May 14, 2026 • 42 mins
Originally conceived as an accountability tool to force them to write, The Failing Writers Podcast has evolved into a unique creative outlet where hosts Tom and Jon 'scratch a creative itch' through sketches, songs, and 'weird stuff', alongside interviews with successful authors. In this episode the duo discuss the independent creator's journey, from the difficulty of marketing a multi-genre show to the paradox of a podcast that both inspires their writing while simultaneously eating up the very time they meant to spend writing.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Tom Turner (00:06):
One of the best things about doing the podcast is that you can just ask people to spend an hour chatting with you. People that did brilliant things, that have written brilliant books or done TV series that you've loved since you were a kid, you just get to have a chat with them. And generally, if you email people and ask them that and you've not got a podcast, they don't even email you back. To be honest, I don't know the answer.
Sam Sethi (00:30):
Claire, we'd love to hear from people. Would you rather see the episode art or the show art or like TrueFans would do? Should we add a feature in the user settings that tells you that you can Change it with MP4? On all other platforms apart from TrueFans, they Download the full MP4 file. TrueFans streams MP4 as well as HLS. We're the only company that does that.
Claire Waite Brown (00:54):
Welcome to Creators from TrueFans. I'm Claire Waite Brown, Head of Community at TrueFans.
Sam Sethi (01:01):
And I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO of TrueFans.
Claire Waite Brown (01:03):
Download the TrueFans app to not only listen to podcasts from around the world, but interact with their creators and start paying the shows you value.
Sam Sethi (01:12):
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Sam Sethi (01:36):
Hi, Claire.
Claire Waite Brown (01:37):
Hi, Sam. How are you doing?
Sam Sethi (01:38):
I'm good, I'm good. Claire, who are we featuring on this week's episode?
Claire Waite Brown (01:43):
We are featuring Tom and Jon from the Failing Writers podcast. I have two guests with me today, so I'm going to ask you to introduce yourselves. Starting with you, Tom.
Tom Turner (01:59):
Hello, I'm Tom, one half of the Failing Writers Podcast.
Claire Waite Brown (02:03):
And with Tom, we have.
Jon Rand (02:05):
My name's Jon and I am the other half of the Failing Writers Podcast, the better half, obviously.
Claire Waite Brown (02:12):
What is your podcast all about? What is its format?
Tom Turner (02:16):
The name does give a little bit of a clue, but we're always very keen to point out that we are the failing writers. And the idea was to force us to start writing for it to become a kind of accountability and for us to interview lots of other really successful writers and find out how we could be less failing along the way. So that was kind of the starting point for it. And format wise, we interview a lot of people, but we also try and keep it quite loose. So it's a writing podcast. And anything we think would interest. Anything that interests us that's even vaguely linked to writing is fair game. Jon, I would say. Is that about right?
Jon Rand (02:59):
Yeah. I think our remit has sort of widened over the years, hasn't it? It started out very much, we're gonna try and write more. And we tended to do like little tasks and things. So we'd set each other, you know, writing tasks and have a go at trying different genres and stuff like that. And then we started interviewing more people and gaining a bit more insight into the industry. And so it sort of started to go. And then we just thought, let's just do stuff that we're interested in. So that's kind of where it's ended up. It's actually quite a difficult thing to explain though. Very quickly it's like, what kind of podcast is it? It's not just two blokes talking, it's not just an interview podcast. We sometimes do sort of almost like documentary type things where we'll go and explore a topic. Like, we've done limericks. What's the history of limericks? We've done an episode on the Brontes where we went and walked up in the hills of Yorkshire and went to the Bronte Parsonage and talked to academics and all sorts. It's quite wide in terms of what we like doing. As long as we enjoy it, basically that's what we do. Talk to people that we. That, you know, sound like they're going to be interesting.
Claire Waite Brown (04:08):
So it's a bit like as you would be exploring and widening your horizons with your writing, you've actually done that with the podcast genre as well. Like gone with the flow and let that be as creative as you might be with your own writing.
Tom Turner (04:24):
I think that is. It's the creativity side of it as well. It definitely scratches the itch for being able to just do slightly weird stuff that we think is funny or interesting or silly ditties. Yeah, yeah, little, little songs or little sketches. And there's points along the path when we've been talking about sort of, you know, the production side of it that we've kind of second guessed ourselves a little bit about whether we should be going off on these tangents or doing these weird things. And we kind of came to the conclusion that a. That becomes a point of difference. That's something we can offer that maybe some of the more straight writing podcasts aren't able to offer. Cause we do get a lot of feedback saying, you know, it's nice listening to you. I'm not really into writing, but it's fun to listen to or it's funny, in my view, and we kind of treasure that. That sort of keeps us going, doing what we do. But, yeah, we came to the conclusion, actually it needs to interest us and we need to go off on these little tangents to keep it fresh, to be a bit different, but to keep us interested as much as anything so we don't feel like we're churning out the same thing.
Jon Rand (05:29):
Yeah. There is a problem inherent in all of this as well, though, which is that because, like Tom was saying, it does kind of scratch our creative itch, it does mean that the time we allow ourselves for writing is massively decreased by doing the podcast. Cause the podcast's a lot of fun and it does involve, you know, it is a massively creative process, and especially the way we do it, because we do like to, like Tom says, do lots of different stuff around it. We like to add a lot of texture to the podcast. So it's not just an interview. You know, there'll be a little song, might be a little sketch. There might be a flashback or something.
Tom Turner (06:06):
So. Yeah.
Jon Rand (06:06):
How much time does that leave for writing, Tom?
Tom Turner (06:09):
Less than maybe it should. But nevertheless, we have done more writing with that small amount of time since we started than pre podcast with a lot of spare time. So.
Claire Waite Brown (06:19):
Yeah, well, I've got two observations about that. One is something I talk about a lot about independent podcasting, is that you have the freedom to do that. You have the choice to make it your own and do what you want to do. And as we already spoken about, the creativity, and you're able to put that in now, the second thing I was concerned about is if you were no longer failing writers, what happens next? So because you now have less time to write, you have less time to become successful writers. So you're spreading out the longevity of both your failing writing career and your failing, failing writers podcast. So I think they complement each other.
Tom Turner (07:00):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. As luck would have it, we don't need any help in maintaining our failing status.
Jon Rand (07:06):
It's all a careful plan, Claire.
Claire Waite Brown (07:08):
Yeah, of course it is. Of course.
Jon Rand (07:10):
We've thought about this, and this is what we've decided. It's the best strategy.
Claire Waite Brown (07:15):
Absolutely. So I wanted to talk to you about how this fits in with other stuff that goes on in your life, whatever that may be, and what kind of experience do you have in production and what kind of processes do you like to use that maybe save you time or are just really useful for producing this type of podcast.
Jon Rand (07:38):
Well, I like to really spend as much time as possible on things and not use any kind of time saving devices. We're not brilliant at that. I mean, Tom might disagree. I don't know if you use some kind of clever editing software or you just use Audacity or something.
Tom Turner (07:53):
I'm I guess old school on that.
Jon Rand (07:55):
Yeah, same.
Tom Turner (07:57):
Not keen on using any AI stuff to take out breaths and stuff. I like to have my hands on everything and move it all around manually and what have you. And I think the production benefits from that. I think we're lucky that we come from a radio background where we've been exposed to some brilliant, brilliant producers and learn off them. So we probably are a lot quicker and slicker than if we'd have just come into it when we started the podcast. I guess more than a decade of experience of producing stuff as well kind of helps in just in sort of skills we've brought to it from our current and previous day jobs. Yeah, definitely.
Claire Waite Brown (08:35):
I think that probably helps in shaping it in the first place, which then helps in editing it later to have those kind of system going in the right order. I'm old school too. I. I keep trying these wonderful AI things that say they're going to take out the ums and ahs and it's going to sound brilliant, but it never does and I just go back to the old fashioned way and I do it myself and I do it so much better if I do say so myself.
Tom Turner (09:02):
No, there's definitely an art, isn't there, to leaving some in and leaving some pauses need to be there. Other pauses absolutely don't. Or someone just needs to say that a little bit quicker for that to work and it is time consuming and you do get quicker at it so it becomes less time consuming. But we're lucky in a way that we had those skills. So our hopefully our first handful of episodes aren't us learning on the job about the production side of things. At least there's a few bits and bobs that have tidied up but you know, they stand up quite well still.
Jon Rand (09:33):
We're definitely learning other things.
Tom Turner (09:34):
Yeah, yeah. There's lots of other things wrong with them, but the production isn't necessarily one of them on that score. No, we kind of. I don't think we even really thought about it as such, did we? It just kind of happened because we knew how to do it.
Jon Rand (09:46):
Yeah, I think that's right.
Claire Waite Brown (09:47):
Well, you had the idea and you wanted to do the thing and this was a means by which you could do the thing. That's how I've worked in podcasting as well. I think it's a good idea. I'll do it. Do other people listen? That'll be an extra bonus. Talking about podcasting, generally, whether we're talking about the wider industry or the processes that we've touched on, what are things that excite you about it, but also that frustrate you about it.
Tom Turner (10:15):
I think the exciting thing is that you have almost an endless potential audience that you can reach is just so completely open. Obviously the counter side of that is you realize immediately after you started your podcast how unreachable that endless audience is. And you just think, well, it's ridiculous. There's billions of people on the planet
Jon Rand (10:42):
and they've all got podcasts.
Claire Waite Brown (10:44):
That's the trouble.
Tom Turner (10:45):
They've all got podcasts. Yeah. So sometimes you question yourself. It does feel like I'm shouting at the Voice sometimes. Third side of that coin, It's a strange shape coin, but nevertheless is when you sweat and you sweat blood and tears into this podcast and you feel like you're getting somewhere. And then random C list celebrity with a random D list celebrity friend are suddenly on BBC Sounds with their brand new podcast, talking about nothing in particular that they've just decided to do and oh, look. And you think, oh, you genuinely think, oh, good for them. That's lovely. I hope they really do well and they enjoy it. That's nice.
Jon Rand (11:28):
It's quite a bitter place, isn't it? Podcasting? I think especially, especially independent podcasting.
Tom Turner (11:34):
Yeah.
Jon Rand (11:35):
And a podcast like ours, which, you know, it's hard, isn't it? It's really hard. It's hard to reach people. There's so much content and it's not just podcasts, it's video content. And like I was saying before, we don't have a really clear way of saying what we are. It's quite a difficult sell, you know, it's not an easy thing to say. This is gonna definitely be worth your time. Have a listen to this. Cause you are this kind of person. We did some ads recently. We thought, well, let's give, let's give it a go. Let's spend some money on some ads and see what comes of it. And it was so difficult, like compressing what we do into 30 seconds. I think at one point we nearly gave up.
Tom Turner (12:19):
And that's bearing in mind that we're both award winning radio advert writers.
Jon Rand (12:24):
It's literally our job. For years.
Tom Turner (12:26):
We'd begin shiny little statues because we're so good at getting something into 30 seconds and we were kind of like, oh no, no, this doesn't.
Jon Rand (12:34):
But.
Tom Turner (12:34):
And we, we went through quite a few different ones, didn't we? Until we kind of just said let's just keep it simple because.
Claire Waite Brown (12:41):
Yeah, yeah, well that's an interesting sideline then. So if you managed to get the advert done, were you able to see and analyze results from that advert?
Jon Rand (12:52):
That's a very good question. Our listening figures definitely went up at the same time. Without a doubt. Was it worth. I mean, I think we spent about 300 quid. It was highly targeted. I have to say that we only put ads out in other writing podcasts, so I'm guessing, you know, it was pretty good in its targeting. But Was it worth 300 quid? I don't know. I mean, it's so difficult to say. Cause we're not doing this for the money as well. That's the other thing we should mention. We haven't made money out of this podcast. It's sort of not the reason we did it. In a way it was to, like Tom says it was, it was about accountability, it was about having fun, it was about scratching creative itch.
Tom Turner (13:34):
We were meant to be making money out of our best selling novels.
Jon Rand (13:37):
That's where we're going ultimately. Obviously we're building an audience for our great British novel that we write. I suppose if you were to say, what is the sort of purpose of doing it?
Tom Turner (13:48):
I mean, it's just ego stroking, isn't it? It's just nice when people say that was funny. Oh, that was good.
Sam Sethi (13:54):
Yeah.
Tom Turner (13:54):
Oh, well done. You did that.
Jon Rand (13:56):
Well, it probably is a bit of that. Like it's really good fun. Yeah, doing it.
Tom Turner (14:01):
What we did say, actually we did a little bit podcast trip to Edinburgh and interviewed a lot of people, went and did some various stuff and it was wonderful, brilliant thing. We agreed and we kind of said one of the best things about doing the podcast is that you can just ask people to spend an hour chatting with you. People that did brilliant things, that have written brilliant books or done TV series that you've loved since you were a kid. You just get to have a chat with them. And generally if you email people and ask them that and you've not got a podcast, they don't even email you back, to be honest. Because why would you.
Claire Waite Brown (14:35):
Doesn't have the same response, does it? No.
Tom Turner (14:39):
It's stalker territory, isn't it?
Claire Waite Brown (14:41):
Yeah, you've made me think about something else now you guys have won. Was it Two independent Podcast awards.
Tom Turner (14:47):
It was just the two.
Jon Rand (14:48):
Yeah, we don't like to talk about it, actually. Yeah, we don't. We don't really want to talk about that. It's not, you know, it's no big deal to us.
Claire Waite Brown (14:56):
But a perhaps unknown, unseen, unexpected benefit of that was that I put all of the winners on a list on the home page at TrueFans called Podcasts We're Loving. And then when you put out a new episode, that goes to the front of the list of Podcasts We're Loving. So when someone goes straight into the home page, they don't necessarily see, I don't even know who the celebrities are. Even when they're on Bake Off, I don't know who they are. Won't see those podcasts straight away. And then from a promotion point of view, we do have as well, a system where you can promote your podcast on those lists or on other podcast feeds. So you might ask another writing podcast within TrueFans, can I advertise on your show? And they say, yes. And in the second or third bit of their list of episodes, they'll be your episode. But what happens with that is that you only pay for a click, a view, and a play, and you can measure those as well, so you can see those much more clearly. But moving on, I wanted to talk because it isn't just what you like to do and the value isn't from just your egos, because you do have contributions, not necessarily just from the guests, but from people writing, sending you in their stuff. So there is some interactivity there between you and listeners. How have you nurtured that? Has that just come because you've asked for contributions? Did you start with contributions from people you knew and it's grown from there?
Tom Turner (16:33):
Yeah, a little bit. Jon's always been very big on getting the listeners involved, really, and sort of driving that community angle of it. That sounds like I didn't like it. I didn't want to. I mean, Jon's always pushed that. I'm like, listeners, whatever, don't hear their stuff. And it has really helped, I mean, overtaken us in some respects. There's people that we know, started listening that are in the same position as us, have been completely useless, that have now got books out relatively successfully, but very nicely. A few have mentioned us in the acknowledgments of, you know, kickstarting their writing again. Amazing. Getting them off the backside. So that's nice.
Jon Rand (17:11):
It's become a much more important part of the book podcast now, isn't it?
Tom Turner (17:14):
Yeah.
Jon Rand (17:14):
And it's kind of the bit that feeds our souls a little bit. You know, when people get in touch, they give us their little story about them, you know, writing more. Maybe they wrote 10 years ago, but they've kind of stopped and we get lots of that kind of thing, which is just amazing to hear.
Claire Waite Brown (17:30):
Yeah. How do they contact you?
Jon Rand (17:34):
They quite often message us. We give out our email in most episodes, so quite often emails. It's quite often the contact thing. What do you call it? Contact form on the website as well.
Claire Waite Brown (17:46):
Okay. Right, I'm going to get on to the Podcasting 2.0 question. TrueFans supports probably all of the Podcasting 2.0 features that are out there. What do you know about Podcasting 2.0 and its features, Jon?
Tom Turner (18:02):
I'll pass this over to you because this will be funny. Now we Googling then. You look like you were just about to Google that. No, no Googling.
Jon Rand (18:12):
I know very little, Claire. I mean, obviously that's why we're here today, is to find out more.
Claire Waite Brown (18:16):
Yes.
Tom Turner (18:18):
What do you think Podcasting 2.0 is, Claire?
Jon Rand (18:21):
Good question, Tom. Yeah, Claire, tell us, what do you
Tom Turner (18:24):
think before we say what do you think?
Claire Waite Brown (18:26):
Of course, of course. Before you give your opinion. Yeah. So. And I'm going to give some practical examples as well. Basically, there are these extra things you can do, and for independent podcasters like us, they can help with some of the stuff we've talked about today. Discovery, interactivity, and monetization. You don't need to. Really need to know anything technical to make them work, depending on the hosting company you're with. So it's things like transcripts, which you would have heard of, I'm sure. One thing I thought about your show, which sounds like a cliche, and I'm going to say chapters, but I love chapters in podcasting. And in particular, I think it would be great for you because you have some distinct sections. So you call hypewriter. The bit where you, you know, you get stuff from other people and that gets read out, and you can actually chapter that so that anybody listening can click on that and go straight to that. You can include art with that. You can include a link to the actual person so that when somebody is walking the dog and at that point they're listening to that bit, if they look at the home screen on their phone without even opening the phone, it'll have the picture that you've put in there, which could be a picture from them. I happen to really, really like your cover art, and that will be in the Chapters for this interview bit, and then I will have links back to your show on TrueFans. So that's something I thought could be good. It could be because you have a sponsor as well, and you do your little sponsorship spiel, put that in its own chapter. Put a link to the sponsor in that chapter. Tell the sponsor, look, I can do this extra thing now. People don't have to scroll through the show notes. They can click straight on when I talk about you. You know, just might make you look more shiny for your sponsor. So that's what I thought for chapters. Another thing, this isn't a Podcasting 2.0 thing, but this is a thing within TrueFans that you can do is you can actually put blogs on your show in TrueFans as well. So if you wanted to actually include some written word excerpts, whatever, from other people from you, a bit more accountability, you could tell people, I've got to write something by such and such a date, and it will be on the TrueFans blog.
Tom Turner (20:50):
I like the idea of the Chapters thing particularly, actually. It's something I've noticed on other podcasts that, you know, does make navigation easier and like you said, I think would be quite well suited to us because it does kind of happen in chunks.
Claire Waite Brown (21:02):
Yeah. The other thing I do for every show is I stream you a little bit of money when I'm listening to your show. That means I have within TrueFans. I've said I'm going to pay the failing writers 5sats for every minute I listen. As I say to all my guests, don't get too excited. You're gonna go away with about 12p. Possibly. But it's something that people can do within the TrueFans app. So when you claim your show within TrueFans, which is very easy to do by clicking on a button and making sure that your email address is attached to your RSS feed, then once you've claimed your show, you'll have this little wallet with a little bit of money in it. And that's something that any listener can do not only in TrueFans, you can do it in other 2.0 apps. And people can leave you comments as well. And people within the app can see those comments and they can reply to them, and people can add payments to those comments as well. So just because we were talking about the interactivity and how people find you, people might be able to DM you directly within the TrueFans app. That was all I wanted to say to you guys about Podcasting 2.0.
Tom Turner (22:13):
I would agree with that. Podcasting 2.0. That's what I was gonna say. Pretty much. I think you've covered it all, Blair. To be honest, I've got nothing to add to that.
Claire Waite Brown (22:21):
Thanks, Tom.
Tom Turner (22:22):
Nothing to add to that. Comprehensive.
Claire Waite Brown (22:25):
How about you, Jon?
Jon Rand (22:26):
Nailed it. Yeah, absolutely nailed it.
Claire Waite Brown (22:31):
Brilliant. Well, anybody listening can, including yourselves, guys, ask me any questions at any point. I'm gonna plug my own show, Podcasting 2.0 in Practice because that has little episodes on all of those things. I've just ment today. Thank you so much, guys.
Tom Turner (22:46):
Thank you.
Claire Waite Brown (22:46):
Tell me again the name of the show and just generally where people can connect with you.
Tom Turner (22:52):
Yes, the Failing Writers Podcast. Or you can check out our website, www.failingwriterspodcast.com. sounds right, doesn't it? Yeah, that'll do.
Jon Rand (23:01):
I love the www.oldschool just so people
Tom Turner (23:05):
know it's on the Internet, Jon. So they don't go looking elsewhere for the website because then otherwise they might not know.
Claire Waite Brown (23:10):
Fantastic. I had to take a breath then because I was laughing. Thank you so much guys. It's been brilliant to talk.
Jon Rand (23:16):
You're very welcome. Nice to see you again.
Claire Waite Brown (23:18):
And you.
Tom Turner (23:19):
Cheers.
Sam Sethi (23:20):
Claire, Tom and Jon. That was really interesting. Thank you for that. Now, Claire, you usually ask me a question here, but this time I'm going to ask you one. You mentioned to Tom and Jon how new episodes of featured podcasts appear at the front of the carousels, the lists on TrueFans's home screen. Can you tell me what the lists are and how they're curated?
Claire Waite Brown (23:42):
I would love to do that. Thank you, Sam. So the home screen will look a little different if you are completely new to TrueFans and haven't signed up for an account yet. You don't have to sign up. You can still listen to podcasts, but if you do, you will be able to do much more in TrueFans with regards to customization. You can make it so that you're going to see more of what you want to listen to and watch there. FYI, Sam and I talk more about this in episode five of Fanzone from TrueFans. What remains the same whether you are signed in or not, is the three carousels that I have the pleasure of curating. The first is called Podcasts We're Loving and this is populated with independent podcasts from around the world. Next we have new and charting and this list features shows from the big networks and shows that come to the podcast sphere with a ready made audience, perhaps hosted by celebrities or with you know, a lot of backing published by newspapers, that kind of things. So we showcase the independent podcasts first, but we don't hide the bigger shows. You're going to see all of that on the home screen as well. Then there is a list called Close to Home, which, depending on where home is, may not be heavily populated. And I explain why, if a podcast creator adds their location to their creator's dashboard in TrueFans, that makes it easier for me to promote that show in the list for the relevant country. So someone in your country is going to see that Close to Home list and see your podcast there. I mine these recommendations from all over the place. So I look at reviews, I look at blogs, I look in the news, the guests I chat with on this show all over the place. But I have also recently created a submission form, so anyone that would like me to consider their podcast to be featured on the home page can fill in that form. Now, when I say featured on the home page, what I mean is it joins the list and as a new episode comes out, that Epico episode goes to the front of the list. Now another new episode comes out from another podcast that day, that week that will go to the front of the list. So it just means you'll be on that home page whenever you release new episodes back to the form. Just to say that submitting that form does not guarantee you will get featured. I do personally review all of the audio, and that is for quality of content and sound as well. You will find the links to that form in the show notes. And those are the three lists that I curate. As you start listening to your own podcasts that you like, you'll see new lists keep listening and new for you. And then the three lists after that will be the ones I curate. And finally, I wasn't going to go on and on, but just to mention, have a listen to Fanzone episode 5 also to find out how you can change your categories so you can see the categories on the home page that you want to see as well. So it's all there to be customized by you.
Sam Sethi (26:50):
Can you customize it in any other way Claire?
Claire Waite Brown (26:53):
Funnily enough, Sam, you can. You can pin one playlist to the top of your home screen. So I have my queue and whenever I see stuff pop up on the new for you list list that I want to listen to, I add it to my queue. So that's all there. And once I've finished the episode, I'm listening to the first episode in my queue or the next Episode in my queue will start playing automatically. So I'm driving in the car, I'm listening to what I want to be listening to on the home page. Also, to begin with, the way you see the carousels is with a nice big square show art, and then you've got the name of the show and the details underneath, and they travel along horizontally. So you scroll horizontally to go along that list. If you prefer to see the art smaller and you want a vertical list, there's two little boxes at the top of the home page on the left. One is of two little cards and one is of a list icon. So that's where you choose which way you prefer to view your lists.
Sam Sethi (27:51):
Lovely. So lots and lots of ways to customize the home page to meet what you would like it to do.
Claire Waite Brown (27:56):
So, Sam, on the home page, when those new episodes come out, if a podcaster has made episode art as opposed to their show art, that's what we see on that page. And I think episode art is lovely. I use episode art. We use it for this show. I use it for Creativity Found. I've seen other shows using it very well, but I've also seen shows that I think don't use it very well because they don't include a reference to the podcast as a whole. So you might see a picture of the guest, but you don't see on the art what that actual podcast is. There's no, like, logo for whatever that show is. Whereas I know you do it for Podnews Weekly Review. I do it for Creativity Found. It's the same art, just with an added picture and a word. So I find it a little bit confusing sometimes when I look instantly at the picture and I don't know what the show is. Now, we could say, right, I'm only gonna highlight your show if it's obvious which podcast it is in the episode art. Otherwise, I'm not gonna put it up there. We could say, does our audience actually. Would they prefer to see the show art every single time, regardless of episode? I don't know. I'm in a quandary about it. What do you think?
Sam Sethi (29:20):
So I'm looking at the home page now, so there's a couple of things to be aware of. One is, as you said, it's the latest episode we show. The second line on the home page is the episode title, and the third line is the actual podcast name. Now, they're all clickable items as well. So you can click and go directly to the episode page by clicking on the episode title, or you can go to the podcast page. If I look at it now, some of the bigger ones, like Diggy Raging Moderates, for example, on my home page do not show episode art. They just continue to show the show art. It's one of those difficult ones and we'd love to know what people want because we had this quandary about a year and a half to two years ago. We were showing podcast show art and I was like, hmm, that doesn't reflect what's current. As in, you know, some people put a lot of effort into the episode art and it's not showing anything different. So that's a bit of a shame. I don't know the answer. Claire, we'd love to hear from people. Would you rather see the episode art or the show art? Or like TrueFans would do, should we add a feature in the user settings that tells you that you can change it? We could have a toggle in your user settings that says, you know, customization. We already give you customization of your carousels. Maybe we give you customization to say, yeah, show me show art or show me episode art and just leave it down to the individual.
Claire Waite Brown (30:45):
Okay, cool. So send us a comment, click on the speech bubble icon and you have three options. Then, yes, please, episode art. Yes, please always show art. Yes, please let me customise and choose myself. How's that sound?
Jon Rand (31:03):
Good.
Sam Sethi (31:03):
There you go.
Claire Waite Brown (31:04):
Hey, I look forward to receiving those.
Sam Sethi (31:06):
Right, let's move on. Have we had any messages, Claire?
Claire Waite Brown (31:09):
Yes, we have. Our friend Martin Lindiscog says I am adding an episode of the Driven Introvert podcast to my queue. And the Driven Introvert is a podcast created by last week's guest, Remi Roy, who I'm sure will be very pleased to hear that Martin. And in pounds sterling, Martin paid 13 pence with that comment, which is 98 sats. Thank you very much, Martin. I would also like to thank Martin as well as David Jon Clark, the late Bloomer actor, because they also stream payments per minute or as they are listening to this podcast, which is another one of the things I talked about with Remi in last week's episode. I also wanted to mention that listeners can attach a payment to any ratings or reviews they give to podcasts, which David Jon Clark has also done. So thank you very much, David. And if anybody would like to have a chat with me, I can explain some of this stuff in more detail to you one on one. Then don't forget you can book a one to one coffee chat with me. And the link for that is in the show notes. Stuff, stuff, stuff going on everywhere. Video is still on the tip of everybody's tongues. Two things, Sam. I know that you have been working hard on how the video plays in TrueFans. Can you tell me a bit more about what you've been up to, please?
Sam Sethi (32:39):
Yeah, as you said, videos everywhere. Now, since Apple adopted video support, they'd already got MP4 video, but now they've gone to this new standard called hls, which is a streaming standard which TrueFans already supports. So one of the things was to improve the playback on TrueFans, the app and the desktop. So what we've done is we've added a little video icon on the play button. So if we detect within the podcast feed that there is also a video capable to be played, we will show you a little video icon and when you click the play button, that will then bring up on the desktop a full screen video. And on the mobile a new video player. Now on the desktop we've gone for this full screen immersive view. And now some people might like that lean back, watch the video. But if you don't like that in TrueFans style, you can go to your user settings and change it. So you can then have it only play as a postage stamp or, or you can say, no, I don't want video to play at all. I'd rather it was an audio only experience. And you can also change that in your user settings. So instead of it always playing the video first, which is what we default to, it will play the audio first as the default. So there's lots of ways that you can change it as usual to suit your personal needs. Now on the mobile phone, I really like the new client because what we've done is we've created a new screen that has the video at the top of the screen. Then you have all of the options for comments, transcripts, payments below it. And if you actually turn your screen landscape, we will then just show you full screen. It'll just be the video playing full screen on your phone. So, yes, lots and lots of options to play back audio and video now on TrueFans.
Claire Waite Brown (34:27):
Now, I have been reading some comments and I haven't told you I was going to mention this, Sam, because I only read them today. But those comments generally in podcasty social media groups have been about hosting companies charging more for you to do video and also about the difference between getting the video to Apple and to other places. Can you give me a bit of clarity on that, please?
Sam Sethi (34:57):
Yeah, it's a right mess, right now, so let me try and explain. Apple have created a secret proprietary API that they've given out to various hosting companies. Truefalns being a host has got it. And so what we are supposed to do when we host a new podcast, if we want to send video to the Apple Podcast player, we have to send it via this proprietary API, not via RSS as usual. Apple have done it that way. And then if there's any advertising in that video, Apple are going to charge you a small fee for it. So it's a way of Apple making money. So lots and lots of hosts are providing this Apple API. So when you have your podcast and you upload a new video episode, you will have an option to tick Podcast index, the normal directory that we use. Apple directory, Spotify directory, YouTube, let's say they're the main four. When the video is sent to Apple, it's sent via that proprietary API. When it's sent to Spotify, it's sent via the Spotify API. And when it's sent to YouTube, it's a YouTube API. But when it's sent to the podcast index, it's sent via rss, which is the right way to do it. And then any app, TrueFans's App, Fountain, podverse, Overcast, Pocket, Cast, all of those apps will read your RSS feed and then just play back the video. It's a bit of a shame that Apple have gone down this road. I don't like it. It's a walled garden experience. We will support it. But the big three have now created closed environments and not supporting open standards. But you as the user shouldn't have to worry. You upload your audio or video to TrueFans and we'll deal with the technicalities of how to get it to those platforms. You just say where you want it and we'll distribute it for you. In terms of the costs, it's really interesting. Some companies are doing it on upload amounts, so that's buzzsprout will limit you on the amount you can upload. I think it's six hours. Captivate will limit you on the number of downloads or streams. Libsyn will charge you $150 a month as opposed to, let's say Buzzsprout charging you $41 or Captivate charging you $50. So the numbers are all over the place. I should clarify that. Trufons charges $30 for video streaming. So again, we are very competitive in that space. But I think the numbers will settle down after a while. People will realize that Actually, if you do want to do video, then where's the best option? It's not what's the cheapest option, but where's the best option? The other one is the analytics. All of those companies have no analytics right now for measuring listen time and watch time. TrueFans is the only company that has a listen time and watch time metric. We've done all the hard work early on. Again, the other thing that we've noticed is that bots, the OpenAI bot, the Twitter bot, the Facebook bot, are listening to podcasts, and so your streaming numbers and your play count gets wildly exaggerated. So again, one thing to note, we can hide those bots for you and give you true human listening numbers as opposed to inflated bot numbers. So I think video has put a cat amongst the pigeons in the podcasting world. Should we do video, should we not do video? And then where should we do it and how we should do it? All those questions are now up in the air.
Claire Waite Brown (38:20):
The hosting companies do try their best to protect you from the bots.
Sam Sethi (38:26):
That's the download bots they protect you from. Not from the streaming bots yet.
Claire Waite Brown (38:29):
Oh, okay, right, okay.
Sam Sethi (38:31):
So part of the IAB standard states that you have to remove bots from the download count. That's great. But there's no IAB standard for streaming video or audio yet. And there is no IAB requirement on you to hide the bots from your streaming playback. That will come. It will come, don't worry. And all of those platforms will have to provide the tools to hide bot data. They might do it themselves and not give you the choice. Again, you can go into the Trufons analytics dashboard and choose which bots you want to hide and which you don't. Because we can hide certain bots at the admin level, but we also chose to give people who host with TrueFans the option. The reason is, you might say, I want to be listened to and Therefore indexed by ChatGPT. I want to be on Claude, but I don't want to be on Twitter and I don't want to be on Facebook.
Claire Waite Brown (39:29):
Brilliant. And what you can see with that though, as well is you'll be able to see how much of your stuff they're getting, how many hours and how many minutes. The actual bots are the ones that are listening to your material. Just to reiterate, the reason that the hosting companies are charging more for video than audio alone, like they're putting it as an add on, is because of the extra costs it's going to cost them because Video uses more data, is that correct as well?
Sam Sethi (40:05):
Yeah, they've all got a big dichotomy, right? So if you are downloading an MP4 1.1 gig, let's say video with MP4 on all other platforms apart from TrueFans, say Download the full MP4 file. So you're watching a video and you might only watch the first 10% of that video. They've still downloaded 100% of that video and that's cost them a lot of money. Multiply 1.1 gig by 100 or a thousand users, that's a lot of data. Right. TrueFans streams MP4 as well as HLS. We're the only company that does that. And so what you've got is all these companies are going, oh, we don't know how much it's going to cost, how many people are going to watch. So they're sticking numbers right now with a finger in the air going, if we add $15 a month, we might protect ourselves. No, no, add $50. Just really be safe. And that's fine, I get it. But with the MP4, they're worried that you're going to have to download the full file with the hls, which breaks it up into six or ten second packets, depending on who you are. That's fine. So a 1.1 gig video, and that's watched only 10%, then only 10% of that 1 gig 100 meg is downloaded or streamed, and so that reduces the cost. But at the moment, nobody knows how many people want to watch or not watch video and just listen to audio. So it's a. It's a period of suck it in sea, really. And pricing is all over the place because of it. Because some people are inflating their pricing to be 100% sure they're not going to lose money, while others are being a little bit more aggressive. Time will tell.
Claire Waite Brown (41:43):
Yeah, cool. Understood. Thank you.
Sam Sethi (41:46):
And that's it for this week, Claire. Our audio is recorded on Riverside and edited by you. And we're hosted by by TrueFans.
Claire Waite Brown (41:53):
You can support this show, as I mentioned earlier, by streaming sats from your TrueFans wallet or leave us a super comment, rating or review. Or better still, become a monthly supporter of this show.
Sam Sethi (42:06):
If you'd like to promote your podcast in the feed for this show, go to your creator's dashboard, find the pencil icon and then locate the podcast promotions tab and you'll be able to choose this show and send a request to us. Nice and simple.
Claire Waite Brown (42:21):
And you can find out more about how to use the features of the TrueFans platform by listening to our sister podcast Fanzone. And don't forget to follow us on Instagram or threads at TrueFans.FM.
One of the best things about doing the podcast is that you can just ask people to spend an hour chatting with you. People that did brilliant things, that have written brilliant books or done TV series that you've loved since you were a kid, you just get to have a chat with them. And generally, if you email people and ask them that and you've not got a podcast, they don't even email you back. To be honest, I don't know the answer.
Sam Sethi (00:30):
Claire, we'd love to hear from people. Would you rather see the episode art or the show art or like TrueFans would do? Should we add a feature in the user settings that tells you that you can Change it with MP4? On all other platforms apart from TrueFans, they Download the full MP4 file. TrueFans streams MP4 as well as HLS. We're the only company that does that.
Claire Waite Brown (00:54):
Welcome to Creators from TrueFans. I'm Claire Waite Brown, Head of Community at TrueFans.
Sam Sethi (01:01):
And I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO of TrueFans.
Claire Waite Brown (01:03):
Download the TrueFans app to not only listen to podcasts from around the world, but interact with their creators and start paying the shows you value.
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Sam Sethi (01:36):
Hi, Claire.
Claire Waite Brown (01:37):
Hi, Sam. How are you doing?
Sam Sethi (01:38):
I'm good, I'm good. Claire, who are we featuring on this week's episode?
Claire Waite Brown (01:43):
We are featuring Tom and Jon from the Failing Writers podcast. I have two guests with me today, so I'm going to ask you to introduce yourselves. Starting with you, Tom.
Tom Turner (01:59):
Hello, I'm Tom, one half of the Failing Writers Podcast.
Claire Waite Brown (02:03):
And with Tom, we have.
Jon Rand (02:05):
My name's Jon and I am the other half of the Failing Writers Podcast, the better half, obviously.
Claire Waite Brown (02:12):
What is your podcast all about? What is its format?
Tom Turner (02:16):
The name does give a little bit of a clue, but we're always very keen to point out that we are the failing writers. And the idea was to force us to start writing for it to become a kind of accountability and for us to interview lots of other really successful writers and find out how we could be less failing along the way. So that was kind of the starting point for it. And format wise, we interview a lot of people, but we also try and keep it quite loose. So it's a writing podcast. And anything we think would interest. Anything that interests us that's even vaguely linked to writing is fair game. Jon, I would say. Is that about right?
Jon Rand (02:59):
Yeah. I think our remit has sort of widened over the years, hasn't it? It started out very much, we're gonna try and write more. And we tended to do like little tasks and things. So we'd set each other, you know, writing tasks and have a go at trying different genres and stuff like that. And then we started interviewing more people and gaining a bit more insight into the industry. And so it sort of started to go. And then we just thought, let's just do stuff that we're interested in. So that's kind of where it's ended up. It's actually quite a difficult thing to explain though. Very quickly it's like, what kind of podcast is it? It's not just two blokes talking, it's not just an interview podcast. We sometimes do sort of almost like documentary type things where we'll go and explore a topic. Like, we've done limericks. What's the history of limericks? We've done an episode on the Brontes where we went and walked up in the hills of Yorkshire and went to the Bronte Parsonage and talked to academics and all sorts. It's quite wide in terms of what we like doing. As long as we enjoy it, basically that's what we do. Talk to people that we. That, you know, sound like they're going to be interesting.
Claire Waite Brown (04:08):
So it's a bit like as you would be exploring and widening your horizons with your writing, you've actually done that with the podcast genre as well. Like gone with the flow and let that be as creative as you might be with your own writing.
Tom Turner (04:24):
I think that is. It's the creativity side of it as well. It definitely scratches the itch for being able to just do slightly weird stuff that we think is funny or interesting or silly ditties. Yeah, yeah, little, little songs or little sketches. And there's points along the path when we've been talking about sort of, you know, the production side of it that we've kind of second guessed ourselves a little bit about whether we should be going off on these tangents or doing these weird things. And we kind of came to the conclusion that a. That becomes a point of difference. That's something we can offer that maybe some of the more straight writing podcasts aren't able to offer. Cause we do get a lot of feedback saying, you know, it's nice listening to you. I'm not really into writing, but it's fun to listen to or it's funny, in my view, and we kind of treasure that. That sort of keeps us going, doing what we do. But, yeah, we came to the conclusion, actually it needs to interest us and we need to go off on these little tangents to keep it fresh, to be a bit different, but to keep us interested as much as anything so we don't feel like we're churning out the same thing.
Jon Rand (05:29):
Yeah. There is a problem inherent in all of this as well, though, which is that because, like Tom was saying, it does kind of scratch our creative itch, it does mean that the time we allow ourselves for writing is massively decreased by doing the podcast. Cause the podcast's a lot of fun and it does involve, you know, it is a massively creative process, and especially the way we do it, because we do like to, like Tom says, do lots of different stuff around it. We like to add a lot of texture to the podcast. So it's not just an interview. You know, there'll be a little song, might be a little sketch. There might be a flashback or something.
Tom Turner (06:06):
So. Yeah.
Jon Rand (06:06):
How much time does that leave for writing, Tom?
Tom Turner (06:09):
Less than maybe it should. But nevertheless, we have done more writing with that small amount of time since we started than pre podcast with a lot of spare time. So.
Claire Waite Brown (06:19):
Yeah, well, I've got two observations about that. One is something I talk about a lot about independent podcasting, is that you have the freedom to do that. You have the choice to make it your own and do what you want to do. And as we already spoken about, the creativity, and you're able to put that in now, the second thing I was concerned about is if you were no longer failing writers, what happens next? So because you now have less time to write, you have less time to become successful writers. So you're spreading out the longevity of both your failing writing career and your failing, failing writers podcast. So I think they complement each other.
Tom Turner (07:00):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. As luck would have it, we don't need any help in maintaining our failing status.
Jon Rand (07:06):
It's all a careful plan, Claire.
Claire Waite Brown (07:08):
Yeah, of course it is. Of course.
Jon Rand (07:10):
We've thought about this, and this is what we've decided. It's the best strategy.
Claire Waite Brown (07:15):
Absolutely. So I wanted to talk to you about how this fits in with other stuff that goes on in your life, whatever that may be, and what kind of experience do you have in production and what kind of processes do you like to use that maybe save you time or are just really useful for producing this type of podcast.
Jon Rand (07:38):
Well, I like to really spend as much time as possible on things and not use any kind of time saving devices. We're not brilliant at that. I mean, Tom might disagree. I don't know if you use some kind of clever editing software or you just use Audacity or something.
Tom Turner (07:53):
I'm I guess old school on that.
Jon Rand (07:55):
Yeah, same.
Tom Turner (07:57):
Not keen on using any AI stuff to take out breaths and stuff. I like to have my hands on everything and move it all around manually and what have you. And I think the production benefits from that. I think we're lucky that we come from a radio background where we've been exposed to some brilliant, brilliant producers and learn off them. So we probably are a lot quicker and slicker than if we'd have just come into it when we started the podcast. I guess more than a decade of experience of producing stuff as well kind of helps in just in sort of skills we've brought to it from our current and previous day jobs. Yeah, definitely.
Claire Waite Brown (08:35):
I think that probably helps in shaping it in the first place, which then helps in editing it later to have those kind of system going in the right order. I'm old school too. I. I keep trying these wonderful AI things that say they're going to take out the ums and ahs and it's going to sound brilliant, but it never does and I just go back to the old fashioned way and I do it myself and I do it so much better if I do say so myself.
Tom Turner (09:02):
No, there's definitely an art, isn't there, to leaving some in and leaving some pauses need to be there. Other pauses absolutely don't. Or someone just needs to say that a little bit quicker for that to work and it is time consuming and you do get quicker at it so it becomes less time consuming. But we're lucky in a way that we had those skills. So our hopefully our first handful of episodes aren't us learning on the job about the production side of things. At least there's a few bits and bobs that have tidied up but you know, they stand up quite well still.
Jon Rand (09:33):
We're definitely learning other things.
Tom Turner (09:34):
Yeah, yeah. There's lots of other things wrong with them, but the production isn't necessarily one of them on that score. No, we kind of. I don't think we even really thought about it as such, did we? It just kind of happened because we knew how to do it.
Jon Rand (09:46):
Yeah, I think that's right.
Claire Waite Brown (09:47):
Well, you had the idea and you wanted to do the thing and this was a means by which you could do the thing. That's how I've worked in podcasting as well. I think it's a good idea. I'll do it. Do other people listen? That'll be an extra bonus. Talking about podcasting, generally, whether we're talking about the wider industry or the processes that we've touched on, what are things that excite you about it, but also that frustrate you about it.
Tom Turner (10:15):
I think the exciting thing is that you have almost an endless potential audience that you can reach is just so completely open. Obviously the counter side of that is you realize immediately after you started your podcast how unreachable that endless audience is. And you just think, well, it's ridiculous. There's billions of people on the planet
Jon Rand (10:42):
and they've all got podcasts.
Claire Waite Brown (10:44):
That's the trouble.
Tom Turner (10:45):
They've all got podcasts. Yeah. So sometimes you question yourself. It does feel like I'm shouting at the Voice sometimes. Third side of that coin, It's a strange shape coin, but nevertheless is when you sweat and you sweat blood and tears into this podcast and you feel like you're getting somewhere. And then random C list celebrity with a random D list celebrity friend are suddenly on BBC Sounds with their brand new podcast, talking about nothing in particular that they've just decided to do and oh, look. And you think, oh, you genuinely think, oh, good for them. That's lovely. I hope they really do well and they enjoy it. That's nice.
Jon Rand (11:28):
It's quite a bitter place, isn't it? Podcasting? I think especially, especially independent podcasting.
Tom Turner (11:34):
Yeah.
Jon Rand (11:35):
And a podcast like ours, which, you know, it's hard, isn't it? It's really hard. It's hard to reach people. There's so much content and it's not just podcasts, it's video content. And like I was saying before, we don't have a really clear way of saying what we are. It's quite a difficult sell, you know, it's not an easy thing to say. This is gonna definitely be worth your time. Have a listen to this. Cause you are this kind of person. We did some ads recently. We thought, well, let's give, let's give it a go. Let's spend some money on some ads and see what comes of it. And it was so difficult, like compressing what we do into 30 seconds. I think at one point we nearly gave up.
Tom Turner (12:19):
And that's bearing in mind that we're both award winning radio advert writers.
Jon Rand (12:24):
It's literally our job. For years.
Tom Turner (12:26):
We'd begin shiny little statues because we're so good at getting something into 30 seconds and we were kind of like, oh no, no, this doesn't.
Jon Rand (12:34):
But.
Tom Turner (12:34):
And we, we went through quite a few different ones, didn't we? Until we kind of just said let's just keep it simple because.
Claire Waite Brown (12:41):
Yeah, yeah, well that's an interesting sideline then. So if you managed to get the advert done, were you able to see and analyze results from that advert?
Jon Rand (12:52):
That's a very good question. Our listening figures definitely went up at the same time. Without a doubt. Was it worth. I mean, I think we spent about 300 quid. It was highly targeted. I have to say that we only put ads out in other writing podcasts, so I'm guessing, you know, it was pretty good in its targeting. But Was it worth 300 quid? I don't know. I mean, it's so difficult to say. Cause we're not doing this for the money as well. That's the other thing we should mention. We haven't made money out of this podcast. It's sort of not the reason we did it. In a way it was to, like Tom says it was, it was about accountability, it was about having fun, it was about scratching creative itch.
Tom Turner (13:34):
We were meant to be making money out of our best selling novels.
Jon Rand (13:37):
That's where we're going ultimately. Obviously we're building an audience for our great British novel that we write. I suppose if you were to say, what is the sort of purpose of doing it?
Tom Turner (13:48):
I mean, it's just ego stroking, isn't it? It's just nice when people say that was funny. Oh, that was good.
Sam Sethi (13:54):
Yeah.
Tom Turner (13:54):
Oh, well done. You did that.
Jon Rand (13:56):
Well, it probably is a bit of that. Like it's really good fun. Yeah, doing it.
Tom Turner (14:01):
What we did say, actually we did a little bit podcast trip to Edinburgh and interviewed a lot of people, went and did some various stuff and it was wonderful, brilliant thing. We agreed and we kind of said one of the best things about doing the podcast is that you can just ask people to spend an hour chatting with you. People that did brilliant things, that have written brilliant books or done TV series that you've loved since you were a kid. You just get to have a chat with them. And generally if you email people and ask them that and you've not got a podcast, they don't even email you back, to be honest. Because why would you.
Claire Waite Brown (14:35):
Doesn't have the same response, does it? No.
Tom Turner (14:39):
It's stalker territory, isn't it?
Claire Waite Brown (14:41):
Yeah, you've made me think about something else now you guys have won. Was it Two independent Podcast awards.
Tom Turner (14:47):
It was just the two.
Jon Rand (14:48):
Yeah, we don't like to talk about it, actually. Yeah, we don't. We don't really want to talk about that. It's not, you know, it's no big deal to us.
Claire Waite Brown (14:56):
But a perhaps unknown, unseen, unexpected benefit of that was that I put all of the winners on a list on the home page at TrueFans called Podcasts We're Loving. And then when you put out a new episode, that goes to the front of the list of Podcasts We're Loving. So when someone goes straight into the home page, they don't necessarily see, I don't even know who the celebrities are. Even when they're on Bake Off, I don't know who they are. Won't see those podcasts straight away. And then from a promotion point of view, we do have as well, a system where you can promote your podcast on those lists or on other podcast feeds. So you might ask another writing podcast within TrueFans, can I advertise on your show? And they say, yes. And in the second or third bit of their list of episodes, they'll be your episode. But what happens with that is that you only pay for a click, a view, and a play, and you can measure those as well, so you can see those much more clearly. But moving on, I wanted to talk because it isn't just what you like to do and the value isn't from just your egos, because you do have contributions, not necessarily just from the guests, but from people writing, sending you in their stuff. So there is some interactivity there between you and listeners. How have you nurtured that? Has that just come because you've asked for contributions? Did you start with contributions from people you knew and it's grown from there?
Tom Turner (16:33):
Yeah, a little bit. Jon's always been very big on getting the listeners involved, really, and sort of driving that community angle of it. That sounds like I didn't like it. I didn't want to. I mean, Jon's always pushed that. I'm like, listeners, whatever, don't hear their stuff. And it has really helped, I mean, overtaken us in some respects. There's people that we know, started listening that are in the same position as us, have been completely useless, that have now got books out relatively successfully, but very nicely. A few have mentioned us in the acknowledgments of, you know, kickstarting their writing again. Amazing. Getting them off the backside. So that's nice.
Jon Rand (17:11):
It's become a much more important part of the book podcast now, isn't it?
Tom Turner (17:14):
Yeah.
Jon Rand (17:14):
And it's kind of the bit that feeds our souls a little bit. You know, when people get in touch, they give us their little story about them, you know, writing more. Maybe they wrote 10 years ago, but they've kind of stopped and we get lots of that kind of thing, which is just amazing to hear.
Claire Waite Brown (17:30):
Yeah. How do they contact you?
Jon Rand (17:34):
They quite often message us. We give out our email in most episodes, so quite often emails. It's quite often the contact thing. What do you call it? Contact form on the website as well.
Claire Waite Brown (17:46):
Okay. Right, I'm going to get on to the Podcasting 2.0 question. TrueFans supports probably all of the Podcasting 2.0 features that are out there. What do you know about Podcasting 2.0 and its features, Jon?
Tom Turner (18:02):
I'll pass this over to you because this will be funny. Now we Googling then. You look like you were just about to Google that. No, no Googling.
Jon Rand (18:12):
I know very little, Claire. I mean, obviously that's why we're here today, is to find out more.
Claire Waite Brown (18:16):
Yes.
Tom Turner (18:18):
What do you think Podcasting 2.0 is, Claire?
Jon Rand (18:21):
Good question, Tom. Yeah, Claire, tell us, what do you
Tom Turner (18:24):
think before we say what do you think?
Claire Waite Brown (18:26):
Of course, of course. Before you give your opinion. Yeah. So. And I'm going to give some practical examples as well. Basically, there are these extra things you can do, and for independent podcasters like us, they can help with some of the stuff we've talked about today. Discovery, interactivity, and monetization. You don't need to. Really need to know anything technical to make them work, depending on the hosting company you're with. So it's things like transcripts, which you would have heard of, I'm sure. One thing I thought about your show, which sounds like a cliche, and I'm going to say chapters, but I love chapters in podcasting. And in particular, I think it would be great for you because you have some distinct sections. So you call hypewriter. The bit where you, you know, you get stuff from other people and that gets read out, and you can actually chapter that so that anybody listening can click on that and go straight to that. You can include art with that. You can include a link to the actual person so that when somebody is walking the dog and at that point they're listening to that bit, if they look at the home screen on their phone without even opening the phone, it'll have the picture that you've put in there, which could be a picture from them. I happen to really, really like your cover art, and that will be in the Chapters for this interview bit, and then I will have links back to your show on TrueFans. So that's something I thought could be good. It could be because you have a sponsor as well, and you do your little sponsorship spiel, put that in its own chapter. Put a link to the sponsor in that chapter. Tell the sponsor, look, I can do this extra thing now. People don't have to scroll through the show notes. They can click straight on when I talk about you. You know, just might make you look more shiny for your sponsor. So that's what I thought for chapters. Another thing, this isn't a Podcasting 2.0 thing, but this is a thing within TrueFans that you can do is you can actually put blogs on your show in TrueFans as well. So if you wanted to actually include some written word excerpts, whatever, from other people from you, a bit more accountability, you could tell people, I've got to write something by such and such a date, and it will be on the TrueFans blog.
Tom Turner (20:50):
I like the idea of the Chapters thing particularly, actually. It's something I've noticed on other podcasts that, you know, does make navigation easier and like you said, I think would be quite well suited to us because it does kind of happen in chunks.
Claire Waite Brown (21:02):
Yeah. The other thing I do for every show is I stream you a little bit of money when I'm listening to your show. That means I have within TrueFans. I've said I'm going to pay the failing writers 5sats for every minute I listen. As I say to all my guests, don't get too excited. You're gonna go away with about 12p. Possibly. But it's something that people can do within the TrueFans app. So when you claim your show within TrueFans, which is very easy to do by clicking on a button and making sure that your email address is attached to your RSS feed, then once you've claimed your show, you'll have this little wallet with a little bit of money in it. And that's something that any listener can do not only in TrueFans, you can do it in other 2.0 apps. And people can leave you comments as well. And people within the app can see those comments and they can reply to them, and people can add payments to those comments as well. So just because we were talking about the interactivity and how people find you, people might be able to DM you directly within the TrueFans app. That was all I wanted to say to you guys about Podcasting 2.0.
Tom Turner (22:13):
I would agree with that. Podcasting 2.0. That's what I was gonna say. Pretty much. I think you've covered it all, Blair. To be honest, I've got nothing to add to that.
Claire Waite Brown (22:21):
Thanks, Tom.
Tom Turner (22:22):
Nothing to add to that. Comprehensive.
Claire Waite Brown (22:25):
How about you, Jon?
Jon Rand (22:26):
Nailed it. Yeah, absolutely nailed it.
Claire Waite Brown (22:31):
Brilliant. Well, anybody listening can, including yourselves, guys, ask me any questions at any point. I'm gonna plug my own show, Podcasting 2.0 in Practice because that has little episodes on all of those things. I've just ment today. Thank you so much, guys.
Tom Turner (22:46):
Thank you.
Claire Waite Brown (22:46):
Tell me again the name of the show and just generally where people can connect with you.
Tom Turner (22:52):
Yes, the Failing Writers Podcast. Or you can check out our website, www.failingwriterspodcast.com. sounds right, doesn't it? Yeah, that'll do.
Jon Rand (23:01):
I love the www.oldschool just so people
Tom Turner (23:05):
know it's on the Internet, Jon. So they don't go looking elsewhere for the website because then otherwise they might not know.
Claire Waite Brown (23:10):
Fantastic. I had to take a breath then because I was laughing. Thank you so much guys. It's been brilliant to talk.
Jon Rand (23:16):
You're very welcome. Nice to see you again.
Claire Waite Brown (23:18):
And you.
Tom Turner (23:19):
Cheers.
Sam Sethi (23:20):
Claire, Tom and Jon. That was really interesting. Thank you for that. Now, Claire, you usually ask me a question here, but this time I'm going to ask you one. You mentioned to Tom and Jon how new episodes of featured podcasts appear at the front of the carousels, the lists on TrueFans's home screen. Can you tell me what the lists are and how they're curated?
Claire Waite Brown (23:42):
I would love to do that. Thank you, Sam. So the home screen will look a little different if you are completely new to TrueFans and haven't signed up for an account yet. You don't have to sign up. You can still listen to podcasts, but if you do, you will be able to do much more in TrueFans with regards to customization. You can make it so that you're going to see more of what you want to listen to and watch there. FYI, Sam and I talk more about this in episode five of Fanzone from TrueFans. What remains the same whether you are signed in or not, is the three carousels that I have the pleasure of curating. The first is called Podcasts We're Loving and this is populated with independent podcasts from around the world. Next we have new and charting and this list features shows from the big networks and shows that come to the podcast sphere with a ready made audience, perhaps hosted by celebrities or with you know, a lot of backing published by newspapers, that kind of things. So we showcase the independent podcasts first, but we don't hide the bigger shows. You're going to see all of that on the home screen as well. Then there is a list called Close to Home, which, depending on where home is, may not be heavily populated. And I explain why, if a podcast creator adds their location to their creator's dashboard in TrueFans, that makes it easier for me to promote that show in the list for the relevant country. So someone in your country is going to see that Close to Home list and see your podcast there. I mine these recommendations from all over the place. So I look at reviews, I look at blogs, I look in the news, the guests I chat with on this show all over the place. But I have also recently created a submission form, so anyone that would like me to consider their podcast to be featured on the home page can fill in that form. Now, when I say featured on the home page, what I mean is it joins the list and as a new episode comes out, that Epico episode goes to the front of the list. Now another new episode comes out from another podcast that day, that week that will go to the front of the list. So it just means you'll be on that home page whenever you release new episodes back to the form. Just to say that submitting that form does not guarantee you will get featured. I do personally review all of the audio, and that is for quality of content and sound as well. You will find the links to that form in the show notes. And those are the three lists that I curate. As you start listening to your own podcasts that you like, you'll see new lists keep listening and new for you. And then the three lists after that will be the ones I curate. And finally, I wasn't going to go on and on, but just to mention, have a listen to Fanzone episode 5 also to find out how you can change your categories so you can see the categories on the home page that you want to see as well. So it's all there to be customized by you.
Sam Sethi (26:50):
Can you customize it in any other way Claire?
Claire Waite Brown (26:53):
Funnily enough, Sam, you can. You can pin one playlist to the top of your home screen. So I have my queue and whenever I see stuff pop up on the new for you list list that I want to listen to, I add it to my queue. So that's all there. And once I've finished the episode, I'm listening to the first episode in my queue or the next Episode in my queue will start playing automatically. So I'm driving in the car, I'm listening to what I want to be listening to on the home page. Also, to begin with, the way you see the carousels is with a nice big square show art, and then you've got the name of the show and the details underneath, and they travel along horizontally. So you scroll horizontally to go along that list. If you prefer to see the art smaller and you want a vertical list, there's two little boxes at the top of the home page on the left. One is of two little cards and one is of a list icon. So that's where you choose which way you prefer to view your lists.
Sam Sethi (27:51):
Lovely. So lots and lots of ways to customize the home page to meet what you would like it to do.
Claire Waite Brown (27:56):
So, Sam, on the home page, when those new episodes come out, if a podcaster has made episode art as opposed to their show art, that's what we see on that page. And I think episode art is lovely. I use episode art. We use it for this show. I use it for Creativity Found. I've seen other shows using it very well, but I've also seen shows that I think don't use it very well because they don't include a reference to the podcast as a whole. So you might see a picture of the guest, but you don't see on the art what that actual podcast is. There's no, like, logo for whatever that show is. Whereas I know you do it for Podnews Weekly Review. I do it for Creativity Found. It's the same art, just with an added picture and a word. So I find it a little bit confusing sometimes when I look instantly at the picture and I don't know what the show is. Now, we could say, right, I'm only gonna highlight your show if it's obvious which podcast it is in the episode art. Otherwise, I'm not gonna put it up there. We could say, does our audience actually. Would they prefer to see the show art every single time, regardless of episode? I don't know. I'm in a quandary about it. What do you think?
Sam Sethi (29:20):
So I'm looking at the home page now, so there's a couple of things to be aware of. One is, as you said, it's the latest episode we show. The second line on the home page is the episode title, and the third line is the actual podcast name. Now, they're all clickable items as well. So you can click and go directly to the episode page by clicking on the episode title, or you can go to the podcast page. If I look at it now, some of the bigger ones, like Diggy Raging Moderates, for example, on my home page do not show episode art. They just continue to show the show art. It's one of those difficult ones and we'd love to know what people want because we had this quandary about a year and a half to two years ago. We were showing podcast show art and I was like, hmm, that doesn't reflect what's current. As in, you know, some people put a lot of effort into the episode art and it's not showing anything different. So that's a bit of a shame. I don't know the answer. Claire, we'd love to hear from people. Would you rather see the episode art or the show art? Or like TrueFans would do, should we add a feature in the user settings that tells you that you can change it? We could have a toggle in your user settings that says, you know, customization. We already give you customization of your carousels. Maybe we give you customization to say, yeah, show me show art or show me episode art and just leave it down to the individual.
Claire Waite Brown (30:45):
Okay, cool. So send us a comment, click on the speech bubble icon and you have three options. Then, yes, please, episode art. Yes, please always show art. Yes, please let me customise and choose myself. How's that sound?
Jon Rand (31:03):
Good.
Sam Sethi (31:03):
There you go.
Claire Waite Brown (31:04):
Hey, I look forward to receiving those.
Sam Sethi (31:06):
Right, let's move on. Have we had any messages, Claire?
Claire Waite Brown (31:09):
Yes, we have. Our friend Martin Lindiscog says I am adding an episode of the Driven Introvert podcast to my queue. And the Driven Introvert is a podcast created by last week's guest, Remi Roy, who I'm sure will be very pleased to hear that Martin. And in pounds sterling, Martin paid 13 pence with that comment, which is 98 sats. Thank you very much, Martin. I would also like to thank Martin as well as David Jon Clark, the late Bloomer actor, because they also stream payments per minute or as they are listening to this podcast, which is another one of the things I talked about with Remi in last week's episode. I also wanted to mention that listeners can attach a payment to any ratings or reviews they give to podcasts, which David Jon Clark has also done. So thank you very much, David. And if anybody would like to have a chat with me, I can explain some of this stuff in more detail to you one on one. Then don't forget you can book a one to one coffee chat with me. And the link for that is in the show notes. Stuff, stuff, stuff going on everywhere. Video is still on the tip of everybody's tongues. Two things, Sam. I know that you have been working hard on how the video plays in TrueFans. Can you tell me a bit more about what you've been up to, please?
Sam Sethi (32:39):
Yeah, as you said, videos everywhere. Now, since Apple adopted video support, they'd already got MP4 video, but now they've gone to this new standard called hls, which is a streaming standard which TrueFans already supports. So one of the things was to improve the playback on TrueFans, the app and the desktop. So what we've done is we've added a little video icon on the play button. So if we detect within the podcast feed that there is also a video capable to be played, we will show you a little video icon and when you click the play button, that will then bring up on the desktop a full screen video. And on the mobile a new video player. Now on the desktop we've gone for this full screen immersive view. And now some people might like that lean back, watch the video. But if you don't like that in TrueFans style, you can go to your user settings and change it. So you can then have it only play as a postage stamp or, or you can say, no, I don't want video to play at all. I'd rather it was an audio only experience. And you can also change that in your user settings. So instead of it always playing the video first, which is what we default to, it will play the audio first as the default. So there's lots of ways that you can change it as usual to suit your personal needs. Now on the mobile phone, I really like the new client because what we've done is we've created a new screen that has the video at the top of the screen. Then you have all of the options for comments, transcripts, payments below it. And if you actually turn your screen landscape, we will then just show you full screen. It'll just be the video playing full screen on your phone. So, yes, lots and lots of options to play back audio and video now on TrueFans.
Claire Waite Brown (34:27):
Now, I have been reading some comments and I haven't told you I was going to mention this, Sam, because I only read them today. But those comments generally in podcasty social media groups have been about hosting companies charging more for you to do video and also about the difference between getting the video to Apple and to other places. Can you give me a bit of clarity on that, please?
Sam Sethi (34:57):
Yeah, it's a right mess, right now, so let me try and explain. Apple have created a secret proprietary API that they've given out to various hosting companies. Truefalns being a host has got it. And so what we are supposed to do when we host a new podcast, if we want to send video to the Apple Podcast player, we have to send it via this proprietary API, not via RSS as usual. Apple have done it that way. And then if there's any advertising in that video, Apple are going to charge you a small fee for it. So it's a way of Apple making money. So lots and lots of hosts are providing this Apple API. So when you have your podcast and you upload a new video episode, you will have an option to tick Podcast index, the normal directory that we use. Apple directory, Spotify directory, YouTube, let's say they're the main four. When the video is sent to Apple, it's sent via that proprietary API. When it's sent to Spotify, it's sent via the Spotify API. And when it's sent to YouTube, it's a YouTube API. But when it's sent to the podcast index, it's sent via rss, which is the right way to do it. And then any app, TrueFans's App, Fountain, podverse, Overcast, Pocket, Cast, all of those apps will read your RSS feed and then just play back the video. It's a bit of a shame that Apple have gone down this road. I don't like it. It's a walled garden experience. We will support it. But the big three have now created closed environments and not supporting open standards. But you as the user shouldn't have to worry. You upload your audio or video to TrueFans and we'll deal with the technicalities of how to get it to those platforms. You just say where you want it and we'll distribute it for you. In terms of the costs, it's really interesting. Some companies are doing it on upload amounts, so that's buzzsprout will limit you on the amount you can upload. I think it's six hours. Captivate will limit you on the number of downloads or streams. Libsyn will charge you $150 a month as opposed to, let's say Buzzsprout charging you $41 or Captivate charging you $50. So the numbers are all over the place. I should clarify that. Trufons charges $30 for video streaming. So again, we are very competitive in that space. But I think the numbers will settle down after a while. People will realize that Actually, if you do want to do video, then where's the best option? It's not what's the cheapest option, but where's the best option? The other one is the analytics. All of those companies have no analytics right now for measuring listen time and watch time. TrueFans is the only company that has a listen time and watch time metric. We've done all the hard work early on. Again, the other thing that we've noticed is that bots, the OpenAI bot, the Twitter bot, the Facebook bot, are listening to podcasts, and so your streaming numbers and your play count gets wildly exaggerated. So again, one thing to note, we can hide those bots for you and give you true human listening numbers as opposed to inflated bot numbers. So I think video has put a cat amongst the pigeons in the podcasting world. Should we do video, should we not do video? And then where should we do it and how we should do it? All those questions are now up in the air.
Claire Waite Brown (38:20):
The hosting companies do try their best to protect you from the bots.
Sam Sethi (38:26):
That's the download bots they protect you from. Not from the streaming bots yet.
Claire Waite Brown (38:29):
Oh, okay, right, okay.
Sam Sethi (38:31):
So part of the IAB standard states that you have to remove bots from the download count. That's great. But there's no IAB standard for streaming video or audio yet. And there is no IAB requirement on you to hide the bots from your streaming playback. That will come. It will come, don't worry. And all of those platforms will have to provide the tools to hide bot data. They might do it themselves and not give you the choice. Again, you can go into the Trufons analytics dashboard and choose which bots you want to hide and which you don't. Because we can hide certain bots at the admin level, but we also chose to give people who host with TrueFans the option. The reason is, you might say, I want to be listened to and Therefore indexed by ChatGPT. I want to be on Claude, but I don't want to be on Twitter and I don't want to be on Facebook.
Claire Waite Brown (39:29):
Brilliant. And what you can see with that though, as well is you'll be able to see how much of your stuff they're getting, how many hours and how many minutes. The actual bots are the ones that are listening to your material. Just to reiterate, the reason that the hosting companies are charging more for video than audio alone, like they're putting it as an add on, is because of the extra costs it's going to cost them because Video uses more data, is that correct as well?
Sam Sethi (40:05):
Yeah, they've all got a big dichotomy, right? So if you are downloading an MP4 1.1 gig, let's say video with MP4 on all other platforms apart from TrueFans, say Download the full MP4 file. So you're watching a video and you might only watch the first 10% of that video. They've still downloaded 100% of that video and that's cost them a lot of money. Multiply 1.1 gig by 100 or a thousand users, that's a lot of data. Right. TrueFans streams MP4 as well as HLS. We're the only company that does that. And so what you've got is all these companies are going, oh, we don't know how much it's going to cost, how many people are going to watch. So they're sticking numbers right now with a finger in the air going, if we add $15 a month, we might protect ourselves. No, no, add $50. Just really be safe. And that's fine, I get it. But with the MP4, they're worried that you're going to have to download the full file with the hls, which breaks it up into six or ten second packets, depending on who you are. That's fine. So a 1.1 gig video, and that's watched only 10%, then only 10% of that 1 gig 100 meg is downloaded or streamed, and so that reduces the cost. But at the moment, nobody knows how many people want to watch or not watch video and just listen to audio. So it's a. It's a period of suck it in sea, really. And pricing is all over the place because of it. Because some people are inflating their pricing to be 100% sure they're not going to lose money, while others are being a little bit more aggressive. Time will tell.
Claire Waite Brown (41:43):
Yeah, cool. Understood. Thank you.
Sam Sethi (41:46):
And that's it for this week, Claire. Our audio is recorded on Riverside and edited by you. And we're hosted by by TrueFans.
Claire Waite Brown (41:53):
You can support this show, as I mentioned earlier, by streaming sats from your TrueFans wallet or leave us a super comment, rating or review. Or better still, become a monthly supporter of this show.
Sam Sethi (42:06):
If you'd like to promote your podcast in the feed for this show, go to your creator's dashboard, find the pencil icon and then locate the podcast promotions tab and you'll be able to choose this show and send a request to us. Nice and simple.
Claire Waite Brown (42:21):
And you can find out more about how to use the features of the TrueFans platform by listening to our sister podcast Fanzone. And don't forget to follow us on Instagram or threads at TrueFans.FM.
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