Ad Spend Climbs In Podcasting

James Cridland 0:00

Coming up, podcast ad spending is up. And do we know where the ads are?

Announcer 0:06

With James Gridlin and Sam Sethy. This is the Pod News Weekly Review with Buzz with Buzz Sprout. Stunt podcasting, heat podcasting.

Sam Sethi 0:18

James, now welcome back to Australia from your mad trip to Europe. And we'll talk about that later. Thank you. Now, not a story I normally start off with, which is about podcast ad spending. You know me and advertising. We're not bed friends. But it seems there's good news with podcast advertising. Tell me more.

James Cridland 0:39

Yes, good news from a couple of people. Firstly, Podscribe, who are showing that money is up in terms of podcast advertising, up 20% from August, $41 million. That's in the US. So some good numbers from there. Also some good numbers from WARC Media. They are talking about global advertising increasing by 11%. So that's global ad spend across everything. And that includes online audio, which is growing 9.9% this year to $16.6 billion globally, which is quite a nice number. It'll still grow next year up 7.5% according to this. I tell you what, the one thing that really shocks me about the WARC figures is that if you look at Amazon, Alphabet, and Meta, those three companies combined take 60% of all ad revenue. 60% of all ad revenue. That's quite a thing.

Sam Sethi 1:40

Yeah, they're probably working out how to get the other 40% right now. So yes, quite right. Did anyone say monopoly? Now, so all's good in the world of advertising, and and I keep seeing stories about Amazon ads here and Bauer Media joining in. So everyone seems to be very happy with advertising. But then you put up a strange post that I can't understand. This is from our friends at Libsin. They've created a brand new namespace extension that publishes the advertising slots within the RSS feed. Why have they done this, James?

Libsyn Exposes Ad Slot Metadata

James Cridland 2:20

Well, I'm not sure quite why they're doing this. So it's very strange. If you take a look at the RSS feed, in a typical Libsin show, you can now see exactly where the ads are and how many can be sold. Now, that's where the ads are in the raw file. So as soon as Libsin start adding ads, then the timings all go uh all go awry anyway. Uh so you can't actually use this data for skipping ads. It'd be nice if you could, I guess, but you can't actually use this data for skipping ads at all. But why would you want to advertise, you know, exactly how many ads might be running in your a pre-roll slot and uh mid-roll slot number one and mid-roll slot number two? Well, what's the sort of thinking behind that? I don't really know. So it's a very strange one, but I mean it's lovely to see that li libsin have understood the benefits of an RSS namespace extension. Um it's just it's a bit weird that it's theirs.

Sam Sethi 3:20

Could okay, I'm gonna play devil's advocate because trying to look at it from a positive rather than negative. Well, you've got to try, haven't you? Could it be that by using the namespace that they've created and presenting in the RSS feed the slots, apps like TrueFans Fountain and others could then say, here's where the ad is, but instead of just saying here's where the ad is, we could add contextual information, we could add links out, we could add affiliate links. I don't know. Is it them trying to say to the apps, look, here's where they are going to appear? Why didn't you build something in your app that enhances the ad with contextual information around it rather than just having an audio segment that just plays out?

James Cridland 4:06

Well, it sounds exciting, doesn't it? If that would work. But of course, I suppose that there are two things here. Firstly, all this is showing, as far as I can work out, is the availability. So in the, you know, in the version that I posted in the RSS feed that I posted, you can see that it says that there are two pre-roll ads, and there are two mid-roll ads in the first mid-roll break. And and the first mid-roll break starts 620 seconds in. Right, so it tells you that, but it doesn't actually tell you more than that. It doesn't tell you how many that they actually sold. And also, this is in the RSS feed, not in the audio file. So actually, if they only sold one out of the two, then you're not going to know as uh true fans. So I'm not sure that it's particularly helpful to do it that way. I think potentially it could be there for somebody like Soundstack or another third-party ad company to know where they can insert the ads at their end. And that would kind of make sense, I think. But I don't think you can use it for skipping ads. I don't think you can use it for enhancing ads because you because you don't know what the ads are, and frankly, you won't you won't actually realistically know where they are. So yeah, I'm just curious as to why that's in there anyway. And I can't think of a single reason why you would want to put that in an RSS feed unless you're signalling to a third party. Well, here's where the ads are, and here's where you can where you can insert. And perhaps it's just that. Perhaps that that's what they're using it for.

Sam Sethi 5:50

That's what I was gonna say. Have they created their own app? But when you said third-party apps, it makes sense that you know there's information that they can extract from the feed, but why do it via feed? I don't get why a feed then.

James Cridland 6:03

No, but anyway. No, I don't I don't guess why you why you do that in the open. Yeah. But yes, yes, strange things going on there, and I'm not quite sure of the reason why. And also, interestingly, the feed, the official LibSin podcast, posted a new episode uh last week. They backdated the timing to March for some reason, but it it actually only published last week, and it was a piece of rock music that went on for three minutes and then went away again. They haven't actually told listeners to that feed that Robin Elsie have moved on and that Rob and Elsie are now on in and around podcasting these days. So I'm not quite sure of the thinking there, but yeah, I mean maybe somebody at Libsyn thought it might be fun to put a three-minute rock track into that feed. I don't really know. Maybe they were just sort of uh checking how many people are still getting that particular podcast, you know, nine months after it stopped. I don't know. It's very strange. I've got the answer. Very strange. Answers on a postcode.

Sam Sethi 7:07

I've got the answer. They've been hijacked. Somebody has taken over Libsyn secretly, putting out namespaces that they don't know and rock music that they don't know about. CEO of LibSin, if you're in trouble, blink twice. That's all you have to do. We'll come and rescue you.

James Cridland 7:25

Well, at least it's not going to be what ASOS, a uh fashion retailer, has uh done where they they've been hacked by someone and the hackers have sent a little a little note through the through the push notifications to everybody that has access to the ASOS app, basically saying we've uh we've we've we we've hacked everything. So maybe it's that. Who knows? I'm sure it's always okay.

Goalhanger Turns Newsletters Into Media

Sam Sethi 7:52

Moving on, James, then look, Goalhanger, one of the big production companies globally based here in the UK, have been doing gangbusters recently. They're winning awards, they're launching new shows, they're running big live events and making tons of money. In fact, Goal Hang has attracted more than 1.8 billion views and streams across all audio, video, and social content. It has over 250,000 people who are paying to be members of its club. It's just launched a newsletter, though, James. Why go back to newsletters?

James Cridland 8:26

Yeah, I don't think it's necessarily just launched a newsletter, but I think it has a new newsletter focus. There's somebody there called Kent Smith, who sounds as if they might be a secret name for Superman or something. But anyway, he is the he's a very important person at Goldhanger and is looking after the way that those newsletters work. Apparently, those newsletters have open rates consistently double the industry average, and which is nice. I mean, you know, ours are also consistently double the industry average because the industry average is pitifully low. Um, and also I tell you what, if if we think we have a problem measuring podcasts, well, my goodness, you haven't taken a look at at email recently, because that's a a whole different ball game in terms of measurement. But Kent Smith is is, you know, in an in an interview very keen on the opportunities that that they have speaking directly to their audience there as well. I mean, you know, I mean, it's interesting that, you know, Professor Mary Beard, for example, wrote this week's The Rest Is History newsletter. I mean, she's not a person that is on The Rest is History, but she's a person that is writing the newsletter, which is quite interesting. So, yeah, it's it sounds as if they are doing what most podcast people should be, which is trying to expand in whatever way possible. And, you know, look at a show which is not just a piece of audio, but now has video, now has events, now has a newsletter as well.

Sam Sethi 10:03

Emily is actually Kent Smith, it's mi it's Emily Kent Smith, and she is the former Sunday Times.

James Cridland 10:09

Emily Kent Smith.

Sam Sethi 10:10

Yes, and she's formerly the editor, no, formerly a journalist on the Sunday Times and Daily Mail. I I think why I found this interesting, and you mentioned Mary Beard there, is they're not putting out as just a bullet pointed, this is what's in the show, this is what's coming up in the podcast, but they're actually turning, I think, more into a magazine, a secondary form of content, which I think is a really interesting strategy by getting actual journalists and interesting content, as you say, not on the podcast but related to the podcast. I think this will do really well. I mean, yes, open rates will be high, but I wonder whether they'll then switch this into another revenue stream because you know if you get to a certain point where subscriber numbers are high, open rates are high, you might think, oh, and for a pro version, you can get extra bits as well.

James Cridland 11:03

Yes, I mean I I I should look a little bit more closely into their newsletters. My understanding is that their newsletters are part of the pro thing that they've got, the membership that they already have. I think that that's how it works. So actually, the newsletter is something that you get as a special because you have signed up and you're paying a little bit of money, which is probably why they're earning so much from the membership schemes that they already have, because that sounds like quite a nice thing, you know, to get as added value. So perhaps it's that, I don't know.

Sam Sethi 11:36

The other thing they mentioned was about having deeper relationships with the users. They don't have that information, it's scattered across the four winds, is what they were talking about, in terms of you might be on Spotify or Netflix listening to the rest is football, or you might be on YouTube. And so the newsletter is one way that they can aggregate fan information around what they're doing. So, again, another smart way of using the newsletter, I think.

James Cridland 12:04

Yes, indeed. No, I think they are a fascinating company to take a look at. I gather more news next week. So I'm looking forward to more news because that company never does things by halves anymore. So it should be interesting to see what they have planned there.

Sam Sethi 12:20

Yeah, and my last comment on it this is what I call creator portals, right? Audio, video, live newsletters. And they've got merch as well, so it's aggregating everything around a brand, not or a creator, not just being a single function app. Right, moving on.

Smart TVs Beat Smart Speakers

Sam Sethi 12:37

Your favourite quoted line, James, you love it. You must have buggles coming out of your well, I won't say where. Smart TV kill the smart speaker star. This is Tom Webster. What's Tom talking about, apart from apologising to you in the first paragraph?

James Cridland 12:55

What is Tom talking about? So he loves the whole video killed the radio star thing, and why not? That makes perfect sense. But he is really do uh uh saying a couple of things here. Firstly, he is saying that, of course, the smart speaker really has not been a very interesting or exciting way to find new podcasts because voice is just the worst interface ever devised, he says. And I would certainly agree with that. I mean, it simply doesn't work for many podcasts. There isn't the word pod news, for example, in a dictionary. So, therefore, what I got most of all was people asking to listen to pod news and getting a podcast which was called Pop News, which was nothing to do with us. So, so I think that that's you know obviously a thing. But Tom's also talking about smart TV, and actually the real technology, which is moving audiences, so he says, is the smart TV. It's moved from 8% in terms of your most used podcast device up to 12%, which is quite an increase. But of course, people are using smart TVs alongside all kinds of other things as well. So, yeah, so much less around the smart speaker, and much more, unfortunately, or fortunately, around video and that sort of thing.

Sam Sethi 14:18

Yeah. So should podcast apps be on smart TVs then? I mean, we we've talked about Pocketcast going on to Apple TV, but that's just one surface. Should we all be now focusing our attention on creating apps for the big TV?

James Cridland 14:36

Well, I mean, I think that that's clearly a place where podcasting is growing, both from this, but also, of course, from things like Netflix, YouTube, and that sort of thing. We know that YouTube is very big in terms of TV usage. You would guess that Netflix is probably big there as well. So, you know, I think you can certainly see that there's an awful lot of consumption going on there. And, you know, of course, any podcast app really needs to have a TV version that works and that works well. Hence why, you know, I mean, there's there is rumors again of a new Apple TV box, but you can certainly see that Apple Podcasts has finally got video into the Apple TV platform, you know, as well. And you know, and you would you would guess that the that there's going to be more of that uh to come.

Sam Sethi 15:23

Is there a way that smart let's say the Alexa's the home pods could make podcasting easier and smarter? I mean it seems the logical thing to use your voice to say play pod news weekly review, doesn't it?

James Cridland 15:41

Yes, it does, but I think that most people are using those smart speakers for things like live radio, which is massive on smart smart speakers still, and and things that actually just work. And I think the difficulty is unless you're using the same platform, unless you're using, for example, Apple Podcasts as your platform to listen to this show, but also to listen to this show on your smart speaker, then it knows where you've got up to in a particular show. It knows which episodes you've listened to and which episodes you haven't, and so on and so forth. If you're using something different, so if you're using Overcast on your phone, then of course your smart speaker won't know w where where that particular show is and where that, you know, how far away you are through that show. So I guess from that point of view, it's it's you know, uh it it's it's great if you want to be locked into Apple Podcasts, but only 9% of people are saying that Apple Podcasts is their number one app these days. It's it's nowhere near as large as it as it used to be. So yeah, I don't think it's gonna work very well, is the quick answer.

Car Listening Data And AI Hosts

Sam Sethi 16:55

So in car, that's the other place that we always say is a very popular place to listen to podcasts, but it's not very high according to Signal Hill in Canada for some reason.

James Cridland 17:07

No, and I am not sure that I've seen any of this data actually for other countries. So maybe this is a first, and it's certainly showing that podcasts are very, very low listened to. Only 2% of time listening to audio in a car is to podcasts, according to this uh new Canadian research from Signal Hill Insights. Now, in Canada, you know, it's very different to in the US. In the US, more than 50% of all radio listening, for example, happens in a car. Only one in four minutes is done in a car in Canada. So it's a considerably different, you know, culture anyway. But I think, yeah, it's it's podcasting, I think, just doesn't, it's not quite as easy to use in a car as it potentially could be, even with something like Apple CarPlay or anything else. I mean, it works, you know. I've I've got it to work fine, but quite often you do have to pull over and sort of fiddle around and find the podcast that you want to have a listen to. Again, it's that it's that voice interface stuff, I suppose.

Sam Sethi 18:15

They also don't like AI-generated content, it seems, in Canada. Well, very sensibly. But Anderson Research says that 66% of weekly podcast listeners also reacted negatively to the idea of AI hosts.

James Cridland 18:32

Yes, yes, uh two different sets of data basically saying the same sort of thing. AI is not a thing in North America, but I think as we heard from Guan Jun Yo at uh Radio Days Asia a month or so ago, uh actually it's very different in in Asia where they're much more comfortable with the whole with the whole AI stuff. So perhaps we're seeing you know some real obvious cultural differences there. I don't know.

AI Agents MCP Servers And Micropayments

Sam Sethi 19:02

Sticking on the AI theme, then just to make you feel much happier, James. Again, will AI agents kill the advertising star? Now, last week on podcasting 2.0, Adam Curry and Dave Jones had a quite an amazing show, I think. They talked about AI agents being used in a way for Adam. We've we've sort of ribbed him a little bit on this show, where he's got his AI robot that goes off and does things like checking that his name's being talked about in shows, and therefore he listens to that clip section. But what Adam demoed, and I don't know if you heard it yourself, was quite interesting where he was asking the AI robot that he's created to go off and find certain clips that are related to what he was talking about. It stripped out all the advertising, found the clip section, so not the whole episode, and then he was able to send that via text as a link to Dave Jones. He intimated that this could be, or Dave Jones certainly felt could be the end of advertising within podcasting, and this may be the way that we go forward. What were your thoughts when you heard it?

James Cridland 20:15

So I haven't heard it, but because unfortunately I've been doing an awful lot of travel over the last week week or so, but I think anything anytime that we hear, well, you know, the end of advertising is nigh because people can do X, Y, and Z, what actually really happens is that there's no real change. There's no real change in consumer in consumer behavior. And, you know, I mean, there are still a lot of people listening to music radio, for example. There's a lot of people listening to, you know, to podcasts without skipping through the ads. I know that you can, but there are a lot of people who don't because you you can see people rebooking their their advertising because their advertising is working for them. So I think at the end of the day, yeah, absolutely, there's yet another reason why AI might might take over the world. I'm I'm not so sure it's going to happen as quickly as anybody would would uh think. And I mean, you know, I have just had an email from a student in the UK asking me what radio will be like in 2070. And I've said I have not the face to be able to do it.

Sam Sethi 21:21

Silent because I'm dead and under the ground.

James Cridland 21:24

Absolutely no idea. But but yeah, so you know, I mean, who knows what'll happen out there, but I think certainly for the next couple of years, yeah. I I don't think that there's going to be anything, anything particularly there. I could well be wrong, but I'm I'm not sure that there will be.

Sam Sethi 21:41

Well, two things. First of all, Adam Curry will be on this show next week to talk about what's going on, so it'll be interesting to hear his perspective again. I mean, I've talked on this show about having AI agents for my own platform, TrueFans, which I would call Kevin and Kelly. And I see value in Them being assistant agents. I don't see them as hosts. I see them as there for me having users ask them questions about ham, what's going on, how many new episodes, etc. etc. And also just sitting in the background, a bit like a Google keyword search that just finds transcripts with my name in it and stuff. So the one thing that you did ask though of Adam and Dave a couple of weeks back as well was could they create an MCP server? Now that's something that originally Adam was like, no, we're never gonna do that, blah, blah, blah, and certainly not gonna charge for it. Hmm, I think you should listen to the episode, James. They've changed their mind completely. There's lots of apologies, and thank you to you. They have created an MCP server. So fundamentally, podcastindexrobot.com. You can go and find basically this podcast index robot that goes against all the four million podcasts out there. You can ask it questions like what's new in my shows, find the part where they talk about X, what's made in Austin, and again, what they've done very cleverly is listed all of the MCPs for all the AI agents out there, which is really neat. Now, I think the the problem we've got here, if I can just extend it a little further, is that this is AI agents being able to scrape RSS feeds. We talked about it last week where Reddit's just closing down the RSS feeds and then they're closing down the API access just for registered developers only. And we've also talked in the past about how X402, this protocol for payments, which is being led by Cloudfair, Coinbase, and also Stripe, is gaining some momentum, along with a consortium called OpenUSD, and we've talked about that as well. I feel there's a jigsaw piece in front of me. I can't quite put all the pieces together to see the full picture, but I see MCP servers, AI agents, X402, micropayments in there somewhere, which we've said is still a valid thing. It just isn't the way that it's been done. And I see that maybe in the future AI agents will be able to go to podcasts, but instead of just scraping it for free, the X402 element will allow us to charge the agent for access to our content and take a small micropayment. And I think that's where it's going, but I think we're a long way off that yet.

James Cridland 24:29

Yeah, yeah. No, I mean it may well happen, but it may well happen, I think, you know, in in in a while. Um, you know, again. But you know, fascinating to see people playing around with AI agents and seeing what they can do. I have to say, I am being deluged at the moment with systems that pretend, for example, that it can do a you know, a clipping service or something like that, and you know, and it can get the best bits from your podcast. And I must get one or two of these a day now, of people that have just worked out an easy way to vibe code their way into that. And and I'm just getting a little bit bored of all of these AI tools that are doing much the same thing as everybody else. So it'll be nice to see if we can manage something a little bit more exciting.

Blocking Scrapers And Platform Lockdowns

Sam Sethi 25:17

Now, in terms of Reddit last week blocking access to AI agents doing this sort of data scraping, it's interesting to see that Amazon has blocked Meta's Muse from shopping on its platform, and also Apple has announced plans for tighter controls over access to data. I think we're beginning to see these platforms going, no, I'm not letting your AI agent come to me, compare the price here, compare the price there, and then give you an alternative. No, I'm gonna lock you out. So, I mean, on my own platform, TrueFans, we have now started blocking AI agents. I'm just I said last week we saw a doubling in the cost of our MongoDB bill, and that was a lot of that was coming from AI agents just scraping data and using our platform.

James Cridland 26:04

Yeah, but how are you bl how are you blocking those?

Sam Sethi 26:08

So we're using something called a WAF, and so look, we're not gonna be perfect, but we are yeah, I I understand what a firewall is, but how are you blocking them?

James Cridland 26:16

How do you know what a yeah, we don't. We we we we're using the user agent.

Sam Sethi 26:24

We are trying, but of course they're spoofing it. So the ones where we do know, I mean, okay, we we we aren't gonna be able to catch them all, right? But then the Opal Glist that you and John have put together for bots is where we start with, and I mean it means we can stop Facebook bots and Google bots if we want, and we can do certain things in there. I mean, why do I want X scraping it from Grok? I don't need that, right? If somebody wants to turn it back on, we have the option for the individual to do that. But at a system level, we're gonna try. Now we might make mistakes, we might block the wrong bots and user agents, but you know what? At the moment, it's costing me a lot of money to have them scrape my data, and I just don't want it.

James Cridland 27:08

So no, indeed. Indeed. Yeah, and it's unfortunately it's the ones that pretend that they are, you know, Safari or Chrome. And we can't block those are the ones that are that are badly behaved, yes, and so unfortunately, you know, you end up with a a world where it's very difficult to block these sorts of things. I mean, we are seeing a lot more integration with other things. Spotify appears to be what c connecting to oh connecting to your uh calendar and stuff like that. Who knows?

Sam Sethi 27:42

Well, it's it's an AI agent wants to now provide you with a daily summary of what's going on and link that to some sort of music as well, so you get a daily briefing. Now we saw a company two, three years ago when we're at Podcast Movement, James, out in New York, try and do this, and they were scraping TechCrunch and they were scraping The Verge and all these other sites. We asked them, yeah, you know, have you got a license to do this? Yes, yes, yes, it's sort of there, yes. Yes, and strangely they went out of business soon after. Yeah, I'm not quite sure where you know Spotify will get access to all of this content apart from my calendar, which I don't want to give them access to. But Dave Weiner, you had a conversation with Dave Winer this week about him trying to block stuff as well. What was that all about?

James Cridland 28:27

Yes, I'm not sure I had a conversation. I think I I posted because he uh he asked and he doesn't chat much, does he? No, but he was trying, I mean, he is most upset. This has got nothing to do with that with uh scrapers, actually. He is most upset with Google, who if you try and access his website, scripting.com, through Google Chrome, it says, Oh, this website isn't secure. Are you sure you want to have a look at it? And it's because Dave won't turn on HG HTTPS. Okay. Because because he's got some belief against that. And so he was asking, how can I block Google Chrome from seeing my website? And so, you know, I took a look at how his website was actually built, it's on Amazon S3, and I gave him the way that he could do it, and then and then gave him maybe a way that was a little bit less user hostile. Um, but uh yeah, so he's busy looking at all of that sort of stuff, but again, you know, it all of this is down to what the user agent ends up saying, so you know, we'll we'll find out what's uh going on there. I mean, a couple of other things around AI. The BBC I player is apparently going to have an AI agent. Well, that's exciting. Iggy and uh there is Iggy. Why Iggy? Stardust, I have no doubt. But wasn't it Ziggy Stardust? No, that was Ziggy Stardust. You're thinking of Iggy Pop. Oh, okay. Um, I've got no idea why it's called that. But you know, Matt Britton, former former local uh branch manager for Google in the in Europe, now boss of the BBC, seems to think that that's a nice idea. And alongside that, apparently some more top-level domains are coming for podcast websites and for other things.agent, dot agi, and dot ASI. I think we looked into dot podcast a while back, didn't we? And then we realized that it was probably not going to pay its way. Yes. Um, and so everybody stopped. But yes, I think it's interesting that.agent got up to 13 competing applications. So I'm not quite sure what what the benefit of another TLD is, but still, if you if you want that, I suppose that that's all fine, I suppose.

Sam Sethi 30:50

Well, I can imagine. Well, no, I'm just gonna say if I've got my own agent, Sam.agent, uh, I don't know, and and that's becomes a standalone entity. I don't know. I don't know.

James Cridland 31:01

Well, I'm I'm th thinking about playing with Omarkey, which is the new version of Linux that has all kinds of AI stuff built into it, just to sort of have a play with it. I mean, I know it's infiltrated by Nazis, but you know, one should at least have a look at these things before you uh you know you you um you you understand what they are. So I might I might have a play with that and see whether or not I can actually get an agent to be something exciting, but I certainly don't want to run that on my own computer, thank you very much.

Sam Sethi 31:34

And they call you just a journalist, yeah. Blimey. Yeah, well geekies journalist I know.

James Cridland 31:40

Well, yeah, sorry about that. Yes, let's talk about books, shall we, very quickly?

Spotify Audiobooks And Human Certification

Sam Sethi 31:44

Yes, Spotify has got into audiobooks. We know that. They've been pushing that boat out for a while, another revenue stream. Seems like doing quite well with it though, James. What have they announced?

James Cridland 31:56

Yeah, well, it seems as though at least they are doing something additional with books and things like that. They have just announced, now, interestingly, they didn't bother telling me this, which leads me to think that maybe I may not be on Spotify's big list anymore, because I don't think I've seen anything from Spotify for a while. Ever since I was talking about that skip ahead button that they were very mentioning. Skip James Cridlin now. Well, yes, I mean maybe, but anyway, so Spotify Audiobooks is now in basically in every country in the world or will be by the end of this year, more than 180 markets. Well, there are 182 countries, I think, in the world, so that's pretty well all of them. Mostly you'll be able to get a amount of audiobooks free with your premium subscription. But if you live in Africa or Asia, which are quite big markets, you will require to buy a paid add-on instead. Users will find books next to their music and podcasts, apparently, which is exciting. Now, of course, uh, for podcasting, that does mean that that's um more competition in the Spotify app for your ears because your ears can only listen to one thing at a time. And so it'll be interesting to see what happens, if anything happens, with the amount of consumption of podcasts within the Spotify app. Obviously, the overall consumption will go up, but consumption of podcasts may go down, who knows? But yeah, so interesting that Spotify is moving books further around the world. And then, of course, there's a few interesting things going on in the UK which I don't fully understand, uh, Sam.

Sam Sethi 33:38

Books by people. Yeah, it's a it's a small startup, and and I just saw the story and I thought, interesting, what they're doing is the intellectual property office here in the UK is giving them the ability to distribute thumbnail-style organic certifications for books that are proven to be human written. And I think really this is where we're heading. We're gonna have to get to a point where, again, certification, we've talked about it in podcasting. You know, how can we add an AI tag to make sure that we're telling people that this is not an AI host? Because very, very soon the line between us detecting what is a human and an AI host is gonna become smaller and smaller to the point of indifference. And I think we need that certification, we need it on images, we need it on all sorts of things, and I think again, I just saw this story and thought at least someone's trying to give people a visual form that says this book is written by a human and not been AI generated. Anyway, I just thought that was quite nice.

James Cridland 34:45

Yes, no, interesting. Alongside that, a man called Mike Smith, not that Mike Smith, from 2017 to 2024, Mike Smith used thousands of bots to stream his own music on places like Spotify as well as AI-generated songs, and basically got lots of money from the music companies, uh, like millions of dollars from the music companies. And he's just been thrown into prison for 18 months for wire fraud, which is interesting. But uh, yes, that the there's been a big press release where the US uh authorities have basically said, you know, that that that they have to ensure the integrity of all markets and to protect the public from those who use super intelligence for fraud. So that must be the first time I think that I've ever seen somebody being thrown into prison for use of AI, but there you go.

Sam Sethi 35:49

Well, I think he he'd set up an AI bot farm to take money out of Spotify mainly. But I only again put this in as a precursor to is this something that might happen to us in the future regarding podcasting? Will AI go in? Will advertisers be paying out continually to people because they're just putting up fake AI-generated bot accounts, right? And then increasing the listening numbers, which is basically what Michael Smith was doing, right? He was just basically saying there's more and more people listening to this AI track that I've just created to pay me money. And if we end up in a model where people get paid out for listening to podcasts in some way, or advertisers pay out to creators of false podcasts, then suddenly, you know, we might be in a similar scam operation.

James Cridland 36:43

Yeah, no, that I mean there may well be some of that, and you know, particularly I suppose if you you know if the industry moves forward with giving that one dollar cost per thousand for every podcast app, well, some podcast apps might wish to try and sneak their way around that. But yes, no, really interesting in terms of you know, in terms of how this particular case went. So yeah, it seems that he wasn't necessarily doing it particularly cleverly, but he did earn more than eight million dollars from his bot accounts. So yeah, there's a there's a thing.

Fraud Risks Jobs Awards And Events

Sam Sethi 37:20

Moving on then, James, people in jobs. Anyone moving and grooving this week?

James Cridland 37:25

Anyone moving and grooving this week? Well, Bob Kane. Bob Kane is an excellent man, Canadian. He's worked in podcasting since it was invented, basically. And he has just joined ACAST as senior account executive. So hurrah for him. Very pleased to see him working with ACast. He had uh worked at Libsyn and prior to that worked at the CBC and various other places. He's very bright. Uh, and also John Goforth has been doing so well at the Gamut Podcast Network that he has been made president. It's a president we can all believe in. That unit's revenue has grown 47% over the past two years. So congratulations to him.

Sam Sethi 38:08

Awards and events, James. What's coming up for everybody? Tell us.

James Cridland 38:13

What is coming up? Well, you've got the the Golden Globes, which are very exciting, I suppose. They are coming up um in uh January next year.

Sam Sethi 38:28

If you must.

James Cridland 38:30

So this year, last year there were 25 shows that were eligible. This year there are 30. You become eligible. I mean, basically, because the the the the the the awards like you. Uh that there's a list of criteria, but their list of criteria is very woolly. Social and cultural impact. How can you put a number on that? I really don't know. Chart rankings, yes. Okay, I can kind of understand that. The number of curated editorial placements, does that mean that if I put a podcast in the Pod News newsletter, that it gets a little bit closer to be eligible for a Golden Globe? I don't know. Audience reach and engagement, all of that kind of stuff. Anyway, there are 30 uh shows. They have been announced as being eligible. Next, the shows spend $500 to submit themselves, and then they spend lots and lots and lots of money trying to promote themselves to all of the judges. The nominations will be announced on December the 7th, and then on January the 10th next year, that's when the Golden Globes are, and that's when we find out that Conan O'Brien has won. Hang on a minute. Yeah, exactly.

Sam Sethi 39:37

But it's got to be a good one.

James Cridland 39:40

No, it's Joe Rogan's not not in that in that list. So my suspicion is, you know, I mean, it's the Golden Globes there for friends of Hollywood. Conan O'Brien is a friend of Hollywood more than anybody else on that list. So I mean, who did it go to last year? Amy Polar. Well, you know, actress, you know, comedian, friend of Hollywood. I think it's going to go to Conan O'Brien. Personally, anybody else would bother.

Sam Sethi 40:08

It's the same scam though, isn't it? Because post that they'll just put a poster out that says Golden Globe winner. Doesn't matter what category, no one will asks that, no one will find out. It'll just be a statue with their name, Golden Globe Winner. Same as I've won an Oscar. Yes. Yes.

James Cridland 40:26

Well, it won't be an Oscar, it'll be a Golden Globe. Um and same concept. And that and that won't be a scam, I should just point out that would be perfectly acceptable for them to do. But yeah, but anyway, so congratulations in advance to Conan O'Brien on winning the 84th Golden Globes in January of next year. It couldn't have happened to a nicer ginger person.

Sam Sethi 40:51

Uh, just a quick one. I'll be at the Independent Podcast Awards on the 4th of November at King's Place in London. Looking forward to that. Yes, so lots and lots of UK podcasters will be there. So happy days.

James Cridland 41:04

Excellent. Yes, yes. So have fun with that in King's Place. Other events going on. Pod Summit is uh happening next week in Calgary. It's a very good conference stroke uh festival, stroke event in quite a nice old-fashioned but also brand new theatre. It's very good. And Podfest has announced Pat Flynn as its first keynote speaker. You don't say the event is in mid-January in Orlando, in

App Updates Video Tools And Person Tags

James Cridland 41:32

Florida.

Announcer 41:32

The tech stuff. On the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland 41:36

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

Sam Sethi 41:43

Just a couple of updates on some of the apps within the community. So Castos now supports transcripts, so congratulations. Remind me which one is Castos again, James. Who's behind that?

James Cridland 41:54

It's a it's a podcast hosting company. Okay.

Sam Sethi 41:59

Uh and Castomatic. I only say it because I get Castos and Customatic always confused. So Customatic has added support for micropayments. They've been added to the Albi Wall of Fame. So congratulations to them. And yes, well done to them.

James Cridland 42:15

I guess and I have to say, just before you go on to uh OSHA, I I'm very surprised. Castos has always seemed to me to be quite quite forward-looking as a podcast host. And I'm very surprised how long it's taken them to support transcripts. That seems a real misstep from them. So I don't really understand what's going on. OSHA, though, they they have moved on with video, haven't they?

Sam Sethi 42:39

Yeah, they've been added to the Apple podcast list, and they've also added the ability for their customers to take audio and auto-generate that to YouTube, a bit like Headliner does as well. So one of the interesting things about it is that they do say due to the costs associated with video, it also will be a feature for its boost hosting plan, which I assume is its premium plan. So it's not for everybody, but again, good forward step. Another one joins the club.

James Cridland 43:09

Yes, no Spotify video I notice there.

Sam Sethi 43:13

You you have an exciting thing here about you can't get Spotify to give you an API access to Muppets. Everyone's asking for it, and they just go, Meh, how many podcasts will you bring us? And you go, Well, I can't be bothered to answer that question and bugger off. Sorry, did I did I say that publicly?

James Cridland 43:32

Why don't you why don't you sit there on the fence there, uh Sad? No, my name's not a good one.

Sam Sethi 43:37

It's not any wonder that they don't send me any press releases anymore. Yes, yeah, and I won't sit on a fence like Ed Sheeran, so you're okay. Now no. One of the interesting things on the GitHub is that we sometimes can have conversations there about what's coming up next. And one of the things that's being proposed is the idea of the person tag. Having multicapabilities. It's something that with my own platform, TrueFans have had for about a year and a half, but it seems that now people are asking for multi-capabilities. So, for example, James is the host of this podcast, but he's also the editor of this podcast. In theory, I'm the host of this podcast and also the producer of this podcast. So we have multiple roles that we could present in the person tag. And there is another podcast app who will announce officially next week that they've added support for it, and they're now pushing for this to be part of the next phase, the update to the person tag, which is interesting. But you also saw, I think you're a part of the conversation, I'm pretty sure. One of the other roles was where somebody could be Craig. What's the James Bond character? Craig. Yes, Daniel Craig. Daniel Craig. Yes. And easily forgotten, just forgotten. He's dead. Where's the next one? Well, James Bond is Daniel Craig's gone. We're waiting for the new one, you know. Anyway, now there was another option in there which I thought was quite interesting, which was an as attribute, because Daniel Craig as James Bond. Tell me more about that.

James Cridland 45:16

So for actors, so for audio fiction, where you have an actor producing somebody, you probably want to be able to find all of the podcasts that have, you know, Daniel Craig acting in them. And you should be able to do that. I think it's role equals actor. And then there's a new sort of as thing. So you can say as James Bond, the name is Daniel Craig, which I think would make quite a lot of sense, particularly for those people who are making audio fiction, which hasn't necessarily always been thought of with some of these tags. So that looks to me like a good plan. So hurrah for whoever it is who put that one forward.

Sam Sethi 45:56

One problem we currently have, and I flagged this up, I think, two years ago actually, but now it's just come back into problems. The the podcast taxonomy was put forward by Pod Chaser and a whole bunch of other companies. They created a website, they uh created a list of roles for the person tag. Well, that website's gone away now, and uh fundamentally it doesn't exist anymore. And that list that I've been saying that we use for the person tag needs to be updated, it's out of date, it no longer exists anyway. There is still a GitHub. The question I had two years ago, and it's a question I pose now: who should take ownership of this? The PSP, the podcast index, a another person. What are we gonna do with it? Because A, it needs to be updated and B, it needs to be live and available somewhere. Yeah.

James Cridland 46:48

Yeah, I would agree. It it probably does need to be run by somebody. So if the original people who don't want to run that anymore, I mean I I guess that the most sensible place for it would be within the podcast index, given that, you know, given that that that's where quite a lot of other things are these days. So yes, we should probably do a little bit of digging and find out what the plan is there. I wonder who owns the podcast taxonomy website URL.

Sam Sethi 47:18

It's not, it's it's open domain again. It's gone, it's gone back to GoDaddy or somebody like that now. So it's gone. When you click on the link, it goes back to nobody's running that, so it's gone.

James Cridland 47:31

Yeah, yeah. It's not not not that's not particularly good, is it? By the way, GoDaddy. Just for a second. Why have we why have we uh accepted this as a brand? As a brand name? GoDaddy? How weird is that for a brand name?

Sam Sethi 47:47

Well, just as bad as call her daddy.

James Cridland 47:51

It's just what a ridiculous brand name to have. Anyway, yes, I uh I just I just say that just for yes, it's just weird, isn't it? Go daddy.

Sam Sethi 48:02

Go daddy, what well I have to say the person behind GoDaddy, the CEO, has got a uh very interesting backstory. I'll let you Google it.

James Cridland 48:10

Oh, here we go.

Sam Sethi 48:10

This is this is uh you're you can go Google it yourself. No, go and Google it yourself. Not a nice man. Great product, not a nice man.

Listener Support Host Updates And Travel

Announcer 48:20

Fan mail and voicemail our favorite time of the week. It's the Pod News Weekly Review Inbox. Inbox.

James Cridland 48:28

Yes, so many different ways to get in touch with us. Voicemail by using the link in our show notes. Please send us voicemail, we like that, or you can send us email as well. And we've had a nice boost from Seth Goldstein last week. Thank you. A row of ducks, double two, double two sats. He says, Great hearing Dave on the Pod News Weekly Review. Dave Jones, of course, our guest last week. You can go back and have a listen because this show isn't live, it's it's available on demand.

Sam Sethi 48:57

Yes, but if you were people could have asked him questions at the same time.

James Cridland 49:01

Anyway, moving on. And he says, and he says, Inception, rock on. Rock on, Seth. Thank you so much for that. We have 25 supporters, and we would like to have you in as a supporter as well if you'd like to do that. James Preston White is one of those. He's from Lean and Loaf who make um podcast videos. Seth Goldstein's one. John Spurlock is one who makes OP3 and the increasingly secretive live wire. And Martin Lindskog is one as well. It could be you as well. Weekly.podnews.net is where to go to become a power supporter. You also get to join our WhatsApp group, Super Secret WhatsApp group, which is quite fun, uh, where you see me being grumpy about having to edit video. Uh, so pop along and do that. What's happened for you this week, then, Sam?

Sam Sethi 49:48

I start the Cotswell Way, which is another walk. So it's another hundred-mile walk that I'm beginning on Sunday. Looking forward to that. And it's my wife's birthday on Sunday, so we'll probably end up in a nice little pub somewhere along the way. Very nice, and why not? Yes. Been invited by the cheerful IFL team to a little VIP party, so that's very nice. I'll be going along to that. Thank you very much to Giles. Very good. And we are sending out our first newsletter this week. So by the time this podcast drops, our first newsletter will be out. It's to around a thousand people, just under, which I think is a good little start. So, yes, we think as well. Same as goal hangar, newsletters are a great way to send and connect with fans.

James Cridland 50:33

Yes, indeed. Just make sure that you get the the complicated unsubscribe stuff right and the DKIM stuff right and everything else. It's a bit of a it's a bit of a nightmare, is doing newsletters, but I might come back and ask somebody who knows about them.

Sam Sethi 50:47

Namely you.

James Cridland 50:49

Yeah when it all goes wrong. Folks at Beehive, I'm sure, are very are going to be very helpful there.

Sam Sethi 50:54

Yeah. On things that we're looking to do, we we want to extend that newsletter function to true fans creators as well. So that will be something we'll be looking at. Something that also is interesting to us, we've started coding it, but we've not pushed it live, is the contact tag, which is a new tag proposed in the podcasting 2.0 community by Daniel J. Lewis and Alex San Filippo. So again, hopefully something we can talk about in the coming weeks. A bit like Overcast, we've added support for the iPhone Geo. Of course, it's not been accepted into the App Store yet, but we are working on that. And we also want to put our little own MCP server again. We will see what Adam has to say next week on the show about what he's been doing. I'm fascinated because I think you will go off and play with the robot itself. I'm sure you will, being you. And I'd love to get your opinion next week, James, on what you thought about connecting it, because I'm sure you can.

James Cridland 51:53

Uh uh, yes. I I'm not sure. I'm uh I'm a user of any AI tool that lets me connect to an MCP service. You're not on Clawed.

Sam Sethi 52:01

I thought you'd be on Claude.

James Cridland 52:02

No, no, not yet. But um no, but it's uh it's on the list. Okay. So we'll certainly take a peek at that. So yeah.

Sam Sethi 52:10

James, so what happened for you? You've been on the road, you've been in Bowers' secret offices in London, you've been in Berlin. What have you been up to?

James Cridland 52:18

Yes, I've been all over the place. So it was the audio festival uh in London on uh Thursday, uh, which was great going there. When I used to go to that event many years ago, everybody was old who went to that event apart from me. Now, when I go to that event, uh everybody's young apart from me. So that was a that was a scary thing, but uh enjoyed speaking there, enjoyed speaking at the community media festival as well on the Saturday in the bowels of Bower Media, which is a big broadcaster in the UK. Very interestingly, they've taken over the basement of this building that they're in. And uh, because they've just bought an out-of-home company, they now have lots of the out-of-home posters in this in this area. They call it the playground, so that they can show clients what their posters look like. And it's a very cool place, so it was interesting to end up seeing uh all of that stuff. And then I was it in Berlin, rather in Potsdam, which is a 30-minute uh train ride away from Berlin to work with a client on Monday, which was good fun, talking to a large German broadcaster about where the future might be. So that was good fun. So, yes, I've had a good long week. Only just arrived live. Was that did you tell him it was live?

Sam Sethi 53:36

Live radio. That's where the future is.

James Cridland 53:39

Well, for radio, yes. Podcasting, it's not podcasting. And yes, so I only got back this this uh morning, hence why I am sounding slightly less coherent than I normally would, because I've been up a long time. So there we are. But it's been it's been fun to fun to do. That's my last big trip uh now. And the only other trip that I've got is to go and give some sonar awards to some lucky people in a couple of weeks' time, maybe even next week, actually. So looking forward to doing that in uh Sydney. But apart from that, that's all of my travel for this year. Hooray! So that's definitely a good thing. And that's it for this week. All of our podcast stories taken from our daily newsletter, podnews.net.

Sam Sethi 54:24

Uh, you can give us feedback using the Buzz Sprout voicemail link in our show notes, or become a monthly power supporter like the 25 Power supporters at weekly.podnews.net.

James Cridland 54:35

Yes, our music's from TM Studios. Our voiceover is Sheila D, and we're hosted and sponsored by Buzz Sprout. Start Podcasting, keep podcasting.

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