Welcome And Podcast Index Anniversary

James Cridland 0:00

Coming up, Spotify launches paid podcast memberships... again - and liquid content with Steve Goldstein.

Announcer 0:08

With James Cridland, and Sam Sethi... This is the Podnews Weekly Review with Buzzsprout. Start podcasting, keep podcasting.

Sam Sethi 0:21

James, James, before we get going this week, we have a little anniversary and congratulations. The Podcasting 2.0 and the Podcast Index, the Adam Curry and Dave Jones Project, is now six years old, James.

James Cridland 0:33

Yes, many congratulations to them. And long may it last. I know that there's an awful lot of uh hard work going on with Dave Jones at the moment to make it easier for anybody to keep it updated. So hurrah for them.

Spotify Paid Memberships Return

Sam Sethi 0:45

Now, Spotify has launched paid podcast memberships. Tell me more, James.

James Cridland 0:50

Yes, so this is a new way for podcasters to make money from their biggest fans, and it's rolling out to 34 markets globally, which is all very exciting. It'll cost you 10%, so creators keep 90% of the membership revenue. I think what's uh quite interesting about it is that there is a qualification, there is an eligibility qualification. I looked at whether or not we should be moving away from our sponsor Buzzsprout to uh Spotify's membership platform. No. And uh no, we won't be doing that for a variety of reasons, but also because we are 49 listeners, we need a hundred per month, and we we do terrible on Spotify, 56 hours on Spotify. By the way, uh down 20% since we started to do video. What does that tell you? But uh yes, so we are nowhere near the the uh qualification there. It it's quite neat though, it's got a couple of a couple of interesting things. It's got some smart things in in terms of badges, in terms of tiers, which they never had before. And so it's got those sorts of things. The badges appear when you cop when you comment to a podcast on the Spotify platform, you end up seeing the badges, which again is quite a nice is quite a nice idea. And so that is new, but as you may already have been guessing from what I'm saying, this isn't a new feature at all. Um they launched it in April 2021 for people in the United States. November 2021, it became available in 34 different countries. It was originally free. The plan was to charge 5%. This one is 10%. But what is quite nice, one of the things that it'll do is you can download your members' email addresses if they say yes, which of course is one thing that Apple Podcasts uh certainly won't allow you to do, even if you've got people paying to become a member on Apple Podcasts. So that's quite nice from a uh creator point of view.

Sam Sethi 2:56

One thing I noted the company tells us that members or memberships will be purchased on the web and not through the in-out purchase. Why is that, James?

James Cridland 3:05

Yes, that's an interesting one because uh well, I I I mean uh that appeared on there was a there was a sort of a purchase flow that appeared as part of their press. In the uh flow you can see that when it gets to the buy a membership thing, it's a button that takes you to a website, and the website is where you put your money in. Why might that be? Well, of course, if you take money through a website, then you don't have to pay either Apple or Google, they're 30% of app tax. So that's quite handy, isn't it? But what I think is worth just highlighting is that is obviously absolutely fine with Apple and absolutely fine with Google. And so, therefore, if you are considering adding the uh the funding tag, the open standard funding tag into your podcast app, then do that because it's clearly okay, according to both Apple and Google. So it's good that we've got obvious uh confirmation of that here. But uh yes, uh well worth uh pointing out that, I think.

Sam Sethi 4:11

The the other thing was obviously the way that Spotify was doing this before was through SOA and offloading it to Patreon and other memberful type platforms. And I think we said on this podcast about six months, maybe even a year ago, when the lawsuit against Apple came through, where you know they were given a smack on the wrists by the court and said you can't charge 30%, okay, we'll just charge 27% and have another so-called app store. And and that's that's never been resolved, by the way. Ever been resolved, it feels. But in that time frame, I think I remember saying something like, Well, at this point, you know, Spotify's stupid leaving money on the table because you know, Patreon's taking all the premium content payments. This seems to be uh uh an answer to that, which I think is don't go to to send your content now to Patreon. You can do it all inside here in Spotify, and we can keep all the money as well. So don't need Patreon's SOA interface anymore. Yes, yes.

James Cridland 5:13

And you make a good point in the uh show notes that I can see that nobody else can't, and it's such a good point, I'm gonna steal it. The wording, become a member versus support this show. Support this show is the way that the podcast funding tag uh works. That is the typical language that podcasters use. And uh, as you so rightly say, this means that the price is set by the fan rather than become a member, where the price is set by the creator. That's a very astute thing.

Speaker 2 5:43

Thank you very much. Yeah.

James Cridland 5:45

Once a year it happens. And that's interesting. What's in a word? So, yes, that's uh that's definitely a thing. Uh uh, you know, along with you know, Adam Curry's talk about, you know, never ask for tips because then you'll just get given tips, uh, which is an absolutely fair thing to end up saying as well. Of course, this is Spotify, and what Spotify is doing for its premium users is that it is uh encouraging you to skip past uh any mention of memberships or free newsletters or indeed adverts. And so I'm presuming that Spotify is going to be skipping past any any mention of these paid-for memberships as well in the audio, because I mean that's what they're doing for everybody else, or at least having a big button that says skip ahead as soon as one starts, which is what currently happens there. So I'm not quite sure how those two things square together. Is Spotify gonna keep on doing that skip ahead feature, including skipping ahead any mention of paid memberships? Or of course not are they gonna are they gonna fix that so that that doesn't appear for Spotify ones? I don't know.

Sam Sethi 6:55

But there's same as I doubt it's gonna be skipping head for any Spotify span ads either. I mean it's it's their platform, they'll play by their rules, and their rules are all of our stuff's okay, and everyone else's stuff's gonna get given the option to skip, right?

James Cridland 7:10

Yeah, and we've uh signed the terms and conditions anyway, and the those terms and conditions very clearly allow Spotify to do anything they want with our content.

Sam Sethi 7:17

Yeah.

Ad Skipping And Who Gets Hurt

James Cridland 7:18

Just just to say. I I'm genuinely wondering. So I turned down a story this week. It was going to be an exclusive for a brand new podcast app, and there were some really nice ideas in this brand new podcast app, some really smart things to do with AI and topic extraction and all of that, reflecting how we actually listen to podcasts. I thought it was a really smart thing, but it also included automatic ad skipping. And I just replied and I said, I don't cover things with automatic ad skipping. And the podcast developer, uh the podcast app developer, came back to me and he said, Well, you know, we're not changing the audio file, so it's fine. So the the podcaster still gets their money. And I said, Well, yeah, the podcaster will still get their money for this campaign, but when it doesn't work, the podcaster won't get any money ever again from that advertiser. That that that's you know, that that that's not how advertising works. And so now, you know, I mean it'll be interesting to see if there's anybody in the next couple of days that does cover the launch of this app, because you will know that that particular title isn't necessarily on the podcaster's side and is much more on on the side of you know the app developer. But yeah, so I thought that that was interesting, and I am uh genuinely wondering whether or not I should be pulling all of the buttons for Spotify in the you know in our directory. Because, you know.

Sam Sethi 8:42

Yeah, I'm gonna give you a counter to this point.

James Cridland 8:45

Yes, I know what you would say. You would say, yes, please, but why don't you replace it with a true fans link? But uh I'm not gonna do that either.

Sam Sethi 8:51

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Well, if you want to, go ahead, knock yourself out. No, I was gonna play devil's advocate to this because uh before the Spotify exclusive that you revealed, you there was another podcast, if I remember, I can't remember its name now, that where you we highlighted that they had a created a skip ahead button, right? Yeah, and you know, within the community of conversation, it was like, oh, this is not a good thing. And then suddenly the big behemoth that is Spotify suddenly comes out and says, Well, we're gonna do it. And so, in some ways, that sort of normalized it, and everyone went, okay, well, that seems to be the norm, then, is it right? Okay, and then Dave Jones said fundamentally, you know, well, app developers get no value from you know the ads that they're you know playing back, we can't charge pro account. You've been promoting, Adam's been promoting it, and there's been no uptake on you know Apple getting a percentage. Why can't other apps get a percentage? That's not moved. So then Dave Jones did say, Well, hey, if the advertisers and all the parties involved are not giving the apps any money, why won't you put a skip ahead button and make it a pro feature and then charge, right? And so, in some ways, that the skip ahead button is a F you back to the advertisers. You don't want to cut us in. F you. We will then give the users the option to get rid of your crap and bingo. And then if you want us to get rid of the skip ahead button, give us a cut and we'll change it.

James Cridland 10:25

And that's fine, but podcast creators are obviously caught in the middle there. Yes. And I think that that that's that's the issue. You know, it'd be lovely if we were able to, you know, support podcasters, podcast apps in some way, shape, or form. But the reality is that, you know, really without there being a central, you know, a central database of all of this kind of stuff, there's no and a fund and all of this kind of of things, which I know that you've tried to do in the past. The reality is that that's probably not going to happen. So it really needs to be funded in some way by you know by the advertisers in in, you know, uh but but yes, it's I'm gonna go random rand.

Sam Sethi 11:07

No, no, no. I don't think the advertisers care because look, they just see YouTube, Spotify, Apple, right? They don't they don't really look beyond that. And we talked about last week, you know, first of many potential podcasting apps, independent podcast apps going by the wayside because fundamentally they can't make money and it costs money to run this thing. Why am I you know trying to you know push a rock up a hill when it doesn't seem to be getting any traction? You said it, I think, in a report, the percentage of downloads and plays that are going to independent podcast apps is dropping. So are we fighting, you know, a losing battle? And if that's the case, you will just end up with the big three.

James Cridland 11:46

And well, and you and as you so rightly say, actually, uh the advertisers would be delighted if it was only three. Um because then they could ignore RSS altogether and they could use the data that they get from Spotify, the data that they get from YouTube, and the data that they get from Apple. Perhaps that's where we're going.

Apple Podcasts Claims And HLS Ads

James Cridland 12:04

Talking about Apple, of course. Did you uh watch someone from Apple Podcasts talking in a in a podcast this week? Who'd have thought?

Sam Sethi 12:13

I did hear young Jake Shapiro talk on Podbiz, yes, and had a little bit of vomit in my mouth, if I'd be honest. Um I I found the whole thing. Well, I know why they were on that podcast and not on another podcast, because it was softball questions thrown up, and we put the pod in podcasting. We are the home of podcasting, we do everything great, and aren't we amazing?

Speaker 1 12:40

You know, Apple Podcasts really is the home of podcasting. We, as you know, put the pod in podcasting over 20 years ago. So in many ways, we feel like and have acted as a steward of the medium from its earliest days. It has gone through many cycles and it's evolved over time, and we want to be the home for where that evolved medium and format really is. And one of the principles, and it led to how HLS plays into it, is we are open by design.

Sam Sethi 13:03

Well, you've got a proprietary API, you don't support the alternative enclosure, and fundamentally you're taking a percentage of the revenue now. So, no, Jake, I'm sorry, I'm not giving you a softball on this. And you know, you can give all the gold phones you like to Donald Trump, and you can pay for the ballroom if you like Apple. This is a DOJ case. I was in Microsoft when the IE browser was added, just the browser. They own the hardware, the software, the app store, the developer tools, the permission. They take a percentage and they do it all. And I've said it many times. You don't get more than the Apple podcast as the default. And I know you've countered that. Well, how do we make it so that there can be other podcasts where the links because there's no method? Well, if you find them a billion quid and you say you're going to break them up, they'll find a solution, right? So they're big boys, they can work it out. I found the whole thing just awful. And I'm sorry, I have great respect for NJ and I do like the Podbeers podcast, but that interview was softball beyond softball.

James Cridland 14:09

Yeah, I, you know, I mean, a the they didn't they didn't put the pod into podcast. It was named, as we know, partially by Ben Hamsley, who was a Guardian journalist, but then no one used that word until in a in a mailing list, and the iPod mailing list. And so that wasn't Apple playing around. You know, Apple came late to that particular party in the middle of in the middle of 20 in the middle of 2005, and and was really there because they needed additional content on the iPod to actually sell the things. So, you know, I it so I think that that's a deliberate rewriting of history a little bit. So I was a little bit sad to end up hearing that. But yeah, you know, the other thing which is just worthwhile noting is where he talks about HLS ads being both audio and video.

Speaker 1 15:03

HLS ads are both audio and video. Um so you could have an ad that you're getting into an ad break and you're watching it, and then you background and you're listening to that same ad. And that opens up this new experience of essentially like an enhanced audio ad. So imagine you have this audio ad. Now there's this opportunity for a visual companion that adds value to that campaign.

James Cridland 15:23

And this is something that I don't think the industry has properly realized yet. That when Apple Podcasts starts charging advertising networks a impression-based fee, I believe it's uh a $1 cost per thousand. It's under 400 million NDAs. So I'll never find out the real number from Apple. I also understand that that charging has slipped until quarter one 2027. But when they start charging this fee, it's not going to be charged for video, as has been widely reported. It's going to be charged for HLS ads. And as Jake Sapiro said, HLS ads are both audio and video. HLS ads are both audio and video. And when he was talking about HLS bad ads being audio and video, he was also basically saying it's a waste of time putting a TV ad in there in the video, because you'll only hear the audio version of that if you're listening in audio. So therefore, what a wasted opportunity. You can't actually have a good TV ad if you're watching a video podcast. You just end up end up getting a, you know, audio ad with some additional visual accompaniment to it, as he said. That to me is not a great advertising thing, but it's an advertising thing that, nevertheless, the entire industry is going to be paying $1 cost per thousand for every single ad that is sold in this way. So I find that fascinating, particularly when Apple Podcasts has fall has fallen to number four in the market and it's probably going to fall even further. Only yesterday I showed Spotify advertising podcasts on Spotify, and they weren't Spotify podcasts, they were podcasts from all kinds of people, from Wondery, from all kinds of people, and they were advertising those on the New York subway. Where's Apple Podcasts advertising? Apple Podcasts. Where is any marketing for Apple Podcasts outside of the Apple ecosystem and perhaps on Instagram or something? There isn't any. So they're doing nothing for creators, they're not promoting anything. They're sitting on their hands, they're hoping that people end up giving them one dollar cost per thousand for advertising. And this is how they plan to grow their business. It's not really working that much. But the really frustrating thing, Sam, is that no one wants to say bad things about Apple. Nobody at all. Because, oh no, we need to say good things about Apple, because you know, they need to promote our shows and everything else, even with their new algorithm that means that you know fewer people in your country will actually see them. It's it's just weird. It's a weird state where we are seemingly incapable of actually going, yeah, Apple, you need to up your game, and you need to stop being smug because you are no longer number one, you're no longer number two, you're no longer number three, you need to up your game, but Apple simply aren't doing it. It's fascinating.

Sam Sethi 18:28

I think I think from that interview, you know, they they were talking about Apple TV and they were talking about ads on Apple. I mean, I think they're doing what they do and always will do, which is they're gonna lock you into their ecosystem, and and there isn't really anyone else they think about, you know.

James Cridland 18:45

So Well we've we've we've launched we've launched TV, we've launched uh video on Apple TV six months after we launched it on the iPhone. Brilliant. And we're supposed to pat you on the back for that, are we, Apple? Really? Is that is that how it works? It's just frustrating. The other thing one hourly deal.

Sam Sethi 19:04

I think we're giving a good good enough kicking this time.

Substack And Beehive Sell Inserted Ads

Sam Sethi 19:08

Now, related to that, Substack, we've been talking about memberships and ad insertions. Well, Substack is proving their dynamic ad insertion for podcast hosting. Go on, James. What's this one about?

James Cridland 19:21

Yes, they're calling it sponsorships. It's not sponsorships, it's dynamic ad insertion. So that's weird. A sponsorship to me is when somebody says this podcast is sponsored by Buzzprout, start podcasting, keep podcasting. That's what a sponsor is, the host saying that, rather than what they're talking about, which is dynamic audio insertion, dynamic ad insertion, but great for them. They will be selling ads, they're working with someone I can't quite remember whether or not it said in the release. So hurrah for them. Interestingly enough, Beehive also with a quite humorous leak uh on LinkedIn today, talking that they are adding dynamic ads uh next week. They'll be working with AdSuiz on that. We will have Ainsley Rosito on a future episode. She will be the second Ainsley to be on this show, the fourth uh guest called Ainsley, but the first three were Ainsley Costello. So looking forward to that. So yeah, it's a good fight between Substack and Behive, of course, both big membership companies, both big uh newsletter organizations, both of them IB certified for advertising, both of them now doing podcast ads as well. And I think this is the sort of great competition that OpenRSS actually gives you. That we're actually seeing, you know, a good amount of competition here in terms of this particular space. So good on the both of them, and I'm look looking forward to learning more about both.

Liquid Content With Steven Goldstein

Sam Sethi 20:56

Now, one person that we've wanted to have on the show for a while is Steven Goldstein. He is both the CEO and founder of Amplify Media, but uh he's a professor at NYU. I think you've actually been a guest lecturer for him, James, haven't you?

James Cridland 21:12

Yes, I have. Yes, it was lovely going down to NYU and uh pretending that I knew what I was talking about, which was uh always nice. So he has come up with a great concept. It's not necessarily a new concept, but I think he's been very good at explaining it and making it easy to understand all about liquid content, and you caught up with him uh to learn more.

Sam Sethi 21:35

You've been writing a brilliant newsletter, and this year I've been fixed on every time it comes out. There's been some great topics, and we want to cover those because I think they're very prescient of what's going on today. Back at the beginning of January, you started with a term called liquid content. So let's start there. What is liquid content?

Steven Goldstein 21:54

Yeah, so liquid content, I wish I could tell you that I invented the term. I did not. I certainly Brought it to podcasting. It was invented by a guy named Matthew Loran, who's at Google Deep Mind. And so he has a deep mind. And so the iteration is why does content have to be in one place when people are now consuming in multiple places in multiple ways? And we've certainly learned now that people will choose audio, will choose video. It is not binary. People will choose what's most convenient to them at a time of their choosing as well. So the notion is that the content can take on different forms. I think about the New York Times being a perfect example of liquid content. So they produce a print newspaper that goes to about 400,000 people. They have a daily podcast show that's audio only, by the way, that goes to two or three million people a day. They have other various videos. Their website is now much more video centric. They are learning to tell stories in multiple formats. And so I think that's an ideal example of liquid content. Yeah, that's a great example.

Sam Sethi 23:06

I think James and I were talking about Goal Hanger as well. They've got audio video live. They've started a newsletter, which is nothing to do with the hosts of the podcast. They have guest writers that come in. They're keeping their fandom engaged when they are putting out content. And then they're choosing to let the fandom pick the platform or the medium that they want to consume within. I think it's very smart. Now, I've talked about creator portals because back in the day when the internet first started, you and I were both around, sadly, but we were. The the guys at Netscape where I worked with came up with the idea of RSS and bringing content from the four corners of the internet to a portal page. And I think we're coming full circle. We've seen audio standalone, video standalone. Those are the liquid content buckets. And I think towards the end of 26, we're beginning to now see all of those buckets being brought back again into a page. You know, if I look at Professor Galloway, if I look at Zateo Media, as we said, goal hanger, they're now aggregating that liquid content, but it's still content that takes different shapes and forms. So given that we've done that, have we got over the yeah, video, it's not podcasting, or can we just now park that argument?

Steven Goldstein 24:24

Yeah, I hope so. And we were early to the video content discussion. I did a study with Coleman Insights in 2024. It was the first major study on video podcasting, and there was a lot of this going on. Stay away, don't do this. Gee, it's not working. We tried it. And look at where we are today. So there's no question, I think it's 73% of podcasts now have video. But also just keep in mind that Liquid is is not just audio or video, it's social clips and and as you mentioned, newsletters and things like that. And now there's quite a bit of abuse in which, I mean, you see this on LinkedIn all the time, where give us your podcast and we'll create 55 clips for you and so forth and so on. And that is all ungated, automated, and it is just, I mean, it's part of the fire hose of content, which doesn't mean it's quality liquid content. It means people are just using the tools around them to create all of this stuff. And there is fatigue. I mentioned to you and and that I have the I brought some of the students from NYU to podcast movement in New York a couple of weeks ago. And these guys are on to the notion that they don't need to listen and or watch the full podcast if there's enough what I'm calling best of content out there. You watch three or four clips from a podcast and you got the whole podcast. You don't need to go to the show. Ed Olsen, who works for Scott Galloway, says his show gets about 7,000 views, but he's 37,000 on the various short-form content that's being distributed. Yeah.

Sam Sethi 26:09

Steve Bartlett said in an interview earlier this year that he's got a panel of about a hundred people who press a space bar as they listen to the episode full publication. And where they find it interesting, they press the space bar and then they create a histogram of interest and then they clip those interest bars. That seems to be the way. I've never consumed a Dario CEO or a Joe Rogan full show. I just watch most of their content. Me watching the club. Does that mean long-form content? Pod Newsweekly review, much to James's ire, is over. Well, it's about 90 minutes to two hours, right? And when I first said to James, let's do a 30-minute podcast, he was okay. And it's crept and crept up. Now, should we not do a two-hour podcast? Should we just do, I don't know, half an hour, clip everything up and put it out? Is long form audio now passe?

Steven Goldstein 27:01

Look, when podcasting came on the scene, it was about slowing things down. It was about deeper dives. It was about people who could speak intelligently on a subject. Now we've got all of this stuff going on, and the economy, this clip economy, is causing people to speed things up. But I'm fascinated with microdramas. And I think it's sort of a hybrid of what you're asking about. So if you're familiar with microdramas, this is a $14 billion business worldwide. It's a billion and a half dollar business in the U.S. And they are taking two-minute segments and string it, well, they're creating a show and dividing it into two-minute segments. So there can be a hundred episodes in these microdramas with little cliffhangers all the way. And so I wonder if we're tired of long-form content or if those guys have unlocked some little magic. We'll see how long it lasts, but uh whether they've unlocked some kind of code for I only have a few minutes right now to catch this, but I am interested in the arc of the story. So I do think that's sort of fascinating. I do worry about, by the way, microdramas for podcasts, for the podcast business, because it's sitting there on this machine. So it's something that can occupy time. So in that sense, it's somewhat competitive. And at the moment, I don't think we know where that is going, but I do think it addresses in its own way the combination of long and short.

Sam Sethi 28:36

Yeah. There's a couple of things that are floating around my head when you said that. I'm I'm known to doom scroll on TikTok, but each each segment, if I So unusual. The weird thing about it is that it does grab your attention. It eventually does drag you in to the micro- Well I have seen those micro dramas and I found myself falling into it and then, oh, all you need to do now is upgrade to get the final story. Blah blah blah, right? It's like that crack cocaine marketing. You had a little bit of it, and now if you want the rest of it to get the real kick, you now need to sign up. And what's interesting as well for me, and I again I don't know what this means about the human psyche, but we used to watch films. Very rarely do people go to cinemas, and now if you listen to directors of films, they're saying they prefer Netflix or Prime TV six, eight series, because they can segment it out into 45 minute, one-hour shows, but you've got a six-hour film, fundamentally. You could never sell a six-hour film in a cinema unless you're in India and doing Bollywood. But other than that, you could never sell a six-hour film.

Speaker 7 29:41

And they stop the movie and give you snacks from the medical. So that's good. You've got to love

Clips Microdramas And Listener Attention

Speaker 7 29:45

that.

Sam Sethi 29:45

So if we are getting on, we're getting this liquid content. We're getting audio video, we're getting blogs, we're getting newsletters, we're getting clips. How do we measure, Stephen? How do we measure success and engagement and reach?

Steven Goldstein 30:00

Yeah, I think this is a really tricky issue. It's easy to come on and say, hey, let's take advantage of short form content, TikTok, Instagram, etc. We need to be there. Tom Webster just had some data, sounds profitable at the podcast movement conference about it by far is the number one way people discover shows, but that doesn't mean that it's efficient. It just means it's now part of the ecosystem. But I don't know that it addresses some other key issues. So for example, the average podcast listener is listening to three podcasts, three podcasts series, maybe about five or six episodes. Those numbers have been static. Number of people listening to podcasts or watching podcasts has grown. But that doesn't say a whole lot for the growth of the business. So you're fighting two things here. One, you want people to sample your show, but I think you're also using these tactics for retention to remind people that you should watch or listen to that particular episode. I don't know about you, but I choose episodes all the time, depending on what the subject matter is. Uh the notion that I'm loyal to the producer or the host of the show every single episode, I think, is deceptive. I just don't think people perform that way. But three shows is not a lot. And so in order for you to get your show onto the shelf of a lot of people, you gotta knock someone else off. Not easy.

Sam Sethi 31:35

Yeah, before I move on to talk about what is the attention economy, because I think this has relevancy. Just going back to Tom Webster for a second. Tom was talking about clips leading to discovery, leading to subscription, I guess, long for connection. You with your students actually said the reverse, if I read it correctly, which is we don't actually listen to the full show. We get the full show in the clip. The clip is the full show. So who's right?

Steven Goldstein 32:02

So they're both right. Well, both things are absolutely correct. And the article that that I published on my Thought Letter blog, from which was a recap of the panel, each of the three students has different habits. One of them said, Hey, I don't go to full episodes. If I can grab three or four clips on a show, I feel like I've spent my time wisely on that, and I move on to the next thing. Another of the respondents said that they really appreciate the deep dive into the subject matter. And I will say this, this is something that totally fascinates me, is not all of the shows that my students select are the big Amy Polar, Joe Rogan kind of box office shows. They choose areas that are of interest to them. One of them is a drama major. They found a podcast that speaks to that subject. You know, one of them is a business major. They listen to the acquired podcast, which by the way, you can only listen to when it's four hours. So I don't think it's one or the other. I think it's both, and people are making their own decisions based on the quality of the episode, the time that they have available, the platform that's convenient for them at the time. And so I think that's really where we are in terms of people choosing content. I don't think I think Tom is right, 73% are using this as a funnel, but that's not exactly where they end up.

Sam Sethi 33:33

So looking at podcasting as a form of attention in terms of the three podcasts that you give it time for, we are competing with films, music, audiobooks, newsletters, blogs. So within microdramas, how do we, again, in this attention economy, how do we make sure that podcasting gets its lion share? How do we measure how successful podcasting is doing? You talked about in your newsletter and at the London podcast show, the download is dead. What is the measure now that we need to put in place as a metric of success then?

Why The Download Metric Fails

Speaker 7 34:13

Yeah, uh so so the download is an adequated early form of measurement. It it sort of served its purpose. I think all media grows over time and the methods become more sophisticated, although they're all in change. I mean, let's get out of podcasting just for a second. I did a dive into what's happening on the television side and TV. I'm using US as the example, but it's I think pretty much the same anywhere in the world. You have the big networks and they used to control all the viewership, most of the viewership, then it bifurcated with cable. So that splits some of the all of that is yesterday, uh, because today, if you watch Saturday Night Live, way more people are watching the clips on Saturday Night Live on YouTube, not even NBC's own platform. I mean, NBC has the TV channels and they got Peacock and they have apps and everything else. People are over at YouTube watching the clips. So how do you monetize that? And how do you track all of that? And so the TV business has moved to impressions. By the way, impressions are what YouTube and TikTok and everyone else is using, and podcasting, we are still struggling mightily. I mean, I really think a lot of what the AMPs did in trying to organize all of this and have been a huge proponent of what they assembled, which doesn't mean it was perfect. I think Dan Granger would tell you it wasn't perfect, but it was a way to organize three key things. What we're talking about is people, plays, and time, which if you listen to Dan Meisner, that's the way he puts it, and I think that's perfect. So we need to get to methodology that allows us to measure those three things. Little more than a little disappointed with the IAB, which essentially turned around and said, Well, you know, we've got this stuff going on in TV, why don't we just use that for podcasting? And I don't think that works, I don't think it will work. But Pierre Bouvard, the chief insights officer at Cumulus and Westwood, reminds me all the time that there's two billion dollars, an estimate, of course, of money sitting on the sides until we get organized, because ad agencies will not buy the download and need something that's on their uh on their on their computer, so trade desk or whatever it might be, they need that kind of measurement available. And we are still screwing around with downloads and hiding the numbers from advertisers. I just think it's insane. As all of this becomes more sophisticated, if we are truly a digital medium, then let's then let's play with the big boys in digital and get ourselves onto those buyers.

Sam Sethi 37:03

Yeah, I mean, look, I mean, Dan Granger at Oxford Road tried and failed, sadly. I I I will say that. A play is not a play, is not a play, depending on which platform you're on. On Apple, it's zero seconds practically, YouTube, it's a hover, and Spotify, it's anywhere between zero and thirty. I mean, look, if I'm an advertiser, it's a pretty simple request. I'm gonna give you a ton of money, but I want to know A, did my ad get played? And B, how long? I'd love to know who played it and where, but that's probably not gonna happen. But at least B certain that someone played it and for how long. So playtime and listen time are key metrics, and I I simply can't get my head around it. I thought with HLS when that came in earlier this year that we were going to fix the problem. Because with MP3 and MP4 downloads, you are still stuck in the download model. And the hosts, because they don't have first-party data, rely on the download as a metric to give creators, got it. And as you said correctly, that's a historical. But as Rob Walsh says, don't shit on the download, it's the only metric we got left, right? That's universal. But other than that, with HLS, what's really key about it is when you start to stream a piece of content, audio or video, guess what? You know when it starts, and you know when it stops. It's a really simple thing. So yes, it actually got played, and how long did it get played? I can tell you. Did the ad in the middle, the consumption data, actually show me? Yes, it did. I don't see what's so hard. We are maybe in a gap between the old world and the new world, the MP3, MP4, podcasting is only audio, to the new liquid content, HLS, play counts, listen time metrics. I hope that's where we're going. But it feels right now that we're in the chasm and nothing seems to be moving forward.

Speaker 7 38:55

Yeah, I d I sadly I I agree with that. But I think the other thing we need to be cognizant of is how fast the medium has changed. Here we are, we're on a video podcast, and you guys always said we're never gonna do video podcast. Just change, just change. That was all changed. Just blame him. Shh. But here we are, because we know that it's an essential part of the mix, but YouTube is not a podcast company. Sure, they have a podcast chart and they even have some people who help podcasters, but it's a teeny percent of their business. So we're on someone else's platform. Spotify, who grabbed the lead from Apple a couple of years ago, is now trying to figure out who they want to be and trying to monetize better. I think they're in an interesting position because they can do video and audio. And Gaple is has no economic incentive to do anything. Had they done it several years ago, I think we would be in an HLS world and it might be a better place to be. But but I don't see an easy recovery on all of this, but I do see the need for us to get there. And one other point I want to make, a couple weeks ago YouTube changes the metric and says, hey, if you hover over it, it's a play. A reminder, their competition is TikTok and Instagram and Facebook, and so they are just following those guys. And so they lowered the bar as to what a play is, and then they hid the real data, which you as a podcast producer need to voluntarily share somewhere, somehow, in order for that to be measured. That's really not helpful, and yet it's not their business. It's not YouTube's business. It's a little side feature.

Sam Sethi 40:48

Is it all about being able to say there's more attention on our platform? Look, so many people hovered over and created impressions on our videos more than they did on Spotify and TikTok, so we're the number one, not you. And then TikTok says, no, more content's consumed on our platform, and Reels comes out from Meta and says, no, we have more on here, and blah, blah, blah. Is it just a game of we are the bigger platform and everyone's trying to be the number one? Is that it? Because I can't make sense of why they wouldn't have proper metrics around the content being consumed.

Speaker 7 41:19

So let's take it to the music business for a moment. And my course at NYU, the the foundation organization is the Steinhardt School of Music, that piloted it with me. They have a relationship with Spotify and Apple and all the other music platforms. I have seen the data that's being produced on behalf of these platforms that go to the record companies. Now there's a big financial model there. I mean, you have three major record companies, and they want to know, okay, where did Taylor Swift get played? How often did it get played? What did it do right after the new track was introduced? All of that super rich data is available and beautifully sliced up, I gotta say. So I know Spotify knows how to do this. I know Apple knows how to do this, but the economic incentive is not there in the same way as it is in the music business. So I don't really have an answer for you on that other than the data is already there and they know how to they know how to slice it. Somebody's got to take the step forward to try and figure out how to make this work on an industry basis.

Sam Sethi 42:30

Yeah, Apple is taking a cut of any ad served on its platform, and James has been saying that model should be extended to all apps. Sadly, again, no one steps forward to say, yeah, let's do it. It seems to be well, when it's no one's business, it's no one's problem, right?

Speaker 7 42:46

And I think it's never gonna be But they but the apps, let's be mindful that 75-80% of the business is no longer on those apps. So it's a question of who's the tallest midget, and not that is not derogatory about the apps. It's just where the consumers went. And rule number one in marketing is you follow the consumers. It's really hard to reverse that.

Sam Sethi 43:08

I have to say that in my conversations with James, I'll be much more focused with my CEO of TrueFans on. I'm much more focused on what Patreon and Substack and Memberful and Supercast are doing. Those aggregated portals, as I call them, creator portals are where I see it. This is where liquid content is contained within one page. And that is then allowing me as a fan to subscribe, to pay premium content, to buy live tickets, to buy merch, blogs. And that's where I see it going. I don't I actually do think standalone audio podcast apps will be a thing of the past because they only serve one tenth of the requirement of what fans want today. And I think those apps that are trying to rely on pro features. To get premium payments. I don't think people are going to pay them because they're being rolled into the Spotify and Apples for free, right? So why why would they pay?

unknown 44:09

Yeah.

Speaker 7 44:09

Well, people don't need to pay for that, but let's also focus on the Patreon thing for a moment. So Patreon, huge success, $649 million given the not given, but shared with podcasters last year. That's a really impressive number. They have about 47,000 podcasts on there that pull some kind of income from Patreon. But the average podcast on Patreon is doing $13,000. Wow. So you've got these big podcasts that are really killing it on Patreon. But mostly people are not making a lot of money there. In aggregate, find Supercast and Patreon to be remarkable businesses. Totally remarkable businesses. But it's still a 1%, 2% business. The people that do well, you can go look at the charts on Graph Graftron or whatever that is, and you can see who's making the money.

Sam Sethi 45:04

Moving on a little bit then, Stephen, one of the other guests on this week's show, along with yourself, is Adam Curry, the Podfather himself. And Adam's been talking about vibe coding and agentic AI, and he's been talking about how fundamentally the model of podcasting is going to change in the future. Now, he did say it, and you know, being an app developer, it was like, whoa, but he did say that in the future he sees personalized apps where he doesn't need a podcast app from a company. He will create his own version to customize and tailor to his own needs. But again, in the demo that he gave on podcasting 2.0 with Dave Janet, he took an episode that did have ads. He got his Muse AI to strip out the ads, to create clips of the best parts and create a playlist. So he's doing the clip economy without advertising, without apps, all in one. Is that the future?

Speaker 7 46:02

Is that really the future we want? So, first of all, he's super smart and there needs to be people who are thinking ahead. I have a very consumer-based view on things. I'm always starting with the consumer on back. And the consumer does not like friction. Everything that puts something in front of them that's either a paywall or difficulty in selection doesn't work all that well. And I think about this thing. My wife, who is Yale graduate in law school and everything else, she does not want to mess around with the settings on that iPhone. It is not of interest to her. And so the notion that she's gonna sit there and start curating her own lists and so forth is just crazy. What she wants is the stuff to be readily available when she wants it. And certainly there are people who are cognizant of that all over the media. So I don't know. I do I do know that the robot's getting smarter and that the robot can do lots of things for us. And I am deep in in my own consumer way with ChatGPT and Claude, but I am not a coder, I'm not vibe coding, I'm not doing anything like that. But I understand that the tools get smarter and we can start asking for things. And when we can make that all vocal or just a simple command, I think, yeah, I think that's possible. But who knows? Yeah, I think it's ten years out.

Sam Sethi 47:34

I genuinely think it's a decade away. It's lovely as a concept and idea, and somebody as smart as Adam Curry can do it, but I don't think, as you said, your wife, my wife, who used to run MSN, it's gonna want to waste her time doing that. So given everything that you've written in your newsletter this year, given every event that you've attended, given everything that you read yourself about podcasting, are we in a healthy position?

RSS Romance And The Future Name

Sam Sethi 48:01

Where are we moving forward to in 2027?

Speaker 7 48:04

Yeah, so glad you asked. I listened to the Freakonomics episode that was published last week, and everybody should, because Steven Dubner is great and does a really good job on that episode of laying out a lot of the issues in the space. But the scariest moment for me was when one of the top agents in the business said, Podcasts is a terrible name. And so Dubner says to him, Well, what do you want to call it? And by the way, Dubner doesn't like to name Podcast. What do you want to call it? And the agent says, shows. I think that is the worst possible outcome for this business. We have something special going on here. Podcast doesn't mean an audio-only show anymore. Any more than Banana Republic, the store, means that you're gonna get bananas and and cheap shorts anymore. I think that we have a term, and what it really means, besides being a round conference table with two microphones on it, is that there's a type of conversation occurring in podcasts that is way more authentic in this automated world where everything is just coming at us super fast. We have developed this category which is really quite remarkable of conversation. And that may not be exactly what everybody wants podcasting to be. I remember in you know, ten years ago, narrative podcasts were a big deal, and there are some narrative podcasts, but by and large we have a name, and even YouTube, which is has shows, and every day there's 720,000 hours of new show put on a platform. We have a word and they use the word, and we should embrace the word because it's fantastic. It may not be that podcasts mean what they meant, but it means a kind of show, and I think that's remarkable and a shame worse than a shame if we don't protect it because then we're just shows. And that's the end of the business.

Sam Sethi 50:14

I think the problem we've got is let me say this before Ben Hammersley went to school with me, and he was the guy who invented the name podcasting, by the way. But that's a secondary my my secondary claim to fame of knowing Ben. We moaned when YouTube hijacked the word podcasting without RSS. We moaned when Netflix takes podcasting and takes it into the Netflix platform, but it there's no RSS. Are we trying to have our cake and eat it? We want the word podcasting to be known and kept, but we want it to be the thing that we've always defined it as. But marketeers now on YouTube, Spotify, and Netflix are understanding that actually it's just shorthand for two talking heads and a microphone.

Speaker 7 51:02

Yeah. Look, so there's d there's romance for legacy podcasters in the RSS feed. I don't care. I I again I'm taking this from a consumer standpoint. I want to put content in front of you wherever you are, and I don't care what the the platform is. If it's something that you're interested in, we'll figure out how to get the content there. And so I don't think we can be tethered to the RSS feed. I mean, there's something so magical about being able to publish at once and have it go to every platform. Love that. This will not stand the test of time, I don't think. That's not so great for us. But let's be realistic about where things are going. And going back to something we talked about earlier, we're renting space on other people's platforms, and they're making the rules.

Sam Sethi 51:48

Yeah, I'm gonna slightly disagree with you on one last point, really. So RSS originally, as I said, started out in Netscape, which was putting in data to a portal because the internet was slow. I think we talked about, and I'm sure that you agree that we've talked about audio, video, newspapers, blogs, all of that can be delivered via RSS. And I, as CEO of TrueFans, we've got a thing called Superfeeds, which is one RSS feed with all of those elements in it that is displayed on a single portal. We've gone back full loop, right? We aggregate RSS as one page on for multiple forms of liquid content. And I think we can, if we can stick to our guns, keep that. But you're right, consumers will make the final decision because maybe they don't even care what the underlying technology is that delivers it. This is plumbing.

Speaker 7 52:38

This is plumbing. And that's what it is, and that's why I say it's a bit romantic to think about it. And you know what? There's the word simple in there, and sim simple really was what the catalyst was to launching this business, and the download was the catalyst to launching the business. But as we all know, the business has changed several times, and obviously it's gonna change again. But we better get measurement right, and whether that's via an RSS aggregation or some other means, I think that's what's gonna hold the business back more than anything else. And one one other thing I d I I want to mention is unlike a lot of other businesses, we are a business of niche podcasts. And you know, your company is called True Fans, and I remember dropping you an email a a couple of months ago going, Hey, was this did you get that idea from Kevin Kelly and his book, A Thousand True Fans? You said yes. I so love the book and the notion where he's saying, Hey, you can go shoot for millions of viewers and listeners and readers and everything else. But if you're a watchmaker, there are people who are really interested in watches. And if you can get a thousand of them together, that's a business. And I totally agree with that premise.

Sam Sethi 54:01

Kevin wrote that about the time when everyone was chasing likes and hearts and all those silly things that actually you couldn't take to the bank. And I liken that to the download. I don't care about the download number if you've got a million downloads, it's an indication of interest, but it doesn't mean anyone played it. And I think in the same way that Kevin talks about a thousand true fans, I talk about a thousand true plays, right? That's more important than a million downloads, which actually may never be heard because they're auto-downloaded. And so there is a parallel between what he originally wrote and what we're doing today.

Speaker 7 54:34

And that number, by the way, just gets worse and worse. It was with Dan Meisner and Jonas Woos last week, and we were talking about this. This is the the number of downloads that are not real has increased dramatically. And so people who are using that number for their show and then not able to deliver that audience, I don't know what they're gonna do. That that's such a huge disconnect. And that's on the edge of fraud, and that's really not healthy for the business.

Sam Sethi 55:03

And that's why I'm totally against the hover count by YouTube. I think that's another element of inflated attention. They're trying to tell appetizers that people are engaged with this content. No, not because it's not even clicking on it anymore. It's now just passing it. So look, Steven, we can probably talk a little bit.

Speaker 7 55:21

Well, but keep in mind that YouTube metrics are really good. YouTube, yeah, sure they're publishing the vanity metric now. But you go you go into the dashboard there, their metrics are really excellent. You can figure out who's watching your show, when they're dropping off, how frequently they're coming in. The data is rich and you can mine that data. It's just that it's not the box office.

Sam Sethi 55:47

And it's not open and available for anyone else. So that's the problem. Right. Stephen, where will we find you next? Where can people go and see you? What's the location of your newsletter? Give us all the ways of connecting with you.

Speaker 7 56:01

Sure. So amplify amp-lifimedia.com. Write the thought letter there. It comes out whenever I have a thought. So it's not a twice a week kind of thing. I try and keep it topical and interesting and stuff that is not necessarily the top of the news, but the top issues for the business. And happy to have you sign up for that. It's free, which is crazy. I should be putting some kind of gate on that, but that's for another conversation. We see you in London in the spring. I hope to be there, and that is my plan at this point. It's a great show.

Sam Sethi 56:40

Stephen Goldstein, thank you so much. Keep up the great work. See you soon, my friend.

Speaker 7 56:44

Thanks for asking. Take care. And nice to be on video with you.

Announcer 56:48

The Podnews Weekly Review with Buzzsprout. With Buzzsprout. Start podcasting, keep podcasting.

Netflix Podcast Talk Without Podcasts

Sam Sethi 56:56

James, look, Netflix is getting into podcasting in some shape or form. But it's not doing very well financially, James. Why are they failing?

James Cridland 57:09

I I I love this. Why are they failing? Revenues up 12%. That's not failing. That's doing really well.

Sam Sethi 57:18

I mean, I can tell you why I said that in a minute if you want. Yeah. Go on, then. Well, because they're they're they're basically bundling forward revenues from the past. So they've done a massive layoff of staff. Remember, Spotify did that as well to try and boost their revenue numbers in a quarter. And and Netflix has just done exactly the same thing. They owe £59 billion worth of backdated fees for content that's already been broadcast that they have to pay for. They are struggling with making forward revenues, which is why the market is not totally happy with them. I don't think the podcast actually that they've undertaken is going to be a success. And I think you're going to see them relying more on things like AI to try and get discovery of old content. But I I think they've got more competition. They're not producing new hits. And I think the layoffs is an indication of where the market is going to see them in the next few quarters.

James Cridland 58:22

Yeah, so they laid off 6% of their staff, including global content chief Bella Bejaria and a movie boss Dan Lynn. So they've uh laid off quite a few big hitters. Their newsletter acknowledged the concern about view hours growth in the US and Canada that investors have. And of course, the big thing that was supposed to help with view hours was podcasts, but the word podcast wasn't actually mentioned in the shareholders' letter. The word podcast wasn't mentioned in the earnings call either. The word podcast isn't mentioned in their accounts, which weirdly you can download as an Excel file from the Netflix investors website. And the word podcast wasn't mentioned at all in the investor video interview, which Netflix brilliantly posted on YouTube. Round of applause.

Speaker 2 59:23

I don't know. What a stupid, stupid thing to do. Oh no, we'll just upload our investor video interview on our main competitor. That would be a good idea, wouldn't it? What do you think, Ted? Oh, that's a good idea.

James Cridland 59:41

Anyway, so uh so uh yes, no mention of podcasts whatsoever, which I find fascinating. So, I mean, what's the deal there? You've been involved in podcasting for literally two quarters. If you believe the sounds profitable numbers, then they are number three in terms of podcast apps that people use to consume podcasts in the US. But you've forgotten to mention podcasts at all, the big uh the big whale of hope in any of your quarter three financials. What what a weird, weird old company. What are we doing getting so excited about Netflix adding podcasts when A, they haven't, and also B, they clearly care so little about them that they haven't even mentioned them. It's a very strange thing.

Sam Sethi 1:00:30

Well, the other thing that I picked up on is that their worldwide subscription rates are falling. I think it was about 16% down. And I suspect what you'll see in the next couple of quarters is an increase in the price to cover that. So I think they're in that spiral now of trying to get more people to watch, stay on longer, spend more attention time, and I think they're not succeeding. And we'll see that reflected, I think, in the share price and the revenue. You can't keep cutting people to to hide the revenue number, it eventually hits rock bottom. And so I suspect that's the same.

James Cridland 1:01:06

I mean, the only the only thing the only thing, you know, with Netflix or with the BBC or with other big content companies is the the thing that uh that will kill you is if you cut the content, because then people will stop paying for you. Because if the content isn't there, if you cut certain shows because, you know, because you need to make a little bit more money for the idiots in the in the investment you know organizations, if you if you cut content, then you are cutting someone's favorite show. And if you continue doing that enough, then people will go, you know what, I'm not gonna pay my my Netflix money anymore. I'm not gonna pay my TV license fee anymore. I'm gonna go and do and do other things instead. And so tread very carefully if you're gonna cut content there as well. So yeah, no, fascinating, fascinating times.

Sam Sethi 1:01:58

The other one that they're failing in is their ad revenue. That's completely flat.

James Cridland 1:02:03

Well, if you remember, they they always claimed that they were never gonna do ads, and then they always claimed that they were never gonna chase sport. And what are they doing? They're chasing ads and they're chasing sport. So bless them. I'm sure that I'm I'm I'm sure that they know what they're doing, but maybe in two or three years' time we won't actually see a Netflix at all. And maybe they will maybe they will go away very, very quickly if if you know. I I kind of hope that they don't, because it's it's a useful, you know, it's a useful organization, but you can clearly see that they are in trouble and in deep, deep trouble.

Sam Sethi 1:02:36

So yes. Spot flix still on the cards. Spotflix is still on the card.

James Cridland 1:02:41

Although I did I did hear you in a recent interview on another podcast saying that you used to own SpotFlix.com.

Speaker 4 1:02:49

Yeah, I don't own it anymore.

James Cridland 1:02:51

Oh didn't keep it.

Sam Sethi 1:02:53

It was eventually like, really, shall I just keep renewing? No, I can't be bothered. But the the last thing I will say is here's here's just a personal observation, right?

Speaker 2 1:03:03

Yes.

Sam Sethi 1:03:04

So if you look at Apple and we watch Apple TV and let's say Ted Lato, uh you get the show once a week, right? They've they've worked out that binge watching is not a good idea because people will binge in a 12-hour window and then unsubscribe.

James Cridland 1:03:20

Yeah.

Sam Sethi 1:03:21

Netflix, the gentleman, watched it in a binge, me and my wife, and then we could, we didn't unsube obviously, but we could have unsubscribed, but my daughters would have done that. They would have gone, paid my $15.99, watched it all, nothing now for another three months, off we go again.

James Cridland 1:03:38

We we we did that with the last series of what's that George R. R. Martin thing?

Sam Sethi 1:03:45

Oh, Game of Thrones.

James Cridland 1:03:47

Game of Thrones, yeah. We did that for the last series of Game of Thrones. We held our nose, we paid for a month's worth of Foxtel, uh, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch down here. We watched it and then we got off there as soon as possible so that we weren't funding that lot. So yeah, no, exactly right, exactly right. But still, the benefit of Netflix is that you can't yet watch Netflix on your on your pervert glasses.

Sam Sethi 1:04:13

Yet, you say, Yet is the key word.

Smart Glasses And New Listening Surfaces

Sam Sethi 1:04:16

So basically, there's been a report out about how smart glasses can make podcasts easier to hear. One of the things that Meta has done is removed the camera from the latest version of the glasses, so it's audio-only playbook. Okay. And what they're seeing is people are enjoying using the music podcast capability, the AI fundamental usage. But yes, the camera's been removed and that capability's gone. And so we'll see whether that has any effect. But people are seeing it as a notherm surface. That's the term I think people use for where they need to start measuring usage, right? There is also the other side of the coin where they do have a set of new smart glasses with heads-up display on it as well. So you they've gone both ends of the spectrum. Right. Yes, you can have audio only, audio and video, or audio and video heads-up display.

James Cridland 1:05:16

Yeah. So this was a piece of research from a company called Kagan that does research on this. Uh Kagan Chief Insights Officer Andrew Wallenstein saying that the opportunity may be less about replacing existing listening devices, but making podcasts easier to access throughout the day, especially during activities where consumers want to remain aware of their surroundings or keep their hands free. Andrew Wallenstein, I have news for you. Have you heard of headphones? Headphones are a good thing.

Sam Sethi 1:05:48

There's no no no no no no. Walking the dog with no, no, walking the dog with both airpods in is not a clever idea, right?

James Cridland 1:05:55

I mean you can walk the dog with one head with one airpod. I know.

Sam Sethi 1:05:59

I like to. Hear you in both ears, James. It's you're better in stereo, I promise you.

James Cridland 1:06:04

Or you can turn on the the the awareness thing rather than turning on the noise reduction thing. I do it all the time.

Sam Sethi 1:06:14

I I use mine for when I walk the dog or when when we're out and about and I've got you know, I don't want to be blocked away from the environment. Each their own. I like them.

James Cridland 1:06:25

I still want to find out, Gabe, from Edison Research. I still want to find out what happened when he turned up at the border of China, where he is. Uh I still want to find out what happened there. I should maybe maybe he's out of prison now.

Sam Sethi 1:06:40

Hey, I turned up to the Nazi Party rally with uh Nigel Farage with my nod. And the security didn't know what I was doing taking photos.

James Cridland 1:06:48

Yes, no, no. It's not the Nazi party. It's possibly worse. Let's move on. Um uh Bumper has done something quite neat, haven't they?

Sam Sethi 1:06:56

Yeah, they've added a free tool to allow podcasters to share your engaged views with potential advertisers. Engage views is this term that YouTube has now done because the pointless hover stroke second play doesn't really matter, it's an inflated number. But they have put it behind the dashboard, the engage views which was available publicly before. And I suppose now you can give bumper access to the engaged view so that they can put it onto the bumper dashboard.

James Cridland 1:07:27

Yeah, it's a very simple and straightforward tool. It's actually not the bumper dashboard, it's just a page, just a page that pulls the views number and the engaged views number from YouTube and then shows them in a page which you can share with people. So there's a bit of legal ease because I have to expressly permit somebody to have a look at my engaged views number. And so in the Bod News newsletter earlier on in the week, I expressly permitted everybody to have a look at uh our YouTube views and engaged views. So they're there now. So I can so I can do that. But it's a very neat tool from Bumper. It obviously means that you can share stuff directly to ad agencies as well, which is uh nice. And in Bureaucracy News, some exciting the new chapter that we've added that we never want to do again. Yes. Yes. Great news, Sam, from the US Small Business Administration. They have issued companies like ours a classification, and we are now N A I C S 5121, which is very exciting, isn't it, Sam? Why is this exciting again?

Sam Sethi 1:08:37

Well, it means you can get loans, grants, and other support, supposedly, from SBA-backed companies.

James Cridland 1:08:42

Ready for your loan, James? That's probably important, isn't it, really? Uh yes, so yeah, so we we now know officially that if you are a podcaster and uh you are earning money from podcasting, then there is now a classification which will allow you allow your bank to understand what it is that you actually do. Sadly, it won't allow your mum to understand what it is you actually do, but at least it'll it'll let your bank so that's a handy thing. So, yes. Good news from America. I I never thought I'd say that. Anyway, there we are.

Sam Sethi 1:09:16

Can I tell you? So when I was an army officer, my mum being an Indian mum used to brag to every other Indian mum what I did. And when I said to her that I was an entrepreneur, she was like, What is a bloody entrepreneur? I can't tell anyone what is it? I have no idea. So I had to try to explain what an entrepreneur was, which is unemployed and broke. And um, and she was like, Oh, okay, I understand what you do now. But we also have something similar, if you recall back in the UK, the Audio UK gave a new SIC code, standard industrial classification for podcasting. There was a 59222 and 59212. I mean I think what is good is maybe in the future there will be an ability to understand the size of the number of companies within the podcasting ecosystem, because often these companies have been hidden under other classifications and therefore you couldn't measure the size of the industry.

James Cridland 1:10:13

Yeah, yeah. No, I uh that's really a useful number, even if it's a bit t uh a bit tedious. So, yes, there we are. Good news. And I think Ralph Estep Jr., who is one of our power supporters, has written a great article all about this and why it's as important as it is if you happen to be in the US. And so, you know, worth a peek and worth a look at that. Right, let's move on to um people and jobs with podnews.net slash jobs.

Industry Updates Jobs Awards And Tech

James Cridland 1:10:43

Always free to post, always free to look. Uh, it's the podcast industry's biggest jobs board, and it's podnews.net slash jobs, paid for by our supporters. So it's always free for you. Uh Anthropic is adding one job, podcast media manager. You will own how Claude shows up in podcasts, they say, one of our most important channels for reaching professionals and knowledge workers. Also in the news, uh, Shannon Quintana has joined Red Circle as Senior Vice President of uh Account Management. Uh, she joins from Oxford Road and Veritone One. Uh Vittoria Cecchini is now head of production for podcasts at DMG Media. Who are DMG Media, Sam?

Sam Sethi 1:11:24

Something I never read, the Daily Mail.

James Cridland 1:11:27

Yes, the Daily Mail, which as you know is not a conservative outlet. So don't go thinking it is, because uh apparently it really isn't. And and also New York Public Radio, who are the owners of WNYC, has uh hired a new chief development officer called Kimberly Watson. So there we are. Awards and events, Sam. Uh my goodness, have you been on LinkedIn this week? Have you seen the amount of people patting themselves on the back because they've won a signal award?

Sam Sethi 1:11:58

Yeah, you know, I mean, uh allegedly I'm one of the judges. I don't think I don't remember uh doing much, but yes, allegedly one of the Yes, thank you very much. I think I got asked, I said yes, and then I didn't really do much more. No, I did a little bit, but the the winners of the Signal Awards were announced. Yes. Any anyone interesting, or is it just the usual?

James Cridland 1:12:18

I mean, anybody interesting, yes. 1,226 podcasts got an award, 465 gold winners, just 465. Selective then the Listener's Choice Awards received more than a quarter of a million votes. So that is why you may have seen quite a lot of people winning awards on LinkedIn this week, because there are uh quite a lot of people who have been given them. I was at the awards uh last week, the Sonar Awards. I recorded this podcast uh before I went there, but that was a really good event. Lots of indies winning that. Lots of um I I think what was nice about it is it was a proper award ceremony where the organizers had actually spent some time thinking about how to do an award ceremony properly, even to the point of making their own trophy, which was made out of recycled plastic. Looks really cool. It was a sort of two kind of megaphones stuck together, but it turns out that it was a mobile phone holder as well. So you could put your mobile phone in the top, and the sides would sort of act as if they were a speaker, which was very clever. So really smart, really nice event. So congratulations to anybody involved in the sonar awards last week. We didn't win anything, but there again, we didn't enter anything, so there is always that. The nominees of the 2026 Astra Podcast Awards were also announced by the Hollywood Creative Alliance. I'm assuming that people didn't enter these. I'm assuming that they were just plucked from a big list because there are an awful lot of people that don't typically enter most of these awards. Good Hang with Amy Polar was in there, along with Call Her Daddy and the Daily, but also, you know, there were two shows from Girlhanger who've been nominated and various other shows that you go. I don't think you entered anything. I think this is a slightly different way of organising an awards. So those are going to be the winners of those are going to be announced in due course, and you will be at the Independent Podcast Awards in uh London Wednesday, the 4th of November, and looking forward to that.

Sam Sethi 1:14:22

Yeah, no, it'll be my third year of going though. Really nice. It's great to catch up with people. So yes, seriously looking forward to that.

James Cridland 1:14:29

Uh, talking about events, Podfest North comes to Liverpool on the 13th of November. Uh, this looks really good. This is in uh obviously Liverpool in the UK. It's very cheap to go, 50 quid if you want to turn up. It's a Friday, so you can spend the weekend seeing all that Liverpool has to offer. And by Saturday morning, you'll be going to Manchester. No, no, no, that's that's absolutely not fair.

Sam Sethi 1:14:56

I like Liverpool, it's beautiful. Yes.

James Cridland 1:14:59

Yes, yes. They've just announced that they're turning a radio station that I nearly worked for, Radio City. They're talking about turning that into the yellow submarine exhibition. So that's a bit weird. But anyway, there we are. That'll be fun. But yes, podcast creators coming together for Podfest North with expert talks, workshops, and networking, all kinds of people there. If you want to find out more information, of course, podnews.net slash events is where to go.

Announcer 1:15:24

The tech stuff on the Podnews Weekly Review.

James Cridland 1:15:27

Yeah, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday in the Podnews newsletter. Here's where Sam talks technology.

Sam Sethi 1:15:32

Yeah, we've got a couple of nice little tidbits of stories. Uh Pod Gageman, Daniel J. Lewis's company, has introduced a new podcast, radar. Uh, very similar to what I think um Alberto Battella from RSS.com has.

James Cridland 1:15:46

Oh no, it's very, very different. It's very, very different. Yes.

Sam Sethi 1:15:49

Oh, okay. Do tell, because for the uneducated, moi, it looks exactly the same.

James Cridland 1:15:55

He's used the same phrase radar, but unfortunately it's uh it's very different. So what he's looking at here is he's looking at the relationships between individual podcasts in the Apple Podcasts ecosystem. So you know when you go to a podcast and it says, if you like this, you'll also like X, Y, and Z. And it links you off to other shows that you might like. This is essentially a piece of graphical work to actually show that. So you can see, you know, the Mel Robins podcast, you can see all of the shows that point you back to the Mel Robins Podcast for, for example. So there's some, you know, it's quite nice work. I sent Daniel an email just reminding him of what my email address was, in case he's launching anything. But um but I think um, but I think this is a pretty smart thing, actually. So it's uh obviously hidden behind the paywall uh if you're a podcast customer, but um but uh perhaps you should be. Okay. It's quite cool.

Sam Sethi 1:16:53

Now now explain to me why it's different to what Alberta did, which was a radar of basically you had you start at one point and it showed you all the links to that podcast.

James Cridland 1:17:03

That that was podcast uh location. That was that was a uh that was a location thing.

Sam Sethi 1:17:09

One was a location based and this is one of a influence based. Okay.

James Cridland 1:17:12

Yes, yes. And you know, and and quite nice. I wonder, I do know that when you go to Apple Podcasts and you say, I I'm you know, I want to listen to the Podnews Weekly Review, I know that the information that you see underneath, at least certainly used to until the last couple of weeks, certainly used to be country specific. So it would actually point you to shows that other people in your country had listened to that had also listened to the Podnews Weekly Review, if you see what I mean. So I don't know whether this is US only or whether this is pulling in data from across the world. You know, I'd like to learn a little bit more about how the thing works. So hopefully we will learn uh a little bit more about that in the fullness of time.

Sam Sethi 1:17:58

Now, another little piece of information that came to us was Craig Hewitt, the founder of Castos, has launched a new AI clipping tool called UltraClip. So it's a self-serve for video editing, so you can create clips from your video. I don't know if you saw this at all. James is charging $49 per video.

James Cridland 1:18:21

Yes, gosh. Well, good luck on that. All I would say is I deluged at the moment with emails from AI companies, normally from AI agents themselves, trying to promote their video editing services, their transcription services, you know, all of these particular AI vibe-coded services that people have built. And I must get through six or seven a day. And the amount of you know, transcription services that I'm being sent every single day is astonishing. Uh, to the point where I can't promote any of them now. Uh because, you know, what am I going to do? Am I going to promote every single one of these random services? Now we're mentioning this one because it's Craig Hewitt, because he does know what he's doing. He's the founder of Castos, he's not just a random, you know, bloke in the street that's just come up with an interesting idea to vibe code. But you know, I I'm beginning to drown in these, in these, you know, exciting product announcements, and I literally don't know what to do with them anymore. Because if I'm going to mention one of them, I I I kind of need to mention all of them. And I I don't know how good any of these are. So it's it's a hard one.

Sam Sethi 1:19:38

I mean, people are trying to sell this as a product, but this is just a feature of a larger product, it's not a standalone product, and that's how I see it.

Speaker 6 1:19:46

Yeah.

Sam Sethi 1:19:46

If you want to do this, great. Well, as part of my larger product, here's one of the features, and it's video editing to create clips, right? It shouldn't be a standalone service, in my opinion.

James Cridland 1:19:58

Yeah, I think it's it is, it's a feature, not and not a service. Maybe not this particular one, because I don't know too much about it, but certainly many of the other tools that I have seen. I mean, as of yesterday, we also covered Music's Match Podcasts, which uh, if you remember, it launched in 2023 from the music metadata company that also does you know lyrics and music data and stuff and stuff like that. The idea was that it would produce for podcasters automated transcriptions, automated chapters, automated topic extraction for podcasts. And pretty well all of those features are now just AI features in other tools. And so, therefore, kind of what's the what's the point there? So that's just announced it's going to close. And I have a feeling that we're going to see more of those closing in in due course as well. Talking about AI-powered tools, of course, YouTube is launching one. Brilliant. Uh, it'll take a clip of audio and make it into a YouTube short, apparently. We linked to a YouTube short of somebody explaining what that was. Another company, by the way, that doesn't send me any press release is YouTube. Don't understand why, but still, but there we are. SpotsNow. We like SpotsNow. They've launched a custom AI tool for podcast networks that will essentially do all of the preparation stuff for you if you want to go out and sell advertising to advertisers. That that that's who normally buys advertising, isn't it? Anyway, uh, SpotsNow have a ton of uh AI agents to actually help you with that, which is which is very uh smart. What else is going on? Uh LinkedIn, is this one exciting, Sam?

Sam Sethi 1:21:38

No, not at all. Excellent. Let's move on. No, it was just a it was just too they've looked, they've launched a new version and and they still haven't fixed most of the other things that are broken. But the in-stream ads, again, they're more ads, more ads to video. And they've added a advice session where people on LinkedIn who weren't an AI expert last week who are an AI expert this week can sell one-to-one consultations.

James Cridland 1:22:07

Oh, that'll be good. That'll be good. So you can share your expertise so I can find out lots of Apple Podcast promoters who will be very keen to share their expertise. Excellent. It's and in in typical uh myopic fashion, it's now available to business premium subscribers in the US with more markets coming soon. Hello from the rest of the world, LinkedIn. Yes, and finally, the IAB Tech Lab has finalized the podcast technical measurement guidelines version 2.3. There's a little bit of change, but frankly, not an awful lot. Co-host has become the first to meet version 2.3 compliance, which is very nice. So congratulations to them. Uh, what I find interesting about this is that the guidelines are now on GitHub. So when they change the guidelines in future, then all of the changes will be visible, which I think is exactly the sort of thing that the IB ought to have been doing. So hurrah for the IB in terms of that. In my humble opinion, version 2.3 doesn't really change an awful lot, but I understand big uh changes in the way, and there will be a version 3 in the future at some point, and it'll be interesting to see quite what that means.

Sam Sethi 1:23:24

Just had a an epiphany moment for a new website. So LinkedIn's where you get your jobs, but dropped out's when you retire retire. So I'm gonna start dropped out, place for retirees.

James Cridland 1:23:36

That's nice. Dropped out.com. Yes, yes, you better you better you better see if you can if you can get hold of that.

Sam Sethi 1:23:44

Yeah. So many of my mates are now retiring, and it's like, oh, what are you doing? And it they're just going off around the world. Yeah, dropped out. That's it. We'll go there.

James Cridland 1:23:51

Yeah, that that sounds like your that sounds like your mates. You know, yeah, yeah, you know, your your mates would go around the world, you know, obviously. I'm afraid to tell you, by the way, that dropped out.com is available, but it's only available on the aftermarket, and it'll cost you six thousand four hundred and ninety-nine dollars. Yeah still still still keen on that idea?

Sam Sethi 1:24:12

UK pension doesn't cover that. No.

James Cridland 1:24:14

Yeah. Dropptout.lgbt is available if you want that, or dropped out.lol. No.

Supporters Mailbag Personal Updates Closing

Announcer 1:24:21

Fan mail fan mail and voicemail our favorite time of the week. It's the Podnews Weekly Review inbox.

James Cridland 1:24:29

Yeah, so many different ways to get in touch with us. Voicemail by using the link in our show notes or emails too. I say so many different ways to get in touch with us. Not that anybody's using any of them. Do you remember when we used to get fan mail? Remember when we used to get, you know, audio sent through by people? Yes, it was. That was a nice good old days. Good old days. Good old days. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, there's a link in our show notes if you wish to do that. That'd be awfully good if you wanted to. Or just send us an email. Why not? Weekly at podnews.net is our email address. Uh, quite a lot of spammers know that. So um I I think that you should know that too. And uh send us something. That would be that would be very nice. But thank you to our 25 supporters, our 25 power supporters. Weekly.podnews.net is where you can uh join up. There's a WhatsApp group where only power supporters can get in, and you can watch Neil Velia being excruciatingly rude about various people in the industry, which is always good, and lots of other things going on there as well. Uh Ralph Estep Jr. is in that list. Also, Brian Ensminger, uh James Burt, Martin Lindescog, and uh Dan Kendall. Dan Kendall, of course, working for mission-based media. He has just renamed his health podcast network. It's no longer called that, it's now called the Health Podcast Library. Lots of trustworthy health podcasts you can go and listen to. You will find that on the obvious URL of healthpodcastslibrary. No, no, no. Healthpodcastlibrary.com. If you to go and take a peek at that. So what's been yes?

Sam Sethi 1:26:06

No, no. We've actually had three comments in from Claire, which are actually quite useful.

James Cridland 1:26:13

Three comments? Oh, this is this is comments on TrueFans that I should possibly have taken a look at. Go on then.

Sam Sethi 1:26:19

Yeah, I should have wonder wh whether I should have done that as well, maybe. Um there you go. There you go. One I wonder if I knew anyone who works there. Um right, so Claire's given us 2222 stats and said a comment regarding Boss Sprout adding a memory for corrected spellings and Riverside adding a dictionary to their transcripts a few weeks ago. A year ago, I asked my husband to make this for me using AI. I was fed up with having to change my name, spelling, and various other regular corrections. So I asked him to create my own platform for all the accompanying stuff around the audio show notes, titles, ideas, clips, which he built in a dictionary. And so, yes, so she's very happy that BuzzSprout, our sponsors, have now actually done this autocorrect version.

James Cridland 1:27:06

Yes, which is very nice. She says it relates back to what Adam said earlier that you don't need external platforms to do this. You can do it yourself, or ask your husband if he likes to do that sort of thing, and you are too lazy. But if you don't have a willing husband, uh insert relevant other relations and friends here. If they don't, if if you don't have the interest yourself, then you will want platforms to do it for you. I think Adam was talking on this week's podcasting 2.0 about exactly that. And, you know, I think Dave was talking about normies, and Adam was getting upset about people uh talking about normies. But yes, I mean this is very much uh Claire Waite Brown is, I think, quite a normy. She is quite a normal person, and she has built something to fix all of that. So I think that is pretty small. Well, yes, but her husband, but you know what I mean. I mean, I don't know whether her husband is a normal per is a normal person. I've never met. Him. But uh anyway, he's a cyclist.

Speaker 4 1:28:02

Never normal he's a cyclist.

James Cridland 1:28:04

Oh, he's a cyclist. Oh my word. Anyway. Claire Claire also says many people will not want to do this themselves, will therefore want to stay with the platform because they have that capability and the user has built up their dictionary and don't want to start again on a new one. Well, that's potentially why you should be signing up with BuzzProut. Start podcasting with them. But also, more importantly, keep podcasting. That's always a good thing. So, what's happened for you this week, Sam?

Sam Sethi 1:28:32

Busy week, busy, busy, busy. Um one daughter completed her first half marathon. Well done to my daughter. Wow. And then the other daughter, my younger daughter, flew off to Canada this week to go and do a ski season in Whistler.

James Cridland 1:28:45

So yeah, she's Oh, in Whistler. In Whistler. She's very close to Justin Jackson. I say very close, in the same province. That that's not very close. No, not very close. But nevertheless. So yeah, so if Ms. Sethi wishes to wishes to pop over to Vernon, then I'm sure you will get a he he will show you the the dolphin statue. Uh he showed me the dolphin statue, and that's not a euphemism.

Sam Sethi 1:29:10

Uh I will I will WhatsApp her immediately and get zero response.

James Cridland 1:29:16

Warn her about that. Yes. Yes. What's uh what's at work looking like?

Sam Sethi 1:29:23

We we are continuing to redo, we we've got new versions, native versions of the platform coming out very shortly. So that's good. We'll be on CarPlay and Apple TV, but we're also building out as an experiment, and I don't really know where it's going, the interface for an MPC MCP server. Again, not really sure where this goes, but we're starting. And then the other one is we are now really beefing up our gamification and our activity stream. So it was a bit slow, we've re-indexed it all, and it's much, much quicker now. And uh so we we see it as a really good way for discovery, but we need to change some of the UI to make it much more intuitive for users. So, yeah, lots of tweaks really. We we're not really adding new particularly features now. It's all about I guess getting iOS 27 and and Android new native versions, that's our primary goal.

James Cridland 1:30:20

Yeah, which is an important thing, I guess.

Sam Sethi 1:30:23

Yes. So what's happened for you, James? I I listened to Young James on a radio clip.

James Cridland 1:30:29

Yeah, so I uh so I used to be on the radio 30 years ago, I realized, rather to my horror, but I used to be on the radio a long, long time ago, and uh but I've never had any recordings of me on the radio. Uh I I just never thought about making a recording. So so I was really surprised when I was contacted by an old colleague who, it turned out, had recorded a show of mine, and a bit of a weird show of mine because I'd actually not been on the air for five months before I did that one show. So it wasn't necessarily a normal show for me, but yeah, and it was really weird having a listen to it. So I've stuck it up on my blog if you want to have a listen. I'm not quite sure why I've I I've done that. Because I was kind of half proud because there were bits where I sounded really good, and also half embarrassed because there are bits where I clearly had not done any preparation when I really should have done. But really enjoyed having a listen to that. And what I what I would say, it's much easier in the podcasting world, but what I would say is keep a copy of the stuff that you produce. Because that's kind of important. And if you don't keep a copy of the stuff that you produce, then you know you you don't stand an awful lot of chance for for uh you know keeping all of this and and coming back to it 30 day uh 30 years later, as I have done. So yeah, that was uh that was a really uh fun thing, but also a very weird thing. So yes, I am a bit shy.

Speaker 4 1:31:57

Ask a favour, add a clip in the podcast just below this. That would be lovely.

James Cridland 1:32:02

Oh, you want a clip of that now, do you? Yes. Michelle Gale on the evening, but is it me or has it been hot today? Cannot believe how hot it's been, and tonight it's gonna go down to only 17 Celsius, which is 63 in the old money. I just cannot believe how hot it's been recently. It's just been absolutely ridiculous. I'll tell you the full weather in around a quarter of an hour from now. And next, I'll play you REM on the evening bit of the pulse. There you go. Are you happy? Happy now?

Speaker 4 1:32:31

Very oh Freeman, eat your heart out.

James Cridland 1:32:35

Yes, I I I did I a little bit later on, I did do an impersonation of Tony Blackburn, actually. Oh because I just read a script and it said, you know, enjoy the fun in the sun. And I then played the jingle. I've said, I can't believe I've just read out Fun in the Sun. Fun in the Sun! Uh that was all great fun. The other things uh obviously that I've been doing, along with everybody else in the entire world, is updating the version of PHP that I have. Brilliant! That was fun, or not, as the case may be. So there was a couple of mitigations that I put in place just before we all had to do the big updates. And now I have done the big updates on all of the uh I've got five servers, uh, all of which run PHP. Amazon were very quick off the mark, adding it to the repo, so that was good. So yes, so we're all safe, but yes, that was a bit that was a bit frustrating.

Sam Sethi 1:33:25

Uh great way to get the world to upgrade to the latest version, isn't it?

James Cridland 1:33:29

Tell me there's a bug. Yes, because quite a lot of the older versions of PHP aren't being updated. And so if you've got an old version of PHP five or below, I don't think they're being updated at all. And so uh, you know, luckily I'm using a version eight, I don't know, whatever version eight uh uh comes on the Amazon repo, and all of that worked fine. But uh yes, that was uh interesting. But I have been uh digging into the Amazon AWS console for the last week or so, trying to save myself money. So far, I've found $40 of something that I was paying for and never used, so that's gone. I found out that my personal website costs five dollars a month to host, but I could have moved that to a free, a free account, so I did, rather than have the forwarder, you know, the forwarder from www.podnews.net to podnews.net, which is its own website because it kind of has to be, that was on a free tier. Well, and that was costing me two cents a month to host. Well, my personal one cost me about four dollars sixteen to host, so I've moved that onto the free account. So I've I've been playing around with all of these things, little little savings, but you know, they're all they all add up.

Sam Sethi 1:34:47

Yeah, I need to. You'll be a new member on dropout.com.

James Cridland 1:34:50

Anyway, yes, yes, clearly. Anyway, uh dropout.lol. Anyway, uh that's it for this week. All of our podcast stories, of course, taken from the Podnews daily newsletter at podnews.net.

Sam Sethi 1:35:05

And you can give us feedback, go on do it using the bus route voicemail link in our show notes, or become a monthly power supporter like the 25 Power Supporters at weekly.podnews.net.

James Cridland 1:35:16

Our music is from TM Studios. Our voiceover is Sheila D. We use Riverside to record this week. Thank you to Riverside uh for giving us access to that. And we're hosted and sponsored by BuzzSprout. Start podcasting, keep podcasting.

Announcer 1:35:32

Get updated every day. Subscribe to our newsletter at podnews.net. Tell your friends and grow the show. And support us and support us. The Podnews Weekly Review will return next week. Keep listening.