Welcome And Week Ahead

James Cridland 0:00

Coming up, the folks from Super Past and all the team from Podcast Movement with James Gridler and Sam Steffi.

Announcer 0:08

This is the Pod News Weekly Review with Buzz with Bud Sprout. Start Podcasting, keep keep keep podcasting.

Sam Sethi 0:17

James, James, welcome back. Now let's cover last week's news. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. But you weren't in Vegas, were you? You were in New York at Podcast Movement. So you can spill the tea. Tell us all.

Podcast Movement Week Field Report

James Cridland 0:31

Yes. Oh, spill the tea. I see what you did there. But I was in New York, not Boston. Ha ha. Yeah, so I was there at uh podcast week. Nobody called it Podcast Week except for me, but uh, I don't know. I think it might it might work. But uh the first couple of days was the Sounds Profitable Business Summit.

Sam Sethi 0:48

Can I just say super intelligence? That's never gonna take either.

James Cridland 0:52

No, no, there's plenty in that country that it isn't going to take, but moving on. Yeah, so the Sounds Profitable Business Summit, that was really good. That was a great, that was a great event held on the Monday and Tuesday in the same venue as Podcast Movement. It was the right venue for that. It worked really well. It was the only conference I think I've ever been at where if you tried to stand up during the speeches to get yourself a coffee, you got told off, you got a slapped wrist. Sit down, listen to the speakers. Okay. Wow. And and by the way, exactly the way that it should be. So there were 400 people there, 200 people were paid sounds profitable partners, and 200 people were ad buyers. So people that were there to learn more about podcasting and to buy more advertising on podcasting. So the right kind of mix. Ira Glass was one of the first speakers. He was really, really good, but the whole thing was was really smart. So that was definitely a big 10 out of 10 from me.

IAB Upfronts And Metric Confusion

James Cridland 1:53

Then there was the IAB podcast upfronts, which was held in the closest that New York has to a hotel with soily carpet. And that was that was a little bit different. My goodness. So that was it it it it was very sort of old-fashioned, very sort of lackluster as well. Lots of people reading from auto cues, people wearing sharpsuits, no stars from podcasting there at all, which was really surprising. No ira glass or anything to kick the whole thing off. No, instead, we had Jason Adamsky from the IAB, who's director of audio. Now, Sam, I don't know whether you heard Jason Adamsky on the Podbiz podcast.

Sam Sethi 2:36

I did. Yes. It was a bit of a ramble. Go on. Yeah. Let's start with a 10. Your question, Mr. Adamsky, what's a download?

James Cridland 2:46

Correct. What is a download and what's a view? And this was how he answered that.

Jason Adamsky 2:51

A download is the bitrate of everything that's been downloaded onto a device. And a play is actually when, and I don't know if we have a standard definition of a play. I mean, it is when we have views and wow.

Sam Sethi 3:08

Do you know when you feel like saying to somebody, exit left, your time's done?

James Cridland 3:12

Yes, yes, exactly. Exactly. Gosh, that was a thing. Just for the record, no, a download isn't anything to do with the bitrate. Fags. No, a download is valid download is 60 seconds or more of audio downloaded to a device. That's what a download is, Mr. Adamski. And a video, uh a video play. Do you know what the definition of a play is, according to the IAB? And this I learned last week.

Sam Sethi 3:39

No, I don't. I mean, because you know, it's as clear as mud so far, but go on, tell them.

James Cridland 3:44

So I learned this last week. This is what the definition of a play is. It's 50% of pixels on played back for more than two seconds.

Sam Sethi 3:54

Okay, I was right. Clear as mud.

James Cridland 3:58

So, and apparently, so according to the to the paper that they released in the morning of the IEB podcast upfronts, apparently we don't need to do anything special for podcasting. We've got these two things. We've got the podcast measurement guidelines, which is 60 seconds worth of download of downloaded audio, and we've got the the video plays, which is uh whatever it is, 50% of pixels on for two seconds, and that's all we need. And they they and we don't need anything else, and we certainly don't need a new framework. So ampere chords go away, is certainly what I read. Okay, okay.

Sam Sethi 4:33

I'm gonna throw this back. If I was an advertiser, right, I would want to know my ad was A played and B for how long. Okay, that's pretty simple things to ask. Okay, if you're going to put in metrics, let's say something stupid about pixels or the Apple zero second or the YouTube zero hover, I'll pay you for the amount of time my ad was played. So whatever you charge me for my full ad, I will pay you only for the amount that my ad was played. And if that is zero seconds, that's all you get. And if that is one pixel, that is all you get. I bet you they'll all suddenly wake up and change the rules.

James Cridland 5:13

Yeah, well, I I'm sure they would. I mean, yeah, I mean, clearly advertisers care about a couple of things. Firstly, was my ad played? Absolutely, and that is part of any radio campaign. You actually go back and you do here's when your ads actually played, Mr. Client, and here are all of the things that you bought, and here's what we delivered. So a delivery report is absolutely part of audio advertising that somebody would be expecting. And then, of course, you've got the attribution stuff on top. How well did it work? And how well did it work is fine for you know, buying a pair of trousers. That's absolutely fine. It is less fine, unfortunately, for although you can do uh brand lift studies, it is less fine for next time I want to buy some trousers, do I choose Levi's or do I choose Wranglers? You know, that that's kind of different, and that's much harder to attribute. And brand lift studies, uh they're nice, but they're not quite as as as obvious. So yeah, I I would totally agree. I think that uh advertisers need to see kind of both of those things. And yeah, and and what we've got from the IAB there, it it it just it it worries me that the director of audio for the IAB, which is what Jason Adamski is, it worries me that he didn't know when asked by a podcast that was obviously going to ask that question. It worries me that he didn't know the answer. I mean, you should know, Solitary Brother, you should know the answer to uh what a podcast is or what a download is pretty well immediately. And if you don't know the answer to that, kind of what are you director of? So I was I was quite surprised by that. Anyway, all of that happened. Yep.

Podcast Movement Changes And Takeaways

James Cridland 7:02

And then podcast movement, which was Thursday and Friday, which was which was, I think I I wrote last week a brave reimagining of podcast movement. Obviously, brand new people working on it and uh working on the whole idea. The venue this time wasn't great for podcast movement, and my understanding is that it's not going to be in that venue next year. Sounds profitable's business summit will be, but the but podcast movement won't be. It was just it was very crowded. It was very, it gave me the COVID heebie jeebies a little bit, uh, you know, in terms of that. And yeah, I mean, some great some great speakers. I love the way that they moved the the big keynotes to the middle of the day. So actually it gave more people a chance to see them, it gave more people a chance to actually sit down and concentrate on them. And Tom did a great session, but yeah, you know, I mean, room for improvement, as you would expect for anybody that has completely changed how something works. But all in all, you know, a pretty good I I would give the entire week probably a 75% would have been higher without the IAB in there. But um, you know, but at least at least it was a good start.

Sam Sethi 8:14

Yeah, no, look, we we know how hard it is to put on events and find the right venue and turn the costs down. Yeah. So, you know, well done to the guys. You know, they will only be going upwards and onwards from this moment forward. Now, look, Tom Webster, you said was there. He he released the podcast landscape 2026 study. What were the highlights from that study then, James?

Tom Webster Warns About Gatekeepers

James Cridland 8:37

It was a really good and quite passionate speech that Tom was giving. I mean, I remember, I think one of his slides says, What are we even doing? Which which I thought was interesting. Wow. Yeah, when he was talking about Netflix. Now we covered, Tom has since uh written that up, and we covered that, I think, in uh Friday's pod news. But yeah, I mean, he what what one of his main things was he showed a list of podcast apps, or rather, he showed a list of apps with podcasts in that people say that they have ever used to listen to a podcast. Now, number one was YouTube, as you would expect. Number two, Spotify, as you would expect. Number three, Netflix, which is not as I would expect. And frankly, Netflix have only had podcasts in there for the last six months, and they've only got 60 podcasts in there. So the fact that so many people have discovered podcasts through Netflix is kind of good, but also kind of bad, as Tom uh explained, because none of these three apps have podcasts front and center. So you need to go, it's a bit like he said, walking into Walmart, trying to find the CD, the CD collection. Walmart does sell CDs, but it only sells the really popular ones, and you have to go quite far back in the store to find them. And I think he was comparing that with Apple Podcasts or with Pocket Cast or with Overcast, which is essentially our own tower records. So I think he was kind of looking at it from that point of view, but he was basically saying our podcasts at the front of the store. Should we be worried about the fact that YouTube, Netflix, and Spotify are the top three? And, you know, is that is that a concern for the industry? And I think it probably is.

Sam Sethi 10:25

I think the bigger concern is not that. I I think it's great that Netflix is coming in. I think we're going to see Disney, Paramount, loads of other people adding podcasts. I think you've called it, you know, cheap TV, adding, you know, content to keep people's attention once they finish the film. What can I do? How can I stay on this platform? But the bigger worry for me is that none of that's using proper RSS, none of those really the wall gardens. I that's my bigger worry. Yeah. But other than that, you know, yes, the more awareness that they bring to the market, great, but no, it isn't. Yeah. That's my that's not my big worry. My big worry is no RSS.

James Cridland 11:03

That's what I'm yeah, and I and I think, you know, no RSS is one thing, but I think also even further than that, we're not on Netflix. We're not going to get onto Netflix because Netflix works. I'm sorry I'm sorry, we're not because Netflix works in a totally different way. Netflix works like a commissioner, like the old gatekeepers of your, where you had to convince Mr. Sarandos that uh, you know, I I run a really good podcast and you should go and have a listen to it. And that was basically how that how that works. That that's not how podcasting works. That's not the magic of podcasting. You know, I was talking earlier on in the day about the history of podcasting and really bringing it back to RSS and why RSS is the magic that has made podcasting so successful is the fact that, you know, this show um can be next to Joe Rogan, can be next to Amy Polar, can be next to, you know, all manner of other people. That that that to me is the excitement of what podcasting has to offer. And with Netflix, you you know, we we don't have access to any of that. So I think it it is very, very different. And Tom was there basically saying, why are we feeding this this gatekeeper? You know, how how does it benefit us? Now, arguably it benefits the industry a little bit in that people that won't have found a podcast can now find podcasts on something else, but I'm I'm not sure it's a good thing. So I'm I'm kind of with with uh Tom on that. So yeah, it was a really interesting thing. He is going to assemble a strategic group within the Sounds Profitable Partners to learn and to discuss the findings more. So that'll be interesting to see what that what that does.

Sam Sethi 12:49

AMP 2.0 sorry, did I say that out loud? Steady on. Sorry. Must must remember that I'm on mic. No, the the thing that I do also recall was a couple of weeks ago you found a early video of Todd Cochrane. And in that video, if you listen to it, he says that the magic of RSS was removing the gatekeepers from the 1.0 web world, you know, where they were all gatekeeping, and RSS opened those gates. And I think, again, I I I think we're going backwards towards that old world where RSS is no longer the uh magic door locker. Yeah. So yeah, watch this. I agree.

James Cridland 13:35

And and and you know, completely agree with that. And you know, Apple Podcasts proprietary uh super secret API that they won't let the likes of you of well, they won't let the likes of me in. Yes.

Sam Sethi 13:48

They won't let me know. But if they won't let me have their API, for example.

James Cridland 13:53

Well, well, you know, there we are. So I think I think these sorts of hidden APIs are a bit of a frustration as well. So hopefully we get rid of some of that too. But yeah, no, it's it was a good, it was a good and thoughtful thing from Tom. He's always very good at that sort of thing, and so yeah, that was certainly one of the highlights.

Sam Sethi 14:11

Now, Rob Walsh was there as well. Did he have anything to say apart from uh don't dump don't shit on the download? Anything else?

James Cridland 14:18

Yes. Um, he was there. I managed to catch up with him earlier on in the week. I I gave him a box of Melbourne breakfast tea, which I'm imagining tastes of sadness and disappointment. Uh why am I living in Melbourne when I could be living in Brisbane? But yes, okay. Yes, yes, you see, fight, fight, fight, Queenslander. Uh anyway, Rob, I don't know quite what he said. I'm waiting for the videos to uh come out because he was scheduled at the same time as me. But one of the stats that he did come out with in his talk, which I checked with him afterwards, Netflix lists just one in 67,547 podcasts and doesn't list you. Uh so I thought that that was a good, a good stat from Rob. So I'm looking forward to seeing a little bit more of what he had to say. If you are a fan of Rob Walsh's presentations and things, I have some earth-shattering news. This one was in 69, it wasn't in 4.3. Oh, right, yes. Amazing thing. Rob, Rob has been historically the only person to turn up with four or three slides, and that's it. And yes, he's re redrawn the whole lot. So hurrah for that. Well, no, no, no.

Sam Sethi 15:34

Back to the future, Rob, because I mean, obviously, now with the duo, it being a four-three style.

James Cridland 15:39

Oh, the iPhone, he's ahead of his time.

Sam Sethi 15:40

He was prescient. Rob Walsh was just prescient. That's all we can say.

James Cridland 15:45

That's clearly it. Yes, that would that would have been the reason why he could he could just have continued. Yes, absolutely.

Sam Sethi 15:50

Apple

Paid Subscriptions Data And Goalhanger Numbers

Sam Sethi 15:51

fanboy, he knew what was coming. Now, one of the other things from Tom's findings that I found interesting was it said revealed 45% of podcast listeners would be at least somewhat likely to pay for subscription tiers to remove ads. So, are we seeing from the results that Tom's presenting that people are now moving away from ads and are more comfortable with premium content?

James Cridland 16:18

Well, and so this was from the podcast study, which actually wasn't Tom, it was it was a set of other people who announced this at the Sounds Profitable Business Time. I I know, I know, I know. But you know, lots and lots and lots of data because of course Acast's data also appeared during the week as well. But yes, I mean there is definitely something there in terms of people who are interested and keen to uh work with to subscribe to a paid service to get rid of of ads and that sort of thing. And so there was clearly something there. It's a really useful piece of research. They're running a ton of webinars over the next couple of weeks. So you can learn more from the podcast study. There's more details in the in the pod news daily newsletter. And also something that happened on Friday was goal hangers accounts. I don't know if you saw this, Sam. No. Goal hangers accounts for 2025. They're a private company, of course. So you would expect that we would never get to see their accounts. But of course, as you know, if you're a UK company, you have to give your accounts to the UK's company's house. Not just that, they have blasted past the list of companies that are able just to give a one-page answer to that because of the money that they're making. Uh, so we could see right into their accounts this time round, which was really interesting. So these are the accounts for the year ending December 2025. So they're a little bit out of date. But from what you can see from that, what I've thought was fascinating is they made the 37 million pounds, which is 49 million US dollars in that year. 67% of that money was from advertising, 25% was from memberships, and then 4% from events, 2% from commissions, which I'm assuming is affiliate deals for, you know, for their, you know, whatever it is, energy. I've I've forgotten the name, Octopus Energy, or you know, whoever it is, or Lloyd's Bank or whoever they might be. So that I thought was really interesting. Two-thirds of their money from advertising and a quarter of their money from the membership side, I thought was a really interesting just to peek into how that company works. And by the way, they earned seven million dollars of profit, pure profit. So, so good for them. I think that they're doing fantastically.

Sam Sethi 18:43

Yeah, no, I it's a well-run company, and I think you know they had that big Rest is event at South Bank in London. Yeah. So you know, it'll be interesting to see what they do going forward. I mean, they've started to do shows that aren't the rest is, haven't they? They've started to do these other type of commission shows. It'll be interesting to see whether all the rest is shows uh retain growth or have they flatlined, or will they bring in new shows? Yeah, fascinating. I'd love to see what 27 brings for that company.

James Cridland 19:20

Yeah, no, they're really interesting company to take a peek at. So, but yeah, it's it's it's always nice to see the their accounts appearing in Company's House. I'm not quite sure how long that is going to is going to happen for, but that's that's what UK law is. So hurrah, we get to you know peek in uh to that sort of thing.

Sam Sethi 19:40

Let's let's move on, James. That was last week's news. That was that's that's the chip wrapper. That's the chip wrapper,

YouTube Metrics Backlash And Standards Push

Sam Sethi 19:46

right?

James Cridland 19:46

Uh well I was just gonna say, I was just gonna say the other the other thing that was actually there at last last week was at the end of the Sounds Profitable Business Summit, we saw three advertising agencies standing up and saying uh, you know, that they were a bit angry at YouTube, a bit angry at YouTube changing the way that they were measuring plays. Because if you remember, they changed that within within five working days. It was just like basically, oh, by the way, from next week we're changing the way that we work out plays. And so, yeah, and so that that was very interesting. So they basically stood there and said, we are only using engaged views from here on in. You should be using engaged views as well, and if you're not, then you're doing things wrong. And then secondly, Dan Granger ended up, you know, standing up at the end and was basically saying, Look, we have a we have a fantastic, a fantastic industry, and we should keep on shouting about how good podcasting is.

Dan Granger 20:48

But then he said, We believe that it's unique, and we believe that it should stand up and assert itself as its own channel. That only happens with the people in this room, and it only happens with you all getting a little fed up and making your voices heard. LinkedIn, IAB, YouTube, Spotify, Apple. Tell them how you feel. Tell them that it's costing you and your creators a lot of money to pay for all this friction that's being created by our lack of standards.

Sam Sethi 21:13

I was there trying to work out. Yes, yes, virtually applauding, yes.

James Cridland 21:20

I mean, I mean, he is he is absolutely correct there. I was wondering what what he was gonna say there when he was saying uh all this friction. And I was there thinking, oh my goodness, I was I was expecting an F bomb. Uh but uh yeah, so that that was also worthwhile seeing. And to be fair, I think that there's a that there was a bunch of quite open people who were basically saying, you know, look, we we have a measurement crisis on our hands and we don't know, frankly, what we should be doing about it, but we should be at least pulling the same way. So for the IB to basically stand up and say, we don't need any new any new frameworks at all. I I thought was entirely tone-deaf. Although I have been told by the Amper Cords team that they didn't read it that way. So you know, there we go.

Sam Sethi 22:09

So for me in summary, or you know, when I look at all of the news that you've just given me, right, I go, We've got these closed-walled gardens that don't want to play with us, we've got the IAB that can't make its mind up about what is a play and a download, we've got YouTube changing the metrics. We are seeing a swing away, not a swing away, but an adoption of premium content. We talked about, you know, a goal hanger. I think if we don't give advertisers what they want as an industry, and Dan's saying this loud and clear, they will just go and find another medium and we will be left with just having to go to premium content. We we're seeing the frustration of the industry. And sadly, I know Dan and the Amber Cords meant well and tried to do something, but you know, that was decision by committee, and we always know, as Dan even said to himself, he was disappointed with the outcome of the Amber Cords. So it doesn't help when the person leading the charge is even disappointed with the result of the proposal. So where where where can we take this, James? I mean, it it where can we push the needle? Because unless we get some clarity, we can't wait for the London podcast show to be the next time we collectively all get together and try and make a decision.

James Cridland 23:30

No, exactly. I mean, I I think that the Amper Chords the Amper Chords was pretty tight. I mean it was 12 people, I think. And so including YouTube. Well, including including YouTube, but also including including Spotify. And Spotify was on i is on both the IB board and on the AmperCords board, which tells you something. So I you know, I don't really know. I don't think that the Amperschords document was workable. I mean, for a start, it it couldn't have worked in in Europe. Quite a lot of what they were asking for just simply didn't actually work at all. So I think from that point of view, you know, that doesn't work too well. But I think that there was something there. And for the IAB to basically turn around and say, no, we know what we're doing. I you know, I don't think that that's particularly particularly useful, I'll be honest.

Sam Sethi 24:29

Should we move on, James, to this week's news then instead? Let's see what we've got.

Apple Podcasts Adds Video Subscriptions

Sam Sethi 24:34

Video is coming to Apple Podcasts. No, that's not the title, is it, James? It's video subscriptions is coming to Apple Podcasts, is more the title. Yes. So what have they done?

James Cridland 24:46

Correct. Yes. So you up until now, if you've been selling Apple Podcast subscriptions, you've only been able to sell audio in that way. Uh, now you can offer video directly as well, or rather, not quite now, coming soon, is is what they're basically saying. So you'll be able to offer subscriber exclusive episodes, ad-free video, early access, bonus content to audiences in more than 170 countries and regions. So that's all very exciting. No actual date quite yet. So my suspicion is that this was a piece of news that they shared in their super secret party at Podcast Movement. It's a really nice way to show creators that you love creators by having a party that creators aren't allowed to go to. But nevertheless, I suspect that that's what was going on there. So great. At some point in the future, you'll be able to sell Apple Podcast subscriptions in terms of video as well as in audio.

Sam Sethi 25:47

Well, it was it was inevitable to do this. It's just shame once again. A Apple's not involved in the industry in setting the tone with the Ampere Cords or with the IAB. But again, this is proprietary API stuff. Again, when will they when will they adopt HLS in the primary enclosure? When will they adopt the alternative enclosure? All of these questions, questions to Apple, I guess.

James Cridland 26:12

Yes, yes, no, indeed. Indeed. And we also covered this week in the Pod News Daily, Courtney Elmer, who is trying to get uh one of her shows uh sorted out for premium subscription, and for a long amount of reasons, it didn't work very well, and so she's found, you know, a number of edge cases there which should just don't work particularly well there either. So I think you know quite a lot of quite a lot of this hasn't fully been, you know, properly baked through as yet. So that was an interesting article to read from her. But I mean, good news, Apple has opened the Apple Music Hall in London's Battersea Power Station. Uh it's a beautiful new live music venue. I think 300 people can sit there. It's got wiring for 16 cameras and all of that. What word didn't appear in the press release at all? Podcasts. Uh because for some reason this is great, a great space for them to record music, but not a great space to record podcasts, apparently. Apple Podcasts again falling short in terms of that. But you know, I mean a glossy release though, so so that was quite nice. Yeah, but it's so obvious.

Sam Sethi 27:27

This is just clearly Apple Music's budget who've created it, and Apple Podcast budget isn't involved in it. That's what it is.

James Cridland 27:35

Well, that might be it. That might be it. You you would know more than me. You've you've spent a long time in Microsoft.

Sam Sethi 27:41

Yeah, well, corporate land is just thiefdoms, isn't it? It's mini thiefdoms. My my my little thiefdom. This is my venue. You are not allowed.

James Cridland 27:50

Yes, yes, yes, no, indeed. Indeed.

Sam Sethi 27:54

Moving

Buzzsprout Session Recorder And Amazon Video

Sam Sethi 27:55

on, then, James. What are we doing here today? We are recording video. Now, you once said never, never, never. That was my best Churchill then, but it didn't really work.

James Cridland 28:07

So and to be honest, and to be honest, Sam, if I can be brutally honest just for a second, I probably still wouldn't be recording video had our sponsor, Buzz Sprout, not upgraded us to video and then given us this super secret tool, which we've been for the last day.

Sam Sethi 28:25

Okay, so you know where to put the blame, it's their fault.

James Cridland 28:29

So this this super secret tool that we have have been using for the last couple of months is a tool which they've finally said publicly that exists. It's a tool called Session Recorder, and it's a very simple piece of of tech which just basically sits and records video on both ends as well as audio, and then sends that through the internet after the after the recording has finished. So theoretically, at least, it should be excellent quality recording because it's happening purely locally. None of this is going through the internet until we finish recording. And so theoretically, it should look really good. And certainly when you have a look at uh the BuzzCast, for example, that that's uh quality production. So that Buzzsprout has now announced the session recorder, which I believe some people will be able to use now as they roll that out. And as I say, we've been using it for uh an a number of weeks, and it's been super helpful to us. So hurrah for that.

Sam Sethi 29:29

Now, Amazon has been a busy, busy team recently. They've expanded their video so it's look, everyone's doing video. So Amazon have gone and done what, James?

James Cridland 29:40

Well, so Amazon are doing video correctly. Amazon are doing video using HLS in the alternate enclosure tag. Hooray for Amazon. So Amazon are using video exactly the right way. With one proviso, because they are a big company and because they don't want porn on their platform, frankly, they are allow listing individual podcast hosts. So the likes of you uh of well, the likes of me will never be able to do it. But if you are on Art19 or on Triton Digital, so Omni Studio, or you're on Flightcast, you can now get your video visible in Amazon Music, in the Amazon Music app. And coming soon will be Sirius XM, uh, megaphone, and LibSyn as well. So hurrah for Amazon. They always do a pretty good job in quite a lot of what they do. And I am there thinking, I wonder why their audience share is so small in terms of podcasting. Because there must be a good reason for it. But I think they are doing exactly what we all want. They're supporting HLS, they're doing it in a very open way. So hurrah for Amazon not using any proprietary APIs at all, albeit, you know, signing signing a contract, which is I guess probably where most of these larger companies are going. So hurrah for Amazon Music.

Sam Sethi 31:09

Yeah, I mean, you know, Shay, who was the let me get his name right. Shay Simpson Simpson, yeah. Yeah, came to the PSP meeting in London, which was great to see him there. It was good that he's now adopting the alternative enclosure. So thank you for doing that. Um I'm just saddened. We did ask Shay to come on the show to talk about what this was, you know, and to promote it. Uh their PR people declined basically. And they hide behind their PR people. You know, I can't send him because of PR. And we hear that from Apple and we hear that from YouTube and Spotify. But you've done interviews with Spotify where we've had to send the questions in. That's not really an interview. That's just, you know, covering your backside. And I I just saddened that they all hide behind PR. I wish they would just be much more, you know, savvy and come on and say what they're doing. We're never gonna we're not trying to get them on a gotcha. We just want to know what you're doing and ask you some, you know, interesting questions.

James Cridland 32:06

But no, and I mean, at the at the very least, Spotify answers the questions that we that we send them. Apple won't even do that. Apple, the number four or the number five platform now, won't even do that. At some point, they're gonna have to give up their smugness and their belief that they are still number one, and they're actually going to have to do a little bit more to work with creators, I think, on that. So yeah, but unfortunately, you know, PR is, you know, an important part of this. And to be fair, I mean, just earlier on we were there playing a piece of unfortunate audio from the IAB, possibly because their PR company, which is, by the way, the IAB's PR company is the worst PR company I have ever worked with. And they have a number of clients, they are awful with all of them. Just if you if you if you know who that company is, I'm not gonna name them, but if you know who that company is, they are just the worst PR company. On why you're still using them, industry, I really don't know. But anyway, let's get get off that high horse. Let's sit back down again. But sorry, I've just been Googling.

Sam Sethi 33:18

Sorry while you're talking.

James Cridland 33:21

Perhaps if the IAB had a better PR company, they too would have turned around and said, no, we're not we're not going to be talking to a podcast, because they might ask us questions that we're too stupid to know the answer to. So, and then and then you'll have other podcasts poking fun at us. So I I can kind of understand from their point of view, there is a bit of trust involved on both sides, and you know, so I can I can understand that. But, you know, you you did mention Spotify uh there. Spotify

Spotify Partner Program Expands Globally

James Cridland 33:55

is actually doing some nice stuff, um, expanding their partner program. So a further 35 new markets, much with Central South America, more countries in Europe as well. And that's actually good news, not just if you are a creator in Central and South America, because all of a sudden you get access to the Spotify partner program and you can earn money. But it's actually also good news for all of the rest of us, because if we are in the Spotify partner program, we're not, by the way, then we could now earn from all of those viewers and listeners in Central and South America as well, uh, which is quite a lot of people. So that's pretty good news. So hurrah for Spotify for continuing to expand that particular part in the program, I think.

Sam Sethi 34:39

Yeah, I love the last part of this though, which is the company load the eligibility requirements in January, which is fundamentally a little stick and a dig at YouTube. You increase the eligibility requirements. So yes.

James Cridland 34:52

Yes, well, I wrote that, so maybe that was exactly what it is.

Sam Sethi 34:58

Let's move on. James,

Superpass On Owning Audience And Revenue

Sam Sethi 35:00

one of the things that I've been banging the drum about for a little while is this move to create portals. And you know, we are seeing many more people now talking about them. And one of the companies that's been doing a lot of work in that area is a company called Superpass. In fact, we had Superpass on the show back in April 2021, Juliana Mayer, the uh CEO. And she's recently popped her head up again because Steve Ackerman, who used to be the head of Global Podcast for Sony, has joined as a non-exec director. And I was curious what was Steve going to be doing there, and to get an update from Juliana. So I start off by asking Juliana, tell us more about what's been happening since we last spoke.

Juliana Meyer 35:45

Yeah, there's so much going on in the industry at the moment, and we're really excited about all the opportunities that we're now seeing where we can really help move the needle for people. So yeah, happy to be here on the show to chat more about that.

Sam Sethi 35:56

Cool. Now, if anyone wants to hear that previous interview with me and Juliana, and then it was on the 15th of April 2021. And at that time you announced that we've been around for 10 years. We do micro subscriptions and direct payments. And I thought, okay, well, now it's 15 years, and that seems such a long time. So 15 years, and you've got a new member of staff. Well, I say new member of staff, a new member of your board. Who's this?

Juliana Meyer 36:25

So we're really excited to announce that Steve Ackerman is joining us at Super Pass on the board. Steve brings such an incredible wealth of experience and connections. And well, I'll just hand over to Steve to explain why Steve wanted to join, and it's a great new chapter for us.

Sam Sethi 36:40

Steve, welcome, welcome. How are you? Hi, Sam. How are you doing? Good. Now we only spoke briefly at the beginning of the year when you were becoming a board member on the London podcast show. So tell me why have you joined Superpass then?

Steve Ackerman 36:55

I think when the opportunity came about with Superpass, first of all, Juliana and I met and chatted quite a few times, and that's probably one of the most important things for me is do I like who I'm gonna be working with and do I feel we can do something together? And that was definitely true. We really vibed from the start. But I think in terms of the business, it's just an amazing intersection. And you just mentioned how Superpass is 15 years old, and in a way, I think the industry has caught up with Superpass, not the other way around, because we all know how subscription and membership is now becoming such a vital bit of not just podcasting, but the wider online content industry, and therefore, to that end, I think Superpass just to me offered a really compelling solution. Certainly, when I was wearing my old Sony hat, it could be quite frustrating trying to see what solutions there were available. It's got a bit better in the marketplace. But frankly, I wish I'd known about Superpass then because it's just an incredible solution. So I find the businesses at a really interesting intersection of the industry, and for me it was compelling that when Juliana said, Would you like to come and be part of things? I was really honoured to be asked because of course I'd like to be part of it.

Sam Sethi 38:05

You're a non-exec director, which gives you an oversight role on the board, which to me also acts as a mentoring role to Juliana. Why did you decide to do the NED and not become a full-time exec within the company?

Steve Ackerman 38:19

Well, first of all, that wasn't under discussion. And to be more Okay, Juliana, why didn't you I don't think there's anything sinister about it? Frankly, that's not what I'm looking for either. I'm really happy. I think as I chatted with you about earlier in the year, I'm really happy with with the variety of things that I do now. And obviously the podcast show, as you said, is one of the other businesses that I'm involved in. But there's a whole bunch of businesses I'm consulting to right across the sort of digital landscape. So, really, this level of involvement is great. You're right. I think there's a mentoring aspect or certainly an advice aspect, and to that degree, Juliana and I have been getting on really well, and I hope she'll tell you that I've been helpful on that front. And obviously, the other key bit really, or the key bit in the mission, has been really to open up my contacts book and start to get superpass into some of the big organizations within the podcast and content landscape. As I say, Superpass's time has come, and I think now there's a very compelling proposition. So that's the level of involvement. And I would say it's been going well, but I hope Juliana will say that.

Juliana Meyer 39:18

It's absolutely brilliant. I think there's real interest in the industry at the moment for owning your audience, having subscriptions directly with your audience, and people are starting to realize that they're leaving a lot of money on the table by not having their own platform for their most loyal audience. And this is obviously what Superpass, for those that already know us, will know this is our core. And for those that don't know us, just to quickly summarize what we do, we basically give you your own technology stack to have your own app, your own website. It can have all your content there across all the different media types. So it might be your podcasts, your videos, your courses, your books, basically anything that you're making, content-wise, digital content, can finally live together in one place. Your community can live there together. You can obviously charge subscriptions or sell other one-off digital products. And the key thing with Superpass is it's 100% yours. So you're not doing RevShare. Most companies are giving so much away in RevShare with Superpass, it's 100% your revenue, it's your data, it's everything is yours, it's your brand. You know, finally you get people's attention and you send them to your link. The amount of amazing shows that have a link in bio that basically just then immediately sends people away when you finally have their attention. That's the golden moment. And then you're sending them to all these other platforms where there's all these other shows and other creators. And why are you doing that? And we've been, I don't want to say banging on for a long time, but we've been talking about that core call to action where if you can say, download my app, but you have that on every show, every YouTube video, every newsletter, everything. The core call to action for anyone that's a loyal fan that wants more is download my app. And then they have one place where they can really give you so much more, but more than that, you can give them so much more. And those are the fans that are really underserved by this really fragmented experience online.

Sam Sethi 41:11

I'm so in agreement with you. I think we're changing the words within the industry as well. Like I think when I was starting out with James, we were talking about the podcast, and now we talk about the creator economy, and now we don't talk about the individual on apps, we talk about portals and we talk about that whole gamut, as you say, blogs, merch, live, ticketing events. So who is your target audience? You've got the likes of Direva CEO, you've got the likes of Joe Rogan, most of those have got their contracts, their licenses there. So where are you targeting superpowers?

Juliana Meyer 41:46

Well, to be honest, we work with such a wide range of creators. So we now support over 10,000 creators around the world. This is the place where they are really building their business around their content. This is the core of that infrastructure. And for modern media companies, I guess the choice is to give everything out to places like Patreon and Substack and don't own anything, or get custom development team to build it yourself. And anyone who's tried to build it yourself will know it's very expensive, it's very time consuming. Things go wrong, you have to maintain it. There's technology changes every three seconds, you've got to keep that maintained. So we sit really in this sweet spot in the middle of that where we take care of all of that tech stack for you. We're basically like your development team, but without the cost of a custom development team. There's things that you need that we don't yet do. We can build that for you. So a lot of why we've got such a very, very broad product that really does almost everything that people need is because over the last 15 years we keep building things that people ask for. We have a very close relationship with all of our creators. People are often surprised when I hop on a call with it doesn't matter how big or small the creator is. Sometimes I'll hop on a call with someone who only has a hundred fans and they'll be like, what's the CEO doing on this call? But it's because we talk to our customers and get to know how they are finding the product, what are they needing, what problems are they trying to solve? And so it's really about that feeling of almost having your own custom development team, but without the cost, and you're getting your own stack that really has everything you need. The way that we like to describe it is you're basically getting your own Netflix, your own Spotify, your own Audible. And we'll talk about it maybe in a moment. But we're now launching some really new, exciting features to really broaden what we're doing around community, and it will basically be like having your own Discord in your own app as well.

Sam Sethi 43:32

So before we get into that, Steve, fast forward 12 months. What do you think you bring to Superpass? What do you think you will deliver that will make a difference? Because obviously I know you from your days in Sony. We know how great you did there. But what do you think you will be saying in 12 months' time, maybe here on POG News? What did you deliver?

Steve Ackerman 43:55

Look, the mission is growth. And obviously from my something else journey That was obviously also a business that had been around a while, but taking that to a successful exit and something that ended up really great. And clearly the mission here is to build this business to be the significant size that it should be. And I think in 12 months' time, what would we want to be talking about? First of all, the average base of customers obviously gone up, not at the exclusion of the funks Juliana's just described. And we always want the 100 fan community, but of course, getting some of those bigger businesses into Superpass would be great. And part of that, frankly, is just letting people know about it as a business. I think if there's one thing I've chatted about with Juliana, in some ways it's been a bit under the radar. It's such a fantastic proposition. Juliana, you can see, is so knowledgeable and is just a fantastic person to have created this and be fronting it. So I think really just making sure the superpass is in the conversation more, doing things like this, making sure the industry is aware. And I think the other key thing that I'd love us to be talking about in 12 months' time is really how we change the thinking in the industry. Because look, data for any content creator now, data is the number one currency. And for any business that hasn't woken up to that yet, I think they are waking up to it now. And exactly what Juliana described. The fact that for many businesses, they're giving that data away to a third party and not having access to it at all, shut off from it in many senses, is something that more and more businesses are realizing that if you then want to really deepen that relationship, you want to sell live tickets, you want to sell merch, you want to get people listening and watching to your stuff more, you've got to have that data so that you can be in contact and you can know where those people are, how they're consuming, and how you can make things better in terms of what they're consuming with you. So data is that first thing, and then revenue clearly, we all know the revenue share model, it has its uses, but it can be frustrating as well. And I think again, superpass just has the advantage of changing the conversation. So in 12 months' time, where would I want us to be? I'd want us to be at the centre of the conversation, having really had an impact on how people are starting to view the subscription and membership model.

Sam Sethi 46:02

Steve, you spend a lot of time in America. Is that a market you think that Superpass can go more into now? I don't know your footprint.

Juliana Meyer 46:09

So the US actually is our main market. I think people there have always been much more, I guess, confident in asking people to pay them subscription revenue. So for us, actually, the US is our main area, although obviously we do have a lot of UK customers as well.

Steve Ackerman 46:22

But the answer to your question, of course, I'll be opening up doors in the States as well with some of the significant players over there. And in fact, we already had meetings set up with quite a number of people.

Sam Sethi 46:31

So, Juliana, you hinted at some new features and functions coming to the platform. What are they? Go on, give us a little teaser.

Juliana Meyer 46:39

Oh, so I I would love to say more. We've got some very big new community features coming out. They're actually now being rolled out to some of our creators, but we're not going to do the sort of big announcement for a few weeks. But as I hinted earlier, it will basically be like having your own Discord inside your own app and websites. We're adding live chat, we're adding a lot more around engagement. Community's always been a big part of what's been part of the app, it's always been about having all your content in one place in the same place as your community. But I think having a place that really drives a sense of belonging amongst your audience, I think there's a lot of value for creators to not just be about delivering content. That's a really one-way relationship. It's about actually being a sort of conduit for bringing people together and actually attracting people that are like-minded and have a passion for whatever it is your topic is to actually meet each other. And I think particularly as things sort of progress with more things going more in the direction of AI and all the AI slop and a lot of noise online. I mean, already social media has so much noise online. I think now it's even more than that. This is about a really dedicated private space away from all of that other noise where people can actually trust that there's human connection. And I think that in itself is really valuable. And I think media companies that really want to build more value for their shows and for their audiences, having that dedicated community space inside your own app where you also have all of your content is so valuable. I think anybody that's not building that is going to really miss out. A year from now, they're going to lose to the competition that is doing that. So I think it's the perfect time for this. The other thing that is also just so valuable of having your own app is push notifications. The ability to have that branded as you, where you have complete control. All the things Steve said, you know, if you're selling tickets for shows or any of the other things you're doing, if you have the ability to bring people to one place to upsell all of that stuff and actually control it, so many of the big companies we talk to don't actually get the data they need from Apple, don't get the data they need from all the other services that actually really own and retain that. And actually, this is a chance to actually know who are your listeners for starters. It's crazy, that's still such an obfuscated thing. So who are your listeners and actually how much value can you give back to them and at the same time make so much more back from them? So it's a really two-way relationship. You you mentioned about the 15-year history. I thought I'd just give a little bit of context of when we started. So we've been innovating in the subscription membership and super fan space basically this whole time. Although the technology's changed a lot, the proposition has actually changed very little because it was always about micro subscriptions direct to your audience. And because we believe that was the future. And for context, in 2011, when we started, that was the year that Spotify first launched in the US. So streaming was brand new. Netflix was actually at the peak of their disc delivery service, so that year was their highest sort of numbers for that. And this was before services like Patreon existed. We just believe really strongly that direct created subscriptions and direct fan relationships was the future. And we've pretty much been banging that drum ever since. And Steve says, maybe it now finally the industry has caught up with us.

Sam Sethi 49:51

Yeah, every idea has a time. Every idea has a time. How have you funded it then? Obviously, 10 years is a long time to run a business. How have you funded the business?

Juliana Meyer 50:01

So we've got over 10,000 customers around the world. We serve over two million pieces of content. So we've got quite good customer base. We've also had investment from angels. We've actually never done the VC route because we just found individuals that really believed passionately about the cause, and we've got very good relationships with those investors. So that they're still backing us through all this time because they just love what we're doing. So yeah, it's been an exciting mission. But I think we're really in the next chapter now because there's just so much opportunity with what technology can do for people, and the pace of change in the technology space is obviously so rapid now with AI. And I just think that really taking ownership of your data, your audience, and your revenue, it's just time for that. I don't understand why people weren't doing that before. Obviously, we've been talking about that for a while. But I think that really is resonating now. And I'm excited that we're in this place where we can actually serve that need at a time when people are realizing they need it.

Sam Sethi 50:59

I think it's more to do with the fact that we've gone from what we would call podcasting being an audio first medium, and suddenly creators are having to get into video if they want to extend the reach, having to then do more than that if they want to monetize beyond just advertising, so live events and ticketing and merch. And I think you talked about the likes of Patreon. I've always found it weird that you would send your audience from one podcast out to Patreon, bring the content back as a private feed. It was just messy. And so I've always thought it's a vertical stack where people would just bring it under one roof. So we we talk the same language. Obviously, one of the biggest challenges being a UK startup is competing with the US startup. You see the likes of Supercast, the Memberful, and Substack, where we can raise maybe a million, two million, ten million if you're lucky, right? They will raise a hundred billion in comparison to what we can do here in the UK. How do you think you're going to be able to compete with those? Because that's who you're competing with. You're not competing with the Overcast, the Spotify, the Apples, competing to the creator economy is now.

Juliana Meyer 52:11

It's a really great question, Sam. And the thing that we do that none of those platforms that you just mentioned do is the custom apps. And we've seen even the biggest companies in the space struggle to do custom apps at scale. And we actually we're a very innovative team. We do a lot around product innovation. And we've actually built an app automation pipeline. We've been building in the AI space for the last five years, really, so long before it became the thing everyone was talking about. And we actually got quite a lot of money from Innovate UK to actually support that innovation. And what we've built with through that is app automation, where we actually can do branded apps at scale in a way that even those other platforms have never been able to do. And if you look at the price point of branded apps on any of the other services that do it, it's always much, much more expensive than we can deliver it at because of that. So yeah, in answer to your question about competing with US companies, it's always a different scale. But I think if you're really innovative and have a core mission and deliver something that is unique in the marketplace, then it doesn't really matter if you're UK or US or how big you are. Because if you serve a need and you do it better than everyone else is doing it, then I don't even think scale matters that much. Although obviously you would love to be at that scale would be great. But maybe watch this space, let's see where we go.

Steve Ackerman 53:32

There's also enough space in the market, Sam. It's such a fast growing area. And one thing I just want to mention, you know, Juliana talked talked about the custom-made apps. The other thing is they're beautiful. The design, look, and feel, I think, for any creator, allows them to have something that really looks beautiful. But the other reason about competing is what we see all the time with Superpass is once people understand the proposition, once they've met Juliana or they've met the team, or they can see what it can do for their business, the vast majority don't want to come on board. And so really it becomes a challenge of getting out and speaking to as many people as possible because once they see what Superpass does, they get it. And it's such a compelling proposition that can be so transformative for a business that it almost becomes a no-brainer.

Sam Sethi 54:18

So, Juliana, as the CEO, as the founder, have you thought of the exit strategy? Because one of the other things that all all entrepreneurs have to think about is it's never-ending. We're not building this to last unless you are planning to build to last. I'll talk to you in 30 years' time from now, then. But you know, there is an exit strategy. We've seen successfully Jason Hoy over at Supercar sell it to Red Seat Ventures. We probably won't see a sale of Patreon. It's probably valued itself beyond the acquisition now, so it'll probably have to do an IPO. Have you got those thoughts in your mind? Five years from now, this is a trade sale, five years from now are going to float it on the UK aim market. Just curious as to what your thoughts were.

Juliana Meyer 54:59

I think that for me it's always about the mission. It's about the fact that this is something which I think every creator on the planet needs and should have. And so I'm open to any possibility of anyone who'd want to partner with us or even buy it. If their mission is to give this technology to every creator on the planet, that's very aligned with our mission. So clearly we've demonstrated that we're very dedicated to this, having been doing this for 15 years, to serve that space because we believe how important it is. My background was as an artist myself before founding this company. And I really wanted creators themselves to own that relationship and actually own their the important things in their business. And that's really always been our ethos. So I think being able to give that to the world in a world where unbelievably most platforms still aren't giving that to the world. So yeah, open to anyone who shares that mission and wants to get involved in helping us take it at scale to the rest of the world. Brilliant. Let's do it. Let's have a conversation.

Sam Sethi 55:57

Juliana, this might be the wrong thought, but are you like the WordPress or the Squarespace or the Wix of podcasting?

Juliana Meyer 56:04

It's an interesting question. Instead of a podcaster choosing to use Wix or Squarespace for their website, we build websites. So it makes sense to do it with us. And I think we're very different to Squarespace or Wix or WordPress, is that they're not designed for huge catalogues of content. We'll have a creator who might have 10,000 pieces of content. And because it's built in the style of Netflix or Spotify, is designed to deal with that volume of content. So you don't, as the one uploading it, you're not having to think, oh, I've got to now make another page for this. And then you end up with like WordPress, loads of pagination pages. That's just a horrible experience. Podcasts that have 2,000 episodes, that's a horrible experience, right? Clicking through lots of pages. Whereas because it's much more content-led, visually content-led with swiping carousels and all the things that everybody uses all the time on Netflix and Spotify, it's just a really different, dedicated proposition. It automatically has your members' login and authentication and comments on every content and a page for every episode that you import on the RSS feed. And so there's so many thoughtful things that we have built that it, and as Steve says, integrates with everything you already do. So it will automatically pull in all of your podcasts of the RSS feeds. It'll integrate with your YouTube channel. So all of your YouTube videos will be in there. A page for every video, but your own sort of private chat around it that's protected from the kind of YouTube trolling and stuff like that. So there's loads of things where we've listened to the challenges creators have and what do they need and what makes their life easy. And now with AI, people are less impressed with Build a Website in a Minute. But a few years ago, we launched Build Your Website in a Minute, and it was really cool for people to come in, basically say what they wanted to do, and just have it automatically create everything that they need, including the infrastructure and the hard text. So it's much more than just a website landing page, which I think when you build on Wix and Squarespace, you're getting a beautiful page or pages, but you're having to think about the menu structure and how every page fits together. And whereas we automatically do that for you, but then if you want to customize it, you then also have full control. Oh, and of course, it's also in your app, so it's both from one place.

Sam Sethi 58:07

Cool. Now, one of the things that we talked about earlier was video. How do you deal with that? Are you a host now as well as an app? Where are you sitting in that verticalization of the market?

Juliana Meyer 58:23

Yeah, so for us, audio and video has always been our core. We don't just work in the podcast space, we also have TV celebrities that will have all their TV shows and films on there. We have, for example, the Arts Channel is the arts of the Netflix of Arts and Cultures, an SVOD. So we have lots of different kinds of businesses, media businesses that we work with. So video's always been really core, and actually our very first video client, because we started in music, so we were always an audio first company, but then we had music videos and stuff like that. But then we had Matt Hayes, who's the world's top fishing celebrity. So he's does all the fishing shows on Discovery Channel and all of that. If any of you are fishing fans, and Matt Hayes came to us and he said, Look, I have all of these video series that I've made. And at the moment, the only place people can watch them is YouTube bootlegs and DVDs that people have to buy. And so we literally built him his own Netflix. And this is a long time ago now, this is more than 10 years ago. And so we really built out on the video side. So we've been delivering high-quality video streaming, including when someone uploads a video to us, we'll transcode it into six different copies so that it will deliver it to your audience according to their bandwidth. So they'll get really beautiful high quality if they're on a fast connection, if they're on poor connection, it'll stream then the lower res one so that they don't have buffering. So all of that, most people don't even know that exists. Hopefully they shouldn't know because they're hopefully making content rather than focusing on the tech. Whereas we know all that stuff, we've done all that work and we've been doing it a long time. So we do video and audio hosting, but not actually sending out an RSS feed. We receive the RSS feed, but then if people want premium content, then they upload that, and then that's what's behind their sort of gated access, whether it's just give your email address to play it or pay for a subscription to access it. There's lots of different flexibility around access. So every single piece of content can have a whole range of different gating and access according to which layer of your fan base you want to access it. So you can create a whole funnel where people come in for free, then they give you their email address, but still get stuff for free. Then they might be paying for this bit of content and that bit of content, and then you hopefully get them onto a subscription where maybe you've got different tiers. And all of that's very flexible and very possible. So you can pretty much tailor it to however you want to do it.

Sam Sethi 1:00:38

One of the last areas of content distribution is going to be live. We're seeing a lot more in the second half of 2026. I think 2027 will certainly come alive, no pun intended. You've got Twitch, YouTube, you've got lots of platforms now, TikTok, who are doing live content. And we see Substack and Supercast just announced theirs as well. Will you get into live distribution and broadcasting?

Juliana Meyer 1:01:05

So we do actually already support various live things. So, for example, live radio, any radio stations that want their own app, that's already a functionality we support. If people want to do live audio streaming, that's already supported. We've got the live chat alongside that, so you can run it as an event and live video. We've got, for example, Imogen Heap, who's another artist that we work with. So she's got a few million followers on socials and Grammy Award winner, many of you will know her. So she's used Superpass again for a long time with us, and particularly during the pandemic, she would do live streams every single week where she'd get the fans into chat and ask her questions. And actually, she's been building something called AI Mojin, which is an AI version of Imogen that knows everything about her, and she's been training it. All the data that's gone into the model has been trained on the information that she did with these live chats with her heapsters, which and her heapsters are her super fans that subscribe to her on her superpass app. So yeah, live stream has always been really important to us. We do actually have some plans to develop live streaming even further in the coming months, and some of that ties into the community stuff I'm teasing today. But yeah, we'll definitely let you know as we do more. But yeah, it's already a core part of what people are using their apps for.

Sam Sethi 1:02:14

Last question then. I'm curious. We have been banging the drum about things called micropayments for one. And I think actually, I'll put my hand up and say in the way that I was talking about them with micropayments being Bitcoin driven, I think it's failed as an opportunity. There wasn't a window that came open, but that window's, I think, gone now. You talk about micropayments, I assume about fiat-based currency micropayments, so dollar, pound, euro. Do you have a tokenization system within SuperPass? How are you dealing with micropayments?

Juliana Meyer 1:02:45

Yeah, so at the moment, basically everyone's just doing it as fiat, but because it's integrates with your own Stripe, and obviously Stripe supports a lot of other kind of currencies, there is the potential there, if there's a creator out there where that matters to them and their fans, then they could do it. Obviously, in-app purchases for Google and Apple is a different story. But if they're sending people to perch through the web part of what we do, then yeah, if it's important to them, it's available. But we just haven't really seen that much take up of it. And I think actually, probably last time we chat, Sam, you and I probably talked a little bit more about the kind of crypto side of things. But yeah, it seems like that chapter's past for now. But you can tell I'm a bit geeky and techie, and I really like things that push the needle on what's possible from an innovation perspective. And I still think that there's opportunity there in the future that I don't think it's necessarily done, but I think at the moment it's not where people are focused.

Sam Sethi 1:03:35

Yeah, I'm with you on that. I think stable coins is the answer, but we won't get into that conversation today. What's holding the barrier to entry for Superpass? Is it, as Steve said, just purely awareness now? Because it sounds like you've got an amazing platform, it sounds like you've got all the feature and functions set. So, Steve, is it just awareness, do you think, that's now gonna stop the stellar growth?

Steve Ackerman 1:03:56

Well, I've left, I don't think anything's gonna stop the growth now. We're definitely on that journey. It's a question of obviously how quickly and how much the business grows. In some senses, I think this is a sign, this is a sort of confirmation of where the industry is at, because when I think subscription membership was first being launched by different sort of podcast creators and content creators, in a way, we were in a fairly weak negotiating position, right? And that's why platforms could dictate what revenue shares they were going to take or how it was going to work in terms of data. And of course, it was take it or leave it. Either you want to be on Apple or you want to be on Patreon or you don't, no middle ground. And in a way, I think the reason why that growth is really ready now is because as the industries grow and the industries become more confident in what they have as a business model, and back to what I was saying earlier about data being that most important currency and their forecasts, the growth really is almost limitless. The scale this business can get to is I think super exciting. Obviously, very exciting for me to have the chance to be involved in that and in a way to come in after Juliana and the team have done all the hard work. But the growth really is fairly limitless because, of course, we all know subscription and membership is becoming such a fast-paced, important part of the revenue model, not the exclusion of advertising, not the exclusion of still offering your content for free to audiences wherever they may be. But of course, that ability to just get closer and closer to the people that you matter to most, to your super fans, to create that membership ability, is becoming a larger and larger opportunity. And so, therefore, when you say how quickly can Superpass grow or what's the growth limit, that's why I'm fairly bullish in saying I don't think there is a limit. I think it's really just a question now making people aware of the product because it is such a phenomenal product.

Sam Sethi 1:05:44

Juliana, one of the things that we're seeing in the market, and I think it's Spotify embodies it very well. They are the company that is struggling the most. They have their own ad network, but they've also got their own skip ad. Button now. They've got premium users, which is really who they want. So the message to advertisers on Spotify is that we didn't really want you, but we'll have you because the free users still need to be monetized in some way. Are we seeing? Because again, it goes back to what Steve said, the the data that advertisers want. Did my ad get played? How many times did it get played? How long was it listened to? All of that data's locked away. Are advertisers going to turn their backs on podcasting? Is it creators saying, actually, you know what? I don't want to be interruptive with poor advertising. I want to actually do premium content and build my community and fandom. Do you still see change or do you still think there's going to be a space for you as superpowers to include advertising within it?

Juliana Meyer 1:06:48

It's such a good question, Sam. And I think the thing with brands and advertising is there's two quite different boxes there. There's obviously just advertising, but there's also sponsorship. And I think that what we've seen with some of the podcasters that we work with is actually there's so much money available in sponsorship. And I can't mention names, but there's a particular podcaster that we've worked with where they got so much sponsorship for their app, where within the app, each sponsor had a little image and a section on them. And he was making six figures within a month of launching the app just from sponsorship of having those placements. So I think there's so many different ways for podcasters to monetize. And with advertising, with Spotify doing that move, and maybe that means that podcasters will make less from advertising because people just aren't hearing the adverts. Maybe what people will do more of is only put some of the content, have more of a funnel. It's a funnel, isn't it? It's Spotify and YouTube and Apple and all those places at the top of the funnel. They're brilliant for reach. We always encourage this, as Steve said, this is not instead of. We always encourage people to really use that top of the funnel to really grow their audience. But maybe you're not putting all your content there. Maybe you're holding some of it back to really create a journey for your audience so that when they are really engaged, they have something else they want to click through to that is then in a location where you have more control. And then it does it matter that much if you're not making as much from advertising because the tech platforms are changing how it works. Well, no, because actually you've got other parts of the funnel that actually will be so much more valuable to you and brands and sponsorship can still play a significant role there. And then in terms of people not wanting to be interrupted, I'm definitely one of these people. When I'm listening to a show, I really want to be focused on it. So I think having that quiet space away from the noise of adverts and also from a community perspective, away from the noise of the rest of the internet, where it's actually really hard to keep people's attention. I think all of those things is what we see very consistently across our creators. That's really valuable to their audience and obviously then to them because that's how they then build the main revenue stream that they're seeing for their businesses.

Sam Sethi 1:08:56

Juliana, Steve, look, congratulations, Steve, on joining Superpass. Juliana, congratulations on getting Steve to join Superpass. Both of you. Juliana, just tell people now if they want to go and find out more about Superware, they would go.

Juliana Meyer 1:09:09

Perfect. So yeah, it's very simple. It's superpass.com. The key is that it's an A, so it's super S U P A P A S.com.

Sam Sethi 1:09:17

Couldn't get the couldn't get the domain, could you?

Juliana Meyer 1:09:19

Well, we wanted to leave it fun. It's based on the kind of super fan and the pass is about your VIP pass, backstage pass. It's always been the but yeah, it's yeah, superpass.com, and we'd love to hear from you if you like what you've heard today.

Sam Sethi 1:09:33

Thank you so much. Take care, guys. Beach you soon. Thanks, man.

Juliana Meyer 1:09:37

Thanks so much, Sam. Bye.

Announcer 1:09:38

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

Substack Discovery And New Distributors

Sam Sethi 1:09:48

Right, moving on, James. Substack. They've been getting more and more involved in podcasting. You know, we've been talking about all of the big platforms. Well, I think they have because I think, you know, when you look at some of the people that I look at, like uh Katie from Pod the North, she's doing a lot on Substack with audio, video, and live. But one of the big concerns has been that people can't find podcasts. We talked about Tom Webster's analogy of, you know, Netflix not having podcasts at the front of the store. And Substack seems to have had the same problem. Well, they've done something about it, James. They've added a new podcast tab.

James Cridland 1:10:28

Yes, they have. So there's a yes, there's a dedicated place now where you can easily reach your existing listeners on Substack. Substack, a company that uh clearly cares so much about podcasting that it couldn't be bothered to turn up to podcast movement. But nevertheless, uh they're they're very excited about podcasting, apparently. So that's nice. It's got thousands of podcasts, so they say, and they are creators publishing podcasts, collectively earn over $200 million a year on Substack, um, which is uh quite a number. Well, creators publishing podcasts. That's not the same as creators publishing podcasts that are on Substack, but nevertheless, useful numbers. All I would say is the folks from Beehive were present at podcast movement. They were speaking. There were three of them. They were there, they had a stand hidden away upstairs. It was good to meet Jacob Wolfe, it was good to meet Ainsley Rosito. They were very open and very interested in everything that was going on. Substack weren't there, so you can always point to that, I guess.

Sam Sethi 1:11:36

Now here's an interesting company that I came across called Horus, and they've started to get into podcasting. They're a UK-based company. I haven't ever heard of them before because they've been involved in music distribution. That's their core function. But now they've decided to expand into podcast distribution. And what's interesting about it, the company was founded in 2006. The CEO is Nick Dunn. And they really are starting to talk about a new service that handles distribution to major podcast destinations, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Audible, and iHeartRadio. And I'm like, wow, they RSS, you mean? Yes. And I think that's what they're talking about. But it's interesting. They're looking to also go and get on to things like Castbox, Overcast, and other places. But they also go beyond that to Geo Savan, Ghana and Boomplay.

James Cridland 1:12:30

So it's it's amazing what you can do with RSS, isn't it? Yes. Because that's literally it. That's literally what they're saying. We're using RSS. RSS reaches all of these pla all of these places. But that, of course, is the way that music distributors have worked for years. They've turned around and they said, we can get you into Amazon Music, we can get you into Spotify, we can get you into Apple Music and so on and so forth. And then all of a sudden they've gone, well, hang on a minute, there's probably an opportunity here to use the same playbook for podcasting because for podcasting, because people don't necessarily understand that podcasting just uses RSS as open distribution that anybody can actually get into.

Sam Sethi 1:13:16

Yeah, they're charging just £20 a year, which is interesting as a number for podcast distribution and £20 a year for music distribution. I wonder whether the folks at Fountain are looking at them closely because that's one of their ideas to do both music and podcast distribution.

James Cridland 1:13:33

Yeah, yeah. Well, maybe. I mean, I guess the question on Horus is what kind of stats you get, whether or not it supports monetization, whether or not it supports advertising. The only thing that was on the Horus website when I went to have a look in terms of podcasting was a login page. That was literally it. There was nothing about what the product does, there was nothing about how the product works. And not seeing any information other than a login page didn't fill me with a whole lot of, and by the way, a very AI-coded login page didn't fill me with a whole lot of confidence in the company. But if they're, you know, a large company in terms of music distribution, then yeah, then why not?

Sam Sethi 1:14:22

James, moving on

Podcast Scores And Attribution Debates

Sam Sethi 1:14:24

then. Score, score, scores. It seems like buses from London. You get one score and along come three. But the first one is the Oxford Road have announced a partnership with our friends at Bumper to add the bumper score. What have they done?

James Cridland 1:14:39

Yes, so uh the bumper score is a private score from zero to two hundred. It's based on some scoring that Bumper has. And Oxford Road reckon that it's a really good idea, and they have announced a partnership to bring the bumper score to market, and they think it's an excellent plan. Now, this show is on bumper, and we have a bumper score, and our bumper score is I think when I looked at it, it was 18. That is not a good score. No, and and so I asked Dan Dan Meisner at Bumper, why is our score only 18? Is it because it's very long, because Sam keeps on putting lots of stories in it, or is it something more than that? And and it transpires that the bumper score, part of what the bumper score is driven on, is it's driven on plays which have prove have provably actually happened. So therefore, you can see into Apple Podcasts data, you can see into Spotify play data, you can see into YouTube play data, but you can't see into play data from Pocket Casts or from or from Overcast or from TrueFans or from any of these other platforms. There's no open API to do that. And so what that essentially means is that the bumper score will knock you down if most of your plays are from a uh from an app which doesn't have the playback score. We have a lot of people who listen to this show who aren't listening on Apple or on Spotify, but are listening on platforms like TrueFans, platforms like Overcast, platforms like Podcast Addicts, and so on and so forth. And so basically, if you want to rise uh raise your bumper score, then instead of saying wherever you get your podcasts, you you you should be saying listen to us only on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify, or possibly even further, cutting off all of these other podcast apps so that you can only be on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, so you've got a big bumper score, which to me doesn't sound like the future that that anybody wants. So I'm I'm I'm I'm a bit grumpy about it. Um but but I can I can understand that you know this is something that Oxford Road feel it is a benefit to them. But anything to me that penalizes podcast creators for people using you know podcast apps other than Apple or Spotify, I I I can't see as a as a good thing, really, to be honest.

Sam Sethi 1:17:15

No, I agree with that part. I I think trying to trying to play devil's advocate for a second, I think looking at the way the bumper dashboard works, it only really gets data from Apple and Spotify when the client gives them access.

James Cridland 1:17:30

Correct. And YouTube, yeah.

Sam Sethi 1:17:31

Yeah, and and you've talked in the past and and you've written a full article on you know, we how apps could get paid and then provide data back. And yeah, you know, is this another example of the value add of apps giving the data back into others that request it so that you know they can be part of the bumper score? So I'm I'm just saying that I'm sure that the guys at Bumper would love to have data from myself at TrueFans, from Fountain, from course they would. But what's in it for me is the you know, as I call it, the Wiffham test. Why why would I want to do that when that data is valuable to me? And you know, when you listen to the superpass interview, Steve Ackerman talks about data, data, data. He says it's the most important thing, right? So again, there's the value that the apps have, and we are the big deep pocketed Apple, Spotify, and YouTube. So we need to, you know, get some recompension for sharing.

James Cridland 1:18:31

Yes. Yes, yes. No, I I I entirely agree with that. But I also, you know, I I suppose on the other side, you know, I mean, for somebody to knock you down as a podcaster because you have listeners on on third-party podcast apps doesn't seem like something that a company that likes podcasting would do. So I'm a bit disappointed at both Oxford Road and at Bumper, to be frank, with this with this score. I've never been comfortable with the idea, but having now seen our score being so low, you know, that that's the concern. And it's being seen as a quality of listener score, it's being seen as a how many bots do they have listening to them score. And from my point of view, I I don't think that that's that that's a fair thing to be scoring people on. So I'm I'm hoping that it's the first it's the first piece of work on that uh score, and I'm hoping that it continues to be worked on.

Sam Sethi 1:19:30

Have they published anywhere how the score is actually calculated because that's where they get their money?

James Cridland 1:19:37

No. Well then it's completely opaque. Then then it's sorry, boys.

Sam Sethi 1:19:41

I mean, I love you dearly, you know that, but I think this is an irrelevancy then to me.

James Cridland 1:19:46

Yeah, right. And and again, it's what it's it's one of these things where we talk down the download, but we don't have an adequate replacement for that. And the bumper score is not an adequate replacement um for for download numbers. So yeah, so we so we get that. There's another quality score which I know even less about from Mission Media, which evaluates shows across a range of signals to help give an objective measure of how audiences engage with them. Now, many of the signals that I've seen, particularly when you have a look at some of these, they look at the amount of ratings that you have on Apple, the total amount of reviews that you have, but also they have a look at things like you know how many followers you have on social media as well as some kind of as some kind of thing of you know how successful you are. And again, you know, I come back to you know Apple ratings and reviews. Um, is that really a good uh uh thing to measure podcasts with? And is how many followers we have on Twitter really the right thing to work out how successful a particular podcast is? I I would say no, but they clearly think that there is something uh going on there. But you know, so they're calling this a objective measure of how audiences actually engage, they're calling this a quality score. I don't believe that it is fully, you know, clarified in terms of exactly how the thing works, but again, it's another one of these uh scores that um people are um giving individual shows now.

Sam Sethi 1:21:27

Who is it who said scores on the doors? Oh, I can't remember.

James Cridland 1:21:32

Bruce Forsyth, I think, wasn't it?

Sam Sethi 1:21:34

Yes. Scores on the doors. Nice game, nice game. Nice game. Yes, yes.

James Cridland 1:21:41

Gosh, there's a there's a thing. Now the third also, by the way, scores on scores on doors are are also the way that you know whether or not you're just about to get poisoned by buying a kebab in in New South Wales, in Australia. They have these things called scores on doors, where as you walk on, uh as you walk in, it says, it says, you know, this establishment has been has been given an 80% score for not killing people.

Sam Sethi 1:22:07

Scores on doors, yes.

James Cridland 1:22:08

Anyway, yes, yeah.

Sam Sethi 1:22:09

Food poisoning is a good thing. Anyway, moving on. Now, uh yes, moving on quickly. There is a third company that's coming out with a form of measurement, data measurement and attribution platform. Fairing is taking podcast attribution down to the show level with a new tool designed to identify which podcasts actually influence purchases. Again, is this a tool that we should be looking at?

James Cridland 1:22:33

Well, this is podcast attribution. There are plenty of podcast attribution companies, the big ones, of course, Magellan AI and Podscribe, who both do a pretty good job in terms of that. Fairing is based on post-purchase surveys. And so if anybody complains about the standard of data that we have in the podcast industry, a post-purchase survey is not it, is not a solution to the issues that we have. So, I mean, really, I I'm I'm not I'm not a particular fan of uh of anything that it is essentially requires people to fill out surveys in order to because I mean every time I fill out a survey, whenever anybody says, where did you hear about us? I always take the button mark podcast, regardless of whether or not I actually heard about that particular brand on a podcast. So I'm sure that I'm not alone in this industry doing that. So um, yeah, I'm not so sure.

Sam Sethi 1:23:31

So, James, the third one then is Hidden Pod, which is giving podcasts a quality signal which allows shows to be discovered in a new and a different way. It scores our podcast, James, 70. Is that good? Is that bad? It's better than 18.

James Cridland 1:23:47

Well, in fact, it was scoring the Pod News Daily, which I put through this thing, and it scored it as 70. It knocked me down for background music, and it also knocked us down for consistency of release, because for some reason one show every weekday, regular as clockwork since 2017, apparently isn't consistent enough. So I contacted I contacted them and I said correct, I know. So I contacted them and I said, Well, I don't really understand the I understand the audio quality thing because of the background music, but I don't understand the consistency thing. And he said, Oh yeah, you found a bug. The consistency thing, it had a placeholder of 50 for everybody. So that's been fixed now. And audio quality, he's managed to work out what's just a bad background noise and what's music in the background, which is relatively easy to do. And so now the audio quality score is 100, the consistency score is 92. Still not quite sure why we don't get the full 100 for that show, but uh so the number has gone up to 88. But again, you know, I mean, it it's a nice number. What does it mean? Who knows? To be frank, I'm not quite sure. I'm scored down for clippability because it's quite difficult to take the daily podcast that we do and and to and to clip it. Totally understand that. And it's all and I'm also knocked down a little bit for content structure because literally I'm just reading stories, so there's nothing more there. But yeah, lots of lots of scores, always nice, but not very helpful.

Sam Sethi 1:25:19

Are we getting these scores again? I just taking it back to the stories that we've been talking about, right? So, you know, the IAB not really doing anything, AMP not really getting it through, Apple being awful with the zero time, YouTube with hovers and all the sorts of overinflated things, cov that they've added recently. All of this BS around metrics that no one's fixing. So is everyone going, okay, well, we can't fix that, and you know what, we'll come up with a score because that's the only other thing we can do.

James Cridland 1:25:50

I I I think you've probably got it absolutely right there. Yes, the the the score is just a simple, straightforward thing, uh, pulls together lots of different stats to try and make something that vaguely works and that you can sell to other people because you don't have to say exactly how your score is worked out. I'm not sure that it's a particularly helpful thing for the industry. I'll I'll be honest. But it I I can certainly see, I mean, you know, at the end of the day, we've got brand safety, and those are scores as well, uh, score-based as well. So we've had brand safety stuff in there, we've had all kinds of other things going on in this space as well, and I suspect that we'll see more of it.

Is Live Streaming Really Podcasting

Sam Sethi 1:26:32

Now, changing tack. One of the things that you and I did when we did our predictions for 2026 was talk about live podcasting. I certainly have been banging the drum, wondering why podcasting 2.0 hosts have not really done more with it. When we've seen things like uh Substack recently do a lot with it, Supercast have announced their live streaming. Obviously, you've got YouTube, uh, and now Twitch has announced that they are going to do lots more coaching around live streaming because they are a big live streaming platform, and this is AI. And so it just dawned on me that you know all these other platforms are doing really well with supporting live podcasting or live streaming of content. And we are not seeing anything yet, particularly from the podcasting community. Now, YouTube debuted something called practice mode for its vertical live formats. TikTok's got creators cut a newsletter to help with live. Why still, James, are we laggarding behind in the podcasting 2.0 community?

James Cridland 1:27:40

I think all of this comes back to what is a podcast. And I think the number one in terms of what is a podcast is on demand. I don't think one when you are live, you are doing a podcast. I think you're you're doing another piece of piece of content. And I think when you merge content together. Then of course you end up with this, you know, thing. But if you're doing live TV, well that's what you're doing, or live radio, then that's what you're doing. So I'm very I'm very relaxed about it. I think if you want to do live uh live streaming, then YouTube has a set of tools which will help you there. And th that that's kind of where we are.

Sam Sethi 1:28:23

But I know she disagree with you. I think we can for once we've created the lit tag. We we we have shows that do stream live, you know, like the show Broadcasting 2.0 with Adam Curry and Dave Jones.

James Cridland 1:28:38

And then post that we Which I can never listen to because it's in the middle of the night. Yeah.

Sam Sethi 1:28:43

Yes. And but but the the but you were on a show that was live yesterday, right? For example, with Rob Grill. Oh, I and so so we know that live works and that people want to interact, and then basically on the back end of that, you take the recording and turn it into a podcast within the RSS feed. So it all works with RSS. It's it's it's there, right? The tech's there, it works, we know it works. And yet, I don't really see the demand from podcasters, I don't see the demand from people saying I want to listen to live shows, and and conversely, I don't see the supply from the hosts enabling it.

James Cridland 1:29:25

Yeah, I I and I I I would just say, yes, I I agree with all of that. And I think that you know, live live media is a very different thing to on-demand media. That's what podcasting is, that's the fundamental of podcasting is that it's on-demand media that you can listen to at a time to suit you. And I mean, I don't even know whether the ampicord's long form definition includes on-demand, but I think it probably should. So yeah, I I'm I'm I'm gonna be the the old Luddite in this conversation and turn around and say that I think live streaming is something else and isn't and isn't podcasting.

Awards, Events, And Industry Moves

Sam Sethi 1:30:08

Let's whiz around the world, James. Let's start off here in the UK. Kate Cocker, the wonderful presenter, with her daily podcast, like you, James, everyday positivity. Maybe we should both be reading that one and listening to that one. Um after this show. My goodness, yes. Well, she's doing her 3,000th episode, and she's going to be having a little party on Friday, the 6th of November as well. You must empathize with somebody who does a daily show.

James Cridland 1:30:38

Yes, yes. And I mean, at least I'm just I'm just basically reporting on what other people are doing. Kate is having to come up with uh actual content as well. Now I've known Kate for a long, long time. One of the things that I should probably do is to grab her for an interview and find out more information about what she's been doing. But I think certainly, yeah, I mean, recording 3,000 episodes, that's slightly more than the Pod News Daily has done so far. I think because I don't do a podcast every single working day. Well, rather, I do do a podcast every single working day. I don't do a podcast every day. So certainly 3,000 episodes is quite a thing. So many congratulations to her. And I hope to have her on at some point in the next few weeks. Right, let's uh shift off to uh people and jobs. There is a new president and CEO at PRX, Jason Saldana, who has worked at PRX for some time already. But Kerry Hoffman, the current president and CEO and podcast Hall of Famer, is uh stepping down after more than 20 years at uh PRX. So congratulations for her for, I'm guessing, a retirement. And congratulations to uh Jason for that new role as well. And Matty Stout has started a new position as managing director at chirp.ai. What does chirp.ai do? Well, I'm glad you asked. Their website says buy 60 second creator reads in upcoming YouTube videos. That's what it does. So now we know. Let's move up to awards and events, then, uh, shall we, Sam? The independent podcast awards you will be at, I believe.

Sam Sethi 1:32:25

Yes, I will be there. They've just put out their short list, so that's very exciting. And the winners will be revealed on the 4th of November. So it'll be at King's Place in King's Cross, London. So, yes, I will be there.

James Cridland 1:32:40

Yes, we should be good. YouTube being a the big partner, but TrueFans also being a partner as well, I notice, which is very fancy. Yes. And of course, this time next week, it's the British Podcast Awards, which is on Friday. And I'm seeing if I can I've sent this press this press inquiry, and I've said, please can I come to the pre-party? Because there's a pre-party going on between six and eight before the awards start. Please can I come to the pre-party with a microphone to interview people for the Pod News Weekly Review, and then I'm going to run away before the before the awards start because I don't want to sit through the awards. Is that okay? Thanks, bye. So we will we will see what happens there.

Sam Sethi 1:33:24

Okay, that brings up two questions to me.

James Cridland 1:33:27

One, yes, you're in London. Oh yes, I'm in London next week. Yes, yes, for a couple of days. I'm in London for the for the audio festival. We should be fun. And then and then yes, and then I would, you know, Friday is is going to be an empty day, but now I'm maybe going to the British Podcast Awards, so that'll be nice.

Sam Sethi 1:33:47

Oh, right. No, your body, your poor body. Get back in that gym.

James Cridland 1:33:53

Talk to me about it. Talk to me about it. And then in Berlin on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday as well. So, yes, there we go.

Apple Duo, iOS Updates, And Maps

Announcer 1:34:00

The tech stuff. On the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland 1:34:05

Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday. The Pod News newsletter. Here's where Sam talks technology. Sam, the the new phone has been announced. Your new telephone, uh, which is amazing. The Apple Duo. I'm sure that it that you are already on the wait list for that. But did you notice that it's got a weird shape screen?

Sam Sethi 1:34:25

Yes, yes. It's back to the future with this one. It's a four by three, not sixteen by nine. Well done. Somebody beautifully put, forget YouTube. Welcome to the tube. Yes, it's an old TV format that they've produced.

James Cridland 1:34:41

Yes. Um and I should just point out the alternate enclosure would allow you to produce a version of your video in 4.3 format. Go, go, go.

Sam Sethi 1:34:52

I would also like to point out that a progressive web app will just automatically size correctly, but there you go.

James Cridland 1:34:58

Well, yes, but not not not the video, it won't. So uh no. Uh yes.

Sam Sethi 1:35:04

So I heard you yesterday with Rob Bringley talk about now we've got to do 16 by 9, now we've got to also do vertical video and four by three. Yes. Yes, yes.

James Cridland 1:35:15

No, I think that that's definitely a plan. I would I would imagine any video editor worth its salt being able to just um throw out copies of of shows in in all three formats, and why not? But yeah, so the Apple Duo, are you are you going to get one, all jokes aside?

Sam Sethi 1:35:33

No, no, I I genuinely thought about it. No, I I've I've looked at it in terms of the specs or seen the review.

James Cridland 1:35:41

A great birthday present.

Sam Sethi 1:35:42

It will, and the wife still agreed to it, so I'm okay so far. I I think I might not be first in cue for this one. I think there might be some bugs and issues with it that might iron out. I'll probably get it for Christmas instead now and and just see what comes based on. Well, no, I I I think it's going to be one of those okay, hands up. If you're on the tube with it, apart from you better have a wrist guard on and and a long piece of string attached to it because it'll get nicked. Other than that, it will look very fancy. And I'm sure those people who want to open it up in a business meeting go, ooh, we'll do very well with it. But I think my my concern with it is it's version 1.0 of a new format, and it's quite a lot of money for something that might actually just change quite rapidly over the next six months as they get feedback. So yeah. I I thought about it and then I've gone, just hold your horses just six months, three months, see where, see where the land lies, get get real world. Do you remember when Steve Jobs said we're holding the iPhone wrong because the band on the side right? I'm just wondering whether there's certain things like that will appear because when they change the format so rapidly, I think they are going to have issues.

James Cridland 1:36:59

No, definitely. I'm I'm sure that there's something going on there. And I think also other changes with Apple is the next version of iOS, iOS 27.2, which is released for developers only, there is a change in there for Apple podcasts. So uh instead of Up Next, which has had sort of vague things in there which it thinks that you might want to listen to next, that has now been refreshed. There's two rows at the top of the home tab: new episodes from the ones that you're following, and continue playing. The ones that you started and might wish to continue having a listen to. So that's had a bit of a rejig. It looks fine. I think there's weird stuff going on with the Apple Podcast's front page, and I'm trying to find more information for a story in the next week or so about that, because I've uh spotted a few things and a few things have been said to a few people uh on that. So more on that when I know a little bit uh more. But the other thing that Apple has done, which I think is very interesting, is Apple Podcasts working together with Apple Maps to launch something called hidden histories, and that is putting podcast episodes on a map. Hmm, there's an idea, for specific places in US cities. It's a lovely idea. It's basically how the podcast location tag could work. So it's lovely to see Apple having a play with that. This is a very curated experience within the Apple Maps environment, but it works quite nicely. So if you are looking for podcasts for specific places, then that's quite a nice way of finding them.

Sam Sethi 1:38:37

So why didn't they use the podcast location tag, James?

James Cridland 1:38:41

Because I think that they need some human curation in there. Um and the data in there isn't good enough quite yet. And particularly some of the larger podcasts aren't actually using it, and that's where the quality is for that. But yeah, so I'm I'm not too angry at them for doing that. But I I I I think anything that can show that podcasts and location data go together is a good thing. So uh it's probably a good thing that we should be saying hurrah to uh rather than uh anything else.

Sam Sethi 1:39:14

Threads. Now, I don't really use social media as much as I used to. I think I've got very bored of it if I'm brutally honest. I use Mastodon a little bit with us lot in the podcasting 2.0 community. LinkedIn, weirdly, seems to be the one I use most. X has not been used for years, and and Blue Sky up and down, and Threads, you know, again. So is there anything that's gonna get me back to using any of these platforms at all?

James Cridland 1:39:45

Possibly not, possibly not, but one of the things that Threads does want is it wants more people to talk about podcasts for some reason. I'm not quite sure why, but they've added a bunch of support for podcasts on Threads. So you can just copy and paste links to episodes or show pages from Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or iHeart onto Threads, and that'll work nicely. But what you can also do is you can link your RSS fees to it, and once you've done that, then it will allow you to host some nice sort of transcript threads and that sort of thing on there as well. So it's quite nice, and you get stats on there as well, including how many people click through to your podcast from there. So they're definitely doing something, whether or not that moves the needle at all, I don't know. But it's quite nice to see that uh threads are diving into this a little bit further.

Sam Sethi 1:40:40

And our good friend Justin Jackson over at Transistor has added a new web template just for video. He's called it Cinema. So again, check that out. But I'm more interested, James, when you're over at Podcast Movement. There was a podcast standards project meeting. I don't know if you were invited or not invited to that one. I've heard zippity doodar out of that, as into what was said or done.

James Cridland 1:41:04

Yes, I was invited to it. I tend not to go to the to the meetings, but I turn up afterwards to uh drink the beer, which is exactly what I did this time as well, you know, because I'm not sure that a journalist should be in those meetings. But I think certainly it was a it was a meeting with a bunch of things that were talked about, and we saw what the agenda was. The agenda was published in the Pod News newsletter last week. So my guess is that we will see some stuff coming out of that relatively soon. But lots of interesting people were there, I understand, including a bunch of new folk who haven't actually been at one of these meetings in the past. So one would hope that that drives a little bit more uh interest in that. So good on Ben and Alberto for putting that on. Of course, Justin didn't make the trip from Canada down into enemy territory, and who can blame him? So so Justin's Justin's enthusiasm and optimism was rather missed in podcast movement for this year.

Sam Sethi 1:42:10

And lastly, uh Red Circle's released an integration with YouTube. So congratulations to Mike. Red Circle can handle both uploaded videos, auto-generated videos from audio-only episodes, and allows you to publish everywhere with just one click, which seems to be the statement of the week.

Listener Feedback, Supporters, And Wrap

Announcer 1:42:26

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

James Cridland 1:42:41

Yes, so many different ways to get in touch with us. There's voicemail by using the link in our show notes, or you can use email as well. We've got some voicemail. And who is it from?

Neal Veglio 1:42:51

Hello, James. Hello, Sam. Neil Velio from PodNos Podcasting here and the soon-to-be opened Podmastery community, or as Dave Jackson calls me, Susan. You'll have to listen to my latest episode of Podmastery to get that inside joke. By the way, thanks for promoting that episode in the newsletter, James. Acast's podcast pulse says the format argument is over, apparently. Well, hear me out. ACast commissioned this. ACast now sells dynamic video ads on YouTube in the UK with LittleDot Studios. And back in 2024, ACAST blocked YouTube from its RSS feeds altogether. So a company with a new video ad business has suddenly found that everyone watches video. I'll be shocked. By the way, does a 30-second Instagram clip count as video? Because that's a very different thing from 40 minutes on YouTube.

James Cridland 1:43:43

Cheers, chaps. Uh, Neil Vellio. There there you go. There you go. I think that the data that we saw from ACARS's podcast pulse was really interesting. Yes, of course, commissioned by ACAST, but actually worked out by a different uh a different company. There's uh there's a bunch of interesting data in there. So far as I'm aware, ACAST is still blocking YouTube from their RSS feeds because they don't want to stick ads in the RSS feeds, and there isn't an easy way to turn off the ads just for YouTube. So I'm not quite sure whether that has changed at all quite yet. But anyway, thank you, uh Neil, for uh getting in touch. I appreciate that. And we got some good news, haven't we, Sam?

Sam Sethi 1:44:26

Yes, we have got a new power supporter. Welcome to Rox Codes. Yes, he's joined us.

James Cridland 1:44:33

It's not his real name. Yes, no, it's not. Yes, he has joined us our 25th power supporter. As I told him last week, he was at Podcast Movement, and as I told him, he was my new favorite person. And Flightcast was obviously after Buzz Sprout and possibly RSS.com and and and TrueFans. Flightcast was at least our fourth favorite podcast hosting company, so which he was delighted by. Rox. Seriously, thank you uh so much for your support. Much appreciated. And it's great to see you in the big list of people in the Power Supporters community on WhatsApp. And you can also join that too. Weekly.podnews.net is where to go. And you can join other people who are far too small on this screen for me to read properly. Ah, yes, like Dan Kendall and James Preston White, who I also saw at uh podcast movement, as well as Seth Goldstein.

Sam Sethi 1:45:32

So uh Madeiris was there as well, wasn't he?

James Cridland 1:45:34

Yes, lots, lots, and lots of people. So that was all good. So what's happened for you this week, Sam?

Sam Sethi 1:45:41

Well, last week, while you were away in New York, I had my mother-in-law's 95th birthday, and uh we stayed at the pig near Bath. It's beautiful if you know where that is. Uh no. And so that was lovely, and lots and lots of her grandchildren, great-grandchildren there. So a very special day. So yes, enjoyed that very much. And then fast forward to yours truly turning the grand old age of 60. So yes.

James Cridland 1:46:08

You're never 60.

Sam Sethi 1:46:09

I know, black don't crack, I look good for it. But and now people can see this in the video. But uh, but yes, I turned the grand old age of 60 and uh yeah, had a lovely evening with a lot of friends. So, yes, very enjoyable.

James Cridland 1:46:23

That's very good too. Very good too. You're on uh you're on a podcast soon, apparently.

Sam Sethi 1:46:28

I'm looking forward to my Friday night, is normally listening to this podcast. It's uh the podcasting 2.0 show with Adam Curry and Dave Jones. And uh yeah, I'm gonna be the guest this week. And conversely, also I've asked Dave to come on this show because I think there's a lot of stuff that Dave's been working on regarding the podcast index and all the endpoints and the new pod ping. I think we need to find out from the horse's mouth what he's been doing as well.

James Cridland 1:46:56

Yes, it's probably a good idea. What else have you have you been working on?

Sam Sethi 1:47:00

A couple of things. Nothing nothing too mad. Network feeds are something we do. It's like publisher feeds, which nobody else supports yet, still very annoying. But network feeds are the ability for independent podcasters to group together and create a single feed and then get the analytics from that single feed to market to advertiser sponsors. So you might have a particular genre that you then get other podcasters in that genre to work with you. And yeah, and then we've worked out all of the analytics and the micropayments and stuff. So it's very cool. So that's one thing we did. We've updated our auto-publishing feature. It's something that I've wanted to do lots and lots of times. We've we've done it with Mastodon and Blue Sky, and clearly no one's noticed it because no one uses them. But we put it on LinkedIn. The idea is that I might listen to this show, uh, I listen to a certain percentage of it, and then we can publish the cover art plus the name of the show, how long I listened, how much I paid, and a link back to the show. So it's a way of me sharing my listening activity automatically with my social media endpoints. And yeah, that's something we've done. Don't know whether people are like it or hate it, but so far yes, that's always always the question, isn't it? Yeah. Neil Velio loves it, so that was quite interesting. But we'll see. It again, these are experimental things that you do. And last but not least, you know, I'm hoping that when I get on the show with Adam and Dave, I want to be talking about the issue that we've talked about quite a lot, user agents. I think that's gonna be a big thing that uh we I mean look, besides plays and and downloads and all that metric measurement, I think we've got a bigger problem about user agents. So that's one thing.

James Cridland 1:48:49

I agree. I agree. But but of course, there is one very easy way of fixing the user agent problem, or at least uh damping it down, and that's uh if you pay podcast apps based on it, because then all of a sudden, guess what? Everybody is going to be wanting to make sure that their user agent is absolutely correct.

Sam Sethi 1:49:06

Yeah. Or the other thing would be that Apple, who take the 30% cut with all the apps, would actually determine that you put a correct user agent in and a correct playlist. You know, that would help.

James Cridland 1:49:19

There is there is definitely that which I think that Apple could be a little bit more forward on. I know that one of the conversations that happened at the PSP meeting was looking at user agents, and there is something that that has been discovered. I think Tom discovered it from Buzzsprout, which is some form of a certificate. It's a bit like DKIM, but it's for uh for HTTP requests or user agents or something. Anyway, he reckons that this is our future for being able to work out user agents properly. So more on that, I'm sure, to come in the next week or so. Yeah.

Sam Sethi 1:49:59

Now, apart from your wonderful trip to New York, anything else happening with you, James?

James Cridland 1:50:03

Well, yes, uh the new media show with Rob Greenley, I was on that show and indeed am on that show. If you wish to go and uh watch that, that was recorded this morning as I speak to you this evening. So that was good fun. Very much enjoyed uh chatting with uh Rob. So worth a peek on that. And yes, and apart from that, I've been trying to trying to uh reverse technology with the solar system in this house.

Sam Sethi 1:50:30

I've discovered that for whatever reason to the sun, that's a reversible.

James Cridland 1:50:35

I've discovered that for whatever reason, Wi-Fi is not the most the best thing for the solar system to communicate on. It really doesn't like the Wi-Fi for some reason, and I think that's because the Wi-Fi here isn't necessarily the right Wi-Fi for it or something. Anyway, I've used this thing called an Ethernet cable, and that works really well.

Sam Sethi 1:50:57

Tell me more, sounds exciting.

James Cridland 1:50:59

I know, exactly. Uh, and so I've managed to plug in one bit of it into Ethernet, so now, and that was the bit that was having trouble connecting. So that's good news. The only downside is that the other bit of it that I would like to connect to Ethernet properly is a bit that uh basically it's next to very live electricity, and so I don't really want to go into that box. And so at some point I'm gonna have to get a jobbing electrician to come in and actually pull the thing out from the box of scary electric wires that that is currently in there, so I can actually plug something into it. That'll be $200, please. But that's basically how that works. So there we are, and uh that is it for this week. Uh, all of our podcast stories taken from the Pod News Daily Newsletter at Podnews.net.

Sam Sethi 1:51:49

Yes, James suffered this marathon. He is tired. You can give us feedback using the Buzz Prout voicemail link in our show notes, or become a monthly power supporter like Rox did, like the 25 Power Supporters at weekly.podnews.net.

James Cridland 1:52:06

Yes, our music is from TM Studios, our voiceover Sheila D. We edit with uh Hindenburg. No, we don't. We edit with DaVinci. What the hell is it called? We edit with DaVinci Resolve this week, and we're hosted and sponsored by Buzz Brout. Start podcasting, keep podcasting.

Announcer 1:52:24

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