July 5, 2023 • 42 mins
In this episode, we're chatting with Sam Sethi all about Podfans - a podcasting marketplace where listeners discover the podcasts they love but only pay the price they want for the value they receive. Sam is the Chief Executive Officer of Podfans, Managing Director of River Radio, a Podcaster and Editor for Podnews, and much more.
Sam's Links:
Website - https://podfans.fm/
Podfans Twitter - https://twitter.com/joinpodfans
Sam's Twitter - https://twitter.com/samsethi
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/samsethi
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hey everyone, Ashley here with RSS.com.
(00:18):
In this episode, we're chatting with Sam Sefi of Podfans.
We're chatting all about the platform and what it can do for both podcasters and listeners
alike.
Enjoy the show.
All right.
Well, I'm just really, really stoked that you could be here and I can't wait to hear
(00:40):
everything that you're about to say because I know you're an OG in the podcasting world.
So Sam, welcome to the show.
Thank you very much.
Can you do us a favor and tell us a little bit about what it is that you do?
Yeah, I co-host a podcast with the original OG, James Cridland, who is on Podnews.
He does Podnews daily and we do Podnews weekly together and we do some Podnews live events
(01:05):
and various other things we do together.
And I'm also the CEO of a new podcast platform called Podfans that's launched very shortly.
Okay.
That's exactly what I wanted to bring you on here for.
What is Podfans?
Okay, so Podfans is a brand new listening app.
I've been working with my developers.
(01:26):
There's only two of us building it.
We've been working on it for a year, day in, day out, even on Christmas day we worked.
And fundamentally we've built a platform that we think is in design terms, you know, we've
gone for the Apple-esque end of the design cycle.
We're not, you know, we're not Apple, but we've gone for a high end quality design.
(01:50):
We've built it as a, what we call a PWA, a progressive web app.
So it's not going to be a native iOS or Android app.
It's basically, it works on the desktop, on your iPad, on your mobile phone, and it just
detects the size of the product and then shrinks down to it.
But the goal of what we've done is to create what's unique about it is it uses a monetization
(02:17):
thing called Sats.
Now Sats are funny tokens, money, if you want to call it.
They're based on Bitcoin.
Now before everyone goes to sleep, Bitcoin, Bitcoin is a stable currency and a micro payment
of the Bitcoin is called a Sat or a Satoshi after the inventor.
(02:38):
Now let me step back.
So when we look at podcasting today, podcasting has got four or five challenges, right?
First of all, any podcast who starts a podcast is like, how do I monetize it?
How do I monetize it?
So is it advertising?
Is it sponsorship?
Well, sponsorship is really hard to get because economic markets changed.
(03:02):
Advertising, unless you're getting 10,000 downloads, so your $25 CPM rates aren't really
going to kick in.
So, you know, yes, Joe Rogan's are going to be fine and your top 10% but at the bottom
end of that, the long tail, you know, most where most podcasts are, we're not going to
be getting 10,000.
We might get a thousand, which is brilliant.
We might get 5,000, which is utterly amazing.
(03:24):
But in terms of advertising, it won't really sustain the podcast.
So when we started PodCans and Adam Curry, inventor of podcasting, is the driver behind
this.
He created a model called value for value.
And the idea was, could we create a way to monetize podcasters where the podcast creator
(03:48):
sets a value and the listener either agrees with the value or doesn't.
Now again, let me take a slight tangent.
I'm going to take two tangents.
Sorry, Ashley.
First tangent is if you go into a store in London, I assume this works around the world,
but if you go to a store in London and you go to buy a jumper, the jumper is actually
(04:10):
an offer price.
It's not a fixed price.
So you can go and take that off the rail, go up to the counter and say, you've said
this is going to be $30.
I'm going to give you $20.
And that is legal.
That's value for value.
They set a value.
I get a value that I agree to and they could accept my value.
So we've done that in podcasting.
(04:31):
We've created a model digitally where the creator sets their price and me as the listener
sets my price of what I will agree to pay.
So that's the first step.
Now because that couldn't work with PayPal or Stripe or any of the other payment modes
because they take 3%, 4% of the payment as a gateway provider.
And also they don't do micro payments.
(04:53):
If I just wanted to pay 50 cents or 75 cents, couldn't do it.
So this is where micro payments, the Satoshis comes in.
So to step back about 15 minutes of this conversation, PodFounds is a listening app that basically
one of four things that it does differently is it is a platform where users can pay their
(05:18):
favorite content creators and sustain them in micro payments.
So it sounds like it's similar to the Fountain app.
Is that correct?
Yeah, me and Oscar are mates.
He's a fellow Brit, lovely guy.
Oscar and I have got very similar thinking.
So probably if I went and said, look, there are five pillars to both of our products.
(05:42):
I won't speak for Oscar, I'll just speak for myself, but discovery, interactivity, monetization,
community and basically gamification.
So we both are doing those.
So in terms of discovery, we support this new podcast index 2.0 extension to RSS.
(06:02):
This is just a set of new features.
So we've created both of us and our tool for PodFounds, a search engine where you can type
in the name of the podcast, which is what most podcasts or apps will do, Apple or Spotify.
But now you can also search for person, location, country, keyword, category, right?
So a clever way to discover podcasts.
(06:23):
Step one, interactivity is the ability to, Hey, have you ever wanted to go to the podcast
you're listening to?
You know, actually I disagree with what you're saying there or I love what you just said
at that moment, right?
And leave a comment.
Now that's common on YouTube, but you try that on Apple and Spotify, it doesn't really
work.
So in the podcasting 2.0 namespace, we've created these things.
(06:46):
They're called boosts, they're comments with a micro payment.
That's what a boost is.
So I might say, Ashley, I loved what you said at minute 44.
And I'll go, you know what?
I'm going to reward you for what you said.
I'm going to give you a hundred sats now.
A hundred sats is 0.0001 cents.
It's nothing.
It's micro of micro.
And that's the idea behind micro payments.
(07:07):
Now you think about it 20 years ago, right?
I'm going to stick you back.
Sorry.
I'm, this is all over the place, but there is a reason, right?
So I was a Netscape product marketing manager for the original browser.
And one of the things that Mark Andreessen, my boss, uh, is always wanted to do or did
want to do was create a micro payment system.
(07:28):
He couldn't do it.
Um, and the result of that was that in order for social media blogging or any other digital
content, we got hearts and likes and all those sorts of things as sentiment analysis.
Hey, I really loved your blog post heart.
I really thought that post you wrote meeting was great clap, right?
Or tweet, you know, heart.
(07:49):
All of that was a sentiment, but there was no money.
So you couldn't, you could write all your life, film all you like, but, and take a million
hearts to the bank manager and the bank manager goes, so what actually that makes no sense.
I can't pay you.
Right.
So then we had advertising as a way of monetizing and look, no one wants advertising.
Right.
We really don't want it.
(08:10):
We do it as a dirty thing.
We do because it has to pay for what we want to really do, which is our podcast.
Um, so we accept advertising and often advertising is intrusive or it's non related.
So it's not contexted to the podcast content.
So advertising is not a great model either, but that's what we had before micro payments.
(08:33):
So discovery interactivity with boosts monetization.
We've talked about gamification is another thing that's coming to podcasting is the idea
of going, Hey Ashley, are you the number one fan of X podcast?
How do we know?
Well, Sam might be the number one fan.
Well, you were the first to discover it.
(08:53):
You played it longer than Sam.
You shared it with more friends.
You left three comments.
You left two boosts.
You liked it, blah, blah, blah.
So you've earned points for all of those activities and that shows you are higher ranked than
I am.
Suddenly you can create badges like discovery badges or Ashley is the super fan, whatever.
(09:14):
And then of course rewards come to super fans and the way the rewards come are in pod fans
for certain me.
If you're the super fan of a podcast, you get a split payment of the money that the
podcast is getting.
So the podcast might get a thousand sats and you're the super fan.
You get 1% of those sats.
(09:36):
So your activity, your time, yet has value.
So discovery, interactivity, gamification, monetization and community and the community
part last part is we've built a complete social network inside a pod fan so you can follow
friends.
You can create playlists.
You can share playlists.
You can communicate.
(09:57):
We've got this feature called co-listening, which is really, really cool.
So let's say you and I were listening to another podcast.
I go onto your profile and I go, wonder what Ashley is listening to right now?
And it says Ashley's listening to this podcast.
I click a button next to it and I jump in exactly at the same moment and time that you're
(10:17):
listening and you see my face appear in your profile.
You now know that I'm listening with you.
So they might make a comment, Hey Sam, what did you think of that?
And we can have a conversation about the podcast as we're listening together without having
it to be live and all that.
There's lots and lots of cool tools that are coming to podcasting to make it much more
(10:38):
I guess, interactive, rewarding and yeah, those sorts of things.
I think that's really cool.
Everything that you said, because I mean, you're basically not just monetizing engagement,
but encouraging people to actually connect over their favorite podcasts.
Yes.
(10:59):
I mean, it's called Podfans for a reason.
It was based on Kevin Kelly's seminal blog called 1000 True Fans.
I don't know if you've ever read it.
And I highly recommend everyone who's watching or listening to this to do so, because what
Kevin Kelly wrote was instead of chasing a million likes or a million people, just focus
(11:23):
on your community, find your 100 or 1000 True Fans, get them to pay you something for the
content you create.
And therefore you will have a sustainable podcast or a sustainable business.
So imagine if you had a podcast where each one of your fans paid you 10 pounds a month
and you had a thousand fans over the year, that's a hundred thousand dollar business.
(11:46):
Boom.
That's great.
That's brilliant.
So that's the basis of what Fountain, what Podverse, what Podfriend, what Podfans are
doing.
What the podcasting 2.0 apps are doing is we're trying to make it so that people reward
content creators with real money and not just likes and hearts.
(12:10):
And therefore they have a sustainable podcast.
Yeah.
I heard about the book that you referenced by way of Pat Flynn's Superfans.
Yes.
That's kind of where I first was introduced to the idea of, okay, if you get $10 a month
and you have a, from 1000 fans, you have a six figure business.
And I think it's fascinating because yes, we all want to monetize our efforts and things
(12:33):
like that, especially since podcasting is a lot of work.
But at the same time, we're all craving that community.
And it sounds like what you're building is a way to have the community built around something
that we're already passionate about, which is our podcast.
Yes.
And I think again, going back to that interactivity, having that feedback loop for your fans, being
(12:54):
able to message them.
So it's not a one way communication.
So, Hey, Oh, Ashley's just sent me a boost.
Great.
Well, what about me sending something back to Ashley?
Right.
How do we, you know, that that's what we're craving because as you said, podcasting is
a very lonely sometimes, especially if you're a solo podcaster.
I used to have a podcast called Sam Talks Technology where I interviewed industry leaders,
(13:19):
but that was a solo podcast.
And sometimes that is a really lonely place to do it.
With James and I bouncing off each other, it makes it a lot easier to do.
Yeah.
It's a lot less of a grind that way too.
Yeah, exactly.
But, but being able to communicate with your community, the people who are your true fans,
(13:39):
that also is a real bonus.
Absolutely.
And one of the things that you mentioned, the co-listening, I like the idea of that
because it kind of reminds me of the Facebook watch parties where you could like interact
and watch things with your fellow, you know, Facebookers.
But the idea of doing it in a space that's not connected to social media, it sounds really
(14:01):
appealing because, you know, right now, one of the big things that's happening with all
aspects of social media is we're starting to all feel like, like you mentioned, you
know, advertising is very disruptive.
It's feeling like everything's intruding on what we're trying to get, the messages we're
trying to learn.
And so if we're not in a space where while we're hearing our favorite podcast or talk,
now we're getting an ad for, you know, whatever it is they mentioned or whatever it is we
(14:24):
liked, I think that's kind of neat that we're, we're kind of almost bringing it back to
the pay to, to, to see your favorite people, but also you could just show up and hang out.
And that just sounds really exciting.
Yeah.
You know, the one thing I'd say is look, we pay for music.
Look, I'm old enough to remember Naps, right?
(14:45):
Peer to Peer music, where we, where we shared music and tried to bootleg music because we
couldn't afford to buy it, right?
It was pre Spotify and, and that whole model was driven by people wanting to have music
and willing to pay a little bit to get it.
And when Spotify came along and said, look, just pay 9.99, you can have everything, right?
(15:08):
You know, it's like the Chinese buffet pay, you know, 9.99 eat all you like, all listen
to what you want.
We all went great.
And that was job done.
And we didn't bootleg music the same way with audio books.
We're now used to doing it.
We all have a Netflix account, a Disney account, an Apple account, a prime account.
I mean, we, we subscription to death, right?
And that whole thing now is going full circle to the next stage where people are saying,
(15:34):
look, I just want to pay per minute for content I consume.
So I don't want to pay for the whole of the track music track.
I don't want to pay the whole of the video.
I don't want to pay for the whole of a podcast.
I want to pay for the bit that I consume.
So in podcasting, for example, you might look at chapters.
You might scan down the chapter and go, Oh, there's a chapter about pod fans.
Oh, I want to listen to that.
(15:55):
Then no, if I want to listen to the rest of this, you just listen to that one segment
and you only pay for it as opposed to pay in advance for the whole podcast or whatever.
So yeah, I think we're moving to a new model.
It's going to take time for people to grasp it, but value for value per minute payment
using digital micro payments is the next wave of the web.
(16:18):
Yeah, it definitely sounds like it.
And it sounds like it's, um, even though people might at first blush, be like nervous about
it, like I feel like it's giving back control to both the podcaster and the listener because
now instead of, like you said, an ad that I have no choice but to listen to, or maybe
skip ahead 30 seconds.
(16:39):
Instead, I can just listen to what I came here for and enjoy the message.
And if I do like it, then maybe tip my host.
Yeah.
And I think, I think what you've got to also remember is, um, you know, um, with, with
podcasting again, you know, we get dynamic ad insertion and most people, this is the
(16:59):
dirty secret of podcasting that people don't like to talk about, but it's true.
You know, I'll say it.
I skipped forward all the ads.
I don't listen to them.
I stopped before the end because I don't want to hear the end.
I really don't listen to the preamble if they're boring, you know, telling, telling me about
what they did with their cat this week.
I don't really care.
(17:20):
I only want to listen to the meat of the podcast that I will listen to.
And that's all that I should do.
Yeah, paying for podcasts is very wrong right now it feels right because we get it for free,
right?
We get it.
Um, but if you don't pay for your favorite creators and they're not getting the money
from advertising and let's be honest, subscription doesn't work.
(17:42):
Apple pushing subscriptions really hard and they don't really work properly.
If I said to you, how many subscription podcasts do you have?
How many have you got?
I had one for a minute.
I had one for about three months and then I canceled it.
You don't feel like you want to do that because you go, well, why am I paying for this Athena?
(18:02):
But if you could then say, look, I'm going to pay you.
So an hour's podcast might cost you 6,000 sats, right?
If you were paying a hundred sats per minute, that 6,000 sats is probably less than 50 cents.
I mean, if you can't pay your favorite podcast of 50 cents to support them, keep them going,
then you probably will find they'll end up doing what we call pod fade and just disappearing
(18:27):
because they'll get bored and not making money.
And then you'll go off.
I really like that podcast.
Why did they go?
Well, because no one paid them.
Yeah.
And that's one of the most depressing things in the world is pod fading.
Yeah.
And so look, I'm not saying that we're going to have this new world of digital wallets
and all the micro payments.
(18:49):
And I know rss.com support digital wallets and all big, I'm just as we do it pop that,
but people have to get used to this vocab ring.
And one quick story for there for Ashley.
As I said, I was at Netscape when the browser was first in, in brought to mass market, right?
And I remember going to talk to people.
(19:09):
It's called a browser Ashley.
It's on TCP IP.
That starts with HTTP.
Take with me Ashley colon forward slash forward slash www dot something something.com.
No, there's no search engine yet, but you'll be fine.
Now, if you imagine those days of trying to explain what a browser was and what the web
was and how to find your way around it, it was sounded like me talking Swahili.
(19:34):
We're in exactly that same cycle.
I tell you, it's a micro payment.
I tell you it's called Satoshi's.
I tell you there's a digital wallet and you can pay per minute.
And you're looking at me, oh, I don't know what's the deal is ever going to catch on,
but it will.
And that's my belief.
So yes, that's what we built pod fans around.
(19:57):
I hope it does.
But what you were describing kind of reminded me, I don't know if you've seen the viral
clip of newscasters that were trying to explain what email was, you know, back when it was
first becoming a thing and it was very amusing off to send you that video.
Oh, please do because before Netscape, I was a systems engineer at Microsoft and I was
there when we first used to demo Windows for work groups, it was called.
(20:21):
And it was a Ethernet connected local and area network mail system that Microsoft had
for exchange.
And I just remember this room of senior execs looking at me and I'd get an Excel spreadsheet
and I'd create a table and I create a chart in Excel, then I'd do drag and drop into Word
(20:43):
and they want to cut and paste into one.
And then I go, it's dynamic.
And then I go back to the Excel spreadsheet and I change a number and the chart would
change in Word.
It was amazing.
And then I go, don't you worry.
Now I'm going to me email it to my colleagues.
I mean, you forget sometimes how crazy.
(21:04):
So many 20 years ago that we, we, we had that world where, you know, just taking an image
or creating a chart and putting it into a document and emailing it to a group of people
was the bleeding edge of computing.
Yeah.
I can't even imagine where we're going to be in the next 20, 30 years.
I mean, just as far as we've come just in the last 30.
(21:27):
I mean, I remember back in, in high school, first finding out about dial up, like, can
you get off the phone so I can get on the internet?
Like that's just so wild that nowadays we don't even think about it.
So I'm sure that, you know, if, if this does continue to be a thing, which it sounds like
it will be, people are going to start to get used to it and it'll just become second nature
(21:49):
just like everything else that we're currently enjoying.
Exactly.
I mean, I mean, if I wanted to send you an email, I just say, Ashley, what's your email
address?
And you go, oh, it's this, this and this.
Right.
So you think, don't think twice about it.
Right.
And then I don't think twice.
I go to my email client, I type in that, whatever you gave me address, type my words and I click
(22:09):
send and it magically appears in your inbox.
Now nobody needs to know that I went through an IMAP4 or a POP3 server or blah, blah, blah
and how it got to you.
Right.
No one cares.
Well, your, your wallet address is like your email address.
Mine is sam at getalby.com.
But I could change that to be samsethi at me.com, which is my email address.
(22:32):
Right.
And then instead of an email client that you would go to, you'd go to your digital wallet
on your laptop and you go, right, I want to send Ashley 10,000 sat.
Right.
Ashley, what was your wallet address?
And you go, it's Ashley at getalby.com.
Great.
Thanks Ashley.
I just typed that in 10,000 sat, click send and boom, instantly that would appear in your
(22:53):
wallet, peer to peer, not through a bank, not through a third party gateway directly
to your wallet.
And once people get that and understand how that works, that is the magic that will happen.
And then that will slowly evolve into, well, what else can I do with my magic wallet now?
Well, I can listen to content.
I can give sentiment feedback.
(23:14):
I can do all sorts of things with it.
Yeah.
It's going to take time for it to catch on, but when it does, it'll go fast.
Yeah.
At the same time though, it doesn't sound like we're taking away the idea of a free podcast
listen experience.
Okay.
It sounds like instead we're just enhancing the ability to give back to the people you're
listening to.
(23:35):
Is that right?
Correct.
So value for value, as I said, so I, as a podcast creator say, I want you, I want you
actually to pay me a hundred sat per minute.
And you go, nah, you know what?
Zero.
I'm paying you nothing.
I'm just taking this as normal for free.
Right.
And you can do that.
You're just setting your value of zero on the content creator.
(23:56):
Now that's, that's what you can do and that's fine.
And probably if it's a brand new podcast, you've never heard, you probably will set
it to zero.
You'll probably say, I'll give it a little bit of a listen.
They're not bad actually.
I quite like this one.
Then you might say the next time an episode drops, I'll give them 10 sats per minute,
not a hundred that they want.
And maybe the next time it's 50 sats.
And eventually you might go, you know what?
(24:17):
I'll give them what they say.
It's a really cool podcast.
So it takes time.
It takes trust, but yeah, you can set the value to zero.
You don't have to pay.
Cool.
That's good to know.
Cause that's obviously going to be the one thing that's going to scare people is, oh,
well, everything's paywalled now.
I'm just going to go listen to the guy that's free.
(24:38):
Yeah, exactly.
No, no, you don't have to pay.
It's a, it's an opt in model rather than an opt out model.
I love that.
But again, it makes it feel like you're having more control over the transactional experience.
So I like that a lot.
So when, when do you anticipate that pod fans is going to roll out?
Like, is it in alpha?
(24:59):
Is it going to be in beta soon?
Like what's going on with that?
It's in alpha right now.
We've got a wait list.
It's a very long wait list at the moment because we are in bug crushing moments.
So what we're doing right now is bringing on three or four people a week, getting them
to play with it, say all common known, you know, really hammer this, see what it does.
(25:20):
And so far so good.
We've found a couple of minor UI, more UI features that people go, didn't expect that
button to do that.
Or I thought that would do X or Y rather than that didn't work.
And you know, is a proper bug.
So we're making just some minor, minor changes.
I mean, what, what happened to the pod fans is when you come on, you come on.
(25:45):
Now you might have an RSS.com wallet from Alby.
You might not.
So you come on, you put your name in, you've got an invite code at the moment, but we'll
remove that eventually when we're in the beta.
So you put your name in, you say what currency you want your default currency to be.
So dollars in your case, Ashley.
(26:06):
And then you say connect my wallet or give me a wallet.
Right.
Well, either you either have a wallet and you want to use your current wallet or you
say, I don't have a wallet.
Give me a new wallet.
Right.
And it will create a wallet for you in our onboarding process.
I talked about gamification.
So what we've done is we've gamified the onboarding.
(26:27):
So you put in your basic details, you connect your wallet and suddenly we've given you 200
stats.
Well, what was that for?
Well, for joining and for connecting your wallet.
The next thing is you can connect your Twitter account, your social account.
Great.
We'll give me another hundred sats.
Oh, this is nice.
I'm earning some money from just my activity.
(26:48):
Now each of your Twitter followers, people that you follow, um, might have a number against
it.
I need the number of people they follow.
We will, if you invite any of your Twitter friends, we will give you the exact number
of their followers.
So if you've got a friend, he's got 300 followers and you invite them and they join, we'll give
you 300 sats.
(27:08):
So it was a bit of fun.
Again, just all your friends have values so that you can gamify bringing your friends
up as well.
And then when you go and start to play your first podcast, then, you know, the money then
goes flows the other way.
You then pay if you want to, or you set the value to zero.
Then you can boost, you can clip things, you can share back.
(27:29):
And eventually you understand that the model is gamified.
So sometimes we're paying you because of activity and sometimes you're paying a creator because
that's what you want to do.
If you create a playlist, for example, in pod fans and someone plays your playlist,
you get paid because you were a creator of that playlist.
(27:49):
So suddenly your time and your attention for everything you do on pod fans has value and
that's why we gamify the system.
So yeah, so you get given a wallet, you get given 10,000 sats by the time you finished
your onboarding and you've got some funny money in a wallet you can start to play with
see how this system works.
It's pretty safe.
(28:09):
That's good.
That's actually what I was going to ask you is how's the security and safety of it?
Yeah.
I mean, first and foremost, you're not having to get a credit card out.
You're not having to make any personal purchase.
So we're giving you satoshis as part of your onboarding gamification profile.
(28:32):
So great.
So if you get 10,000 sats, you listen to three or four podcasts and you go, nah, this is
not for me.
I don't like it.
You've lost nothing.
We've lost nothing.
Safety job done.
If you then decide I really like it, yeah, you have to then top up your wallet.
And the only way to top up your wallet is two ways.
One is to be more active in the podcast platform.
(28:54):
So earn money from your activity, sharing, commenting, clipping, or you can go to a third
party bank called Moonpay.
It's an accredited bank.
It's a partner of Alby's where you can put in your Apple pay or your Google pay or your
credit card and you can put in 10 pounds or $10, you know, in 10, $10 will give you probably
(29:19):
300,000 sats, right?
There's quite a lot of money suddenly that you can pay with.
And so the idea eventually is that you will trust the system that you're helping support
your favorite podcasters.
You're earning some money as well.
It's a bit of fun while you're doing podcasting.
And at the same time, when you do need to top up your wallet, it's through a secure
(29:42):
bank is not through me or some third party.
And so that's quite nice.
It reminds me of the early days of Amazon.
When Amazon first came out and people go onto amazon.com, they put things in their basket
and then they wouldn't put their credit card.
So then they'd rig up a call center.
Hi, yeah, it's Sam.
(30:04):
Yeah, I've got basket.
Yeah, it's full.
Yeah.
50, 50 quid.
Right.
Okay.
Here's my credit card number.
And you'd read it out to them because you didn't trust them.
Right.
And then eventually you go actually prime and it was called one click and you went,
okay, I'm going to put my credit card in one click.
Oh, that worked.
I've done this three times now.
(30:24):
They've not taken any other money out from my credit card.
Feels good.
Okay.
I will now trust them.
And now no one thinks of it.
You know, it's just put your credit card into into Amazon.
You get your prime account and guess what?
Click a button.
Next day, the thing arrives in that same way.
We will get people to realize your wallet is very secure and very safe.
(30:46):
It's your wallet and you can top it up either through activity or through credit card payment.
That's awesome.
To know that it's secure is probably going to help people feel a lot better about it.
So with the pod fans, do you anticipate that this will be a really good way for people
to promote their show to kind of increase the number of downloads that they're getting
(31:08):
or do downloads even matter anymore at this point?
Downloads as a metric doesn't matter.
We've created a brand new set of metrics with a company called Bumper.
Bumper is Jonas Voest and a couple of the other guys who've come out of Pacific content.
So a really good analytics company in Canada.
(31:29):
And what we do is because we have a pay per minute model and even if you're not paying,
we're tracking you per minute.
So we know how long you've listened to a podcast.
Let's say there's a 30 minute podcast and we know you've listened to 20 minutes.
So we will show you 20 minutes, a percent of that as a percentage completed and the
(31:51):
amount of sats you've paid if you have paid any.
So those three metrics together, which are, you know, time, percentage completed and the
value paid are much, much, much more powerful than, Oh, I just downloaded it.
Because you know what, if you've got Apple and it's set to auto download, you've never
(32:12):
heard of it.
But the podcaster runs to the advertisers, Oh, 10,000 downloads.
How many people listen to it?
Nobody.
I don't know.
I have no idea.
And then, you know, that ad, and I was telling you the dirty secret of podcasts, you know,
that ad that's third into your podcast and no one listened to it.
Because guess what?
They downloaded and listened to 10 minutes, but that ad was a 25 minutes.
(32:34):
Well now, so downloads are a rubbish, rubbish metric.
What time listened, percent completed and value paid gives you a much stronger.
So yes, I listened to 60 minutes of your podcast.
Great.
I know how far you got and 60 minutes is 80% of your podcast.
(32:56):
Great.
So 80% of my podcast you listen to and you paid me 4,000 sats.
Amazing.
That's real value.
And that's how the metrics, the next generation of metrics are coming along.
So yeah, that's what we do.
Yeah, it definitely sounds like doing that, like looking at those metrics shows, yeah,
okay, I may not have a lot of downloads, but I have engaged loyal fans that really care
(33:21):
about what I say.
And you know how much they paid or how long they listened or how much they completed.
Those are the much more valuable.
And as an advertiser, that third ad, they can go, hey, Ashley, you know that ad that
was in your podcast that we dynamically inserted?
Did anyone listen to it?
Oh yeah.
You know what, Sam?
There you go.
80% of my customer base listened to over 90% of my podcast.
(33:45):
They heard your ad, you know, maybe they've skipped it.
Shh, don't tell them that.
Other than that, other than that, at least they got past your ad and they might have
heard it.
So that's the best you can offer.
I know you said you're in alpha now, but when did you say about that beta is going to be
rolling out?
Looking at probably the end of July.
(34:09):
So the beta is really us taking the desktop app, which is what works now and making that
desktop app a progressive web app.
So making it work on your mobile and on your iPad.
And so it's not hard.
(34:29):
What we've done is we've gone for the model of complete all the features, create all the
functions, make sure it works, remove all the bugs as best we can, never remove all
of them.
And once that's all tested and functioning and we think we're good to go, then we then
start to work on how do we shrink it down when somebody's got it on a different screen.
(34:50):
And so that's going to take us three, four weeks of time of development to do that.
So that's when the beta will open.
And so we'll go alpha now, come to podfans.fm, beta probably July is what it's going to take
us to do.
And then, yeah, hopefully fingers crossed, we will have people then go, yeah, I love
(35:10):
it or I can use it on my mobile or I can use it on my desktop, same app.
So if someone wanted to get an invite now, what would they need to do?
Just come to podfans.fm and just click the join the wait list.
And yeah, we're opening the doors slowly to various people.
Okay.
Well, it sounds like it's rocking and rolling.
(35:34):
Like we're on the cusp of this thing and we're going to see some really big things happen
very, very soon.
Well, as we wrap up here, I have to bring up one thing that I always do.
And I have to ask you the one question I ask everyone.
What's one question I didn't ask you in this interview that you really wish I had?
Oh, good question, Ashley.
I like that.
What was the one thing I didn't reveal?
(35:58):
What or how will you overcome Apple and Spotify's market dominance?
Okay, then that, let's hear the answer if you've got one.
Yeah.
So with Spotify, Spotify's in big trouble.
Not because of podfans, they are in big trouble period as a business because the exclusives
(36:18):
haven't worked.
They have a, what we call a fixed price model.
So you pay 9.99, you pay 14.99.
That is what you pay, right?
Family or individual.
And the problem you've got is that the record companies are wanting more of profit.
So they're squeezing Spotify from the top.
(36:42):
Spotify can't increase the price significantly at the bottom because if you and I had to
pay 29.99 for Spotify, we just jumped to Amazon or Apple, right?
Because guess what?
They won't increase it.
The problem Spotify has got is Amazon's got Amazon, the food stores and the home delivery
(37:03):
and all the things we said.
Plus they've got films, plus they've got books, plus they've got all these other things.
And they've got all these other revenue streams, Spotify's pretty much core business is music
and books and podcasts.
So they can't afford to subsidize that business with another business.
Whereas the other two can keep the price low and even run them as loss leaders.
(37:28):
So Spotify's got a really hard problem.
As I said, podfans is based on variable prices.
You only pay for what you consume because you only pay for what you consume.
If you're a low consumption person, then you'll only pay a little bit.
And if you're a high consumption person, you pay more, right?
That's great.
Whereas with Spotify, they can't change that.
So that's their big Achilles heel.
And I think you'll begin to see that will cause them.
(37:51):
They're still not profitable.
They've IPO'd.
They're still losing money.
They're bleeding staff.
They got rid of 200 people last week, had a podcasting.
They are just in a bad place, right?
They won't say it, but that's where they are.
By the way, audio books aren't paying them either because they have to do a jump out.
So they really are on a squeeze.
(38:12):
Apple is slightly different.
I mean, Apple could kill this whole industry tomorrow if they made Apple pay a micro payment
system and said, right, you know what?
We're just going to allow you to pay with Apple pay and no fees.
Wow.
We're all dead.
So Apple is still very scary in this business.
So I think Spotify is the target market I want to try and aim for.
(38:33):
I think we've got features or the podcast index 2.0 name feature like person, tags,
people, all the discovery stuff we talked about earlier, its location.
We've got interactivity.
So we've got lots and lots of things that the industry and pod fans do that Spotify
don't do.
(38:53):
So I think that's the target we would go for.
And you might say to me, have you been here before with this?
Yes.
We were at Netscape when we took on Microsoft and Microsoft lost.
I've been in this fight before.
It was called the browser war and I was front and center.
This is the podcast war and I'm front and center for this one as well.
(39:13):
Well, I guess we need to all get our armor on for this war.
Indeed.
Bring it on Daniel.
I'm ready.
Well, that's fantastic.
And I can't wait to, I mean, personally, I'm going to definitely be going to pod stands
and I'd like to play with an account myself just to see what there is to see.
Yep.
(39:34):
Well, you are going to be invited in.
No problem at all after this.
Fantastic.
That's good to hear.
Well, thank you so much for being here and telling us all about what we can expect from
pod fans.
And I guess it sounds like the future of podcasting.
I'd like to think so.
I would too.
Absolutely.
Well, is there anything else you wanted to share before we wrap up?
(39:57):
No, I think, I think the one thing people have got to look at is again, complexity is
failed simplicity.
That's one of my favorite sayings and this world of micro payments and wallets has been
very complex to understand.
And it's the job of people like me and Oscar at fountain and Mitch at pod first and multi
the pod friend to make it easier so that the end user, the listener doesn't have to think
(40:24):
twice about how to do this stuff.
It's second nature.
So I think give it another six months.
I think it will be second nature.
It will be common fair for people to talk about a wallet.
Do you know there's 50 million podcasts wallets out there already today?
No, I didn't.
And somebody gave me a really interesting stat.
(40:46):
Back in 1996, there were roughly 50 million users on the internet using a browser.
Just how many there were then if you say the wallet and the browser are similar sorts of,
you know, learning technology to get on, then we are pre web one dot.
We are still not in the hype cycle of growth.
(41:09):
So I think there's a long way to go in this, this platform new world and Value for Value.
But once it does take off, boy, oh boy, will it be big.
Well, that it definitely sounds like if anyone doesn't have a podcast now, they've needed
to get on the train.
Indeed.
I love it.
Well, thank you again for being here.
Pleasure Ashley.
Thank you for inviting me.
(41:39):
Well my fellow podcasters, we hope you enjoyed the insights, tips and ideas shared in this
episode.
To learn more about launching and growing your own show, head over to rss.com backslash
blog.
And if you're ready to launch a podcast of your own, you can get started for free with
your first episode on us.
Thanks for tuning in.
Hey everyone, Ashley here with RSS.com.
(00:18):
In this episode, we're chatting with Sam Sefi of Podfans.
We're chatting all about the platform and what it can do for both podcasters and listeners
alike.
Enjoy the show.
All right.
Well, I'm just really, really stoked that you could be here and I can't wait to hear
(00:40):
everything that you're about to say because I know you're an OG in the podcasting world.
So Sam, welcome to the show.
Thank you very much.
Can you do us a favor and tell us a little bit about what it is that you do?
Yeah, I co-host a podcast with the original OG, James Cridland, who is on Podnews.
He does Podnews daily and we do Podnews weekly together and we do some Podnews live events
(01:05):
and various other things we do together.
And I'm also the CEO of a new podcast platform called Podfans that's launched very shortly.
Okay.
That's exactly what I wanted to bring you on here for.
What is Podfans?
Okay, so Podfans is a brand new listening app.
I've been working with my developers.
(01:26):
There's only two of us building it.
We've been working on it for a year, day in, day out, even on Christmas day we worked.
And fundamentally we've built a platform that we think is in design terms, you know, we've
gone for the Apple-esque end of the design cycle.
We're not, you know, we're not Apple, but we've gone for a high end quality design.
(01:50):
We've built it as a, what we call a PWA, a progressive web app.
So it's not going to be a native iOS or Android app.
It's basically, it works on the desktop, on your iPad, on your mobile phone, and it just
detects the size of the product and then shrinks down to it.
But the goal of what we've done is to create what's unique about it is it uses a monetization
(02:17):
thing called Sats.
Now Sats are funny tokens, money, if you want to call it.
They're based on Bitcoin.
Now before everyone goes to sleep, Bitcoin, Bitcoin is a stable currency and a micro payment
of the Bitcoin is called a Sat or a Satoshi after the inventor.
(02:38):
Now let me step back.
So when we look at podcasting today, podcasting has got four or five challenges, right?
First of all, any podcast who starts a podcast is like, how do I monetize it?
How do I monetize it?
So is it advertising?
Is it sponsorship?
Well, sponsorship is really hard to get because economic markets changed.
(03:02):
Advertising, unless you're getting 10,000 downloads, so your $25 CPM rates aren't really
going to kick in.
So, you know, yes, Joe Rogan's are going to be fine and your top 10% but at the bottom
end of that, the long tail, you know, most where most podcasts are, we're not going to
be getting 10,000.
We might get a thousand, which is brilliant.
We might get 5,000, which is utterly amazing.
(03:24):
But in terms of advertising, it won't really sustain the podcast.
So when we started PodCans and Adam Curry, inventor of podcasting, is the driver behind
this.
He created a model called value for value.
And the idea was, could we create a way to monetize podcasters where the podcast creator
(03:48):
sets a value and the listener either agrees with the value or doesn't.
Now again, let me take a slight tangent.
I'm going to take two tangents.
Sorry, Ashley.
First tangent is if you go into a store in London, I assume this works around the world,
but if you go to a store in London and you go to buy a jumper, the jumper is actually
(04:10):
an offer price.
It's not a fixed price.
So you can go and take that off the rail, go up to the counter and say, you've said
this is going to be $30.
I'm going to give you $20.
And that is legal.
That's value for value.
They set a value.
I get a value that I agree to and they could accept my value.
So we've done that in podcasting.
(04:31):
We've created a model digitally where the creator sets their price and me as the listener
sets my price of what I will agree to pay.
So that's the first step.
Now because that couldn't work with PayPal or Stripe or any of the other payment modes
because they take 3%, 4% of the payment as a gateway provider.
And also they don't do micro payments.
(04:53):
If I just wanted to pay 50 cents or 75 cents, couldn't do it.
So this is where micro payments, the Satoshis comes in.
So to step back about 15 minutes of this conversation, PodFounds is a listening app that basically
one of four things that it does differently is it is a platform where users can pay their
(05:18):
favorite content creators and sustain them in micro payments.
So it sounds like it's similar to the Fountain app.
Is that correct?
Yeah, me and Oscar are mates.
He's a fellow Brit, lovely guy.
Oscar and I have got very similar thinking.
So probably if I went and said, look, there are five pillars to both of our products.
(05:42):
I won't speak for Oscar, I'll just speak for myself, but discovery, interactivity, monetization,
community and basically gamification.
So we both are doing those.
So in terms of discovery, we support this new podcast index 2.0 extension to RSS.
(06:02):
This is just a set of new features.
So we've created both of us and our tool for PodFounds, a search engine where you can type
in the name of the podcast, which is what most podcasts or apps will do, Apple or Spotify.
But now you can also search for person, location, country, keyword, category, right?
So a clever way to discover podcasts.
(06:23):
Step one, interactivity is the ability to, Hey, have you ever wanted to go to the podcast
you're listening to?
You know, actually I disagree with what you're saying there or I love what you just said
at that moment, right?
And leave a comment.
Now that's common on YouTube, but you try that on Apple and Spotify, it doesn't really
work.
So in the podcasting 2.0 namespace, we've created these things.
(06:46):
They're called boosts, they're comments with a micro payment.
That's what a boost is.
So I might say, Ashley, I loved what you said at minute 44.
And I'll go, you know what?
I'm going to reward you for what you said.
I'm going to give you a hundred sats now.
A hundred sats is 0.0001 cents.
It's nothing.
It's micro of micro.
And that's the idea behind micro payments.
(07:07):
Now you think about it 20 years ago, right?
I'm going to stick you back.
Sorry.
I'm, this is all over the place, but there is a reason, right?
So I was a Netscape product marketing manager for the original browser.
And one of the things that Mark Andreessen, my boss, uh, is always wanted to do or did
want to do was create a micro payment system.
(07:28):
He couldn't do it.
Um, and the result of that was that in order for social media blogging or any other digital
content, we got hearts and likes and all those sorts of things as sentiment analysis.
Hey, I really loved your blog post heart.
I really thought that post you wrote meeting was great clap, right?
Or tweet, you know, heart.
(07:49):
All of that was a sentiment, but there was no money.
So you couldn't, you could write all your life, film all you like, but, and take a million
hearts to the bank manager and the bank manager goes, so what actually that makes no sense.
I can't pay you.
Right.
So then we had advertising as a way of monetizing and look, no one wants advertising.
Right.
We really don't want it.
(08:10):
We do it as a dirty thing.
We do because it has to pay for what we want to really do, which is our podcast.
Um, so we accept advertising and often advertising is intrusive or it's non related.
So it's not contexted to the podcast content.
So advertising is not a great model either, but that's what we had before micro payments.
(08:33):
So discovery interactivity with boosts monetization.
We've talked about gamification is another thing that's coming to podcasting is the idea
of going, Hey Ashley, are you the number one fan of X podcast?
How do we know?
Well, Sam might be the number one fan.
Well, you were the first to discover it.
(08:53):
You played it longer than Sam.
You shared it with more friends.
You left three comments.
You left two boosts.
You liked it, blah, blah, blah.
So you've earned points for all of those activities and that shows you are higher ranked than
I am.
Suddenly you can create badges like discovery badges or Ashley is the super fan, whatever.
(09:14):
And then of course rewards come to super fans and the way the rewards come are in pod fans
for certain me.
If you're the super fan of a podcast, you get a split payment of the money that the
podcast is getting.
So the podcast might get a thousand sats and you're the super fan.
You get 1% of those sats.
(09:36):
So your activity, your time, yet has value.
So discovery, interactivity, gamification, monetization and community and the community
part last part is we've built a complete social network inside a pod fan so you can follow
friends.
You can create playlists.
You can share playlists.
You can communicate.
(09:57):
We've got this feature called co-listening, which is really, really cool.
So let's say you and I were listening to another podcast.
I go onto your profile and I go, wonder what Ashley is listening to right now?
And it says Ashley's listening to this podcast.
I click a button next to it and I jump in exactly at the same moment and time that you're
(10:17):
listening and you see my face appear in your profile.
You now know that I'm listening with you.
So they might make a comment, Hey Sam, what did you think of that?
And we can have a conversation about the podcast as we're listening together without having
it to be live and all that.
There's lots and lots of cool tools that are coming to podcasting to make it much more
(10:38):
I guess, interactive, rewarding and yeah, those sorts of things.
I think that's really cool.
Everything that you said, because I mean, you're basically not just monetizing engagement,
but encouraging people to actually connect over their favorite podcasts.
Yes.
(10:59):
I mean, it's called Podfans for a reason.
It was based on Kevin Kelly's seminal blog called 1000 True Fans.
I don't know if you've ever read it.
And I highly recommend everyone who's watching or listening to this to do so, because what
Kevin Kelly wrote was instead of chasing a million likes or a million people, just focus
(11:23):
on your community, find your 100 or 1000 True Fans, get them to pay you something for the
content you create.
And therefore you will have a sustainable podcast or a sustainable business.
So imagine if you had a podcast where each one of your fans paid you 10 pounds a month
and you had a thousand fans over the year, that's a hundred thousand dollar business.
(11:46):
Boom.
That's great.
That's brilliant.
So that's the basis of what Fountain, what Podverse, what Podfriend, what Podfans are
doing.
What the podcasting 2.0 apps are doing is we're trying to make it so that people reward
content creators with real money and not just likes and hearts.
(12:10):
And therefore they have a sustainable podcast.
Yeah.
I heard about the book that you referenced by way of Pat Flynn's Superfans.
Yes.
That's kind of where I first was introduced to the idea of, okay, if you get $10 a month
and you have a, from 1000 fans, you have a six figure business.
And I think it's fascinating because yes, we all want to monetize our efforts and things
(12:33):
like that, especially since podcasting is a lot of work.
But at the same time, we're all craving that community.
And it sounds like what you're building is a way to have the community built around something
that we're already passionate about, which is our podcast.
Yes.
And I think again, going back to that interactivity, having that feedback loop for your fans, being
(12:54):
able to message them.
So it's not a one way communication.
So, Hey, Oh, Ashley's just sent me a boost.
Great.
Well, what about me sending something back to Ashley?
Right.
How do we, you know, that that's what we're craving because as you said, podcasting is
a very lonely sometimes, especially if you're a solo podcaster.
I used to have a podcast called Sam Talks Technology where I interviewed industry leaders,
(13:19):
but that was a solo podcast.
And sometimes that is a really lonely place to do it.
With James and I bouncing off each other, it makes it a lot easier to do.
Yeah.
It's a lot less of a grind that way too.
Yeah, exactly.
But, but being able to communicate with your community, the people who are your true fans,
(13:39):
that also is a real bonus.
Absolutely.
And one of the things that you mentioned, the co-listening, I like the idea of that
because it kind of reminds me of the Facebook watch parties where you could like interact
and watch things with your fellow, you know, Facebookers.
But the idea of doing it in a space that's not connected to social media, it sounds really
(14:01):
appealing because, you know, right now, one of the big things that's happening with all
aspects of social media is we're starting to all feel like, like you mentioned, you
know, advertising is very disruptive.
It's feeling like everything's intruding on what we're trying to get, the messages we're
trying to learn.
And so if we're not in a space where while we're hearing our favorite podcast or talk,
now we're getting an ad for, you know, whatever it is they mentioned or whatever it is we
(14:24):
liked, I think that's kind of neat that we're, we're kind of almost bringing it back to
the pay to, to, to see your favorite people, but also you could just show up and hang out.
And that just sounds really exciting.
Yeah.
You know, the one thing I'd say is look, we pay for music.
Look, I'm old enough to remember Naps, right?
(14:45):
Peer to Peer music, where we, where we shared music and tried to bootleg music because we
couldn't afford to buy it, right?
It was pre Spotify and, and that whole model was driven by people wanting to have music
and willing to pay a little bit to get it.
And when Spotify came along and said, look, just pay 9.99, you can have everything, right?
(15:08):
You know, it's like the Chinese buffet pay, you know, 9.99 eat all you like, all listen
to what you want.
We all went great.
And that was job done.
And we didn't bootleg music the same way with audio books.
We're now used to doing it.
We all have a Netflix account, a Disney account, an Apple account, a prime account.
I mean, we, we subscription to death, right?
And that whole thing now is going full circle to the next stage where people are saying,
(15:34):
look, I just want to pay per minute for content I consume.
So I don't want to pay for the whole of the track music track.
I don't want to pay the whole of the video.
I don't want to pay for the whole of a podcast.
I want to pay for the bit that I consume.
So in podcasting, for example, you might look at chapters.
You might scan down the chapter and go, Oh, there's a chapter about pod fans.
Oh, I want to listen to that.
(15:55):
Then no, if I want to listen to the rest of this, you just listen to that one segment
and you only pay for it as opposed to pay in advance for the whole podcast or whatever.
So yeah, I think we're moving to a new model.
It's going to take time for people to grasp it, but value for value per minute payment
using digital micro payments is the next wave of the web.
(16:18):
Yeah, it definitely sounds like it.
And it sounds like it's, um, even though people might at first blush, be like nervous about
it, like I feel like it's giving back control to both the podcaster and the listener because
now instead of, like you said, an ad that I have no choice but to listen to, or maybe
skip ahead 30 seconds.
(16:39):
Instead, I can just listen to what I came here for and enjoy the message.
And if I do like it, then maybe tip my host.
Yeah.
And I think, I think what you've got to also remember is, um, you know, um, with, with
podcasting again, you know, we get dynamic ad insertion and most people, this is the
(16:59):
dirty secret of podcasting that people don't like to talk about, but it's true.
You know, I'll say it.
I skipped forward all the ads.
I don't listen to them.
I stopped before the end because I don't want to hear the end.
I really don't listen to the preamble if they're boring, you know, telling, telling me about
what they did with their cat this week.
I don't really care.
(17:20):
I only want to listen to the meat of the podcast that I will listen to.
And that's all that I should do.
Yeah, paying for podcasts is very wrong right now it feels right because we get it for free,
right?
We get it.
Um, but if you don't pay for your favorite creators and they're not getting the money
from advertising and let's be honest, subscription doesn't work.
(17:42):
Apple pushing subscriptions really hard and they don't really work properly.
If I said to you, how many subscription podcasts do you have?
How many have you got?
I had one for a minute.
I had one for about three months and then I canceled it.
You don't feel like you want to do that because you go, well, why am I paying for this Athena?
(18:02):
But if you could then say, look, I'm going to pay you.
So an hour's podcast might cost you 6,000 sats, right?
If you were paying a hundred sats per minute, that 6,000 sats is probably less than 50 cents.
I mean, if you can't pay your favorite podcast of 50 cents to support them, keep them going,
then you probably will find they'll end up doing what we call pod fade and just disappearing
(18:27):
because they'll get bored and not making money.
And then you'll go off.
I really like that podcast.
Why did they go?
Well, because no one paid them.
Yeah.
And that's one of the most depressing things in the world is pod fading.
Yeah.
And so look, I'm not saying that we're going to have this new world of digital wallets
and all the micro payments.
(18:49):
And I know rss.com support digital wallets and all big, I'm just as we do it pop that,
but people have to get used to this vocab ring.
And one quick story for there for Ashley.
As I said, I was at Netscape when the browser was first in, in brought to mass market, right?
And I remember going to talk to people.
(19:09):
It's called a browser Ashley.
It's on TCP IP.
That starts with HTTP.
Take with me Ashley colon forward slash forward slash www dot something something.com.
No, there's no search engine yet, but you'll be fine.
Now, if you imagine those days of trying to explain what a browser was and what the web
was and how to find your way around it, it was sounded like me talking Swahili.
(19:34):
We're in exactly that same cycle.
I tell you, it's a micro payment.
I tell you it's called Satoshi's.
I tell you there's a digital wallet and you can pay per minute.
And you're looking at me, oh, I don't know what's the deal is ever going to catch on,
but it will.
And that's my belief.
So yes, that's what we built pod fans around.
(19:57):
I hope it does.
But what you were describing kind of reminded me, I don't know if you've seen the viral
clip of newscasters that were trying to explain what email was, you know, back when it was
first becoming a thing and it was very amusing off to send you that video.
Oh, please do because before Netscape, I was a systems engineer at Microsoft and I was
there when we first used to demo Windows for work groups, it was called.
(20:21):
And it was a Ethernet connected local and area network mail system that Microsoft had
for exchange.
And I just remember this room of senior execs looking at me and I'd get an Excel spreadsheet
and I'd create a table and I create a chart in Excel, then I'd do drag and drop into Word
(20:43):
and they want to cut and paste into one.
And then I go, it's dynamic.
And then I go back to the Excel spreadsheet and I change a number and the chart would
change in Word.
It was amazing.
And then I go, don't you worry.
Now I'm going to me email it to my colleagues.
I mean, you forget sometimes how crazy.
(21:04):
So many 20 years ago that we, we, we had that world where, you know, just taking an image
or creating a chart and putting it into a document and emailing it to a group of people
was the bleeding edge of computing.
Yeah.
I can't even imagine where we're going to be in the next 20, 30 years.
I mean, just as far as we've come just in the last 30.
(21:27):
I mean, I remember back in, in high school, first finding out about dial up, like, can
you get off the phone so I can get on the internet?
Like that's just so wild that nowadays we don't even think about it.
So I'm sure that, you know, if, if this does continue to be a thing, which it sounds like
it will be, people are going to start to get used to it and it'll just become second nature
(21:49):
just like everything else that we're currently enjoying.
Exactly.
I mean, I mean, if I wanted to send you an email, I just say, Ashley, what's your email
address?
And you go, oh, it's this, this and this.
Right.
So you think, don't think twice about it.
Right.
And then I don't think twice.
I go to my email client, I type in that, whatever you gave me address, type my words and I click
(22:09):
send and it magically appears in your inbox.
Now nobody needs to know that I went through an IMAP4 or a POP3 server or blah, blah, blah
and how it got to you.
Right.
No one cares.
Well, your, your wallet address is like your email address.
Mine is sam at getalby.com.
But I could change that to be samsethi at me.com, which is my email address.
(22:32):
Right.
And then instead of an email client that you would go to, you'd go to your digital wallet
on your laptop and you go, right, I want to send Ashley 10,000 sat.
Right.
Ashley, what was your wallet address?
And you go, it's Ashley at getalby.com.
Great.
Thanks Ashley.
I just typed that in 10,000 sat, click send and boom, instantly that would appear in your
(22:53):
wallet, peer to peer, not through a bank, not through a third party gateway directly
to your wallet.
And once people get that and understand how that works, that is the magic that will happen.
And then that will slowly evolve into, well, what else can I do with my magic wallet now?
Well, I can listen to content.
I can give sentiment feedback.
(23:14):
I can do all sorts of things with it.
Yeah.
It's going to take time for it to catch on, but when it does, it'll go fast.
Yeah.
At the same time though, it doesn't sound like we're taking away the idea of a free podcast
listen experience.
Okay.
It sounds like instead we're just enhancing the ability to give back to the people you're
listening to.
(23:35):
Is that right?
Correct.
So value for value, as I said, so I, as a podcast creator say, I want you, I want you
actually to pay me a hundred sat per minute.
And you go, nah, you know what?
Zero.
I'm paying you nothing.
I'm just taking this as normal for free.
Right.
And you can do that.
You're just setting your value of zero on the content creator.
(23:56):
Now that's, that's what you can do and that's fine.
And probably if it's a brand new podcast, you've never heard, you probably will set
it to zero.
You'll probably say, I'll give it a little bit of a listen.
They're not bad actually.
I quite like this one.
Then you might say the next time an episode drops, I'll give them 10 sats per minute,
not a hundred that they want.
And maybe the next time it's 50 sats.
And eventually you might go, you know what?
(24:17):
I'll give them what they say.
It's a really cool podcast.
So it takes time.
It takes trust, but yeah, you can set the value to zero.
You don't have to pay.
Cool.
That's good to know.
Cause that's obviously going to be the one thing that's going to scare people is, oh,
well, everything's paywalled now.
I'm just going to go listen to the guy that's free.
(24:38):
Yeah, exactly.
No, no, you don't have to pay.
It's a, it's an opt in model rather than an opt out model.
I love that.
But again, it makes it feel like you're having more control over the transactional experience.
So I like that a lot.
So when, when do you anticipate that pod fans is going to roll out?
Like, is it in alpha?
(24:59):
Is it going to be in beta soon?
Like what's going on with that?
It's in alpha right now.
We've got a wait list.
It's a very long wait list at the moment because we are in bug crushing moments.
So what we're doing right now is bringing on three or four people a week, getting them
to play with it, say all common known, you know, really hammer this, see what it does.
(25:20):
And so far so good.
We've found a couple of minor UI, more UI features that people go, didn't expect that
button to do that.
Or I thought that would do X or Y rather than that didn't work.
And you know, is a proper bug.
So we're making just some minor, minor changes.
I mean, what, what happened to the pod fans is when you come on, you come on.
(25:45):
Now you might have an RSS.com wallet from Alby.
You might not.
So you come on, you put your name in, you've got an invite code at the moment, but we'll
remove that eventually when we're in the beta.
So you put your name in, you say what currency you want your default currency to be.
So dollars in your case, Ashley.
(26:06):
And then you say connect my wallet or give me a wallet.
Right.
Well, either you either have a wallet and you want to use your current wallet or you
say, I don't have a wallet.
Give me a new wallet.
Right.
And it will create a wallet for you in our onboarding process.
I talked about gamification.
So what we've done is we've gamified the onboarding.
(26:27):
So you put in your basic details, you connect your wallet and suddenly we've given you 200
stats.
Well, what was that for?
Well, for joining and for connecting your wallet.
The next thing is you can connect your Twitter account, your social account.
Great.
We'll give me another hundred sats.
Oh, this is nice.
I'm earning some money from just my activity.
(26:48):
Now each of your Twitter followers, people that you follow, um, might have a number against
it.
I need the number of people they follow.
We will, if you invite any of your Twitter friends, we will give you the exact number
of their followers.
So if you've got a friend, he's got 300 followers and you invite them and they join, we'll give
you 300 sats.
(27:08):
So it was a bit of fun.
Again, just all your friends have values so that you can gamify bringing your friends
up as well.
And then when you go and start to play your first podcast, then, you know, the money then
goes flows the other way.
You then pay if you want to, or you set the value to zero.
Then you can boost, you can clip things, you can share back.
(27:29):
And eventually you understand that the model is gamified.
So sometimes we're paying you because of activity and sometimes you're paying a creator because
that's what you want to do.
If you create a playlist, for example, in pod fans and someone plays your playlist,
you get paid because you were a creator of that playlist.
(27:49):
So suddenly your time and your attention for everything you do on pod fans has value and
that's why we gamify the system.
So yeah, so you get given a wallet, you get given 10,000 sats by the time you finished
your onboarding and you've got some funny money in a wallet you can start to play with
see how this system works.
It's pretty safe.
(28:09):
That's good.
That's actually what I was going to ask you is how's the security and safety of it?
Yeah.
I mean, first and foremost, you're not having to get a credit card out.
You're not having to make any personal purchase.
So we're giving you satoshis as part of your onboarding gamification profile.
(28:32):
So great.
So if you get 10,000 sats, you listen to three or four podcasts and you go, nah, this is
not for me.
I don't like it.
You've lost nothing.
We've lost nothing.
Safety job done.
If you then decide I really like it, yeah, you have to then top up your wallet.
And the only way to top up your wallet is two ways.
One is to be more active in the podcast platform.
(28:54):
So earn money from your activity, sharing, commenting, clipping, or you can go to a third
party bank called Moonpay.
It's an accredited bank.
It's a partner of Alby's where you can put in your Apple pay or your Google pay or your
credit card and you can put in 10 pounds or $10, you know, in 10, $10 will give you probably
(29:19):
300,000 sats, right?
There's quite a lot of money suddenly that you can pay with.
And so the idea eventually is that you will trust the system that you're helping support
your favorite podcasters.
You're earning some money as well.
It's a bit of fun while you're doing podcasting.
And at the same time, when you do need to top up your wallet, it's through a secure
(29:42):
bank is not through me or some third party.
And so that's quite nice.
It reminds me of the early days of Amazon.
When Amazon first came out and people go onto amazon.com, they put things in their basket
and then they wouldn't put their credit card.
So then they'd rig up a call center.
Hi, yeah, it's Sam.
(30:04):
Yeah, I've got basket.
Yeah, it's full.
Yeah.
50, 50 quid.
Right.
Okay.
Here's my credit card number.
And you'd read it out to them because you didn't trust them.
Right.
And then eventually you go actually prime and it was called one click and you went,
okay, I'm going to put my credit card in one click.
Oh, that worked.
I've done this three times now.
(30:24):
They've not taken any other money out from my credit card.
Feels good.
Okay.
I will now trust them.
And now no one thinks of it.
You know, it's just put your credit card into into Amazon.
You get your prime account and guess what?
Click a button.
Next day, the thing arrives in that same way.
We will get people to realize your wallet is very secure and very safe.
(30:46):
It's your wallet and you can top it up either through activity or through credit card payment.
That's awesome.
To know that it's secure is probably going to help people feel a lot better about it.
So with the pod fans, do you anticipate that this will be a really good way for people
to promote their show to kind of increase the number of downloads that they're getting
(31:08):
or do downloads even matter anymore at this point?
Downloads as a metric doesn't matter.
We've created a brand new set of metrics with a company called Bumper.
Bumper is Jonas Voest and a couple of the other guys who've come out of Pacific content.
So a really good analytics company in Canada.
(31:29):
And what we do is because we have a pay per minute model and even if you're not paying,
we're tracking you per minute.
So we know how long you've listened to a podcast.
Let's say there's a 30 minute podcast and we know you've listened to 20 minutes.
So we will show you 20 minutes, a percent of that as a percentage completed and the
(31:51):
amount of sats you've paid if you have paid any.
So those three metrics together, which are, you know, time, percentage completed and the
value paid are much, much, much more powerful than, Oh, I just downloaded it.
Because you know what, if you've got Apple and it's set to auto download, you've never
(32:12):
heard of it.
But the podcaster runs to the advertisers, Oh, 10,000 downloads.
How many people listen to it?
Nobody.
I don't know.
I have no idea.
And then, you know, that ad, and I was telling you the dirty secret of podcasts, you know,
that ad that's third into your podcast and no one listened to it.
Because guess what?
They downloaded and listened to 10 minutes, but that ad was a 25 minutes.
(32:34):
Well now, so downloads are a rubbish, rubbish metric.
What time listened, percent completed and value paid gives you a much stronger.
So yes, I listened to 60 minutes of your podcast.
Great.
I know how far you got and 60 minutes is 80% of your podcast.
(32:56):
Great.
So 80% of my podcast you listen to and you paid me 4,000 sats.
Amazing.
That's real value.
And that's how the metrics, the next generation of metrics are coming along.
So yeah, that's what we do.
Yeah, it definitely sounds like doing that, like looking at those metrics shows, yeah,
okay, I may not have a lot of downloads, but I have engaged loyal fans that really care
(33:21):
about what I say.
And you know how much they paid or how long they listened or how much they completed.
Those are the much more valuable.
And as an advertiser, that third ad, they can go, hey, Ashley, you know that ad that
was in your podcast that we dynamically inserted?
Did anyone listen to it?
Oh yeah.
You know what, Sam?
There you go.
80% of my customer base listened to over 90% of my podcast.
(33:45):
They heard your ad, you know, maybe they've skipped it.
Shh, don't tell them that.
Other than that, other than that, at least they got past your ad and they might have
heard it.
So that's the best you can offer.
I know you said you're in alpha now, but when did you say about that beta is going to be
rolling out?
Looking at probably the end of July.
(34:09):
So the beta is really us taking the desktop app, which is what works now and making that
desktop app a progressive web app.
So making it work on your mobile and on your iPad.
And so it's not hard.
(34:29):
What we've done is we've gone for the model of complete all the features, create all the
functions, make sure it works, remove all the bugs as best we can, never remove all
of them.
And once that's all tested and functioning and we think we're good to go, then we then
start to work on how do we shrink it down when somebody's got it on a different screen.
(34:50):
And so that's going to take us three, four weeks of time of development to do that.
So that's when the beta will open.
And so we'll go alpha now, come to podfans.fm, beta probably July is what it's going to take
us to do.
And then, yeah, hopefully fingers crossed, we will have people then go, yeah, I love
(35:10):
it or I can use it on my mobile or I can use it on my desktop, same app.
So if someone wanted to get an invite now, what would they need to do?
Just come to podfans.fm and just click the join the wait list.
And yeah, we're opening the doors slowly to various people.
Okay.
Well, it sounds like it's rocking and rolling.
(35:34):
Like we're on the cusp of this thing and we're going to see some really big things happen
very, very soon.
Well, as we wrap up here, I have to bring up one thing that I always do.
And I have to ask you the one question I ask everyone.
What's one question I didn't ask you in this interview that you really wish I had?
Oh, good question, Ashley.
I like that.
What was the one thing I didn't reveal?
(35:58):
What or how will you overcome Apple and Spotify's market dominance?
Okay, then that, let's hear the answer if you've got one.
Yeah.
So with Spotify, Spotify's in big trouble.
Not because of podfans, they are in big trouble period as a business because the exclusives
(36:18):
haven't worked.
They have a, what we call a fixed price model.
So you pay 9.99, you pay 14.99.
That is what you pay, right?
Family or individual.
And the problem you've got is that the record companies are wanting more of profit.
So they're squeezing Spotify from the top.
(36:42):
Spotify can't increase the price significantly at the bottom because if you and I had to
pay 29.99 for Spotify, we just jumped to Amazon or Apple, right?
Because guess what?
They won't increase it.
The problem Spotify has got is Amazon's got Amazon, the food stores and the home delivery
(37:03):
and all the things we said.
Plus they've got films, plus they've got books, plus they've got all these other things.
And they've got all these other revenue streams, Spotify's pretty much core business is music
and books and podcasts.
So they can't afford to subsidize that business with another business.
Whereas the other two can keep the price low and even run them as loss leaders.
(37:28):
So Spotify's got a really hard problem.
As I said, podfans is based on variable prices.
You only pay for what you consume because you only pay for what you consume.
If you're a low consumption person, then you'll only pay a little bit.
And if you're a high consumption person, you pay more, right?
That's great.
Whereas with Spotify, they can't change that.
So that's their big Achilles heel.
And I think you'll begin to see that will cause them.
(37:51):
They're still not profitable.
They've IPO'd.
They're still losing money.
They're bleeding staff.
They got rid of 200 people last week, had a podcasting.
They are just in a bad place, right?
They won't say it, but that's where they are.
By the way, audio books aren't paying them either because they have to do a jump out.
So they really are on a squeeze.
(38:12):
Apple is slightly different.
I mean, Apple could kill this whole industry tomorrow if they made Apple pay a micro payment
system and said, right, you know what?
We're just going to allow you to pay with Apple pay and no fees.
Wow.
We're all dead.
So Apple is still very scary in this business.
So I think Spotify is the target market I want to try and aim for.
(38:33):
I think we've got features or the podcast index 2.0 name feature like person, tags,
people, all the discovery stuff we talked about earlier, its location.
We've got interactivity.
So we've got lots and lots of things that the industry and pod fans do that Spotify
don't do.
(38:53):
So I think that's the target we would go for.
And you might say to me, have you been here before with this?
Yes.
We were at Netscape when we took on Microsoft and Microsoft lost.
I've been in this fight before.
It was called the browser war and I was front and center.
This is the podcast war and I'm front and center for this one as well.
(39:13):
Well, I guess we need to all get our armor on for this war.
Indeed.
Bring it on Daniel.
I'm ready.
Well, that's fantastic.
And I can't wait to, I mean, personally, I'm going to definitely be going to pod stands
and I'd like to play with an account myself just to see what there is to see.
Yep.
(39:34):
Well, you are going to be invited in.
No problem at all after this.
Fantastic.
That's good to hear.
Well, thank you so much for being here and telling us all about what we can expect from
pod fans.
And I guess it sounds like the future of podcasting.
I'd like to think so.
I would too.
Absolutely.
Well, is there anything else you wanted to share before we wrap up?
(39:57):
No, I think, I think the one thing people have got to look at is again, complexity is
failed simplicity.
That's one of my favorite sayings and this world of micro payments and wallets has been
very complex to understand.
And it's the job of people like me and Oscar at fountain and Mitch at pod first and multi
the pod friend to make it easier so that the end user, the listener doesn't have to think
(40:24):
twice about how to do this stuff.
It's second nature.
So I think give it another six months.
I think it will be second nature.
It will be common fair for people to talk about a wallet.
Do you know there's 50 million podcasts wallets out there already today?
No, I didn't.
And somebody gave me a really interesting stat.
(40:46):
Back in 1996, there were roughly 50 million users on the internet using a browser.
Just how many there were then if you say the wallet and the browser are similar sorts of,
you know, learning technology to get on, then we are pre web one dot.
We are still not in the hype cycle of growth.
(41:09):
So I think there's a long way to go in this, this platform new world and Value for Value.
But once it does take off, boy, oh boy, will it be big.
Well, that it definitely sounds like if anyone doesn't have a podcast now, they've needed
to get on the train.
Indeed.
I love it.
Well, thank you again for being here.
Pleasure Ashley.
Thank you for inviting me.
(41:39):
Well my fellow podcasters, we hope you enjoyed the insights, tips and ideas shared in this
episode.
To learn more about launching and growing your own show, head over to rss.com backslash
blog.
And if you're ready to launch a podcast of your own, you can get started for free with
your first episode on us.
Thanks for tuning in.
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