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James Cridland 0:00

Coming up, the worker bees at Beehive have been busy. Plus, Spreaker needs a deleter with James Cridland and Sam Sethi.

Announcer 0:10

This is the Podnews Weekly Review with BuzzWith Buzzsprout. Start podcasting, keep keep keep podcasting.

Spreaker Import Loophole Fuels Piracy

Sam Sethi 0:19

So James, ah, naughty, naughty, naughty Spreaker. What have they been doing? Tell me.

James Cridland 0:25

I have had stories every so often about someone copying a podcast and making money from it and confusing the Apple charts and various other things. And there has been one pretty obvious thread between all of these individual shows, and that thread is they've all been on Spreaker. And it turns out when you go onto Spreaker and you want to, you know, just import a podcast from somewhere else, it doesn't check. It doesn't check that you own that podcast, it just imports it automatically. You can click a button that says keep this updated. So you can do that. You can then click a button that says monetize this show. And uh they uh uh turn on monetization even if the show is called test. And then finally, you can then add the copy of this podcast, which is now earning you more money because it's got ads at the beginning, ads at the end, so it's earning you money from stuff that isn't yours. You can then add that into Apple Podcasts and into uh Spotify and other places, and of course it starts charting there because of the ways that charts work. And hey, presto, you start earning lots of money, and everybody's happy apart from the person whose podcast you've stolen. That's essentially what's going on with Spreaker. Not just a few, but the data that I have discovered says 1,700 shows are duplicated on Spreeker at the moment. All kinds of podcast publishers in there, Podcast One and Vox Media and Goldhanger and Sirius XM and all of that kind of stuff. I mean, to the point where I've now got individual podcast publishers who are wanting to work together on a new code of conduct for podcast hosting companies, which is, I think, probably a good thing. But also we've seen the first company which has sprung up to actually fight this. It's a company called Pod Protect, a company produced by somebody called Lisa Lacey, and she discovered a couple of weeks ago that her podcast had been copied by somebody on Spreeker and was earning money and was already charting within a couple of days. And so she's actually launched an entire thing. So it's been a really interesting couple of days of basically pointing out what's going on on Spreeker and Spreeker doing absolutely nothing apart from give me a nice statement saying, Oh, no, no, no, no, we don't uh we don't condone any of this. Well, guess who makes 41% of the money from the advertising? It's Spreeker.

RSS.com Fixes A Hijacked Feed

Sam Sethi 2:58

They're not the only companies suffering from this copyitis. RSS.com, you had a story about them having a similar problem, but they dealt with it very differently. Tell me more.

James Cridland 3:10

Yeah, they dealt with this rather nicely, I think. So this is a a podcast that was made by, and this is a weird one. This was a podcast made by a man called Sanderson Jones. Sanderson Jones made his podcast for a while, people liked it, and but he but he got a bit bored of making it and he stopped making it. And so somebody hacked into his ACAST account, moved that show over to RSS.com. Once it was on rss.com, which of course you can earn money from, once it was on rss.com, not only did they slap ads at the beginning and at the end of all of this guy's shows, they also started making new shows with a clone of his voice, which was an astonishing thing, and actually turned a non-secular show into a secular show and starting talking about God and everything else, which isn't exactly not what Silas and Jones was talking about. Now, RSS I think have done a really good job here. They were they they were sort of alerted to this problem by Hyperfixed, which is an excellent podcast, and they ended up uh firstly getting the podcast back to ACAST, but also secondly giving $1,300, which was the amount that it earned in terms of total ad revenue, to Sanderson Jones, to the guy whose podcast it was originally. And Sanders and Jones, I think, said, This is the first money that I've earned from this podcast, and thank you very much. But my goodness me, that's that's quite the thing, I think.

Sam Sethi 4:40

Okay, a couple of things. Akos got hacked and he made money. Shouldn't he just leave it there and let the other guy who's clearly knows how to make money off his podcast and just take a cut?

James Cridland 4:51

I mean Yeah, but he doesn't want his whole point was to make a show which was about you know about spirituality spirituality, but without actually any talk of religion in there. And so of course, what the what what the person who then hacked his show started doing is lots of talk about God and Jesus, which was precisely not what Silas and Jones was wanting to talk about. So I thought that that's uh yeah, so possibly not, but you know, I mean, I think it I think that's a this is a really weird case because it was very clearly it had been redirected over to RSS.com. So uh I think rss.com, they just thought that this this was a a legit show and because his account had been hacked by you know by by this g by this person. So, you know, so it's a bit of a weird one, but yeah, all's well that ends well, perhaps.

A Code Of Conduct For Hosts

Sam Sethi 5:51

It also brings to mind again one of the other problems. You said it was an AI voice. I mean, again, no flagging of the AI voice, no, no again, we've got quite a few issues here in the industry, James. How do we stop it? I mean, I know you talked about you know Lisa starting a copyright, you know, program, but will it have any teeth? I mean, the problem is how do you really technically stop it? If it's not technically stopped, it would not be done by manual labour.

James Cridland 6:21

Yeah, there's a couple of things here. I think firstly, uh my understanding of what PodProtect is, is it's a way for you to at least know that your podcast has been copied. And that that's the first step. Actually, quite a lot of people don't realize that their podcast has been has been copied wholesale. So firstly, spotting that is a useful thing. The second thing, I think personally, I think that we need two things here. We need firstly a code of conduct for how we import podcasts from other podcast hosts. So the sort of thing that I would suggest is ensuring that the original creator is made aware of the import taking place. So send them an email. That will be at least a start. Secondly, don't allow any monetization until a redirect has been confirmed. That's the way that Red Circle do it, I understand. Don't also allow one-click distribution to Apple and Spotify and other places until that redirect has been confirmed. Because you can only redirect a podcast if the owner of that podcast is wanting to redirect it, unless you do some hacking. And then fourthly, do things like, you know, support the podcast lock tag, which Spreaker to their credit do, but also have some form of commitment that any revenue owed will always be paid to the copyright owner if a show is pirated. But also the revenue owing to the podcast hosting company should also not stay with the podcast hosting company for as so far as I'm concerned. I don't think that the podcast hosting company should be rubbing their hands together and going, great, well, we still own, we still get 41% of the revenue as as uh Spreaker does. So some kind of commitment to either give that to charity or to, I don't know, also give that to the copyright owner. I don't know. But but something that would that stops the podcast hosting company benefiting. And if we've got that code of conduct, well, perhaps that code of conduct is something that the good folks at the Podcast Standards Project were to have a look at so that there's just a standard code of conduct which is written up, which has a champion and is there so that all podcast hosting companies can say we abide by the code of conduct. Because at the moment there's none of that, none of that actually exists, and there are some good companies in this. There are some companies that actually make it far too complicated and far too difficult for themselves. And there are also companies like Spreaker who just have absolutely no control over this whatsoever. So that's what I think should happen. But let's wait and see what actually happens out of this. It would be interesting if Spreaker actually did something, because at the moment they've done absolutely nothing.

Sam Sethi 9:15

But uh anyway, we'll find out. We'll be talking about Instagram later on in the show, but Adam Massiri, the CEO of Instagram, was on Colin and Samir, and in the interview, one thing he was talking about was their challenge of in-platform AI copying the best top 10 reels, shows, whatever, and then putting them straight back out with AI voiced and monetizing on the platform.

SPEAKER_09 9:44

One of the things I'm getting a lot of complaints about right now is stand-ups having their bits stolen and then delivered by AI characters. Oh, interesting. And it's like, oof, it's like, all right, like, you know, like rights management for jokes is like a thing that isn't a thing, you know, but also like I want to make sure that we're a platform that rewards the people, the original content creators. How do we tell the difference? Maybe we could treat it as unoriginal content because we're not gonna be able to like censor content for saying the same thing.

SPEAKER_00 10:14

That's what it is, unoriginal content. I mean, I've been seeing a lot of these characters are running off of scripts that just pull what are the most viral reels of the past couple months or year and then recreating them with these characters.

Sam Sethi 10:25

Yeah. So they're not even moving off platform, they're good, they're staying on platform, finding the best stuff and republishing on platform even. I think this whole thing about AI being able to very quickly replicate and copy and monetize uh is a big thing. I don't think it's just a podcasting thing. I think it is a I think YouTube's probably facing the same problems. I'm sure Spotify has. Maybe they're not even talking about it. Because it is that ability to take content quickly and use AI to replicate. Oh well. Yes, it's all another whack-a-mole job to get on with.

James Cridland 11:04

It really is. And again, unfortunately, it's another fault of RSS. And those who want to kill RSS can just stick this on their whiteboard along with all of the other reasons why RSS is is is a dreadful idea. And that unfortunately is going to be grist to the mill to some of these people as well.

Newsletters Meet Podcast Memberships

Sam Sethi 11:22

Moving on then, James. Uh Supercast, the Red Seat Ventures company that's owned by Fox Media, they've done something. They've added newsletters, according to Jason Suhoy, the CEO. What have they done?

James Cridland 11:36

Yes, so uh as we've seen Substack and Beehive, who who run newsletters and add podcasts to their tools, what Supercast, who runs a podcast membership tool, of course, has added newsletters. That seems to make an awful lot of sense. It's offered as part of the base Supercast tool set. What's quite nice is that it offers content gating, tiered subscription levels, segment targeting, much the same as Patreon or something else ends up doing. So I think it's a very clever move from Jason's Hugh Hoy, of course, uh owned by Red Seat Ventures now. And apparently you can build or bring in your free newsletter right into Supercast right now and yeah, and uh scale that and and work that the way that you want to.

Sam Sethi 12:26

We talked about Goalhanger recently doing newsletters as well. So it seems that you know what was once old is new. I mean, talking to a man who does a newsletter, obviously. Have you seen a new interest in people subscribing to newsletters? Have you seen an uplift? Is it the thing that everyone's now turning back to?

James Cridland 12:47

Well, I think I mean newsletters are interesting because I mean some uh quite a lot of people say they get rid of the algorithm and they deliver directly to people. They don't. There's still an algorithm there, uh, and the algorithm is what the email servers do with your emails. And unfortunately, it isn't quite as easy as saying it gets rid of the algorithm because it most certainly doesn't. Uh interestingly, this week I learnt that Google Workspace has a different spam filter than Gmail. And you and you'd think that it would be the same, but no, it's just No, no, no, hang on, no. Two products from Google being the same. Don't be so stupid, James. No. So, and there's probably reason for that and everything else. So, yeah, so I mean, you know, new newsletters are always fascinating, though. You can get far, far closer to your readers with a newsletter because, of course, particularly for websites, but also for you know other things as well, people don't always go and visit a website just to check that somebody has posted a new a new article or whatever. And so actually a newsletter is you know is really good. And you know, and similarly, I think, you know, we'll we'll uh talk about next week a company which is actually sending emails directly to people that want to know when a podcast has updated itself. Because actually, you know, again, emails are a good way of doing that sort of thing. So, yeah, I think emails are really interesting, and I think what we're seeing here is a move in this space for these large membership companies to be focusing on offering more services, to be focusing on offering more ways of monetization. And I think it's a really exciting time for those of us that want to branch out, not just have a podcast, but have all kinds of other things as well.

Sam Sethi 14:38

Now, talking of Beehive, as you did at the beginning of this segment, you did an interview with Ainsley, who runs their podcasting. What was that

Beehive Monetization Tools For Podcasters

Sam Sethi 14:47

one about?

James Cridland 14:47

Yes, indeed. Beehive uh have been very busy bees, if you don't mind me saying so. And they've launched a bunch of new stuff. So I caught up with Ainsley Rosito, their head of podcasts, and asked her what they'd announced.

SPEAKER_05 15:02

Yeah, so we announced a suite of monetization tools. We are going to let creators either flight their own campaigns for ads that they've directly sold, or opt into programmatic advertising that comes along with a suite of dynamic ad insertion tools, the ability to drop breaks in the pre-mid and post-roll sections of your episodes, control how many spots can go into those ad breaks. If you're running your own campaigns with us, you have the ability to do some targeting, whether that be if you're a multi-show network, particular shows that you want those campaigns to run on, particular spots you want those campaigns to run in, or more technical things like geographical targeting or you know, pacing, frequency targeting, all those types of things.

James Cridland 15:48

That's nice. So you support, you know, if I was to join Beehive, you would support the ads that I am selling, first of all, which is something that uh actually quite a lot of podcast hosts don't actually do. So that's a great step forward. But you also can provide programmatic ads as well.

SPEAKER_05 16:06

Yeah, we we are working with ads with on the supply as well. So a tried and tested and true, I think, great partner that a lot of folks work with in the ecosystem. So we wanted to kind of with all things beehive, we try and make sure our solutions can fit people who are new to podcasting or new to newsletters, but also enterprise customers. And so we want to make sure we can fit if you have a full sales operation or if you're a brand new podcaster just getting started and you want to make a little bit of cash to at least cover your beehive subscription.

James Cridland 16:38

Now there are some podcast hosting companies that they will sell for you, but it it you can sell as well. And it ends up being a bit of a fight as to whose ads actually appear in there. What what if I've sold something, but so have you? How does that work with your system?

SPEAKER_05 16:56

Sure. Your ads will always be prioritized in our waterfall. So the way that it works is standard. If you've trafficked campaigns that are your advertisements you've sold, those will run first and then second in that waterfall, if you've opted into programmatic advertising, which again is totally optional to you. But if you have opted in, those will then flow into your unsold inventory. And then if you're running any promos, house promos or event promos or things like that, we'll put those in as the final layer. But again, it's all kind of pick and mix. If you have a sales lull and you don't have direct campaigns running, we might recommend that you opt into programmatic to kind of maximize your revenue potential. But if you don't want programmatic ads, you don't have to have them.

James Cridland 17:43

Yeah. Yeah. And what happens if people don't want ads in their shows from a listener point of view? Is there a way that I can pay to get the the same show but ad-free?

SPEAKER_05 17:55

Some of our podcast creators on the platform have created premium subscriptions with us, and ad-free listening is one of the main benefits that we see. So you could do it through through that route if the publisher offers it.

James Cridland 18:08

Yeah, yeah. And remind me, you're IAB certified as well, aren't you, in terms of in terms of the numbers that you get back?

SPEAKER_05 18:15

Yes, we are IAB certified and have been since early summer.

James Cridland 18:19

Yeah, yeah, which is and it is fascinating seeing that there's a bunch of companies that have done newsletters, but very much getting into podcasting. I think from the way that I'm looking at it, I mean you you you were at B uh you were at Podcast Movement earlier on in the year. You hang out in all of the places where podcasters hang out, Ainsley. So it it does look as if you're taking this really, really seriously, which is great in comparison to perhaps some of them. But I'm finding it really interesting seeing just the amount of companies jumping into this space now. Is this something that you think we can continue seeing as sort of an amalgam of membership companies getting involved in newsletters, getting involved in podcasting, getting involved in communities and other things?

SPEAKER_05 19:09

Sure. I mean, I think that the newsletter is so interesting because unlike the subscription, you don't actually have to charge to bring someone into your newsletter community, but it does give you a direct point of contact with them. You have that email, you own that relationship, and it's something that's a little bit more solid than just the download where you're getting a blank number back and you're guessing, you know, was that a person? Is it the same person coming back to listen to my weekly episode or not? And so I do think like the emergence of, I think we've seen the subscriptions, whether they're Apple Premium subscriptions or other third parties where you're building those around your podcasts, or now newsletters, or you know, maybe both of those things working together is a really strategic move for podcasters to control and own their audience in a way, especially as like platforms continue to make adjustments that can impact your revenue. You still need a way to just make sure you know where to get to your audience and how to find them. I think that the newsletter also can create other revenue streams, and it can also help you push your audience to different initiatives you might be working on, not just a podcast. Like so many of us have live events now that we want to educate our listeners on. And sure we can mention them in the episodes, but maybe you want to get there right into their inbox, give them additional information, visuals, videos, all those kinds of things. And it's the best way to service them directly.

James Cridland 20:40

Yeah, I mean, hopefully I would be very confident about a newsletter and what that can do.

SPEAKER_05 20:47

Um I don't have to sell you my Yeah, yeah.

James Cridland 20:50

Not not not especially. But you also do things like community, and you you've got a st I I think a store as well where you can sell other things on your do you do stupid question, but you must do sort of, you know, if I wanted to put my entire website onto onto Beehive, it would it would it would exist there, I'm I'm assuming as well.

SPEAKER_05 21:15

Exactly. So we we do podcast hosting, newsletters, those are the the two primary ones that we've talked about. But community came out earlier this summer, and we do have a full web builder, and then you mentioned digital products. And so our goal is you know, all of these services are available to you, and however you need an operating system. You don't necessarily have to use them all, but if you were to, you could in theory hit publish on a podcast episode. We'd automatically generate a landing page for that episode on your website if it's beehive hosted and it would publish there. You wouldn't have to copy and paste a bunch of metadata, a bunch of links, embed players for YouTube and all that. You can also automatically sync it up to your community so that episode. So drops in your community channel. You can facilitate dialogue between members right there. If you have anything subscription related, you can also manage that in one place and how people access it and what those subscription tiers are and those sorts of things. And then as you mentioned, digital products, you can build out a whole source store on Beehive and host those there as well.

James Cridland 22:22

Yeah, I mean it does seem it does seem as if you've got pretty well everything there. You also have APIs into much of this stuff, which is always nice. And and I noticed MCP access for your imaginary robot friend, you know, as well on there. So so there's a bunch there's a bunch of things going on. What what what's next for Beehive? What what what where are you where are you headed?

SPEAKER_05 22:46

Yeah, I mean on the podcast side of things, we know we still need to get into video hosting and distribution to be able to get up to parity with some of the other podcast hosting platforms in the ecosystem. So that's what's next for us. We'll be rolling that out before end of year. And like everything else in that suite of products that we talked about, it's going to be very interconnected with those other surfaces of video publishing to web, video publishing to community, and and all those sorts of things. And we'll be supporting, you know, publishing your content, not just to Apple and Spotify, but to YouTube as well. And there will be a whole analytics suite that goes along with that. Because we don't just want to make it easier for you to distribute content, we also want to make it easier for you to understand how it's performing and then do things with that data. You know, you mentioned our MCP, and I think it's a really cool thing to be able to say, hey, Beehive, you have all of my newsletter and podcast data, what's working well across these two things? And how can I maybe turn that into a digital product or facilitate a conversation in my community? And so we want to just continue to build on that foundation with all these new feature releases coming out.

James Cridland 23:56

And I've seen you at a ton of events and things. How important is it to be part of the wider podcasts community in in terms of what you're building?

SPEAKER_05 24:06

I mean, it's critical. Everything that we have baked into the feature set of our monetization tools has come from user feedback and also my own personal experience working with every different hosting platform that's out there throughout the course of my career and even being on some teams that have built one before. But it is so critical for us to hear what creators need and their feedback and build on that. Because if we're building a feature that doesn't serve them, then you know what is the point ultimately? And I think that that's such a big part of our ethos as well. Like when you set up a subscription with us as well, we we don't take a revenue share because we want to do right by the creator. And I think you know, people also compare us to some of the other more algorithmic-based platforms. Whereas when you host your content on Beehive, you really don't know we exist. You don't say I'm going to Beehive to look at XYZ. You say I'm going to pot news or I'm going to that podcast or that website. And so we just try and be, you know, the legs of the duck working very hard below the water for you.

James Cridland 25:14

Yeah, yeah. No, it's it's it's certainly looks very cool. And I think um there was a conversation in one of the super secret WhatsApp groups that we were in recently about the rise of the everything app. And I think quite a lot of people were just like looking at uh apps that do everything, like Grab in in Indonesia, for example, where you can do your grocery shopping on there, you can book uh taxis, you can do banking, you can do all kinds of stuff in there, and actually saying that the world of podcasting is kind of going that way, isn't it? It's it's kind of, you know, we're we're seeing people like Spotify and YouTube having, and particularly Spotify, having audiobooks in there, having podcasts in there, having music in there, and that appears to be working. And in fact, I suppose that the only company that isn't doing an everything app, but I suppose is doing an everything device, is Apple, where they are keeping these, you know, entirely separate. And I think it's it's interesting seeing you know Beehive very much getting involved in as many parts of the creator economy as possible, in kind of an everything app for the creator economy, I suppose.

SPEAKER_05 26:19

Yeah, exactly. And I think that I think that's such an exciting thing. I mean, we were talking a little bit before we even got on the phone about how we're now doing video and you know, how podcasting had this big, you know, oh my gosh, we are there there's a kind of a friction of podcasts are really audio. Are we gonna really start doing video? But it's so much more than that. Like seeing podcast content on all these other platforms in all these other ecosystems and different formats just gives so much more opportunity for discovery. So I think it's a really exciting thing. And I think that platforms who are helping creators extend their content to those different surfaces in different formats are really helping do a service to the creator to help get their content discovered by more audiences. So I'm excited by it.

James Cridland 27:06

Yeah, and I think uh certainly self-sustaining creativity is uh is a very good thing. So Beehive is it BWEHIIV.com. Do you own the proper beehive.com spelling as well? You should do. So if you want to find out more, you can you can go along there. Thank you for your support for the Podnews newsletter as well, Ainsley. I really appreciate it, and thank you for your time today.

SPEAKER_05 27:30

Yeah, thank you for your time.

Announcer 27:31

It's great chatting with you. The Podnews Weekly Review with BuzzSouth with Buzzsprout. Start podcasting, keep podcasting.

Instagram Long Video Test For Creators

Sam Sethi 27:40

James, now this was a surprise to me. Instagram has announced their testing. Note the word testing, because I've seen Adam's post this morning about complaints that Instagram is testing 90-minute horizontal videos of four podcasters. What what what why have they gone down this road?

James Cridland 28:02

Yes, so they're launching a test of horizontal videos of up to 90 minutes with select creators in the United States. Hello from the rest of the world, Instagram! It's a product called features, uh, it's aimed at podcasters very bluntly. It's got the ability to refer viewers to the full video from the short form reels on the platform. So great. Except, well, how does it all work? Presumably you'll have to upload your video to somewhere else. Great, uh, excellent. And secondly, you know, what is the is the HLS involved? Is the pass-through involved? I wouldn't have thought so. You know, how does it all work? It's all very, very early doors, I think, for for this. They have been quietly testing it with creators in Brazil, so clearly it's worked there, which is why they're now testing it with a few people in the US. But is it is it a podcast play? I'm not so sure, to be honest, but you know, it's another place, I suppose, for us to put our podcast if we want to.

Sam Sethi 29:07

Yeah, I mean, one of the things for anyone who's interested in hearing more about it in depth, Colin and Samir in their show did a full interview with Adam Massiri. I mean, the videos will be recommended to users not by followers, not by word of mouth recommendation. It's algorithmic, and again, we'll be talking more about the problem of that later on. They also have no exclusivity currently, but Adam did talk about that they will be paying certain brands and certain podcasts to be much more prominent on the platform. Now, one of the things he did say that I thought was interesting was that the Instagram for TV, which they launched on Samsung, will be on the Apple TV. They're clearly going after YouTube, they're clearly going after that market space. And, you know, he talked about the same things we've all talked about for a few weeks. You know, you start with audio, you get in your car, you're on your way to work, you come home, you put the big screen on, etc. But what he did say that I found really interesting in the interview is that it could affect the rest of Instagram.

SPEAKER_09 30:16

We're taking a big risk with this long form thing. Like I I still am I don't know if it's gonna work, right? I still really believe that short form and friends are very adjacent, and long form, I'm trying to figure out a way to like reshape it so it's adjacent. But it you know, we could be wrong.

Sam Sethi 30:32

And he worries that the watch time on the long form will affect people doing clips or uploading photos, because let's say you've got one hour of attention available before you have to do the next task you're on to. Well, if you're watching that long form video, you're not DMing people, you're not uploading photos, you're not creating reels, you're not watching reels even. So he worries about the bastardisation of the platform, and that's why I think they're very being very cautious right now about what they do. One of the things that Colin Smear said was they worry that people are gonna invest into the Instagram platform and that 12 months from now Instagram are gonna get bored because it's gonna affect the rest of the platform. I think again, Adam tried to say, Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, and then they brought back the fact that you know Instagram have brought features in the past and then they've got rid of them. So I think it's interesting, as you said, James, another place. But it won't be through RSS, probably, and it will be through an API, and it probably will be manually uploaded, and seems to be the trend which you know Apple, YouTube, Spotify are using. So worry, worry, worry.

James Cridland 31:46

Indeed, indeed. Yes. I I will not be hurrying to post stuff onto Instagram, it must be said.

Announcer 31:53

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3,000 Straight Days Of Positivity

James Cridland 31:57

So uh Sam, uh I caught up with Kate Cocker earlier on this week. So uh Kate, like me, does a daily podcast, but she actually does a proper daily podcast, i.e., she even does Saturdays and Sundays as well. And she's done 3,000 consecutive days now, which is quite a thing. The podcast is called Everyday Positivity. She started doing it quite some time ago. 2016 is when she started doing it. She's got over eight million all-time downloads. And I thought it would be really interesting just to have a quick chat with her to understand a little bit more about what she does, why she does it, and the sorts of things that have really worked for her to make sure that everyday positivity is listened to by a ton of people.

SPEAKER_06 32:45

Hello, my name's Kate Cocker, and I present the Everyday Positivity Podcast. We're a podcast that's been going for eight years, and we're all about a nugget of positivity for your day so that we make your life better every single day. 3,000 and odd plus episodes old, and we've been going for about eight years. And the the the day job is pres hop training presenters how to speak on mic or on stage uh in business and in broadcast.

James Cridland 33:10

Very good. So presenters like podcast hosts, but also radio people and that sort of thing. So everyday positivity, 3,000 episodes. So when did when did the show start and why did the show start?

SPEAKER_06 33:24

So the show started in July 2018, which we know very well now because we've counted the 3,000 episodes. Um and we started well, I start I I came up with the idea six months previously because I'd gone through a bout of depression again. But this time I was like, I don't really know why. Like before it had been, oh, I've maybe lost a job or I'd had the kids and I'd had postnatal depression. This time I was like, I don't really know why this is happening. And as I came out of that slump, I'd found that daily affirmations in the set in the form of good friends and exercise instructors was really helpful. And I sat in a pub with my husband and I said, in the January of that year, I said, I think I could do if I need daily reminding that things are good and everything's okay and I've got to keep a positive mindset, surely everyone else does too. And he went, just put a hold on that. You know, I don't think it's a priority at the moment. I went, Yeah, you're probably right like that. Six months later, I got a Facebook note in one of the podcast groups from Company in America saying, We're looking for daily content, short daily content. Does anyone have any? And I went, I went, I do. And that's how we launched. So we I said, I said it, I said I wanted it to be called everyday PMA at the beginning. And they advised that actually that probably wasn't, you know, people didn't know what PMA was, so let's call it everyday positivity. And I was like, okay, fine, I'll do that. And then I wrote 27 episodes, and uh and they said, Do you think you could keep going with it? And I went, Well, I've written 27 episodes without looking at a book yet. So yeah, I think I can. And here we are 3,000 episodes later, and I have.

unknown 34:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 34:57

And it works.

James Cridland 34:59

So how do you how do you do a show every day? What what's the uh do you do you actually do a show? Do you actually do seven shows on Monday? Or or do you actually do a show every single day?

SPEAKER_06 35:13

Well, I think it's important to recognise that the show that we're talking about is very low production maintenance. You know, it's easy to make. So it's often anywhere between two and five minutes or one and a half and five minutes, because it's meant to be, at the time I launched it, I thought, you know, it's just like an Instagram quote. It's meant to be like a little just a little drop. So it's not like I'm doing an hour a day. So let's first of all say that's one of the reasons that this works so well daily. Second of all, it depends on the week. So largely I adopted a lot of radio methodologies. So when we first started doing it, it was like it's here today, gone tomorrow. So when I say I've done 3,000 episodes, we can talk a bit about content if you want to, but it's not like I'm I've never repeated an episode. I've never picked up an episode and played out the same episode in its audio file again. But the same concepts come around and I do tell the same stories because it's here today, gone tomorrow. And then to answer your question, the way that we record it is I don't like getting too far ahead because I like the topicality of it. Usually in a week, I might do three on one day and four on another in an ideal world. But if I'm running out of ideas, it's daily, or if one of us goes on holiday, as in my producer I goes on holiday, we get a good week and a half ahead. So it's exactly like having a radio show, right? You either pre-record when you need to and you do a few ahead, or you are doing it live, or you know, you're recording it on the day. So that's that's usually the way that it goes. So it's a bit of both.

James Cridland 36:40

One of the reasons I I I would guess why you try not to get too far ahead is that you you have emails from your audience and you read those emails out. And I I talk a lot when I'm talking about radio, I'm talking a lot about communities and communities of common interest. And you know, my my current shtick is talking about the coffee shop that I go to every single day. I don't really go for the coffee, I go for the for the other people there. And I I'm I'm it does sound as if you have that sort of community too, right?

SPEAKER_06 37:16

Yeah, I do. And I've got so many things I could I could say about this because there's so many interesting there's so many interesting things. Yeah.

James Cridland 37:25

So I think about Kenya, first of all.

SPEAKER_06 37:28

Okay, well Kenya is Kenya came out, so there are oh gosh, yeah. So community starts, COVID hits, we start doing live calls. So I start putting in place, like, let's just create a space where we can all get together. And those went really well, and we just started calling them the hangouts. And then I would run some courses around like habit setting or positivity and things like that. And so what then happens is you've got listeners that you're starting to draw into your world. And I started doing some one-to-one coaching, and one of those people kind of started to become a bit more like a friend, and so she then decided that she was going to renew her wedding vows in Kenya because she's always she loves safari, she knows quite a lot, she's got good connections there. And so she was like, I'd really love you to come. And I was like, I can't, you know, this is this is weird. You're a listener, you can't invite me to Kenya. Like, that's odd. And I said, Well, I need a job if I'm coming, I can take pictures or I can I can cook. I'm really good like that. And she went, Will you officiate? And I was like, Isn't that cool? Like your favourite podcast host is officiated. And I was like, But I'm not ordained. She goes, We're already married, we're just renewing our vows. Yes. So uh, so yeah, so me and the my producer Will, we went to Kenya. And you know, she's a really good friend now. And I've got a couple of people like that who have been with me since the beginning, who the other day I had another, literally this week I had another woman that has been having one-to-one coaching, and she's sort of come to the end of it, and I went, Can we just be friends? And so, yeah, so she she and I are gonna continue speaking regularly because you know there's a there's a lovely benefit to it. But what I really got out of the community, I suppose, I think the first and foremost, the thing that I've got out of the community the most is that they drive the content and the need and the desires. So actually, those monthly hangouts were a great place for us to connect, just like you said. I've got friends all around the world now. It's it's wonderful, right? I've got I've got this sense of this being that I speak to that is a group of people. But also they remind me that, you know, just because I'm wanging on positively every single day, and just because I think, oh, that must mean everybody's got it, people are still people have still got their backs to carry. They've still got stuff going on in their lives that they're having to manage while they go out into the real world and work and be in front of people. And, you know, helping people to maintain that mindset is a constant thing. So, you know, it gives me a lot of confidence around those 3,000 days as well.

James Cridland 39:54

Yeah, yeah. I mean, 3,000 episodes is uh is is quite a thing. What what are some of the changes that you've seen in podcasting since 2018?

SPEAKER_06 40:04

I thought you might ask me this because the fundamental change is video, right? The biggest change is we all jumped on our microphones and went, yay, we'll pee, this is really cheap to do, and we can do it, and it's really great, and we're connecting with people and people are listening.

James Cridland 40:15

But you are you are sitting in a fancy studio with a nice camera. You've got the regulation bookshelf with one book behind you. You've got the regulation. Oh, it's a pillow. Oh, I know. I know where you got that. And you've also got and you've also got the wooden slats that everybody has now.

SPEAKER_06 40:37

Yeah. And I've also got I've got I've got an office where I've put the wooden slats, and my husband's got an office where he's put the wooden slats, so it all looks like we're in the same room if we're in a different place as well.

James Cridland 40:48

Very nice.

SPEAKER_06 40:49

Which is very clever. So yeah, so video, and we don't do it for everyday positivity. Like you'll have noticed, we're not on YouTube every single day. And it's one of those in the back of your mind where you're like, we should really be on YouTube every single day. We really should. The truth is, we tried it a couple a few years ago. We just went too early. And when we did it, we were like, oh, this isn't really worth the traction that it's getting versus the work and the cost that it's taking. I think now it's a bit different, but really there are some weeks where you know the beauty is that we can do it this quickly on on microphone and we turn it out and turn it round. So it is something that is in the pipeline. We said to the listeners on day 3000 that over the next hundred days we would we would evolve, you know, and improve the the podcast. So that's one of the things that we'll be starting to put in. So we just haven't got to it yet. That's the truth of it. I think there's something to be said as well. I think, and I suspect there are other podcasters listening who are also in this, which is you've got a really good community doing it the way that you've done it. You don't think, oh, I need to now build that community, or the moment will come when I can put more time in to build that community up. Actually, we you know, we you know, we might be guilty of resting on our laurels a little bit, you know, being a bit complacent. But I think, you know, we know that we've got that community there and we know that they are listening rather than watching. So it's a bit of a way up, I think. You you juggle what what what is possible at the time.

James Cridland 42:16

Yeah, and I think, you know, one of the things that we've found on this show is, you know, we have our power supporters, we have 25 of those people. We all talk in a WhatsApp group. Nice. Because I've learnt that there's a thing in the world called time zones. And time zones, time zones make it very difficult to actually have a face-to-face, you know, conversation at a time that actually suits. And that's one of the things Sam keeps on talking to me about doing the show live. Uh, and I'm saying, I you know, it's it's not gonna work live because you know, the only time that Sam and I can talk, all of the Americans are asleep. And so actually, you know, none of that bit works. So it's interesting that we've all sort of found our way round how to do a community, how those communities work, but specifically done for this particular type of, you know, for our particular community and our, you know, the people who we who we have there. I I think that that's a really interesting thing.

SPEAKER_06 43:16

Gosh, it's really true, you know. I we are definitely American leading because when we started with Volley, they're not called Volley anymore, they're called weekend. They had the American audience because they're in San Francisco. Right. And so her heritagely, we have we have more American audience higher American audience than we do a UK audience. The UK audience has grown over the years, but I'm I think it's very minimal what we have over in your part of the world, in Australia. And so you're right, because we work to those two time zones. We, you know, when my hangouts are on a Sunday afternoon, late Sunday afternoons, so I've got Pacific time, that's 10am, you know, and UK time it's 6 p.m. So that makes it work as a Sunday, but then anything else, anytime I'm trying to do anything else, I'm in people's work. Days, all of that. So yeah, you are right when you say yeah, time zones is a whole thing. It's a whole thing.

James Cridland 44:07

So how how sticky are your are your audience? I'm not talking about uh physically how sticky are they. I'm talking more about how long have they stuck with you? Because I think you've done a survey, haven't you?

SPEAKER_06 44:20

I have. And I can't remember the answer on that bit of a survey. Okay.

James Cridland 44:26

Quite a lot of people have have stuck around by the looks of things. 44.

SPEAKER_06 44:30

I mean that is the answer. I couldn't give you the number. But the the the answer is that lots of them. No, I what I was going to say, which I think is a really interesting thing to see with community, is that you get people who come in, really love it, stay for a bit, and then they obviously have, you know, they're on to the next thing. So I definitely have noticed these waves over time where you get this sort of you've got these names that come up in the Facebook group or names that come up on the comments a lot, or they turn up to the hangout. But we do have a core that really have listened for a very long time. And, you know, they will say we listen for five, six, seven, eight years, you know, more than five years. So yeah, we do have a a loyal following, which to your po which to the point of video, it's like you sort of are always weighing up. If you do something new, will they like it?

SPEAKER_07 45:17

Yes.

unknown 45:17

Yes.

SPEAKER_06 45:18

You know, is that actually an addition or is it a detraction? And you know, how how are we serving them best? So we're really reviewing that in the moment.

James Cridland 45:25

So Well, our total hours for this for this podcast have have have gone down since we added video. So I'm not quite sure what that tells you. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_06 45:34

Okay, that's really interesting.

James Cridland 45:36

So maybe they're seeing you. Yeah, well, maybe that's it. Maybe it's not me, maybe it's Sam. That's what I think is the is what's going on.

Monetizing A Two Minute Daily Show

James Cridland 45:46

To ask a stupid question, then, are you are you earning money from this? And and if so, how does the business work?

SPEAKER_06 45:52

So the stupid question is not a stupid question. It's we do two things now. We have ads on ACAST and we have the Patreon community. Would when we say do we earn money on it? I think we've ever, you know, I look at other podcasts and go, gosh, wow, that would be amazing to earn that much money. We're more of a, you know, we can put that back in and afford, you know, for the part we're gonna do a listener party online, for example, and we were talking the other day and going, actually, do you remember that time we bought everyone coffee? Let's do something like that again, because you can just do the QR code on the Starbucks. So it is, it's still a bit beer money, I'd say, but it drives so many other opportunities and so many other things, and we really love doing it. So, in terms of it as its own business, it probably it it holds its own, but it's not making, it's not like we're walking away going skip, skip, let's get some some.

James Cridland 46:42

But I mean it's marketing for you, right? And it's marketing for other things that you do.

SPEAKER_06 46:46

Exactly right. And, you know, with the presenter coach, what we talk about is great communication will change your life, including the way you talk to yourself. And mindset's a really important part of what we do. So this is a great resource because I push people this way and go, you know, listen to this podcast. And I get clients in that sphere who go, Oh, I listened to the podcast this morning, which is another reason I don't like to get too far ahead, because then I go, What did I say?

SPEAKER_07 47:09

What was I talking about?

SPEAKER_06 47:10

Oh God, because they talk to me like it's today, and I like, I'm like, yeah, what did I say? So uh so yeah, I try and keep try and keep it close. But what I would say has been part of our challenge is with ads. So we're like two to five minutes long, right? And if an ad is running at 30 to 60 seconds, that's like 25% of our podcast. So so putting an ad on the front of the oh irate. We didn't meet we did it by accident when we first joined ACAST. Oh, they were irate. The listeners hated us, and we were like, I'm like, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to do it. I was like on everything, going, I'm so sorry like this. Um so we we do make sure it goes on the end. And we got an email the other day saying, you know, we're gonna be putting this in this place. We're like, don't do that, put it on the end, you know, we can't have it at the beginning. Because there's no, not even with a skip function that you don't want to listen to a two-minute podcast and have to skip at the beginning. It's it's it's a it's it's a that's been one of the challenges. So you have to really think about that context, I think, of of what the adverts are bringing. So yeah, we put them on the end.

James Cridland 48:13

What's the future for everyday positivity? What have you got planned? What are your thoughts?

SPEAKER_06 48:19

So planned. I want to we'll drive the community some more because I think we need to put in some energy into that. So we're gonna drive the community more, we're gonna do some more long-form stuff. So we're looking to the I think the YouTube channel is where we start putting long-form content. So rather than trying to post there every single day short form content, we're looking at having more interviews, building, uh, having more guests, and building that YouTube community in that way. You know, I'm not against YouTube at all. I think it's such a great platform, and obviously the search engine element and blah blah blah.

SPEAKER_07 48:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 48:50

So yeah, so but I just we've for forever we've been like, people the listers have been saying we want more long form. And then we do this long form and then we put it behind the paywall at Patreon, and I'm like, it just doesn't feel quite right. So the epiphany has been like, right, let's use YouTube for longer form content. So there's that. So that's guest-wise, but we've got to start booking some guests. So if anyone wants to come on, come chat. We've got a comedian book lined up, and that's probably about it at the moment. So we're we're on our way to doing that. The hangout I'd like to turn into a journaling club because we know that every Sunday we do a journal prompt. And the idea is that you you can you can write and journal if you want, or you're just mulling over. And the journal prompt is always really popular, so we want to move into proper, you know, journal clubs rather than so we do guided journaling rather than just having a hangout. And with that, hopefully, then we can start developing some journaling. And then the really interesting thing that's going on in the background that you'll love is that we're working with a company at the moment who is trying to build positive mental health toolkits, if you like, via AI. So we've got then, and we've been working with them for a long time. So that we maybe in the new, it's a bit, you know, it's one of those, it's in development, so it's a bit, but in the new year, we want to be able to for people to be able to make their own visualizations, make their own meditation tracks, make their own journal, you know. So that's all coming down the line. We've always had a little eye on what you can do in that technical world. Like really, we we did many, many years ago. I had they when D script first started doing the overdub stuff, they used my voice because there was so much online. Right. So yeah, we used my voice. So I hope I was like one of the first times I ever heard myself back. I was like, whoa, it's really quite scary. What's possible? So yeah, it was really weird. I threw my phone across the room because it was the only thing that said it wasn't me was the crackle that was behind, and now they've got rid of that stuff, right? So you can but my inflection, everything, it was bizarre.

SPEAKER_07 50:38

Wow.

SPEAKER_06 50:39

So yeah, so we've always kind of had an eye on what's the technology that's coming and how can we use it to serve the community. And I do think that idea that people who love doing vision boards, or people who love doing journaling, or you know, or love making visualizations or meditations, or that there's an AI tool that we we are working with the company that build that to bring everyday positivity community into that. So yeah, so that's a lit, that's an interesting little space as well. So yeah, big big interviews online, journal club, AI, you know, beyond it just telling you you're a really great parent, which is basically what I do these days. I'm like go to Gemini and go, why does my teenager hate me? And it goes, it's not you, don't worry, they're just and I'm like, thanks, like that.

James Cridland 51:22

So yes, yes, gosh, I know that feeling. So everyday positivity is available wherever you get your podcasts. Tell us where we can find the presenter coach and other things that you do, Kate.

SPEAKER_06 51:34

So the presenter coach is the website is thepresentercoach.co.uk. And or you can find I am on LinkedIn, it's my key place, I have to say. I'm just limited to one. But I try and avoid being a twat on LinkedIn. Yes. So uh yeah, so just find me there, Kate Tucker. And you can sign up too. We're now running a monthly webinar, if you like, or community space in the presenter coach called the sounding board, an opportunity to hear from like great communicators and and hear their expertise. So you can sign up for that. Again, that's at the presentercoach.co.uk forward slash sign up. But if you just sign up there, then you can help communicate better at work, basically.

James Cridland 52:11

All good. Kate, it's uh great to great to uh to uh catch up and we'll speak again soon, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_06 52:16

Yeah, lovely to speak to you. See

Are Followers Dying In Audio

SPEAKER_06 52:18

you later.

Sam Sethi 52:18

Last week's guest was Professor Stephen Goldstein, and he said something that you clipped out, which was There's romance for legacy podcasters in the RSS feed.

SPEAKER_04 52:29

I don't care. I want to put content in front of you wherever you are, and I don't care what the platform is. If it's something that you're interested in, we'll figure out how to get the content there. 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 we're renting space on other people's platforms.

Sam Sethi 53:01

I think for you and I and for many in the podcasting to-do community, that's that's five years of work putting the metadata into the RSS feed. It feels a little bit sort of oh my god. But we have talked on this show extensively, James, about the worry that people trying to define a podcast never define the podcast as and RSS. And I've always said that it's not a podcast unless it has RSS. It's something else if you upload it via an API. It's not a podcast. That's my line, but you know, others will say no, just just get over yourself, Sam, because you know, it's a podcast, it's a podcast, right? But Stephen's gone one stage further this week. He's now said the death of the follower in his latest newsletter. So now we don't have RSS and we don't have followers, according to Stephen. He said basically, are we now seeing the death of the follower? Because the algorithmic level of podcast. Now we've always talked about podcasting being word of mouth, you know. Um hey, have you heard about this? And you follow people and you subscribe to feeds, and that's all been the great way of doing it. But actually, when I read the article, I did stop and think. If I look at my TikTok usage, I don't use the follower. I really f I don't follow people on TikTok, I don't see the point. The 4U feed, according to CUSO.ai, I've never heard of them, they analyzed 31,000 creators and they said that 85% of views were from the 4U feed. And I thought about it for myself. I don't actually look at the follower tab. I don't. I just don't.

James Cridland 54:41

So how many views were from the the following feed rather than the algorithmic 4U feed? Wow.

Sam Sethi 54:52

That's that's quite a difference, isn't it? Yeah. And I don't really follow people on YouTube. I don't really follow pe so again, I'm just wondering, has Stephen come across something? What's your thoughts?

James Cridland 55:06

Well, I think I think a few things. I think firstly, just to come back to the RSS is dead thing. I think RSS is great as a d distribution medium, even for video. It was built to keep media content free. It was built to keep media content available to everybody. But where RSS falls down is the analytics. So for downloaded media, obviously, there's no way to know whether the ad that's 30 minutes into this show was ever watched. There isn't an ad 30 minutes into the show, but you know what I mean. HLS video does go to some way towards fixing that, but only some way. The problem is that the people that want to make money from consumption data are not the people that believe in free open media. And those salespeople would happily close everything off and happily have podcasts in two or three places, not you know, over 160 different podcast apps that now exist. So I think, you know, we we've got two sets of people. One set of people that comes from the New York City make money, make money, hustle, hustle, hustle culture, and one set of people that are not doing it quite for money, and that are actually doing it because of ideas and let the ideas be free, man. And so I think we've got that sort of, you know, as one sort of side. I think then you've got this whole follower thing and the you know, it's perfectly possible, for example, to use YouTube without subscribing to a single channel. Perfectly possible because YouTube still understands what you like, still wants to make sure that what you do is, you know, is is to watch more stuff. So it'll still recommend things that it thinks you will find interesting, regardless of who you subscribe to or not. And you know, podcasting is beginning to go that way, and particularly Apple Podcasts, if you start looking at some of the changes that they've done in the new version of iOS 27.2, which has uh come out this week, you can very clearly see in there that there's much more algorithmic stuff in there in their homepage to get you to keep on listening to stuff that you started to and all of that kind of uh thing. So you know, you can argue that the death of the follower is one thing, but you can also say that they do do different things. And you do the difference, I suppose, with a podcast is that you are kind of following creators and wanting to hear that same show every single week. That's what podcasting has historically always been about. YouTube, not actually as much. YouTube you can f flit from topic to topic to topic and still get very engaged and involved. Podcasting has never really had that concept of topics within episodes. We don't have that rich metadata. And so actually, you know, the the thing that we have been doing is following people rather than anything else. So I think time will tell. I'm not sure necessarily that I agree with everything that the professor says, but I think, you know, certainly you can certainly see that um, you know, part of the benefit for podcasting on YouTube is that there is that algorithm, and that algorithm throws new and interesting things, you know, in front of you.

Sam Sethi 58:30

Yeah, I mean I remember back in the bad old days of early Facebook where everyone was chasing likes and brands were chasing likes, and then good old Facebook, once you'd got a great follower count, throttle that access until you paid them to give more access to your followers. I see the same on LinkedIn today. You know, I've got over 5,000 followers currently on LinkedIn. I'll put a post about what we're doing here. I reckon it'll reach probably a couple of hundred in that five thousand, I'm pretty sure. And yeah, every time after I post, it's like boost, pay us, pay us to get more reach. Yes, exactly.

James Cridland 59:09

Well, that's Microsoft for you. Uh that's Microsoft Meta and all of them. Now, no, you're right. You're right. But but you know, I mean, but but you can but you can also have a look at I, you know, I found it interesting that this week we've seen two new podcast apps launch that have algorithms, but they have algorithms in very different ways. And they're specifically there for discovery. And I and again, I don't think that there's a problem with that. So if you did i if you haven't seen both of them, one of them that we covered on Monday, I think, was a thing called Dial Flipper, and it works a bit like an old-fashioned radio. So you tell it some of the shows that you like, and then it will just play stuff that it thinks that you're into. But it does two very interesting things. Firstly, it drops you into the middle of a podcast right rather than right at the beginning. So you actually get the middle of a conversation, and you can go, oh, this is interesting. I'll I'll restart this show and have a listen to it properly. Or you can go, this isn't really for me. I'll just flip the dial again, and it flips it again and takes you to another show that it thinks you might like and begins to learn from what you stick with and what you don't. I think that's a really interesting model. There's nothing wrong with that model. Uh it works with uh OpenRSS, you know, and why not? The other one is one that we mentioned in yesterday's newsletter, something called Static Radio. Static radio I thought was really interesting and very similar to what Adam and Dave are doing with Godcaster in a sense. If you if you use the Static Radio app, it gives you eight radio stations, which are made up of independent podcasts, direct from the RSS feed, of course. Everyone hears the shows at the same time, so you can actually see you know other people listening to the same shows as you. And you know, it it it it just feels like it's got a room full of people in it, and you might stumble onto a show that you've never thought to search for. So these aren't necessarily, you know, follow-based, but they are certainly pushing new stuff in front of you. But perhaps these tools are discovery tools, but not consumption tools, in the same way that we're seeing with with YouTube. We're seeing YouTube in many cases being used as a discovery mechanism for you to then follow shows on Apple Podcasts or on Overcast or or on TrueFans or or anywhere else that you actually get your podcasts, I suppose.

Sam Sethi 1:01:37

A couple of weeks ago we had Adam on the show, and Adam's been talking about AI agenc personalized apps and using them for discovery. He's admonished us several times now by saying that it's not about removing ads, it's about discovery. Get it right. So let me get it right. It is about discovery, and that's what Adam's saying, that his AI agenc is going off and finding himself. So again, I think a lot of people are building stuff to go and find other ways of discovering more content.

James Cridland 1:02:12

Yeah. Yeah. I I I mean, I think you can certainly you can certainly see that if Muse or you know Claude knows so much about me because I've given it access to so much stuff, because what could go wrong with that? If it knows so much about me, then actually asking, hey, is is there a podcast you would you would recommend? You know, normies might do that. I don't think normies will build an app. But I think that normies would certainly at least ask, okay, knowing what you know about me, r recommend a podcast that I might like. And that's interesting because I've got no idea where the where the data would end up coming from. And I'm sure the answer will be Joe Rogan anyway. So uh, you know, who knows?

Sam Sethi 1:02:59

Anyway, uh if you want also to hear a really interesting discussion around some of these challenges and also some of the problems around RSS and some of the problems around analytics and video. There's a great discussion on Buzzsprout's buzzcast this week's. They talk about the analytics mess and measuring downloads and plays. It's a good listen. So again, if you want more of this stuff, go and have a look and listen to look and listen, James, noted to uh Buzzsprouse video. Yes, they have in video. So

Spotify And The Coming AI Agent Era

Sam Sethi 1:03:32

yeah.

James Cridland 1:03:32

Yes, indeed. And BuzzPrat is our sponsor, of course. Talking about Muse, as I was interesting to read in Spotify's financial update. Good things about ad revenue, up 10% year on year, it's all automated stuff, and all their own stuff is what they're making money out of. Uh interesting also, just to point out that ad revenue is only 10.7% of total company revenue, uh, which is where those skip buttons have come from, although uh weirdly that wasn't mentioned to investors. Can't think why that might be. But the the there was an interesting thing from Gustav Serdestrum, wasn't there, about AI agents and what effects AI agents might have on Spotify, Sam?

Sam Sethi 1:04:15

Well, it was a question posed by one of the investors which said given AI, if it was given the task of go and check all my subscriptions and unsubscribe me from you know costly subscriptions that I might have forgotten about. Was Spotify in danger of being unsubscribed from? Because they get more money from their premium subscription users than they do through advertising. And clearly Gustav is not going to say, oh yes, we're in pre-trouble now. Yes, yes, yes, that's it. Now his answer was clearly no, no, we're so important and valuable that no one would ever unsubscribe from us. But I think we've talked on this show about the elasticity of the price of the subscription. And I worry that as the slowdown in new users comes to the platform, it has to at some point, there will be saturation. Yeah, and the metrics will have to change to time spent on platform and and the ARPU, that the subscription number will become more important to them. And it becomes when they have to increase the price, you will start to see people naturally say, I'm gonna unsubscribe. Now you could actually build into the AI if the price goes to $20 or $25, just unsubscribe me. And nothing that Spotify could do to stop that. So I do think, again, personal agents working on our behalf will be useful in the future. I think it's early days. I always say that one of the reasons why Alexa's voice commerce failed was because the AI was not working for me, it was working for Amazon. I never trusted the AI to find me the best price. And the best price.

James Cridland 1:06:01

Yeah.

Sam Sethi 1:06:02

I always felt that it was going to give me Amazon basics was the answer. What was the question? And and it often did. You know, it never gave me duracell batteries. It would just say Amazon batteries, right? And I never trusted it. And I think that's why Voice Commerce failed on the Alexas and other platforms. I think when you get a trust in your personalized AI agent, it will be interesting. But it goes back to, you know, we said Reddit's closed the door to it, Amazon, Apple. People can see the danger of this, and Spotify are obviously not going to tell investors there's a danger, but there is a danger there for them.

Subscriptions Grow While Standards Lag

James Cridland 1:06:41

No, no, indeed. Well, as as we hear more of AI tools turning off new subscriptions, Global in the UK is just starting their own. Interestingly, starting subscriptions for ad-free podcasts for $2.99 a month, which is about $3.99 for ad-free episodes. And a little bit more if you want the some of the shows with exclusive content in there. I say interestingly because interestingly, they are available for they're available ad-free on Global Player and on YouTube. So there is a subscription tie-in that they've done with YouTube in some way, shape, or form. Or maybe it's a separate subscription on YouTube. I don't know. But anyway, worth a look at that. What where uh what do you think? Because I know you've been banging the drum about subscriptions and premium content for a long time, Sam. What do you think of Global's new uh plans here?

Sam Sethi 1:07:43

No, it's great. I think I think it goes back to what you said earlier in this show about you know consumption data and advertisers, they're not getting what they want. I think Spotify's making more money from premium than advertising. I think we're seeing people moving. We've educated the market that you know paying a little bit for ad-free content and supporting the creator is the right model. We we tried with micropayments, that didn't quite work. But I think people are using fiat currency and happily doing so, you know, 399, 299. We're seeing that with Substack, Patreon paying out billions, I mean Substack making millions. I mean, the numbers are significant, they're not, you know, a drop in the ocean. I think one of my biggest disappointments has been in our own community, the podcasting 2.0 community. It's not adopted a universal payment. There is a GitHub post that has been ignored and left to rot about how we could include premium and freemium within the RSS feed. There are technologies like L402 and X402. They work. I've got working examples in TrueFans. This is not ethereal, this is not would we, could we, should we? This is it works, and here's an example. But no, there's no uptake, there's no interest, there's no desire to do it. We've subjugated it again one more time to other platforms. I banged the drum about creator portals, I think, for three years plus, and we're seeing them now here. You know, we've got some good interviews with networks next week. I mean, this is where it's going. Those networks aren't ad driven, they're subscription driven. Global's going subscription driven. Goal hanger makes seven dollars a month from its subscribers making significant ad revenue is being affected. Now, I don't know whether we are going to be able to turn this around. I have no idea, but I do think we need to pull our finger out. Again, it's the slowness of adopting video. We were late to the party, and I think we're slow and late to the party on payments. Sorry, but I think we are.

James Cridland 1:09:51

Yes, I think you're right. And I d I think it's just a shame that we've not that we've not worked out a simple, straightforward way of actually doing that throughout all podcast apps. At the moment we have private feeds, then the Spotify's thing, which everybody is talking about, as if it's brand new, it's not. We've got Apple's weird thing where they keep 30% and they don't share any of your uh subscriber information, which is uh not very good for anybody. And all that we really need is uh is for a standard to be there, and it's a bit of a shame that there isn't actually a standard there. Let's finish off with some good

SiriusXM Transcript Lawsuit Near Settlement

James Cridland 1:10:30

news though. Good news! I've got some news. Go for it. Back in back in December 2021, the National Association of the Deaf, do you remember they took Sirius XM to court for not having transcripts in the app? And that court case has been going on for nearly five years. But the good news is that the two parties have told the judge that they are working on an agreement now. They're working on a settlement of that case, so that case will finally go away. I think um good for the National Association of the Deaf to go after someone in podcasting, which essentially forced all of us to do that. I think it's uh really helpful that we've got transcripts now in pretty well everything, which is really good. It would be great if it was the creator produced transcripts and everything, but you know, there we are. But I think certainly that's good news, and good news that they are now settling their differences and moving on, not uh making the lawyers any more rich. So hurrah for them.

Announcer 1:11:29

The tech stuff on the Podnews Weekly Review.

New Apps And AI Production Tools

James Cridland 1:11:34

Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday in the Podnews newsletter, and here's where Sam talks technology. Yeah, again. Sam, anything exciting? Oh, this look this this looks exciting.

Sam Sethi 1:11:45

Well, our sponsors Bos Sprout announced on their buscar show they've got a new iOS and Android app. It's uh it's for the administration, not a client-side app. And it does things like allows you to do sound bites now on the mobile app, and it also shows you your achievements and many more things. So they're really excited about this new app. So again, go and download it. It should be available now in both stores, and yeah, Kevin's worked hard on this one.

James Cridland 1:12:16

So this is an update, right? To the current BuzzSprite app that exists at the moment. Correct. Yeah. So go in and mash that update button, and you'll doubtless see that appear in there. Very good. What else is going on?

Sam Sethi 1:12:31

Riverside, which we are currently using to record this show with, have released a set of agents, a new team for AI production. Go on, James, you use Riverside, I use D Script. What what's what's this gonna do for you?

James Cridland 1:12:46

So, firstly, do you remember Rice Krispies? Or I think they're called rice crackles in the US, or they're called rice pops here in the here in Australia. And and you you remember that that they've got these three playful faces, snap, crackle, and pop, in their advertising? Yes. I think somebody Riverside saw that and thought, that's a great way of of of showing off our agents. And so it does look a bit like Rice Krispies, to be honest. But yes, so four agents that you get uh access to. And you one of them is a producer, so it helps you with planning what you're going to say and what stories you're going to cover. One of them is an editor, so uh edits the show to however you want it to. Then you've got a clipper who takes bits of your show and clips it up, and then you've got a marketer who tells you where you should be posting some of these posts and so on and so forth. Obviously, a human creator needs to be directing all of these, but it's a nice way. I'm not quite sure how much additional functionality that they've added in terms of this, but it's a nice way of, you know, obviously humanizing the whole thing, making it a little bit more clear what you can do with certain parts of that particular product and uh quite nice. So you will notice this week, for example, that this show, if you're watching it, that this show is now not just a Sam and James in a box, but is actually a little bit more interestingly edited because R Riverside is actually choosing which particular camera angle to end up showing. So that's quite a nice plan, for example, on that. So yeah, I think that it's an it's a nice plan. Yeah, worth while taking a look at.

Sam Sethi 1:14:30

In our WhatsApp group for the power supporters, there was a good discussion around this, you know, what what what's D Script doing? I think Jim James had a meeting with D Script, and you know, there are pros and cons. I mean, Claire Wait Brown, who does a lot for TrueFans, who uses Riverside, doesn't like Snapcrackle on Pop. She thinks they get in the way. I think, you know, it reminds me of Clippy from uh Microsoft Office a little bit. You know, people might like it, might not. I use D Script with Underlord. It comes up with suggestions. I think D Script don't go far enough with it because it comes up with 10 suggestions and then doesn't tell you how to do them. It says, here's ten things you can do. Great, how do I find that feature? It'd be really nice to have a little button that says do this thing now, right? But it doesn't. So the way I do it is I cut and paste the suggestion into the prompt box and then it does it. Really silly, but that's what I have to do. I don't know.

James Cridland 1:15:31

Yeah, no, I th uh, you know, I mean I think I think uh so Riverside, you can basically set up a number of things and you can say do this every show I record or every interview that I record, don't do that, don't do that, which is actually quite useful. So yeah, I think it's a it's a pretty good thing. So yeah, and they also have an MCP server as well, so you can play around with that, as do a bunch of other people. So Poddig has just launched their MCP server a couple of weeks ago. They've now added connections to it in the Claude Connectors directory and the chat GPT plugin directory, whatever they are. And Podbean has added a MCP server as well in there to uh allow you to do all kinds of stuff, help prepare and optimize episode content and analyze podcast performance and so on and so forth. So every everybody's certainly jumping into the AI stuff here. So, yes, uh expect more of that, I suppose, to come. A couple of other things just to uh mention. One of them is Podcorn. Podcorn used to be called the Odyssey Creator Studio for a little bit, and that was an analytics prefix that's going away on November the 1st. I found 13,300 shows with the Podcorn URL still in them, which is a bit of a worry because they will all stop running on November the 1st. Um, so I posted a list of them. Now, some people say that was an old list. It came from a very recent podcast index data dump. So perhaps the podcast index URLs haven't necessarily updated entirely, but who knows? But anyway, if you are using Podcorn in your podcast, take it out, because your podcast will stop working without that. You have been getting very excited about Apple, because Apple have been announcing all kinds of all kinds of new hardware. Are you buying one of these new touch screen MacBooks, Sam?

Sam Sethi 1:17:34

No, Steve Jobs is rolling in his grave right now. He's like, oh my god, why I said never. So yeah, so clearly, clearly, never meant never.

James Cridland 1:17:45

I think they've done a very good job. I so firstly, I think I think Steve Jobs was wrong. I I was playing around with a touchscreen computer 10 years ago, Google Chromebook, as it happened, and you end up using the touch screen a little bit when you want to, you know, move Windows around or if you want to scroll a web page. A touch screen is quite nice. I think what Apple have done, which is very clever, is if you open a menu bar with your trackpad, for example, then the menu bar is it looks like it normally does. If you open a menu bar with your finger, then all of the space between the menu bar is much larger. So you can actually click on the icons in that menu. So I think Apple have have done their customary thing of sat on their hands for 10 years to work out how they could do it properly and are now launching this stuff properly, and also to give you know Steve Steve Steve Jobs' body, you know, a bit of a chance to um to cool down and decompose prior to actually going against what he said. But I do believe that he was wrong. I think that you don't nobody wants to see the end of a keyboard, for example, on a MacBook. Of course. And so Steve Steve Jobs is absolutely right in terms of that. But I don't think that adding touch to a MacBook is a bad idea at all. And so uh although I won't be buying I won't be buying one of those one of those computers, apart from anything else, Sam, we we were looking at the costs of them here in the Australian Apple store. And the cost for a good, well-spec' MacBook is $16,000. You can buy a car for that. So not sure. Wow, I'm gonna not sure I'm going for that. Uh everything is so expensive these days in terms of in terms of computers and things. So yeah, not sure I'm gonna be going for that, but still, but there we are.

Sam Sethi 1:19:50

Audi has just partnered with Spotify to launch Spotify's native in-car app. This is not on CarPlay, this is not on Android Auto, this is Spotify's own software. And I think it's interesting.

James Cridland 1:20:03

We we we saw I thought you said Aldi there, and I was thinking, wow, that's not the market.

unknown 1:20:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_11 1:20:13

Every trolley has a Spotify interface on it.

James Cridland 1:20:17

Weird, but could be an idea. No, that that that is that is interesting, isn't it? I mean, I know that car manufacturers think that they're trying to be software developers as well, but yeah, interesting that Audi would actually get Spotify to make them that sort of thing. If, of course, that's what that's what's happened.

unknown 1:20:35

Yeah.

Sam Sethi 1:20:35

Well, the problem was with CarPlay, CarPlay was overtaking the manufacturers in the interface and everything else. You know, you know, the Aston Martin DBS was going to actually allow CarPlay Plus to do everything, uh speedometers everything for you. So I think it's this pullback. Okay, it's our car, not your software. Anyway, we'll see. Yes, no, indeed.

Listener Mail On Reviews And Voicemail

Announcer 1:21:00

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

James Cridland 1:21:08

Yeah, so many different ways to get in touch with us. Voicemail by using the link in our show notes or email too. We've got some fan mail. Thank you for leaving fan mail. Thank you for leaving voicemail, which we'll get to in just a second. Hello to you if you are 7372 in Alhambra in California. Some very good curries uh just up the road from Alhambra, but that's the Alhambra in Bradford, not Alhambra in California. Anyway, they say James was on a tear this week. Everything okay? Yeah, everything's fine. Don't worry. Uh thank you so much.

SPEAKER_11 1:21:41

He's flight, he's flight bound. He's he's got stir crazy.

James Cridland 1:21:45

No, I'm I'm absolutely not missing any of that. Here's a voicemail from Lena LaRue.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:52

You know what really stinks is the fact that the only podcast listening app where someone can leave a written review is Apple Podcasts. Can't do it on Spotify, can't do it on Pocket Cast, can't do it on Player FM. I mean, I haven't used that one in years, but as far as I know, you can't do it. Why is it that only Apple Podcasts offers the ability to leave a rating as well as a written review? It doesn't seem fair. Especially for those of us who use Android, who don't have Apple products, who don't have a Mac, it just doesn't seem very fair to me. I don't know. Is there like some secret do they have like control over that or something? I I don't know. Also, why is it that ratings on Apple why do they carry more weight? Why is it that every every podcaster says, oh yeah, go rate on Apple? Why not the smaller apps? There you go. Lena.

Sam Sethi 1:22:51

Uh yeah, thanks for that. Are reviews important, James? I guess. You've always said ratings and reviews aren't that important. Some people hold bigger stores by it. I mean, my own platform does offer ratings and reviews. I don't know about other platforms. Are they important, James?

James Cridland 1:23:07

Yeah, I think I think they're they're not important for Apple. But they are important, weirdly, for other places. So Podscribe, for example, or Rephonic, two large tools that a lot of ad buyers use to buy advertising, they estimate how many people are listening to your show based on the number of reviews that you have, which seems a ridiculous thing. But anyway, that's how they they do it. And because I've very overtly said that ratings and reviews don't matter, the fewer people leave ratings and reviews for this show, which means that if you go on to Podscribe, for example, and you ask how many people tune in to this show, the the end-up figure is about half the size that it really is, because they're looking at the number of reviews that we have. And so, A, please leave us a review, go hard on the five stars, but also B, yeah, I mean they're they're they're still important. But I completely agree with Lena. If you use Android, you don't have an Apple product, then tough because you're not going to be leaving a review, and that's just the way that Apple works, unfortunately. And why do they carry more weight? Well, you know, it is Apple, I suppose. And so from that point of view, at least we know in terms of how Apple's ratings work, that people can't leave more than one, for example, you can't spoof those very easily, at least. So yeah, I think all of that is all of that is an interesting thing. Now, here's another voicemail, this one from Adelaide in South Australia.

SPEAKER_10 1:24:43

I felt so sorry for you boys. You had no voicemail. So David John Clark, the actor and host of the Late Bloomer Actor podcast, calling in just to make you feel a little bit better. But no, on a serious note, half the reason is is because I'm listening with my ears whilst driving, and then I can't leave a message or comment when I get really pent up on something that you guys say or something happens in a podcast, and then by the time you're out of the car, it's too late and you forget. But here we are from my Tesla, a message for you, gentlemen. Love your work, cheers.

James Cridland 1:25:13

David John Clark, thank you so much. Yes, we had no voicemail for a couple of weeks. So it's lovely to hear your Del Cit South Australian times, mate. And uh thank you for leaving. Thank you for leaving that. Most appreciated, and most appreciated if you would like to send us a voicemail as well. You're more than welcome. Weekly.podnews.net uh is where you can leave us a voicemail, or you can just email a voice note if you like. Weekly at podnews.net is where you would end up doing that. And our 25 supporters, we heard from Kate Cocker earlier on, of course. Who else is in that list? Well, people like Neil Velio, people like Wait Brown is in that list, and other people as well. But Sam has made the list so small I can't read it from here. Um to spec savers. I should upgrade those glasses. I should say. Neil Vellio, many congratulations to him, one of our power supporters. He produces a podcast called Podmastery, podcasting insights and advice for indie creators. And he has celebrated a hundred episodes of the podcast this week with a free podcast health check for every listener. So go and uh check out Pod Mastery, which you'll find in your favourite podcast app and also in Spotify. Uh, and congratulations to David John Clark on listening to over 1,000 hours on TrueFans. Oh, yes. Yeah. Well, well, there's a thing. There's a thing.

Sam Sethi 1:26:41

Past his milestone. Well done, Teddy.

James Cridland 1:26:43

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

Host Updates And Weekly Send Off

Sam Sethi 1:26:46

Uh we are launching uh we talked about newsletters. I've talked about it before. We we will be launching.

James Cridland 1:26:53

One thing I didn't I didn't ask is I bet TrueFans is just about to launch a newsletter feature.

Sam Sethi 1:26:58

I thought I couldn't say it earlier. I really couldn't. I thought I'd have to save it till later. This is not the TrueFans show, this is a Podnews show. Correct.

James Cridland 1:27:06

Sponsored by Buzzsprout. Exactly, not TrueFans.

Sam Sethi 1:27:09

So keep it to yourself, mate.

James Cridland 1:27:12

So you're launching one. You're launching one. Excellent.

Sam Sethi 1:27:14

We've launched our newsletter and we're launching the feature for uh users, creators to do that as well. So look, that'll come. Good luck with that. We've been playing with the web MCP integration, not the MCP, and I think that is really interesting. It's brand new out of Google as a spec. It's in every browser the support. And what's neat about it is you as an individual can be on the same web page with your AI agent and interact together. So it it's got some interesting ideas. We we haven't got anything really formed yet, but I think it's something people should look at. Still building our native apps, so we'll see. And uh Claire and I did an event yesterday about networking fees. We had about 40 people turn up for it, so that was nice. As I said, I am loving the iPhone Giro apart from the problems they've had. Some of the screenshots of the new Netflix app looks really cool, and some of the ways that you can have comments on one side of the screen and the app running on the other. I can see podcasts doing this. I can imagine, you know, full screen video, you know, on the left hand side and comments, live comments on the right. So I think there's things I love about that thing, but I'm gonna wait. I talked about Colin Samir's podcast, I highly recommend if you want to know more about Instagram. And the Bill Gates one on the verge is really good. Again, talks about the future of AI, but he also really got challenged about COVID and also Epstein. He was a little, a little fidgety in his seat when those ones came out.

James Cridland 1:28:54

Well, Epstein, I'm sure.

Sam Sethi 1:28:55

I I I'm not quite sure about COVID, though, but he's been accused by Andreas Norowitz, one of their partners, has accused him of manufacturing a global crisis. And that was presented to him in the video. I think it's it's look, it's a really interesting video. He used to be, you know, obviously the CEO of Microsoft, smart guy. I some of the things he wrote in The Road Ahead have come to light. I think he's had some really good insights. He's talked about a robot tax many years ago, and that may be the way that we remove people from the workplace, but still corporate companies pay us so we can have UBI. I mean, look, there's loads of ideas in there. Well worth listening to, I say. Well, we'll see.

James Cridland 1:29:39

We will see.

Sam Sethi 1:29:41

Indeed. Now, James, what's happened for you, my friend?

James Cridland 1:29:44

Uh I uh so I've lived in Australia now for ten years, and there's one thing in Australia that is very confusing to me, Sam. Very confusing indeed. The idea of Christmas t-shirts. Christmas t-shirts. Wow. Yeah, so you know how the Northern Hemisphere has Christmas jumpers and amusing Christmas jumpers. We have Christmas jumpers, but they are t-shirts, and it's the it's the it's the knitting pattern printed onto a t-shirt because it's so bloody hot down here during during December. And so Christmas t-shirts is a thing. I've not got used to that, nor have I got used to walking around the the shopping centres hearing you know songs about snow falling, and maybe it's cold outside while you're there, desperately trying to keep cool. So uh yes, very, very strange. So that's been that's been an entertainment. So I've been playing around with that sort of thing. And uh yes, and and and so what with that, and uh it's been nice uh having a week here. It's been pouring it down with rain. And one of the things of being in a subtropical climate, which I've I've learnt, is that if it's humid, then it typically rains at about three o'clock in the afternoon. If you go to Singapore, you know this. It it rains for about half an hour, three o'clock in the afternoon, and it buckets it down, absolutely buckets it down. Well, guess what? It does that here as well. And for the last couple of days, I've been going out to because I jump in the car and drive 20 minutes to pick up my daughter from school, and always this week it's been pelting it down with rain for the exact time that I'm in the car. I get to school, uh, the rain is gone, it's all lovely, and the sun is out and everything else. We get into the car, I then start driving home, and again, the rain just keeps on coming down and coming down and coming down. It's the most bizarre thing. And as soon as I get home, the rain stops again, and I'm getting a bit bored of it. So uh if you wouldn't mind fixing that, that would be that would be good. But uh, yes, it's a it's a strange world down here, I'll tell you that.

Sam Sethi 1:31:55

Well, I was gonna say, talking of Aussies and summer stroke Christmas, my daughter's gone to Whistler for ski season and she's got five Aussies in the house. None of them have ever seen snow.

James Cridland 1:32:11

Yes, yes. So that uh like how how my daughter was a couple of years ago until we took her to Iceland for Christmas. Uh that was a sure. That's pretty poor. That was a baptism of fire, I'll tell you. Uh and the other uh the other news from Australia, because this is clearly news from Australia, the other the other news from Australia this week is that the Australian court has passed a ruling on Apple that Apple has to allow other app stores in this country. And so that's gonna be interesting to uh see what happens. 27%. 27%. So that's gonna be interesting to see what happens there. My assumption is that yeah, they'll they'll do something, but they're only they're only you know 25 million people who live here, and so hey, who cares at the end of the day? But yes, so we will watch and wait and see what happens there. And that's it for this week. All of our podcast stories taken from the Podnews Daily Newsletter at Podnews.net.

Sam Sethi 1:33:10

You can give us feedback using the Buzzsprout voicemail link like David and Lena did this week. In our show notes, you'll find a link or become a monthly power supporter like the 25 Power Supporters at weekly.podnews.net.

James Cridland 1:33:22

Our music's from TM Studios, our voiceover Sheila D. We use Riverside to record this week, and we're hosted and sponsored by Buzzsprout. Start podcasting, keep podcasting.

Announcer 1:33:32

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.