good luck for comes next. I appreciate it.

unknown 16:50

Thanks.

SPEAKER_04 16:50

Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_03 16:51

Thank you so much, Sam. Appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Take care.

Announcer 16:54

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

Caloroga Media's Linnet

Sam Sethi 17:01

James, uh friend. Lots of people who are friends of this show, thank God. One of those is Caloroga Shark Media, no longer called Caloroga Shark Media, now called Caloroga Media. And they have done something interesting. They've produced an AI production studio called Linnet. Tell me more.

James Cridland 17:22

Yes, Linnet is, I believe, some kind of small bird, according to the uh press information. But it looks very cool. So it's an AI-powered media production platform. What it will do is it pretty well does everything from script writing to music mixing to audio mixing to, you know, the whole thing to video editing and even to uploading the stuff that you have produced as well. So, you know, many of us, I think, uh fiddle around with different accounts for all kinds of things. But this unifies the entire workflow in one space. It looks pretty cool, doesn't it, as well?

Sam Sethi 18:05

What's the price point? I mean, that's going to be a criticality.

James Cridland 18:08

Yeah, it is going to be a critical thing at the moment. It is closed beta, so they're testing it with other people now. They've been using it within Kalaroga Media for quite some time. And w we keep on saying it. Linet is actually a she, apparently. So uh in in the in the press release, it's all she proposes an action. She says what she's going to do, which is very weird. But yes, so it'll be interesting to see what the price point is. In our super secret WhatsApp group, which is there for power supporters. You can become a power supporter at weekly.podnews.net. I think Neil Vlio has been saying that he was trying to make something similar, and it ended up costing so much in terms of AI fees that frankly he kind of gave up. But uh clearly Kalaroga Media has um worked out a way of doing it a little bit better.

Sam Sethi 19:01

Do we know any more about when they might open the beta for other people to try?

James Cridland 19:06

We don't, but uh, I will be seeing John McDermott next week, uh, who's one of the co-founders. He says he's the co-founder that just tells Mark, the other one, what to build. And Mark goes away and does that. So hopefully I will learn a little bit more next week at Podcast Movement.

Sam Sethi 19:23

Excellent.

Lower numbers??

Sam Sethi 19:25

Now, James, a couple of stories that you wrote about that I just want to know what's going on here because there's a bit of a trend, really. Let's start up with the first one. Podtrack released its ranker for August, and the top three companies are showing significantly lower traffic. What's going on?

James Cridland 19:43

I wish I knew what was going on. Podtrack measures YouTube, PodTrack measures Spotify video, PodTrack, even now, apparently, uh, measures HLS video as well from July. So, therefore, I don't really understand why. If you compare year on year, iHeart is down 15% in monthly audience. Let's probably have a look at downloads because that makes a little bit more sense and it's more easy to compare. So iHeart is down by 20% for streams and downloads, NPR down by 15% year on year, Libsin is down by 50%. Now, Libsin's maybe because people have left that particular network, I don't know. But certainly iHeart and NPR don't appear to have had too much attrition from their network. So I don't really understand why the numbers are so much lower. I've asked Mark at PodTrack what he thinks, but he has yet to come back to me. But yeah, some really interesting numbers coming out from that company and from other companies as well.

Sam Sethi 20:47

Yeah, you also wrote, Are most podcasts dead? Or you didn't write that, but that's the article. Four in ten are without a new episode in the year. Now, would that suggest that that's the reason why the numbers are going down, or are they two separate ideas that shouldn't be conflated together?

James Cridland 21:07

No, I think that uh I think it's just two separate ideas. In fact, uh, I mean that was from a very AI-heavy UK podcast marketing company, and they only looked at 20,000 feeds. So I went to have a look at the full 4.7 million feeds from Podcast Index to find out that uh it's uh 20% have been updated in the last year. So that is, well, that's actually two in ten have been updated over the past year. Is that a bad thing? I don't think it matters. I think when you go into a bookshop, you're not there going, now which of these books was published in the last year? Because I'm going to ignore the rest of them. I mean, at the end of the day, you you you just want something good to read. And similarly, I think you can also have something good to listen to as well. So I think uh wouldn't necessarily worry too much about that

TWiT moves to DAX

James Cridland 21:58

number.

Sam Sethi 22:00

Quickly have a quick whiz around the world. If any uh one, yeah, the Twit podcast network is now going to be hosted by DaxUS Change.

James Cridland 22:08

Yeah, this is quite a change, I think. Twit has always hosted itself by itself. It's uh used uh bandwidth for a long, long time from Cashfly, you may remember. And all of a sudden, it is now hosting on DaxUS. Rob Walsh being very pleased that he's managed to get that deal and quite rightly. That will now allow Twit to directly manage the DAI advertising across its network. They've probably not had any proper DAI functionality before now. So I think that that's um pretty good news from their you know point of view. I I I find it quite interesting to see what what what uh Twit is is uh doing there.

Sam Sethi 22:52

It used to be my go-to. I I I remember over a decade ago uh religiously watching Leah Laporte's shows. I haven't been there for years now. Have you watched any of their stuff recently? I I because they came out of the brick house, they moved out, and it all seemed to be going south, and I just thought, oh, you know, and Leo seemed to be ready to retire. So I don't know what's going on over there.

James Cridland 23:17

Yeah, I mean, I I watched the the uh uh quite a recent This Week in Tech with uh Leo. I haven't watched for many, many years, but it used to be one of the podcasts that I would go to probably 15 years ago. It used to annoy me a little bit because Leo uh seemingly was doing his research while he was recording his show, if you see what I mean. Right. So so I so I could never quite fathom it out. But yeah, I mean it seems to be just exactly the same show and seems to be put together very well, seems to look fantastic, seems to sound great. So, you know, I mean Leo has been going for years and years and years, and I really hope that he continues for a long, long time as well. You but it it it it is exactly the same show that you used to have, you know, quite some time

People and jobs

James Cridland 24:04

ago.

Sam Sethi 24:04

People in jobs, let's go to that, right? We've said this show is going to be about people, people, people. I think we should start off, James, with a very sad but very well done memorial to our friend Todd Cochrane. Tell me more about this one.

James Cridland 24:21

Yeah, so Rob wrote a Rob Greenley, of course, his co-host for the New Media show, wrote a really nice blog post earlier on in the week, really pointing out how consistently Todd Cochran fought for what he believed mattered. And you know, he was very good, very easy to wind up in a way, but very good at actually saying what he really felt. And I think that we don't have enough of those types of people in the in this industry. I I've been very taken by how few people, for example, have been calling out Spotify for the for their skip button, for example, or how few people have been saying it's unacceptable what megaphone have have done to the industry over the last couple of months. They've completely screwed everything up with a botched upgrade, but no one wants to talk about it. Similarly, nobody seem seems to want to talk about many other things that are going on in the industry as well. Todd was one of those people that would. And, you know, so I think that that's probably one of the things that we that we miss. It'll be the first podcast movement without him next week. And so I will miss him, you know, at the hotel bar late at night. Although, to be fair, there won't be a hotel bar late at night because there's no hotel. So there is always that as well. I linked to Todd's first ever video podcast, which I found from November 2006, and it was classic Todd, basically talking about he was going to CES, which he did every single year, and he was doing it from his office, and I think this was his office in Hawaii, and and it were you know, a typically, typically untidy office, but you know, great, great fun. So, yeah, it's it it will be a weird podcast movement without him, but uh Rob has written a very good piece all about that.

Sam Sethi 26:16

Yeah, the word oh comes to mind for Todd is curmudgeon for me. I think that would be the word that he sums him up. He was a force of nature who who enjoyed uh poking the bear at the big players and calling them out quite often. So yeah, we do need a uh Todd Cochrane in our industry because I think right now, when I look at most of the people in our industry, they are rolling over, rolling over quite quickly as well, sadly.

James Cridland 26:47

Yes, no, I agree, I agree. So uh we we do need someone who who basically who who who basically says says what's what and there are too many people who are just scared of you know of upsetting Spotify or upsetting Apple. And I think sometimes, you know, we really should be talking about that sort of thing. So yeah, there we go.

Sam Sethi 27:10

I think we do a fairly good job of of uh calling them out when we can.

James Cridland 27:15

Yeah, I I I would I would think so. But I I don't want to be the only person doing that. I don't think that would be a that would be a wise thing.

Sam Sethi 27:24

I don't think we're on their Christmas list anyway. No, that's for sure.

James Cridland 27:27

No, well indeed.

Sam Sethi 27:28

No. Now, moving on, ACARS teased out in last week's interview that they've got a big hire about to join them. Yes, they do.

James Cridland 27:37

And yes, it's come out now, so we know who it is. It's Liv Sandberg. Now, Liv is a really interesting person. So she won the role model of the year at the Nordic Women in Tech Awards in 2024. She's served on the IAB Sweden board since 2019. She's worked at places like StarCon, which is a big advertising agency, also Facebook, which is a big oh no, we know what Facebook is, and uh TikTok.

Sam Sethi 28:04

That's a big advertising agency.

James Cridland 28:07

And TikTok as well, who I think she was in charge basically of TikTok for most of the Nordic countries. She is a big, big deal. You can tell that she's a big deal because she's been announced, but she starts working in early 2027, and it's only September, so so you can tell how big of a deal it's going to be. It's the first time that all of ACAST's business in Europe is now under one single regional leader. So that shows what a big person she is going to be. But that is a fantastic move, I think, for that particular company.

Sam Sethi 28:42

Yeah, and we've got her lined up so when she gets her feet under the table. She is lined up for an interview. We've already been asked. Yes. And uh I've already said yes.

James Cridland 28:53

Excellent. Other people news, Matt Mullenweg, the CEO of Pocket Casts and probably more best known for also being the CEO of WordPress, their owner automatic. Uh, he has been essentially fired by the company's board of directors. He's been placed on mandatory administrative leave after he got but got back from Burning Man with a lot of a lot more ideas. He's going to be replaced by an interim CEO, Mark Davies. Marlon Wegg basically, for the last 18 months, has, and I don't want to use this phrase in a bad way, but he's basically gone mad. He he has kicked off so many legal quarrels over the past year. He's lost more than 150 employees who basically said, We don't want to work for you anymore. He claims he was conspired against. I think it sounds like the company's board that's basically gone, enough is enough. Typically, he comes back from Burning Man, apparently with lots of great ideas in University Commerce. Yes. But yes, there's an implosion going on. I mean, I hope he's all right, if you if you saw it if you see what I mean. But yes, drama going on there.

Sam Sethi 30:05

Well, we do have Ali Rubinstein coming on the show after podcast movement, but I'm pretty sure she won't be able to talk anything about this.

James Cridland 30:13

I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure that that will not be something uh that she will wish to talk about, and quite rightly so. Congratulations to Alex Sanfilippo. Uh the 400th episode of Podcasting Made Simple was released this week, and which is seven whole years of podcasting. So uh many congratulations to Alex. He posted a picture on LinkedIn of him when he started doing the show and him now, and he's still in the same room. Uh he's still using the same stand-up desk. But what he has added, of course, is lots of lighting and video stuff because you know it's podcasting. So uh I thought I thought that was quite a function.

Sam Sethi 30:52

Magically, he hasn't aged either.

James Cridland 30:54

No, he hasn't aged. Yes, I noticed that as well. I noticed that as well. Yes, whatever, whatever he's on. Uh yeah, who knows? A few other people just to qu quickly whisk through. Nikolaas Brandtberg has started as managing director for Spotify in the Nordics. Uh, he wrote a nice long post on LinkedIn saying, I want to build strops with creators across the Nordics and responsibility right now, though. Yeah, a fun ride. Gosh, that skip ahead button is so useful, isn't it, Sam? Also, Bobby Bones celebrating 10 years of the Bobbycast. He, of course, is a big country music personality in the glad you told me who was.

Sam Sethi 31:38

I had no clue who this was at all.

James Cridland 31:40

Yes, uh, he's um one of the iHeart team, but uh very, very big online. He now uh runs the Nashville Podcast Network. He was basically doing that that podcast, the Bobbycast, 10 years ago, and was probably really pushing iHeart, who wouldn't have been doing podcasting at the time, was really pushing iHeart to say, you know, there's something here, there's something here. I think I should be doing a podcast, and quite rightly so. So many congratulations to him. And also many congratulations to Steve Ackerman, who is joining as a non-exec director for Superpass, which is an audience membership platform. He was formerly head of global podcasts for Sony Music. And as soon as I saw that, I replied to Steve and I said, This looks exactly like what Sam is trying to build. It's a really interesting thing. Bringing content, membership, subscriptions, community all together. Guess what else they do? They allow you to build your own app so that you can have an app for your podcast, which also contains everything else in there as well. So it contains, you know, all kinds of other things, all kinds of community stuff, all kinds of membership stuff and everything else. So basically, we should probably get Juliana Mayer, who's the founder and CEO, onto onto the show, essentially, I'm saying.

Sam Sethi 33:05

So I think we've we we have spoken to her in the past, actually. But to answer your question to answer your question directly, yes, there are similarities, and I've been banging the drum about creator portals for a little while. And this is another creator portal aggregating everything from audio, video, newsletters, blogs. It's along the lines of Substack, Supercast, a member file, etc. I think the only difference here is that when they talk about creating a website and app, I have them more akin to Squarespace and Wix, but a podcasting version of those platforms because it's not the same as what let's say TrueFans will do, which you can come to your own page within TrueFans and you'll have a customized domain, but you can jump out of that person's podcast and oh look, I can go back to an aggregated podcast app with Superpass, it will be just that one person's place on the web, which is more a case of adding everything to like a Squarespace website. So, yes, very similar, and I think we should have them on. I agree. I did look at the pricing, and I was like, oh, interesting. I don't know if you've seen the pricing at the bottom.

James Cridland 34:19

No, I've not, I've not, but uh yeah, yes, the pricing is uh gosh, yes, I see what you mean. $347 a month. Okay, let me sign up to that immediately. Yes, yes, $1,000 a month for the ultimate. Yes, whatever the ultimate gives you. So uh yeah, well, uh I'm I I I'm looking forward to uh Steve is a very, very bright man, and I'm looking forward to seeing what he does there. Uh, you you so rightly say that uh Juliana Mayer has been on this show. Uh it was back in April 2021, and the reason why I don't remember it is I didn't do the show. It was you and Matt Deegan. So I must have been off that particular week. Elsie Escobar was also on the show all the way back then. It was called something else. It wasn't even called the Pod News Weekly Review. No, so there we are. So if you want to go and have a listen to that, then uh feel free. It's from 2021. My goodness, we've been doing this show nine uh for five years. My gosh. Yes, um, yes. Well, there we are. Gosh.

Sam Sethi 35:20

Um here's a quick question for you, James. Non-exec director. Why is a non-exec director like a B-Day?

James Cridland 35:28

Because nobody knows what it's for.

Sam Sethi 35:30

Uh well, you know what it does, you just don't know how to use it. Yes. Very good.

James Cridland 35:35

Very good. Oh dear. Yes. A couple of other people just to say, just to just to mention, uh, Ray Harkins has become head of podcasts at Mint Agency. He was previously at Art19 and Amazon. Uh, he also hosts a music podcast called 100 Words or Less, which has a book coming out. So there's a thing. So who knows? We might be talking to him in the next few months when that book comes out. He's at Podcast Movement next week. Two people joining Airwave. Uh Sam Hofnagel. Uh yes, she's VP of Revenue Operations. She's joined from Times of India, but also for Airwave, Jim Lally has joined. He will be VP of Partnerships and Business Development, joining from WNYC Audio Boom, Libsin Ads, and Podcast One. So, yeah, he knows a thing or two about this sort of thing. Airwave doing some real heavy hiring right now. They're pulling all of their uh sales in-house as of the end of this year. So I think they are definitely a company uh company to watch right now. So yeah, that that's a big signing for for Airwave. And finally, B Thomas has started as PR for Apple Music, Apple Podcasts, and the Apple TV platform across the UK and Europe. I think that's the first time that Apple has had PR specifically for the Apple Music Podcasts and TV in anywhere else other than the US. So I think that looks very exciting. Now, I I I could be wrong on that, but interesting and exciting to see another PR person uh who will be looking after Apple Podcasts among other things. Now she does join from Columbia Records and Warner Music Group, so I think you can tell where her focus will be. But um that's um good news, I think, for anybody in Europe that is keen on Apple Podcasts getting a bit more out there.

Sam Sethi 37:38

Well, James, just being Apple, let's have one more thing then. Who's the oldest podcaster in the world? We've done five years. I calculated that you would have to be going till 2056. I'll be dead by then. But you'll be going till 2056 in order to be the oldest podcaster in the world. Wow. Who is the oldest podcaster in the world?

James Cridland 37:58

Well, uh, so that was a question that we asked this week, and it turns out now William Shatner is 95, which makes me feel incredibly old. My goodness. William Shatner, 95. Really? Uh yes, he does a podcast. It's called No Time But Now, aptly talking about health, longevity, and resilience. And so he's 95, but 26 days older than William Shatner is Dominic Chianese. And Dominic Chianese was in the Sopranos, and he has just launched a brand new podcast as well. And so uh yeah, I think the oldest podcast host is 95 and is Dominic Chianese. If you know different, then editor at podnews.net would make a ton of sense.

Awards and events

Sam Sethi 38:44

Moving on to awards and events, James. Any awards that we should be talking about?

James Cridland 38:49

Well, the independent podcast awards are very pleased. They've got a big sponsor. It's a company called YouTube. So that's nice. So you'll be able to watch the entire ceremony. And by the way, it counts if you watch just the first the first five seconds of it and then walk away. That that that will count. You can watch the entire ceremony in King's Place in London, Wednesday, November the 4th. Are there any other exciting sponsors at that uh event?

Sam Sethi 39:17

Yeah, we we think we have one more. True fans, yes, Claire Wait Brown has been working really hard. And no, never heard of them either myself personally. But we're gonna be sponsoring one of the awards there as well. So I'm very excited, and Claire's gonna be handing that award out as well. So, yes, well done.

James Cridland 39:33

Excellent. Oh, well, that's good news. The Sonar Awards have released their finalists in Australia. There's a link to find out more in Pod News yesterday. The New York Festival's 2027 Radio Awards are now open for entries, but there are plenty of opportunities for podcasts to win. There is a new category this year. Well, there are a couple, but one new category that you might be interested in: Crime Drama Podcast. Yes, finally, True Crime is making it to an award ceremony there. So, yeah, you've got until January the 31st to enter that particular one. If you want to go to the International Women's Podcast Awards, then you should. They are in October. They're in Toronto in Canada. Toronto, the awards. Toronto. Apparently that's how you pronounce it. Um, so the awards recognize moments of audio brilliance in podcasting and the women that produce them. Lots of entries, of course, for that. You should go up there and see the excellent folk at Tink Media who are doing all of that. And speaking about Canada, uh, Pod the North has announced the Pod the North Pitch contest, uh, which will be held at Pod Summit YYC on October the 17th. You can win over 3,500 Canadian dollars to support your podcast, which is about £2.50. Uh only joking. Uh applications to take part are open now, although you do have to go to Podcast to PodSummit YYC to uh to play along, so that may be a thing. But yeah, that looks pretty cool as well if you are up in Canada.

Sam Sethi 41:10

Any events that were occurring or are about to occur, James?

James Cridland 41:15

One brilliant event which I noted last week. Goal hangers The Rest is Fest, which took place last weekend. 22 shows, live podcasting. They sold 26,000 tickets, not as many as crossed wires, I should just point out. But nevertheless, they sold 26,000 tickets over one weekend. Lots of pictures in the Pod News website. If you want to go and uh take a peek at that, that's pretty big, I think. Uh I think uh Gullhanger clearly doing quite a lot of quite a lot of good stuff there.

Sam Sethi 41:45

Yeah, we've said this before. Persophonica and goalhanger, you know, we've seen their growth from the beginning, and it's been pretty impressive for both of them. But I think what's also impressive is the UK is batting way above its weight at the moment, as usual. You know, if you look at the London podcast show, you look at what Persophonica did up in Sheffield, and you look at this event, all three massive events. Well done to the people involved.

James Cridland 42:10

Yeah, no, I think uh I think you're absolutely right there. I think, yeah, the UK seems to be doing things really, really well. What we really need is a bit more of this sort of stuff going on in other parts of the world as well. It'd be lovely if there was a podcast event in Australia. That would be nice. It would be nice if there was, you know, a big I mean, there is Pod Summit, which is a pretty good podcast event in Canada, but it would be nice if there was something of the sort of size of the podcast show up there as well. So but uh yeah, I think the UK really is showing that you know it can be good at something, which must be very good for you.

Sam Sethi 42:50

Says the ex-pat. Oh my word.

James Cridland 42:53

I know, yeah, I know. There you go. There you go. Talking about the UK, by the way, uh Edison Research publishing the top 25 podcasts for quarter two, twenty-six. Uh, there's a big list on the website, and I I find it interesting to see. Number three, the rest is politics, number four, the rest is history, number five, the rest is football. Again, Goldhanger doing some really good things there. So many congratulations to them for that too.

Sam Sethi 43:21

Weird there, they're bringing out a new show that is nothing to do with the moniker of the rest is. They're bringing out a bear hunt show.

James Cridland 43:32

Yes, yes, they're going on a bear hunt. It's gonna be a big one. Yes, uh, we're not scared. So uh yes, that that is that is coming out, and it is also really interestingly, it's a drama. It's an audio drama. I think it's the first drama from certainly from Goal Hanger's Drama Unit, which is called Goal Hanger Drama. Of course, they do have Sherlock and Co., which is another show which is not the The rest is. And they've got a couple of other shows in there as well. I think Empire is another one of those too. But yes, so they do appear to be launching all kinds of stuff. So hurrah for them.

Sam Sethi 44:11

Apple had an event this week as well. What did they announce, James?

James Cridland 44:15

Oh yes, they did. Yes, they've announced your your new phone. Your new phone is going to be called the iPhone Duo, Sam.

Sam Sethi 44:23

Half for me, half for you. Excellent.

James Cridland 44:25

It's it's it's Apple's thinnest iPhone yet. And it has a yes, it it it's it it it it sort of uh so it's a book style folding iPhone. It looks sort of quite similar but different to the folding phones which exist. The the the screen ratio looks a little bit different there, which is uh sort of a little bit weird to have a look at. It'll support Apple Pencil, but not quite yet. It's got you know it's got a few weird and wonderful things. So they announced the iPhone Duo, very, very expensive as well. $1,999.

Sam Sethi 45:05

Yeah.

James Cridland 45:06

Which are you buying? Are you buying the Star White or are you buying the night sky colour?

Sam Sethi 45:10

Oh, night sky, yeah. No, white, never gonna get white, that'll get scratched and um guaranteed.

James Cridland 45:17

Yes. Well, you see, I I I copied everybody to to get the orange, the orange iPhone 17. So yeah, but no, it looks it looks very nice. Are you are you gonna be rushing out and buying one of those?

Sam Sethi 45:30

I'm not sure. I won't rush out and buy it. I think I'll wait for it. You will. I know you will. Yeah, okay, fine. You got me. Um it's not out until October the 23rd, but I think I think it's one of those that I have been waiting for for a long time. I've got an iPhone 11, so I'm due an upgrade. Come on. I have waited. But I think one of the things that's gonna be interesting is how do apps adapt to the new foldable screens. So the developer documentation is very light at the moment, actually, about how you adapt. So that's gonna be interesting. They've got some launch partners, obviously, Zoom, Netflix, and a few others. So clearly they are gonna work with the bigger platform apps to convert over to it. No, I I like it. I I think everything I've seen of it so far is exactly what I want. I just worry, like all 1.0 versions of products, whether it's something that I should jump into as quickly or wait and see what the upgrade will be post the bug fixes.

James Cridland 46:39

Yes, I think that that might be a plan. I mean, it might be one of those phones that you hold wrong, and I'm sure that lots of people will be trying to break it as well. So, you know, so you know, Jerry, Jerry rig everything. I'm looking forward to that video. That that should be fun seeing him uh rip that phone to bits. But uh yeah, so watching out for that. Of course, Apple also announced the new Apple TV finally, which is uh good news. Oh no, they didn't. No, they didn't. Still no new Apple TV.

Sam Sethi 47:10

I was going, I was going along with you. I was going, really?

James Cridland 47:13

God, I'm still still no new Apple TV. But they've announced, I think, a new Apple Watch, which has a thing called Siri Recap. Have I understood this correctly?

Sam Sethi 47:26

Scary. I mean, yeah. So Siri Recap has it constantly listening with the microphones on your watch to everything you say during the day. And the recap is AI at the end of the day summarising your day for you. Bugger off, Apple. You know, you can turn it off. Oh, well, yeah. I don't trust that.

James Cridland 47:53

I tell you what, I saw I saw last week in Jakarta in Indonesia, I saw Gabriel Soto from uh Edison Research. And Gabriel was telling me that he was doing the work at uh Radio Days Asia, and then he was going to China for I think it was a friend's wedding. And so he was going into China, and the company that he worked for basically said, You're not taking your laptop with you, you're taking a USB of your presentations and stuff, and you must destroy that USB before you go into China, because they're really quite worried about what what the Chinese might do. I'm not quite sure why. With a with a PowerPoint, really. But anyway, so they wanted to end up doing that. And then I looked at at Gabe and I and I realized what glasses he was wearing. He was wearing the same pervert glasses that you wear. Oh, wonderful, yes. Yeah, and I said, and you're going to get into China wearing those? And he said, Well, I hope so, because they're my prescription glasses. I need them to be able to see. Not a chance, not a chance. I I think not a chance. I think not a chance. So I'm I'm fascinated. Obviously, I can't email him because he has nothing to to respond to the emails or anything. But I am fascinated to find out what that, you know, how how he actually got in. But uh yeah, because I can't imagine any of the you know, any of the Chinese allowing him in with those pervert glasses. So yeah, yes. So that's gonna be that's gonna be an interesting thing. Let's find out what happened there later on.

Sam Sethi 49:36

Of course, a bit like Ten Cents CO, never to be seen again. Yes, please, Gabriel.

James Cridland 49:40

Yes, yes, exactly right, exactly right. And of course, the big events coming up next week are Podcast Movement, the Sounds Profitable Business Summit, and the IAB podcast up front. I will be at all three of those, and so we will catch up next week, and I will give you my thoughts on how all three of those actually happened. So that

The Tech Stuff

James Cridland 50:02

should be fun.

Announcer 50:02

The tech stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland 50:06

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

Sam Sethi 50:10

Well, just a little bit more Apple News. It seems that they've now got an embeddable web player that does video playbacks. So you can now use that on various websites, and it will do progressive streaming and it will send back the data back to the hosts as well. So it will detect whether it's audio or video and change subsequently. So it seems like a very good upgrade from Apple.

James Cridland 50:37

Yeah, it seems pretty good. Now, the the the plays that you get in the web embed player won't appear in Apple Podcasts Connects, but I wouldn't worry too much about that because as we have established on this podcast many times before, those numbers are nonsense and you shouldn't be looking at them. So therefore, I wouldn't worry too much about that. Of course, your podcast host, if it's a good one, like Buzzsprout, will have all of that detail anyway. Um, they have had video in their embedded web player before, but they have added a bunch of new things in there, so you can actually have you know links to the trailer and all kinds of uh stuff, so it's it's so it is quite nice.

Sam Sethi 51:17

Now we talked about Automatic and Matt Mullenberg earlier, but Pocket Cast is obviously their podcast app, and they've been very busy. I mean, I've I really am looking forward to interviewing Ellie Rubenstein because they've been doing some great stuff, and one of the things they've added now is a new smart book feature that allows users to use a podcast transcripts content to bookmark content. Again, I want to understand more about what that is, but the other thing that they've added is something called a or they're going to add is something called a new network tab. Did you see this, James?

James Cridland 51:55

Yes. So you'll be able to, within the Pocket Casts app, you'll be able to go, okay, here are all shows from the BBC, and here are all shows from blah blah blah. I'm presuming that they won't be using the podcast publisher tag, which you have uh banged on around, banged on about for the last 400 million years. But it does sound like quite a nice, quite a nice idea.

Sam Sethi 52:19

Yeah, I mean I bang on about a lot of things and it takes people a while to catch up, but yes, they will catch up.

James Cridland 52:25

Other people doing interesting things. Flightcast has added video advertising capabilities, which basically allows you to do video ads and stuff like that across Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and RSS, which is nice. You've not been able to do that before in most podcast hosts, so that's a smart thing. Congratulations, Rox Codes. Red Seat Ventures has done something interesting, haven't they?

Sam Sethi 52:50

I'm gonna ask you to translate this sentence. Redseat Ventures has integrated Barometers contextual analysis directly into its hosting platform. Translate that for me, please, James.

James Cridland 53:00

So Barometer is a company that looks at what people are talking about in a particular podcast, but in a particular episode. So if we did a special episode all about, you know, your new Range Rover, right, then Barometer would know that this was a special episode all about a Range Rover. And so therefore, it would potentially get Range Rover dealers to advertise in it. So it's quite a useful tool for advertisers. It unlocks a lot of opportunity, a lot of uh revenue and stuff like that. And so, yeah, and so Red Seat Ventures has essentially plumbed that in to their own hosting platform. Their hosting platform at the moment has 40, count them, 40 customers. So it's not the biggest, but it is uh, of course, owned by them, and so therefore they can do some quite neat stuff like this with it.

Sam Sethi 53:57

ACARS does contextual analysis as well of the transcript. They still don't publish that transcript, which annoys me. I've asked them on numerous occasions why they don't do that, but they do actually do the same contextual analysis from what I understand. Yeah.

James Cridland 54:12

And it and it might just be that the transcript is good enough for contextual analysis, but not actually good enough to publish. But yeah, so so that's certainly interesting. But yes, uh, so more of that, I'm sure, to come. Audacity now doesn't look like a dog's dinner, it looks quite nice with the release of Audacity version 4. It's got a clever little paid cloud cloud sharing service on it, which doubtless is going to be where the company that bought it, Muse Group, is going to be making some money. But otherwise, it's free if you want to use it. And uh it looks pretty good. All kinds of plugins, including noise reduction and vocal, you know, vocal removers for karaoke and AI transcription if you want that as well. But uh yeah, if you want a if you want a nice, a nice looking free audio editing program, then Audacity could be the one for you.

Sam Sethi 55:07

Now, Stripes launched something called Profiles. Nathan Gathright basically posted about this, and I thought, ooh, I wonder what this is. He said it might be nice as an option for podcasters who want a destination for their podcast funding tag. I thought, hang on a minute, what are they doing? I went and created the TrueFans profile straight away, and it's a landing page. It reminds me of PayPal.me, where you could basically send someone to a page and then you could then make a payment on that page. So yeah, that's the thing I'm thinking. It it's like a landing page for your profile where you can tell people to go to with a user-friendly stripe.com at truth and now they they've offered that for quite some time, and they're called payment links.

James Cridland 56:02

I think the stripe profile thing also allows you, if you are a if you have a Stripe profile and somebody who you are trying to pay has a Stripe profile, then I think that that essentially allows you just to connect those two uh accounts together, and maybe you don't even need to use your MasterCard or your Visa card to pay somebody. Right. Maybe you can do that entirely yourself. So, you know, there might be something interesting there too to allow people WISE has the same sort of thing, to allow people to essentially bypass those additional fees, and who knows, that might be a very useful thing for value for value, it might be a useful thing for all kinds of other things. So certainly worthwhile taking a peek. I don't think that so if you, for example, if you press the support this podcast button in your in your podcast app for the pod news daily, then you will come to the the pod news stripe page, essentially. So you can give us some money on there. But of course, what that doesn't do yet is it doesn't do splits and that sort of thing, unless you just pass that money on, which apparently is all kinds of problems. But yeah, so I think I think the profile is more around searching for other other people and making it easier to pay you directly. So uh yeah, some interesting moving, interesting movement from Stripe. As I say, Wise have something similar, and Revolute quite recently has just turned into a proper bank in Australia, and so it's therefore covered by all kinds of uh laws here, but that's going to be interesting to have a look at as well.

Announcer 57:51

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

James Cridland 57:58

Yes, so many different ways to get in touch with us. Voicemail by using the link in our show notes or email as well. And by the way, if you are using Spotify and you've wondered where the voicemail links are, then uh have a look now, because all of that is fixed. So that's good news, isn't it? Some we haven't had any voicemail this week, but we have had some messages. A couple of messages from Seth Goldstein, who I believe is coming to Podcast Movement. Looking forward to seeing you there, Seth. Justin Jackson Timberlake, hilarious. He says Podcast is making big moves. I agree. And I think James on clips would be good, talking about um sharing clips and stuff like that. And Neil Vellio has sent something as well. Sam's angry man impression needs to be a regular feature. What was your angry man impression?

Sam Sethi 58:47

Oh, you don't want to do this. You too well want to do that.

James Cridland 58:51

Oh, that that angry man impression. Yes, absolutely. Quite right. Quite right. Yes, I enjoyed that. So that was uh very good. Thank you so much for all of the power supporters. There's a WhatsApp group where only you get in. There's also uh the knowledge that you're helping this show grow. Let's say thank you to Ralph Estep Jr., to Seth Goldstein, who I should see next week, to James Preston White from Lean and Loaf, who I should see next week as well, and John McDermott for your kind support. Much appreciated. Weekly.podnews.net is where you can

Sam and James's week

James Cridland 59:26

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

Sam Sethi 59:29

Well, a couple of things. One of the things that I'm very keen on doing, I think we talked about it briefly, which was uh upload once, publish everywhere. I was talking about last week about the idea of hosts going beyond just putting it into podcast directories. And I'm keen to get clips to social media as a form of discovery. We haven't got that part done yet, but what we have done is updated our automated social sharing. So in Truefans, we have a feature where you can go into your user settings and choose the social networks that you want us to publish to. So we have to have you authorize those first, we don't do it automatically, and then after that, then we use the activity stream verbs within TrueFans. So, for example, if you become a fan of this show, you might want to uh let people know on a particular social media network site. So you might say, I want to tell people on Maston or Threads or LinkedIn that I've become a fan of Pod News Weekly, or you might leave a comment and you want that to be automatically published to your social media, or you want to give people your play analysis. So I listen to this show for three 30 minutes and I consume 60% of the show, and you might say, I want to do that because I want people to discover through word of mouth, but automated from true fans. So those are the sorts of scenarios that we're looking at around automated social sharing. It's early days. We did add one thing in which was a slide filter, which says only publish my play count if it's beyond a certain percentage. So not doing the YouTube and Apple thing where I play one second of a podcast and publish it. You set your percentage level before you actually notify your friends.

James Cridland 1:01:25

Yeah. No, very good, very good. Yes, harder work there. We were talking about publisher and network pages earlier. Uh you're you're doing stuff there as well, aren't you?

Sam Sethi 1:01:36

Publisher pages and network pages. I just wanted to give um a delineator between them. So a publisher page, in TrueFan's words, is the publisher feed from the podcasting 2.0, and that is a single entity, so Wandry or Goal Hanger or Global. And so what we do is we discover the publisher from the RSS feed, and we then say, Yep, let's say the rest is politics, is part of the wider goal hanger at group. So then we have a link on that page. When you click on that link, it goes, Oh, here's all the other podcasts from that publisher, and we turn that into a playlist and we do all sorts of other things. So it's a way of discovering other podcasts from the same publisher. That's been around for a while. But one of the things we've launched and we're gonna have out next week, we've got it in test at the moment, is network pages, and this is where a single creator, so James, it might be you, might want to start a Star Wars. Actually, you haven't got a Star Wars one. So let's use Mark Asquith, better example. Mark's got a golf and a Star Wars podcast, who knew? And basically, he might want to have a network of other podcasters who do Star Wars-related podcasts. So he could come in to TrueFans, create a network page with his podcast, and now we've built an invite capability. So he could go and do a search across the podcast index via TrueFans, uh, use the location tag to limit it to a certain distance if he wanted, or set other criteria, and discover all the other podcasts, and then he can send an invite to them to join his network page. Uh, conversely, podcasters can uh request to join someone else's network page, so it goes both ways. But the idea is that these aren't podcasts that Mark produces, these are podcasts that are similar in genre to him, and collectively they will see in the dashboard the total number of fans, total number of plays, which means they can then go out to advertisers and say, Hey, we've got 20 podcasts in our network, but we have 5,000 fans and we've got 100,000 views, whatever it may be. And so it's a way of creating collective aggregation around network pages to go and get advertising if you want, or sponsorship, or whatever it may be. And then, of course, with dynamic ad insertion, what will happen is each one of those podcasts will then play whatever sponsor or ad is then bought by that collective network.

James Cridland 1:04:15

Right, right. Yeah, and we'll do uh obviously you've got creators are are in charge of what they actually stick on there, yeah?

Sam Sethi 1:04:24

Yes, completely. So the admin for the network page sets up the network page, you then have a creator level, so we have two levels, and the creator then can say yes or no to anything they want. But the idea is that you fundamentally are trying what we're trying to look at is the long tail of podcasters, right? The independent podcasters, because individually they probably don't qualify for sponsorship deals, individually they don't qualify for advertising, but collectively around a genre they might do. You know, we talked earlier about barometer with contextual advertising, right? Somebody talking about Range Rover. Well, if you had a group of car-related podcasts, maybe that would be a really interesting sponsorship opportunity for Range Rover to go to, but individually they the podcasts on their own wouldn't be big enough, and that's what we're trying to achieve with network pages.

James Cridland 1:05:20

Yeah, yeah. No, very cool, very cool. So, yes, it's all going on with uh with uh you, isn't it?

Sam Sethi 1:05:27

Trying, James. We are trying. As my wife says, I'm very trying, yes. And then the last thing is I'd like to give a shout out to my mother-in-law, who's gonna be 95 this weekend. So congratulations to Marjorie.

James Cridland 1:05:42

Well, there you go, 95.

Sam Sethi 1:05:44

Her and William Shatner, hey, look at that. 95 together. Maybe I'll find out if he's single, get her on a date, you never know.

James Cridland 1:05:53

Well, yeah, you never know. Yeah.

Sam Sethi 1:05:55

To boldly go where no one man's been before. No, move on. Right. What's happened to you, James?

James Cridland 1:06:03

I have had an entertaining week coming all the way back from uh sunny Indonesia. Indonesia was hot, and I managed to get out before the the uh volcano started. So there's a volcano which has now kicked off, which uh meant that uh all of the travel had to stop for two days. So there were some people who were at the conference that I was at who were stuck in in Jakarta, not able to go anywhere else, which must have been kind of quite annoying. So, yeah, so that was so that was all fun. But yeah, no, just um planning uh planning ahead for both podcast movement and all of that next week, but also planning for a trip to London and Germany in a couple of weeks as well, and trying to get all of that done because I know that I'm not gonna have any time to myself next week. So all of that has been fun, but it's been I'm looking forward to it.

Sam Sethi 1:06:56

Yes, I think you're gonna be one very tired young man when you finished all of your travels.

James Cridland 1:07:02

Yes, no, I think I absolutely will be. And that's it for this week. Uh, all of our podcast stories taken from the Pod News daily newsletter at podnews.net.

Sam Sethi 1:07:12

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

James Cridland 1:07:22

Yes, our music is from TM Studios, our voiceover Sheila D. Our audio has been recorded using CleanFeed and D script this week. We edit with uh Hindenburg. We're also using Waves Regen to fix some audio, and we're hosted and sponsored by Buzz Sprout. Start Podcasting, keep podcasting.

Announcer 1:07:41

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