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Gautam Raj Anand (00:00):
The Pod News Weekly Review uses chapters so
you can skip between stories andinterviews if you're too soft
to handle the whole thing.

Announcer (00:07):
The last word in podcasting news.
This is the Pod News WeeklyReview with James Cridland and
Sam Sethi.

James Cridland (00:15):
I'm James.

Sam Sethi (00:16):
Cridland, the editor of Pod News, and I'm Sam Sethi,
the CEO of True Fans.

John Burgess (00:20):
That really helps the advertiser feel confident
that they are approaching theright shores for their audience.

Acast's John Burgess on their new smart
recommendations tool.

Gautam Raj Anand (00:30):
Plus, the growth rate of people uploading
video podcasts is at a higherrate than the growth rate of
people uploading audio podcasts.

Gotham Rajanand on a new way of doing video
podcasts Plus Apple Podcastspaints the town purple and the
Infinite Dial report for the UK.
This podcast is sponsored byBuzzsprout with the tools,
support and community to ensureyou keep podcasting, start
podcasting, keep podcasting withbuzzsproutcom.
From your daily newsletter, thePod News Weekly Review.

Sam Sethi (01:03):
So, James, welcome back from the London Podcast
Show.

How are you feeling?
I'm feeling jet-lagged andtired, but at least I don't have
the COVID which Neil Mody doesfrom Headliner.
Yes, yes, Get well soon, neil.

Sam Sethi (01:17):
Thankfully I didn't hug him too long.
I think I'm OK.

I think we're probably OK.
He did launch two things at thepodcast show last week which we
did cover, interestingly enough, but we covered in the show
that no one will hear on thisfeed, sadly, because the audio
it's very weird.
The audio just jumped every 30seconds.

(01:41):
So it must have been some kindof you know, I don't know sample
rate problem or something, butthat probably means that
everything that happened in thatroom hasn't recorded properly.
So, oops, anyway, there we are,but we might talk about that
later.
So, what's going on?
What's going down?

(02:01):
What's going down?
You're so with're so with.
The kids aren't?

Sam Sethi (02:05):
you spill the tea.
Oh, there you go, you're inthere now, yeah right.
Um, well, our friends at acastpinged us about something called
acast intelligence uh, playingon the ai.
Um, they've come up withsomething called smart
recommendations.
It's an ai powered podcast adplanning application.
The idea is they've been usinguh transcriptions and

(02:29):
conversational transcriptionsand they've got third-party data
and they've got lots of othersignals and they're taking all
of that data and they're givingit to their ad planners to say
look, I want to put in a promptsuch as find me, for example,
women in Canada interested ininvesting, which is a very
obscure prompt, but that will goaway and find all the podcasts

(02:53):
that might be relevant to thatprompt and then they can then
start to build a targetedcampaign against it.
So that sounds very exciting itdoes.

It sounds very smart.
I love the fact that AI in thiscase stands for ACAST
intelligence.
Osha would probably like toclaim that they were first for
that, but anyway, I think Applemight as well.
Oh well, yes, Apple, oh yes,yes, no indeed.
Anyway, you caught up with JohnBurgess from Acast and you

(03:29):
asked him what is it?

Well, it's a mouthful, but it's really.
Smart recommendations is whatwe're calling it within the
Acast marketplace.
Smart recommendations isessentially an AI powered search
engine that allows advertisersto find the perfect podcast
match in seconds.
Finding the right audience isthe most efficient for their ad
spend.

Sam Sethi (03:50):
Okay, so it's AI powered.
Now don't get me wrong.
Many people talk about AIpowered, but how are you using
the AI to go and get a betterresult?

Yeah, it's a great question.
Ai gets thrown around a lotthese days.
Most people think about AI.
They're thinking about the chatGPTs, the groks, the Claudes of
the world, the typical LLMs.
That is certainly an element ofwhat we're doing with smart
recommendations, but it's a lotmore than that.
What we're doing here, whatwe've developed with smart
recommendations, is essentiallya way for you to use natural

(04:24):
language so you can come intothe platform, you can describe
the audience you're looking for,you can describe the product
that you're wishing to promoteand with that natural language,
we're taking that prompt.
So I could type out I'm lookingfor my perfect audience is
females in London interested inrunning and we take that and
using LLMs, we can extract allof the nuances around that

(04:49):
prompt.
So, looking for femalesinterested in running okay,
running, what's kind of aroundin that space it might that
you're interested in certainrunning brands, certain apps
that are related to running, allof those kind of interests that
runners may have and we kind ofextract all of that nuance and
that's using the LLM aspect.

(05:14):
But then we take it further thanthat and we across all of the
kind of proprietary data that wehave, both first-party from
creators themselves and fromthird-party data that we have
and also all of the kind ofpredictive demographic and
audience data that we've builtthroughout our data sets.
We understand a lot about ourcreators and we can kind of map
all of those different signalsto really find what is the

(05:37):
perfect shows that you canpromote against and that you can
buy and support those creators.
And then finally, after that,the most important thing is the
why.
Why is this show the best fitfor me?
And again, that's where we'reusing the LLMs with all of the
kind of data points that we'veextracted and that reasoning, to
kind of narrate that reason asthe why, that justification, and

(06:00):
that really helps theadvertiser feel confident that
they are approaching the rightshores for their audience.

Sam Sethi (06:05):
So ACAST did something really smart about a
year or so ago, which wascontextual transcription, which
was the idea of being able tolook outside the immediacy of
what the podcast was advertisingat the title or description
level.
So you might have a podcastthat talks about knitting, but
it had a mention of basketballand therefore you could pull
basketball.
So that's the basis of yourdata set right, which is what

(06:29):
you're working against.
Now you're applying an AI layerto that data set and other data
points that you have as well.
Now, if you're doing that, howare you seeing the results?
What is happening?
Are you getting you know?
10% better, 20% better?
What's the return on this typeof AI layer that you've applied?

Yeah, you make a really good point there about
the kind of transcripts and thecontextual elements of that.
And that's one of the problemsthat we found right that
advertisers find and plannersfor these advertisers find is
that it can take a lot of timeto find the perfect podcast for
you.
There's millions of podcastsout there.
There's 140,000 podcasts onAircast and finding that right

(07:14):
one can be really difficult ifyou're just relying on titles
and descriptions and things likethat.
But when we're going deeper andwe're really looking into the
show and what is being talkedabout, that's where we can
really find those perfectmatches which might not be so
easy to find.
And to your point about the kindof stats that we're seeing,
we've been running thisinternally now for around six to

(07:36):
eight weeks.
It's been used on over 200campaign briefs during the
internal test period andanecdotally from our planners we
see that we've gone from in therange of an hour to put
together the recommendations toless than five minutes.
So 92% time-saving, which ishuge right.
That allows those planners toreally go and work on higher

(07:59):
value campaigns.
It allows them to do morecreative endeavors that they may
not have had the time for inthe past.
We're really seeing it as asecond brand, if you like, for
the planners and the advertisersto really allow them to
optimize their time.

Sam Sethi (08:13):
So okay, so you're seeing big gains in time
efficiency.
Are you seeing better retentionof listeners to the adverts?
Now, one of the problems Iperceive I'm not in the
advertising game, but it's justmy perception is that people, if
or when they can, will skippast because the ad is

(08:34):
irrelevant to their context.
Right, so you might have apodcast.
The ad's irrelevant.
We've seen it all you know.
Casper mattress in the middleof a tech podcast is really
irrelevant and it's not eventargeted at me and it's not even
timely.
So none of those contextelements.
So the natural thing is I'llskip past it.

(08:55):
So are you finding, by usingthe AI and targeting the podcast
to find better matching, thatyou're also getting better
listener retention of the ad?

I think the listener retention of the ad is
a really interesting metric tomeasure.
It's not something that we havenumbers on right now, but what
I would say is that, by usingthe smart recommendations, what
we are trying to do here also isimprove the relevancy of the ad
which is being served.
So the example that you usethere with, let's say, a Casper

(09:28):
mattress, or it could be anyadvertiser there has always been
that inherent bias.
Let's say, where you've builtyour relationship with that show
, you have a really goodrelationship with them and you
tend to go back to them, or youwould typically approach to work
with the big name shows thateveryone knows about their top
of the charts, and that's how itkind of manifests.
We get all of these brands thatare going for these top shows

(09:50):
because they have a very largeaudience.
But again, what that actuallyresults in sometimes is that it
may not be the most efficientand it may not be the most
relevant, and what we're doinghere is it's around surfacing
the most relevant creators foryour brief here.
It's around surfacing the mostrelevant creators for your brief
.
So what we hope here is thatthat relevance increases and
therefore the retention and theskip rates and subsequent

(10:11):
metrics will decrease over timeas a result of the improved
relevance and that data-drivenmatchmaking that we're
generating here with smartrecommendations, and we already
do start to see that.
So we already start to see thatwe are surfacing.
Let's say that those shows thatmay not have made it onto a
media plan in the past We'veseen that from shows that have

(10:33):
less than 50,000 listens in aweek, we've seen 35% increase in
visit rates to those pages as aresult of smart recommendations
and a 14% increase inpurchasing of those shows that
may not have appeared on a planhad it been through a manual
discovery process.
So we are seeing really bigmoves in relevance and to your

(10:57):
point over time.
The hope would be, and the planwould be, that those retention
metrics improve.

Sam Sethi (11:03):
Okay now Now let's dig a little deeper.
What AI are you using?
You know what flavor of AIBecause there's many LLMs out
there.

Yeah, so we're using OpenAI's 4.0, 4.0 mini at
this point.
We chose this because of theefficiency elements of it.
There's many versions and andover time we need to see how
things play out.
We're really excited to belaunching this week and over
time we're going to be reviewinghow it's being used, the types
of prompts that people areputting in there, how long are

(11:36):
they, how descriptive are they,how maybe you know very broad
they are and finding that rightmodel that most suits the need.
But, as I say, we're using avery efficient model for the use
case at the moment and we'llsee over time if we need to make
any changes on that to improvethe results.

Sam Sethi (11:54):
So prompt engineering is very critical.
You've just said that, and willyou be there for giving out
help and advice, training, topeople who are using the service
in order to get the betterresult?
So how are you going to helpthem?

yeah, it's a really good point.
I mean prompt engineering.
It's the term of the year sofar and it's something that
we've thought about through thedesign, the interface.
And when you actually come intothe acastad platform and you go
into the smart recommendations,we actually provide you there
with some guidance on how bestto format that prompt.
We'll give you two or threedifferent kind of starting

(12:29):
suggestions.
So my audience is, or I'mlooking for podcasts about, for
example, or find podcastssimilar to a certain show or a
certain brand, and so on and soforth.
So we're kind of guiding theuser in these early stages and
also on the back of that, wealso provide you with all the
past recommendations that you'verun as well.
So you have that full historyof what you've done.

(12:51):
You can run some side-by-sidecomparisons by changing the
prompt and I think over time, aswe build out what we're calling
here Acast Intelligence Suite,over time we want to make that
more proactive as well, kind ofless reliant on the user to kind
of engineer those prompts butbe more proactive, making
proactive recommendations forthe user based on their past

(13:13):
recommendations that they've hadwhere they've purchased certain
shows, where they've workedwith certain creators in the
past and how we can help themreally more proactively build
those prompts that's going tofind those perfect shows for
them.

Sam Sethi (13:27):
So if I wanted to come and play with it, try it,
get my hands on it and see theresults of what it might be
before I commit, could I goanywhere on the Acast website to
play with it now?

Absolutely so.
From today it's available onthe Acast ad platform.
You can go into creating asponsorship campaign campaign
and you can play around with it.
That would be great.

Sam Sethi (13:47):
Is this a free add-on to customers who are already
using the Acast platform, or isthis an additional function and
feature?

It's included within the Acast ad platform
Nice.

Sam Sethi (14:00):
So I don't have to get my wallet out more, John,
thank you so much.
Remind everyone again veryquickly if they want to find out
more.
Where would I go and find somevideos?
Where would I go and find somemore info?

You can head over to selfserveaircastcom.
You can start playing aroundand you can head to aircastcom
to find out more informationabout smart recommendations.

Perfect.
See you soon, John.

Thank you, Sam.

John Burg smart recommendations.
Perfect, see you soon, john.
Thank you, sam john burgess.
Uh, who you met up with at uhthe podcast show in london, um,
uh, talking about, um acast'snew thing, but that wasn't the
only thing that happened, uh, atthe podcast show, of course
well, some of us got an inviteand some of us didn't, so you
went to the swanky apple partywhatever whatever it may be
where they painted the townpurple.

Sam Sethi (14:46):
So, as I wasn't there , tell me more, james.
Well.

I went to go and see the folks at Apple.
Now, that is something that I'mactually not allowed to tell
you.
Rather bizarrely, they're themen in black.
They really are the men inblack.
But down in Battersea, in SouthLondon, in it south of the
river, they may or may not havehad a little shindig as well,

(15:16):
which I was invited to, but inthe end I didn't go to because
my voice was going.
In the end, I didn't go tobecause my voice was going and
also I wanted to make sure thatyou didn't spend all of the
PodNews money on the drinkswhich I failed on that one, but

(15:37):
anyway, yeah, you failed on thatone desperately.
I wish you'd turned up about 20hours earlier, but anyway, there
is a beautiful picture in PodNews from last week showing
Battersea Power Station, whichis, of course, where Apple's UK
operations are based, turningApple Podcasts purple because
they managed to convince thelandlords to end up doing that.

(15:58):
All I can tell you is thattheir offices are very nice, as
you would expect, but Appleended up speaking.
Jake Shapiro and Susie Warhurstfrom Apple Podcasts ended up
speaking at the podcast show.
It was the first time thatApple have officially spoken at
a podcasting event, so quite acoup for the London podcast show

(16:20):
to have got.
Susie Warhurst, of course, isin charge of Apple in the UK,
ireland and other places.
Jake Shapiro, ex of RadioPublic, has been involved in
podcasting since the year Dotand works out of Boston, but
they ended up sharing a ton ofinformation, including data from

(16:41):
one of Girl Hangers shows.
The Rest Is History, which has45,000 paying subscribers using
Apple Podcasts, most of them 57%of them paying the annual plan,
which is 60 quid, 99 Australiandollars.
I don't know how many USdollars that is, but it's quite
a lot of money and that's quitenice.
They say helpful for retention.

(17:03):
Absolutely it is, but you canvery clearly see that that is
some nice income coming in, forthe rest is history.
So at least.
Well, what's that?
At least 2.7 million.
Would that be right?
That can't be right.
45,000 paying subscribers times60.

(17:25):
Yes, I suppose it is, isn't it?
2.7 million, yeah, minusapple's 30, of course.

Sam Sethi (17:32):
Um, but uh, yeah, quite a thing, I thought yes,
well, I thought it was evenfunny, because jack davenport
and max cutler on on stage, uhtalking about fandom and
monetization, and they bothagreed that the best way forward
was to move to Substack.
So we'll see what happens next.

Yes, well, that's a little bit of a strange
thing.
I mean, I look at it and I go.
You know, apple Podcasts worksfantastically, of course, within
Apple Podcasts, but, you know,moving to Substack is a
different conversation to alsousing Substack, because I'm sure
that all of these tools wouldend up using a bunch of those

(18:12):
other things.

Sam Sethi (18:13):
I don't think it would be exclusive.

Yeah, indeed, that makes no sense at all.
But yeah, so that was good.
They also pointed out how goodUK podcasting is, because of
course they would, and theyannounced the latest addition to
the Creators we Love programme,which includes five of the UK's
most established podcasters.
Now I am unaware that Applehave ever mentioned Creators we

(18:37):
Love from any other countryother than the United States of
America Shire.
So interesting to see ApplePodcasts all of a sudden jumping
in and going.
You know what.
We're actually going to supportsome creators from other
countries as well now, so that'scertainly a very good thing.
Does that mean that the podcastof the year this year is going

(18:58):
to be from the UK?
Probably not, but certainlynice to see them ending up doing
that.
But yeah, I thought it was areally good thing for Apple to
have.
I know that it was an awful lotof hard work for the team to
get it agreed and accepted andeverything else, but really good
to see them speaking at thepodcast show in London,

(19:21):
connecting with the podcastcommunity in that way, and I
think that was a pretty goodthing.

Sam Sethi (19:29):
Yeah, no, congratulations to Jason Carter
and the team there for gettingthem there.
I do think Apple, hopefully,are now going to embrace more of
the podcast community.
There was a big discussion withApple around them embracing
more podcasting 2.0 tags.
They had connected with thepodcast standards group, which

(19:50):
we'll talk about later, aboutwhat they want from the industry
and there's a list going backto Apple about what the industry
wants from them and I think oneof the big ones is will they
support HLS, their owntechnology that they invented
themselves in 2009?
And you know they do supportvideo, but they don't tell
anyone about it.

(20:10):
And, weirdly, I think you wroteabout somebody called John
Murdoch who reminded us thatback in 2017, apple actually had
an audio chart and a videochart.

Yes, so I must have missed when they pulled the
video podcasts chart.
Maybe it's still available inthe API, who knows?
That would be something thatDan Meisner could look into.
But yes, I mean I think youknow, as I've been going on and
on and on about video, just rawvideo files in OpenRSS does not

(20:47):
work, and there are lots ofreasons why it doesn't work.
Just do a search for videopodcast RSS, james Cridland in
your favourite podcast in yourfavourite internet search engine
to find out all of the reasons.
So HLS would be a perfect useof that and using open video,

(21:10):
and there's probably no reasonwhy someone like Apple, if they
shared the stats, couldn't cashsome of that as well, couldn't
cash some of that as well.
So I think there's quite a lotof interesting things that Apple
could do with video podcasts,but just bunging a massive two

(21:32):
gigabyte file in an RSS feed isnot going to be the way that you
end up doing that.

Sam Sethi (21:38):
No, I agree 100%.

I mean and certainly and certainly you know
all of the indications are isthat you know Apple are very
keen to continue looking at openstandards where they can, where
it fits with what they want toend up doing, but open standards
where they can to help promoteshows and to help link to shows

(22:02):
and everything else.
I think, particularly when youstart having a look at things
like Podroll the recommendationsfrom podcast creators that's
something that could very easilybe put into the Apple Podcasts
app as well, to the ApplePodcasts app as well, and that

(22:25):
would certainly answer some ofthe criticism that Apple have in
that.
You know, many people say theyonly support the big shows.
They don't only support the bigshows.
There's plenty of places in theApple Podcasts app where
smaller shows are given quite alot of push.
But even so, I thinkrecommendations from creators is
a really good and easy way toactually approve that as well,

(22:49):
do you?

Sam Sethi (22:49):
think it'll happen.

I think it could .
I mean, you could end up havingApple's requirement for the pod
roll tag to include the AppleID, but I don't think that
anybody would turn around andsay that that's an awful idea.
So you know, I think you know.
Apple is big enough for them toturn around and say yes, we
would love to support that.

(23:12):
We don't use this podcast GUID,whatever that is, and we would
rather not do an RSS lookup.
Can we have our own ID in there?
And I'm sure that most peoplewould jump on that, because we
all know the Apple IDs anyway.
So you know, so why not?

Sam Sethi (23:30):
Yeah, no.
Well, let's see.
Let's see, I'm not holding mybreath is all I'd say.

No, but I think you know Apple are very aware.
I mean, you know it wasinteresting.
On one side they said how muchOpenRSS is important, how much
you know Apple has been workingwith OpenRSS.
It's nearly 20 years sincepodcasts went into iTunes and
all of that kind of stuff.
On the second, you know,basically the second thing that

(24:03):
they announced was workingtogether with Canva to produce
the very Apple-centric extragraphics that Apple require for
their app.
I mean, if I were Apple, Iwould be turning around and
saying you know what that shouldbe open as well.
You know, you can't say thatyou have been doing all of this
wonderful stuff for OpenRSS andthen in the next breath say, oh,

(24:26):
and, by the way, ourproprietary graphics that we'd
like podcasters to make, we'remaking it slightly easier for
you to send those proprietarygraphics instantly to us.
Hmm, it's not necessarily theanswer, so we will see quite
what happens there.

Sam Sethi (24:44):
Now, one of the other things that was announced at
the London Podcast Show was theInfinite Dial UK report.
At least some of it wasannounced, and yesterday, if you
wanted to, you could have goneon to the webinar and seen the
full report.
What's in the report, james?

Yeah, so in the report it's much like Infinite
Dial US and in fact it asks thesame questions, but just to a UK
audience, and that's helpfulbecause that allows us to
compare US versus UK.
You know and understand wherethe similarities are, where the
differences are.
Understand where thesimilarities are where the

(25:24):
differences are.
I mean, the main headline storywas that the data gives a new
high in the UK for monthlylistening for podcasts at 51%.
It's 53%, if you remember, inthe US.
So and I think this has beenthe story of the infinite dial
the last one was done, I think,in 2022, I'd like to say so a
few years ago, maybe even 2021.

(25:45):
But the story has always beenthat the UK is a couple of years
behind where the US is in termsof consumption and this is
certainly showing that.
I think part of that is the BBC, the BBC's radio player or
iPlayer or whatever it's called.
Bbc sounds these days, isn't it, and I think that that rather

(26:10):
makes things a little bit morecomplicated.
But anyway, really useful data.
It's also coming out here inAustralia relatively soon and
coming out in New Zealand lateron in the year, so we'll have
four countries to be able to,you know, check and look at, and
it'd be great to see morecountries taking part in that as

(26:33):
well.
Also released in London the top25 podcasts in the UK for
quarter one 25 from Edisonpodcast metrics.
They measure pretty well everypodcast which is available out
there by asking people whatpodcasts they've been listening
to.
And no change in the top threeJoe Rogan at number one, the
rest is politics at two.

(26:53):
Diary of a CEO at three.
Goldhanger has four shows inthe top 10, which is fairly
impressive.

Sam Sethi (27:00):
Well, you know now that Gary's not at the BBC.
He needs the money.

Well, I don't know if you notice, but walking
to the podcast show from AngelTube, there were a lot of those
electronic billboards.
And all of those electronicbillboards every second ad was
for a Goldhanger show.
So if I was Goldhanger I wouldhave bought those specifically
for people going to the showbecause that would make perfect
sense.
But even so, it was a prettyimpressive sight walking up

(27:34):
Islington High Street you know,seeing all of these ads for
those big Goldhanger shows.
So well done them.
I think that that was a veryclever thing to do.

Sam Sethi (27:47):
Yeah, I wasn't joking , though, that the BBC have
dropped.
The Rest Is Football.
The first of the goal hangerpodcasts already.

Have they really what they've taken it off?

Sam Sethi (27:53):
BBC Sounds already Completely yeah, so I would
expect that the others will gosoon as well.

Gosh.
Well, there we are.
Yeah, I think the rest isfootball was the only one that
was there.
The rest is history.
I think was the other one,actually, but you've reminded me
.
Yeah, the rest is politics.
They couldn't touch the BBCbecause it's not necessarily
quite how the BBC would haveliked, but, interesting, I will

(28:24):
take a peek at that.

Sam Sethi (28:25):
Now also Ofcom released some information, james
.
What have they said?

Yes.
So Ofcom is the UK's mediaregulator.
They released two sets of dataa podcast survey and an audio
survey for 2025.
Now what Ofcom do, quitehelpfully, is that they just
publish all of the data.
For the podcast stuff, theaudio survey, they've done quite

(28:51):
a lot of work, you know, makingit look nice, explaining what
the data says.
With the podcast survey, you'reon your own, and so, thank
heavens for veteran radioanalyst Adam Bowie I'm sure he
likes being called that.
Anyway, he's crunched thenumbers to find out more from
the data.
Now, three things that I thoughtwas really interesting from

(29:12):
there.
Firstly, the average number ofpodcasts Brits listen to is five
, which is always interesting.
Seeing that number, men aremore likely to listen regularly
to podcasts than women.
Probably something to do withthe subject matter, maybe
something to do with the tech,who knows and the biggest reason
people give for stoppinglistening to podcasts is that

(29:33):
they can't find any podcaststhat interest them, and again,
I'm just going to say pod roll,because that could certainly fix
quite a lot of that.
So just something to bear inmind.
There were some other things, infact, one of the things that I
noticed for the radio newsletterthat I write, which is called

(29:55):
Radioland, which I stole youridea for a name there.
One of the things that I didspot from that is that it gives
quite a lot of information aboutradio, obviously, and radio
listening and all of that.
Music radio 62% listen eachweek.

(30:15):
Speech radio 36% listen eachweek, which I thought was
interesting, although thatdoesn't necessarily say that
listeners want music rather thanspeech.
But the one thing that it didsay, which I have underlined and
written in big coloured writingthree in five smart speaker
users say their devices playedthe wrong thing when asked to

(30:38):
play a particular radio station.
Three in five, not surprised,that's a data point to be
worried about.
I'm not surprised either, butisn't it brilliant that Ofcom
are actually asking thatquestion?
So yeah, really good.
And total radio listening incars higher in 2024 than it has
ever been in history.
So lots of people talking aboutApple CarPlay, lots of people

(31:03):
talking about Android Auto asadding podcasts into cars, and
nobody's listening to the radioanymore.
No, total radio listening incars higher last year than ever,
which I thought was very, very.
I'd love to see how that'smeasured.
Very, very interesting.
There you go, you see, it'salways the Very, very
interesting.
There you go, you see, it'salways the way, isn't it?
As soon as you see some datawhich says what you don't

(31:25):
believe.
I'd love to see how that wasmeasured.

Sam Sethi (31:28):
Well, isn't that the case?
Okay, if it disagrees with mypoint of opinion, I'd like to
know how they've come to it.

Correct, but yes .
So some useful data in there,and you'll find that linked from
the Pod News newsletter thisweek.
Let's whiz around the worldquickly, james, back in your

(32:03):
country.
Basically, arn will sell adsinto Global's shows and ARN's
shows will be available withinthe Global player in the UK,
which, to me, does not read thatGlobal is going to sell any of
the ads inside ARN's shows,which I thought was interesting,
but nevertheless.
Good news, I'm sure, for Global, because they'll get a little
bit more money.
Bad news for me because Ilistened to a number of shows

(32:28):
from Global which have beenblissfully ad-free, which will
no longer be ad-free, and Ilistened to the best of the
Chris Morales Breakfast Show onRadio X, which, my goodness, I
downloaded an episode of that inthe UK while I was over there
and I've been having a listen toit over the last couple of days
.
It's chock full of ads.

(32:48):
Every 10 minutes there'sanother ad break, so I'm going
to have to get used to thatfairly quickly.
But good news for ARN anyway.
Spanish language podcastplatform iVoox, or iVoox, has
published a monetization guide,so they are doing private RSS
feeds, but also paid RSS feedswithin their own app, and they

(33:13):
say that they have so far sharedover 4 million euro in income
for creators.
That's about US$4.2 million, sothey seem to be doing quite
nicely in terms of that.
There's a company that youmight want to have a chat with
about L402, something that wewill cover next week.

(33:35):
And in Germany, some figuresfrom MA Podcast, which is one of
these podcast rankers Totaldownloads down 5% from March.
The true crime show Mordlustmade it to number one 6.8
million downloads for that aswell, so always good to see

(33:56):
other rankers and other datashowing us what's listened to in
other countries People.

Announcer (34:00):
News on the Pod News Weekly Review to see other
rankers and other data showingus what's listened to in other
countries.

Sam Sethi (34:04):
People News on the Pod News Weekly Review.
Anyone moving and grooving thisweek, James.

Yes, a few people.
Somebody called Hugh Ormond isthe first head of podcasting for
RTE in Ireland.
Rte is the big publicbroadcaster there and it doesn't
weirdly doesn't seem to have apodcasting background to be
their first head of podcasting.
He's been a producer, he'sproduced radio and TV shows for

(34:31):
18 years within RTE and is nowtheir head of podcasting.
So best of luck, hugh.
Looking forward to seeing a bitmore stuff coming out of that
broadcaster because it doesproduce some very good things.
Rte Radio 1 is the big sort offull service radio station, a
bit like Radio 4 or kind of NPRin Ireland, and has some very

(34:57):
good shows.
So it should lend itself verynicely to podcasts, one would
have thought, and a couple ofother people.
Podimo has appointed a chiefcontent officer called Georgia
Brown.
Now what was interesting inthat report wasn't necessarily
that they've got a chief contentofficer, but that she's English

(35:17):
and there is in that pressrelease talk of an expansion
into English language content.
Now you might remember thatPodimo is one of these companies
that charges for access to itsshows.
Again, l402, sam, just writethat one down on your list.

Sam Sethi (35:37):
I just told you.
You know, we'll have this greatdiscussion in two weeks' time.

There you go forward and um, so interesting
to see ponemo um diving intoenglish, uh language stuff.
And the bbc has finally got ahead of sales for podcasts in
north america.
Um, somebody that should know athing or two, because he was
the VP and the Chief RevenueOfficer of Barometer, john

(36:05):
Sardellis, who will be workingfor the BBC there.
So clearly some money to bemade there, you would have
thought.

Sam Sethi (36:16):
Now we touched on the fact that the London podcast
show was really good this yearand everyone, I think, if my
LinkedIn notifications isanything to go by, I love the
show.
I mean, my God, it went off theRichter scale with the number
of people being mentioned andthen the number of times.
But congratulations to JasonCarter and to Ferger and the

(36:39):
whole team there.
How many people went throughthe doors eventually, James?

Yes.
So just for the show itself,6,100 over the two days of
conferences and exhibition.
That makes it by far thebiggest podcast show in the
world.
Podcast movement sometimes doesaround 2,000, 2,500.
Now, even if you were tosuggest that they've double

(37:08):
counted, if I went in the doorson the Wednesday and then again
on the Thursday, I might havebeen counted twice.
But even if I was counted twice, that is still significantly
bigger than podcast movements.
So congratulations to them.
But that wasn't everything,because of course the podcast

(37:31):
show also had the podcastfestival that was around it,
with live shows that you couldgo and pay to go and watch, and
so overall, the event had over10,000 people who ended up
taking part in it.
So it's a pretty good thing.
Now, interestingly, jasonCarter said that the aim of the

(37:51):
London event isn't to grow, atleast in that venue.
They may do some more venuestuff elsewhere in North London,
but the plan there is tocontinue to improve and engage
with the visitors there ratherthan cram more people into the

(38:12):
venue, which I think makes for abunch of sense as well.
Clearly, lots of people havebeen talking to them about
launching in other countries aswell.
The interesting thing, though, Ithink for me is if they were
going to launch the podcast showNew York, for example, which

(38:33):
sounds like a very sensible ideaoff the top of it, it would
essentially, from my point ofview, kill the UK show Because
actually quite a lot of thepeople coming to that UK show
were coming from the US.
So I'm kind of looking at thatand going, yes, I can see the
excitement of you know, let'slaunch an event in New York, but

(38:58):
actually that would probablykill the UK one.
So perhaps there areopportunities for a little bit
further afield or in other partsof the world, but I'm not so
sure that a US move.
You know you'd have to be,you'd have to do that quite
carefully, wouldn't you?

Sam Sethi (39:18):
Yeah, well, I mean, most of the Americans would say,
well, well, we'll go here, butthen would the brits go to the
american one and then suddenlygo well, why are we doing
anything in the london one?
What's lovely about the wholeshow is that you felt everyone
was there pretty much yeah, Iknow there was a few people
missing, but generally everybodywas there and you.
What I love about it?

(39:38):
Compared to the ones I've goneto in the us, it is very tight,
so it feels very buzzy and youcan look left, you can look
right and there's alwayssomebody you know and you can
talk to, whereas when I've beento vegas or I've been to la, I'm
generally walking a bazillionmiles to go to a, to a seminar,

(39:59):
and they're not seeing anyonethere because they're a
bazillion miles the other way,in another room, and you don't
get that sense in America thatanyone's actually at the event,
even though they are, whereasyou do get that sense in London
that everybody is there.

Well, and evolutions being particularly
that I mean, you know, it reallyfelt as if there was nobody
there and there was.
There was quite a lot of peopleat that event in Chicago, but
yes, I thought that that wasinteresting to end up seeing is
that if you look on the PodcastMovement website right now,

(40:40):
there is no mention of PodcastMovement Evolutions anymore.
Absolutely no mention.
There's something to have alook back at this year, but in
terms of where it is next year,no mention whatsoever.
Not quite sure what that tellsyou.
Well, maybe I am sure what thattells me Looks as if it's not

(41:02):
happening anymore, which isinteresting to have a look at.
It would be fun to find outmore information on that when
I'm in Dallas in the next coupleof months.
But yeah, that I thought was,yeah, interesting.
Just to just to say.

Sam Sethi (41:23):
Well, one other thing that um, it's not, it's not a
secret Um, after the interview Idid with Jason, jason and I
talked about meeting up post theLondon podcast show to talk
about next year.
Now, one of the things I wantedto do this year was a pod camp
and for multiple reasons thatdid not happen mainly cost and

(41:45):
venue location, which really wasannoying for me but annoying
for other people as well.
So Jason's very keen to get atechnical thread going through
next year.
That's one of the conversationpieces.
But Jason's got a very strongtrack record in music and that's
comes from his days in the bbcand he's he wasn't aware until

(42:05):
we talked about it but musiccould be delivered through
podcasting.
He's not technical.
He doesn't really understandpodcasting, if I, if I was
honest um, or the mechanism ofpodcasting.
Let's be honest and say it thatway.
So when I explained howindependent music artists are
now using rss, he was like, oh,that's really interesting and I

(42:26):
think it may be a light touch tobegin with.
Maybe a panel about music andpodcasting next year, nothing
more, um, and maybe sometechnical threads that we can,
we can introduce, but he is veryopen to that.
And again, your point abouthaving multiple venues, so not
trying to squeeze it into thesame venue, which I think is now
sort of yeah, bursting at theseams, um, maybe that's the way

(42:49):
forward with those type of um,extra, uh sessions that we'd
like to introduce I did notice,by the way, that there are, you
know, copious meeting rooms inthe hilton next door which I
don't think were being used, butI did notice that.

But there are also plenty of other venues
pretty close to that particularone, so you could certainly see
that there might be a way ofgrowing that event without
overpowering it in terms ofadditional people.

Sam Sethi (43:25):
Other events.
James, what's going on?

The winners of the 2025 Quill Podcast Awards
were announced, which you cansee a full list of on the Pod
News website.
Podcast of the Year went toWell, I Laughed, or maybe it's
Well I Laughed, or maybe it'sWell I Laughed.
Anyway, it's a podcast forlisteners who find themselves in

(43:49):
search of a good laugh andtheir next strange story to tell
at parties Organised by Quilland co-host, and I noticed that
there were only three winnerswho host with co-hosts, so it's
a proper awards, not justpatting themselves on the back.
So well done to them.
Talking about Canada, becausemany of Quill's folks are in
Canada, here's another thinggoing on in Canada.

(44:12):
Pod Summit YYC, which is inCalgary in Alberta, is happening
in September.
You can now buy tickets forthat.
You can see Jesse Lipscomb Iwill be there as well doing a
keynote.
There are live podcast showsfrom the CBC's Crime Story and
also from Sick Boy and plenty ofother things as well.

(44:35):
Super, looking forward to that.
That should be fun.
I've not been to calgary umbefore, apart from the airport
which I've been to, which isvery boring, uh.

Sam Sethi (44:44):
So, um, I gather that calgary is less boring do you
have to buy a stetson hat whenyou get there?

uh, a stetson hat?
I don't think, so what?

Sam Sethi (44:54):
what would be a I suppose it's candor?
Would you have to wear aMountie hat, or?

something.
Yeah, no, I mean, it would be abeanie.
A beanie, and yeah, and you'dhave to be drinking.
You'd have to go out and have ahot, steaming coffee, either at
Tim Hortons oh no, thank you orat the curiously named Second
Cup, which is something that youare very unlikely to ever have,

(45:18):
having had a First Cup, butwhich is something that you are
very unlikely to ever have,having had a first cup.
But yes, so no, I'm lookingforward to it.
It should be great fun.
One of the things that they havedone very well I should say the
organisers is that they havedone a very good deal with both
Air Canada, who I'm not flying,but a hotel which is very close

(45:40):
to the venue.
It's a very good deal.
It's a very cheap place to stayin comparison to what you would
normally pay for that hotel.
So I've no idea how they'vedone that, but that's a very
good thing.
So, yeah, looking forward tothat which is in September.
A couple of other things justto tell you about are the
Podcast Day Asia, which is atthe beginning of September, that

(46:04):
is, in Jakarta, in Indonesia.
This year no, she went toVerona Court and I'm looking
forward to being there.

Sam Sethi (46:13):
That's why you're the keynote speaker of the year.
I get it Now.
I understand.

Yes, that's clearly it, so I'm looking
forward to being there andtaking part.
There is also something goingon in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia.
It's the ABU, the Asia-PacificBroadcast Union.
They're running their Confestconference and there's a very
big podcaster there, markFennell, who interestingly

(46:40):
hosted a show, a podcast calledStuff, the British Stole, which
is a great show.
You would enjoy it, sam, I doParticularly.
There you go, but it's thenbeen turned into a TV show as
well, and the TV show isbrilliant and he did that very,
very well.
If you are, you know perhapsyou're doing a podcast and you

(47:02):
wonder, well, how can I makegreat video out of that?
Well, that's one of the ways, Ithink.
So, taking a look at that, it'sjust $50 if you're not working
for an ABU member, if you canget to KL.
So that is a lovely thing whichis all going on.

Sam Sethi (47:22):
There's also a couple other ones, because I actually
read your events section on thePod News Daily.
So you do, I do, yes, someonehas to, and it is very good.
So a couple of the other eventsthat grabbed my attention were
the Web Summit Rio on June the8th in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil,
and also the Web Summit Rio onJune the 8th in Rio de Janeiro
in Brazil, and also the WebSummit in Qatar.

(47:45):
I think that's how you say it.
You just have to sort of soundlike a camel.
I don't know that.
Everyone I've heard recentlyRacist.

Well, I used to say Qatar.

Sam Sethi (47:54):
But now you've got to go Qatar.
I think it's Qatar these days?

Is it Qatar?
It could be, I don't know.
We will move on.
Anyway, we will ask ChachiBT InDoha.
Yes, the reason that those arein there, by the way, is the Web
Summit, which I'm sure that youwill have been to in the past,
because it's a big, big, big oldevent, and the main one is in,

(48:21):
I think, lisbon, in Portugal.
Yeah, it used to be in Ireland,it's now moved over to Portugal
, yeah, yeah, and so that is apretty big event.
They are leaning into podcasting, so I've been told, with a
bunch of different shows thatare being recorded on stage.
Let's hope that their recordingworks and we'll find out.
You know what's going on there,but, yes, so worth taking a

(48:41):
look at.
I think there's one that isliterally taking place at this
moment.
It might be the Lisbon one,actually, but yes, the Web
Summit in Rio is on June, the8th.
The February one is Qatar, doha, in Qatar.
So if you can get to those,then that's a good thing in

(49:02):
Qatar.
So if you can get to those,then that's a good thing.
And, in fact, I think that theWeb Summit in Qatar this year
was the one where iHeartannounced that they were
launching a podcast studio inthe Middle East, so I think that
that's where it was actuallyannounced.
So you can see that there'sdefinitely some podcasting stuff
going on there.

Sam Sethi (49:20):
Now a little section that I wanted to introduce.
Um, I haven't cleared it withthe boss, um, but here we go, um
I.
I find that you know, and I'msure that you probably do as
well, james, because we listento a lot of podcasts during the
week ourselves and, um, there'soften some great stories.
I know that you have a sectionin pod news daily that covers

(49:40):
some of the links out to them,but there's things that sort of
grabbed my attention during theweek and I thought where do we
stick those?
They're not really stories,they're not really big enough to
be tech or main stories, butthings that grabbed my attention
.
So the first one that I saw inPod News Daily was Netflix is

(50:01):
publishing the Big Pitch withJimmy Carr, a podcast and
YouTube series which stands up,which the stand-up star gets
comedians to suggest movie ideas, which was done with BBC
Studios, and it suddenly the bitthat jumped out was Netflix,
and again they were at theLondon podcast show.
So can we officially say nowthat Netflix is a podcasting

(50:24):
production company and they'regoing to get bigger?

Well, they've been making podcasts for some
time.
I think they've been makingpodcasts for a couple of years.
The question that I have isthey are making this in video,
yet it's not available onNetflix.
Duh, that's weird.
So surely, if you've signed up,jimmy Carr, to make a show and,
by the way, I mean the entireshow is a very naked promotion

(50:50):
of Netflix, it's basically, youknow, looking at some of the
really weird genres that Netflixhas made Surely you would, yes,
stick it on YouTube so thateverybody can watch it for free,
but stick it on Netflix as well.
Surely you would have thoughtbut anyway, yeah.

Sam Sethi (51:07):
Is that the thing that's coming, though?
That's the point.

Well, maybe that is the thing that's coming.
Yeah, I mean, who knows?
But yeah, that to me sort ofstood out.
They have been making shows forquite some time, and you know
so, wang, chris, mccausland, youknow very, very UK focused, and

(51:49):
of course Romesh Ranganathan isthere, because Romesh
Ranganathan is in everything.
So you know, so we'll find out,you know quite what the deal is
there.
But I mean, so, you know, sowe'll find out, you know quite
what the deal is there.
But I mean, surely you wouldexpect that to be on the Netflix
site itself as well.
You'd have thought.

Sam Sethi (52:07):
So the other thing I wanted to find out then was
who's running their podcaststrategy, and I did a hunt round
and I did a hunt round.
Najeri, eaton and Abizuma StJohn, who used to be at Netflix,
have both left, so they're notin charge and it's not obvious
who is in charge of theirpodcast strategy.
So do you know, by any chance?

That's a good question and the quick answer is
no, I'm not sure.
I do know.
I mean there's a bunch ofpeople who are clearly working
at Netflix on their podcastingstuff, but the only
communication that I've had hasbeen the BBC Studios press

(52:52):
release, which doesn't mentionanybody at the Netflix podcast
itself.
Interestingly, even Netflixhave sent me the BBC press
release, so not quite sure whatthat says, but anyway.
So yeah, so not quite surewho's in charge at the moment.
I do know that the big boss ofNetflix recently has been

(53:16):
sounding increasingly rattledabout YouTube.
Netflix have basically turnedaround and said we are rattled
about YouTube, um.
Netflix have basically turnedaround and said we are not going
to.
You know, we've stoppedfighting people like Disney plus
and HBO max and all of thesepeople because we're so much
bigger.
So it's kind of not really afair fight.
But the fight that they wantnow is YouTube Um and so, um,

(53:38):
they'd be making some very clearnoises about how Netflix is a
significantly better experiencethan YouTube.
Youtube have clearly beenmaking some changes, although
YouTube has, of course, a verydifferent business model.
But yes, it'll be fascinatingto see what happens there and,

(53:59):
of course, you would expect thatNetflix would quite like to
grab as much cheap TVprogramming as they possibly
could, and part of that isvisualised podcasts, whatever
they are.

Sam Sethi (54:11):
Spotflix.
You heard it here first.
Keep saying it, it's comingsoon.
Spotify acquires no.
Netflix acquires Spotify.

Yes, one day I might be right, one day you'll
be able to sell that domain name.

Sam Sethi (54:24):
Yeah, Now the other one that I thought was
interesting.
I'm not going to go into it toomuch.
There's a great podcast calledUncensored CMO.
They've got some great guestson it, run by John Evans.
They actually had Angela Zepeda, who's the new CMO for X.
Now, normally wouldn't listento it, but actually it was a

(54:46):
good listen.
They talk about the Everythingapp, they talk about how they're
using Grok and they talk aboutbringing back video and payments
, and so, again, if you want tosee from who their CMO thinks is
what they're going to do next,that's a really good listen as
well.

Yeah, nick Quire also had a chat with Tim Katz,
who is as close to the person atYouTube who is in charge of
podcasting as anybody else is.
He ended up talking about apodcast on the platform as being
listenable content.
So content, that's videooptional, which I suppose is one
way of putting it and also saysa very curious thing.

(55:26):
He says if you look at the toppodcasts in the US, almost all
of them are on YouTube.
Yet if you have a look at datafrom PodTrack, only half of them
are on YouTube.
They can't both be right.
So not quite sure what's goingon there, tim Katz, but let's
find Bill Gates.
He's had some really big guestsand I was like, well, why is?

Sam Sethi (56:03):
Neil Mohan talking to this guy how's he got this
guest?
And it turns out this guy is a34 year old multi-billionaire.
That helps, yeah, um, uh.
He's like the Joe Rogan ofIndia, uh and.
But what really annoyed me washe calls this a podcast.
So I thought, great, no problem, I'll go and see for true fans.
I'll go and find the RSS feed,but make sure we've got it there

(56:25):
.
We'll link the YouTube channelto it, cause we can boom and I
thought that'd be brilliant.
Can't find an RSS feed for itanywhere.
It doesn't exist not in thepodcast index, not in Apple
Podcasts, not in Spotify,nowhere.
And yet this is called apodcast.
And that really riled me,because this is YouTube now
taking the word podcast andliterally saying screw you the

(56:49):
industry.
We don't need to supportanything outside of our walled
garden.
We're going to use the wordpodcast, and I was just a little
bit annoyed with that one.

Well, it's always been the way YouTube just
thinking that they have amonopoly on everything, and
indeed Google.
But yes, well, I mean, you know, it is interesting actually
looking at the P word, thepodcast word, looking at the P

(57:20):
word, the podcast word, becauseboth Jack from Goalhanger and
also Max Cutler from PaveStudios I mean you heard him in
the video here last week sayingthat he uses the word show and
not podcast and he, you know Maxbasically thinks that the term
podcasting has out-served itspurpose, which is, you know,
always interesting to end upseeing.

Sam Sethi (57:44):
Well, we saw the same with Spotify.
If you remember from theirfinancial reports, they didn't
talk about podcastingparticularly.
They talked about shows intheir financial reports as well,
yeah, yeah.
Now, the last one that grabbedmy attention this week was a
friend of the show, StephenGoldstein.
It was lovely to see him inLondon.

And let me tell you he will be delighted that
you've added a new feature tomake this show even longer.
He will be absolutely delighted.

Sam Sethi (58:08):
Well, he will, because his show's mentioned in
it.
So, yes, there you go, I betyou won't skip this section.
So, yes, there you go, I betyou won't skip this section
Again.
One of the things he did was hewrites a newsletter and he
wrote five things from London.
I think you have to read thewhole newsletter.
But things that stood out for mehe said podcasting is not just

(58:31):
about creators anymore, it'sabout building multi-platform
content machines, podcast, yes,but newsletters, videos, books,
social influence, even liveevents.
We've moved well pastpodcasting's quaint beginnings.
So even Stephen's beginning tosay is the word podcasting very
limiting.
He also went on to say that thelines between media formats is

(58:52):
converging and blurring fast,and I think that's true.
Is a video a podcast?
Is a podcast, just audio?
Youtube recently introduced apodcast chart.
We talked about that in thepast, but goal hanger revealed
that 25% of their 63 millionmonthly downloads comes from
YouTube.
And that's a significant signal, says Steven, and flight studio

(59:15):
, which is Stevenven bartlett,have started to talk about
knocking down podcasting'sartificial walls and going after
the 400 billion dollaropportunity.
And again they're talking aboutvideo, audio, social
newsletters, books, and this isthe thing I've been sort of
trying to bang on about that.
I think one of the biggestplatforms now to look at is

(59:36):
Patreon, substack all of thesethat are multifunctional
platforms.
I think single podcastplatforms are going to seem
quaint in a year's time.

So what's the name of our industry now, then?

Sam Sethi (59:50):
I don't know Podland, I don't know.
I mean, I have no idea, james.

Because I think the difference, the difficulty
is.
So I was moderating a panelabout video monetisation and
Georgie was there from FlightStudio and I asked the question
you know, what is a podcast now,particularly when we're having
a look at monetization for video?

(01:00:20):
And Georgie said I don't thinkit's very helpful to have a
conversation about what apodcast is anymore.
And I was there thinking well,how can we show how big
podcasting is as an industry?
Do we really want to be a bitplayer in the whole YouTube
ecosystem?
Because that's all that we'llbe.
If we're not podcasting, ifwe're not self-identifying as

(01:00:41):
podcasting and podcasters, thenyou know, our entire industry is
just another YouTube contentcreation tool.
Well, that's exciting, isn't it?
You know, I'll pack up and gohome if we start doing that.

Sam Sethi (01:00:57):
Yeah, but look at our sponsors, buzzsprout, for
example.
Okay, so we did a show, we havea transcript, but now through
co-host AI, they also provide ablog post.
So now I use that in TrueFansand I upload that blog post into
the TrueFans for this show.
Now that's content that peoplecan either use for SEO, for

(01:01:20):
reading, for looking at adifferent version of the
transcript.
Fundamentally, again, we talkabout podcasting, have live
events monetization strategies.
So I can see that the narrowfocus on podcasting as an audio
medium is moving beyond what thecreator economy wants and

(01:01:42):
therefore wide max uh, cutler atPave calls them shows.
Why people like um, you knowSpotify call them shows.

James Cridland (01:01:50):
I mean, we know.
So how are we going to, how arewe going to convince people
that podcasting is growing, thatpodcasting is in great shape,
when we can't even say what apodcast is anymore?
How can we even turn around andsay, well, podcasting is a $2.4
billion industry if we don'tknow what podcasting is?
We're just a small bit of theYouTube machine where we're

(01:02:15):
making crappy television showsand that's our future.
I just don't get it.
I don't get why we would takeour entire industry and go you
know what?
Yeah, we're actually nothing todo with audio anymore.
We're just another set ofpeople making crap television
shows and sticking them ontoYouTube.

(01:02:38):
What's the long-term future inthat?

Sam Sethi (01:02:40):
for anybody.
Well, there's two things I'dsay.
What do you call a live showthat is from a podcast like the
Rest Is Politics on a stage.
Is that a podcast?

Well, no, that's not a podcast, no.

Sam Sethi (01:02:51):
But it's part of the podcast revenue stream.

It's only part of Hanan's podcast revenue
stream.
It's only part of Hanan'spodcast revenue stream.

Sam Sethi (01:02:58):
It's not part of that 2.4 billion.
Well, it's part of goal hangers, I'm sure.
I'm sure they don't break outthat they are earning from live
events.
I'm sure they say our podcastingrevenue is yeah, maybe maybe
I'm not a person who has ananswer to the question.
I think the question is beingposed, but the worry I have is
it's being posed by many peoplein the industry, which seems to

(01:03:22):
suggest that we either need touse podcasting as the umbrella
term for all of this.
So YouTube calling it a podcast, although it's not RSS, but it
is a conversational item, that'svideo generated in this case,
and we say everything's apodcast and then we just claim
it, which is what I think AnandLopez was saying.

(01:03:43):
I think that's what Stephen Bis saying that narrow, focusing
it just on audio, but podcastingis all of it.
It's audio books.
Is an independent music artistwho puts art through RSS?
Is that called a podcast or amusic?

I don't know Well, I think it's called a
music album, but anyway, yes, Idon't know, I just thought it
was interesting.

Sam Sethi (01:04:04):
Anyway, if you're interested in reading that,
that's again from StephenGoldstein's newsletter, and
that's why I wanted to have thissection.
James, I think there's somereally interesting people
writing and talking about stuffthat we talk about weekly, but I
also think it's good to hearfrom other people's voices as
well.
The Tech Stuff on the Pod NewsWeekly Review.

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

Sam Sethi (01:04:32):
Adam Currie, the podfather, just put out a post
on Macedon saying just a quickreminder after five years.
We built the podcastindexorg tobe an open resource and API to
build on and innovate to protectpodcasting's open nature from
gatekeepers.
So time to say that Missionaccomplished.
Over 70 apps and services relyon it and actively support with

(01:04:53):
it.
Value for value, mainlyfinancially.
Everything else is whatever itand actively support with it.
Value for value mainlyfinancially.
Everything else is whatever youwant to do with it.
Yeah, so you know.
Congratulations to adam anddave.

So five years yes, except it's not five years,
because five years is inseptember.
So why is he posting this now?
Is he posting this now becausehe's he's now wanting to step
back from the podcast index?
He, he, you know he thinks that, thinks that it's achieved its
goal.
Why would you post missionaccomplished like that?

(01:05:22):
What's the thinking behind thisparticular post, sam?

Sam Sethi (01:05:26):
I'm not really sure.
I mean you might have moreinsight than I do, but I think
if your goal was to get a openecosystem of apps and um using
this one index, compared to theapple index, for example, I
think one of the goals was, youknow, to to protect people from
being deplatformed, and maybeadam feels that they've achieved

(01:05:49):
.
He's got his other project,which is, you know, godcaster um
, which does use the podcastindex as well.
I don't know.
I mean it'll be a good questionto adam.
I hope he's going to.
I think he says he's going togo on the jason calacanis show
to promote podcasting 2.0.
Um, I do actually feel, weirdly, that all the stuff we've been
talking about for the last threeor four years is coming to

(01:06:12):
fruition.
I don't know how you feel, butI feel all the micropainting
stuff is becoming much moremainstream as a conversation
video.
I don't know.

Yeah, indeed, no , I think that there's
definitely, um, that does feelas if there is momentum in
certain things and it's great,you know, obviously seeing Apple
being more interested in um,the open, um, you know, more
interested in the open, you know, in the new podcast namespace
and all of that stuff.
So yeah, but yeah, no, I wasjust sort of curious as to why

(01:06:47):
Adam would post this sort ofrather final sounding post yeah
exactly, you know.
But I mean saying missionaccomplished, which is, you know
, I love Adam to bits, butwhenever you see mission
accomplished, you see that youthink of George W Bush with that
big banner saying missionaccomplished when it palpably
wasn't.
So I'm there thinking I don'treally understand what he's

(01:07:11):
trying to do and he's threemonths early.
Understand what he's trying todo and he's three months early.
But congratulations the podcastindex, because it is a very
useful, very useful tool.
Talking about Adam's new thing,Godcaster, I found it
interesting to note thatTransistor has just added a new
theme specifically based fortheir podcast web pages and

(01:07:38):
websites, called Beacon, whichis specifically built for
churches and faith-basedorganisations, which I thought
was interesting.
You can give it a play, if youwant, for your very own podcast
at freepodcastwebsitescom andfiddle around with that.
But yeah, I thought that thatwas interesting, that Justin

(01:08:01):
feels that there is a goodreason to be involved in not
just that part of the industrybut to actually, you know, focus
on that from a point of view ofchurches and faith-based groups
and things like that.

Sam Sethi (01:08:18):
Now, one of the things that happened at the
London Podcast Show was thepodcast standards met twice not
once, but twice and the topic ofconversation twice was video
podcasting, but using HLS.

Yes, and I think that this certainly looks
interesting.
So the Podcast Standards Projectsaying in a post in LinkedIn
that it's been talking about abetter solution for supporting
video in RSS and it pretty wellovercomes all of the issues that
I wrote about last year Couldeven allow dynamically inserted

(01:08:56):
video advertising too, whichmight be interesting, because
you can do all of that sort ofthing in HLS if you like.
And, of course, since it's astream rather than a download or
at least it can be a streamrather than a download it means
that you could even get reallygood consumption data and
information around that.

(01:09:17):
Plus, it's cheaper to serve aswell, because you're not having
to deliver the entire massivefile to somebody that might
never watch it or that mightonly watch half of it.
So I think that quite a lot ofthat is very good news, and
there was certainly in that postfrom the Podcast Standards

(01:09:38):
Project, some really goodsounding information about
support already existing fromPocket Casts and support to come
from some other largeorganisations as well,
particularly if they're havingconversations with Apple.
So, yeah, all of that lookedpretty good in terms of making

(01:10:03):
sure that OpenRSS is capable ofoffering a really good solution
for video as well as for audio.
Yeah, yeah.

Sam Sethi (01:10:12):
So Ellie Rubenstein was there from Pocket Casts and
she basically piped up and saidlook, we don't have to wait for
Apple, because one of theconversation pieces was well, we
won't implement this untilApple implement this.
And there we got back to thechicken meat egg conversation.
So Ellie said look, we supportit.

(01:10:34):
And then I piped up and said,well, all the podcasting 2.0
apps actually support it,because we did that for ANC
Costello when RSS Blue used HLSfor broadcasting that live.
So all the apps went throughthe exercise of getting that to
work.
So we know we all support it.
So there is a momentum there.
And then, you know, one of thethings I you may recall was

(01:10:55):
pushing very hard for was theuse of the alternative enclosure
for this.
So the primary enclosure couldstay MP3, mp4, but the secondary
enclosure, the alternativeenclosure, would contain HLS as
an example to try and move thisforward, again, not breaking the
feed for Apple because theydon't support it yet, but still

(01:11:16):
allowing newer apps and thingslike Pocket Casts to use HLS as
a fallback and get people tounderstand the difference.
Now Todd Cochran and I spokequite a lot last year.
Todd Cochran at Blueberry doessupport it as a host.
Hubhopper supports it, pod2 nowsupports it, so there are hosts

(01:11:36):
out there that do it.
I think Podhome does as well.
I know RSS Blue does forcertain, so it's not isolated.
So we could as an industry moveforward quite quickly with this
.

Yeah, it's all very interesting in terms of
that and certainly good news, Ithink, personally, for Open RSS
for us to be able to properlydeliver video in a way that
works for everybody.

Sam Sethi (01:12:02):
There's a number of hosts that already support HLS.
We've got Blueberry, obviously.
We've just talked about Todd,but you've got Pod2 looking to
support it, and over in India,gautam Rajanand.
Hubhopper has been supportingHLS about three years ago.
He also supports YouTube videoand I remember from our
interview it'd be worthwhiletalking to him again about his

(01:12:23):
experience of HLS and why theydropped it and also what's been
happening with the latestupdates on YouTube video.
Now, last time time we spoke,we were talking about Hubhopper
enabling YouTube video, sohosting and distributing to
YouTube.
How's that going?

Gautam Raj Anand (01:12:43):
It's going really well, and the way that I
would recognize that it's goingwell is in the fact that
creators are requesting fordistribution outside of just
YouTube.
So they're asking us for moreplatforms.
And then they're also asking usfor added tools within the

(01:13:03):
product which can furthersupport their foraying into
YouTube, which is clips, videoediting, et cetera.
Now I don't know what thetimeline is for us to be able to
provide them all of theseadditional tools, but the very
fact that we start getting abarrage of requests from folks
asking for more stuff, I thinkthose are good indicators that
market is receiving it but wantmore and I think one of the
things you also mentioned was sothere was a downside which was

(01:13:26):
you're getting less audiopodcasts but more video podcasts
if you look at pure play data,it's not that we're getting more
video podcasts and audiopodcasts.
I would say the growth rate ofthe video podcasts have been
higher than the growth rate ofthe audio podcasts, but in terms
of absolute numbers we're stillgetting more audio podcasts and

(01:13:47):
video podcasts by a very largeamount.
So one clarification if I sortof misspoken earlier, maybe this
will clarify that.
If I sort of misspoken earlier,maybe this will clarify that.
The second I would say point isthat on the consumption side,
it's not that we're seeingmassive dips in consumption on
audio.
I just feel that there's alarge amount of chatter with
video podcasts.
So top of funnel, awarenessabout video podcasts is at an

(01:14:09):
all time high.
People are excited about it,People feel that they need to do
it to make their podcast cyclecomplete.
But it's not as thoughconsumption on audio has taken a
massive hit and I think thatthat also is in line with what's
happening with the rest of theworld.
But the growth rate of peopleuploading video podcasts is at a

(01:14:29):
higher rate than the growthrate of people uploading audio
podcasts.
I hope that sort of clarifiesmy statement.

Sam Sethi (01:14:36):
Yeah, now you're delivering the video using
standard MP4.
You've got your own CDN andgenerally the belief is that
storage is not the biggest costburden to host, but it's the
delivery over the contentnetwork to the edge that is the
bigger cost.

(01:14:56):
So you're delivering over MP4,is that correct?

That is correct, yes.

Sam Sethi (01:15:02):
So the last time we spoke, I was going well, why
aren't you using HLS?
And you turned around and saidto me I actually was using HLS,
the Hypertext live server whichApple invented.
And I went oh my God, whyaren't you using it still?
So what happened?
Tell me more.

So it was really interesting.
It came out of necessity alittle bit.
So what had basically happenedwas we had a partner, an
exclusive partner of ours, thatwe integrated with and they were
making a very large number ofrequests to us a DSP, a
consumption site platform.
Now, this was a little bit of aburden at that point for us.

(01:15:44):
I mean, it was a good thing,but it was also a little bit of
a burden for us.
So we wanted to come up with asolution that basically worked
for both parties, because theywere also making requests, like
abnormal number of requests tous, you know, at a system level,
not just at a user level.
So what we basically did was westarted to search for solutions
around this and we happenedupon HLS at that time and we

(01:16:08):
took this to them and at thattime it was basically a cost
saving strategy from ourperspective at that time.
It was basically a cost-savingstrategy from our perspective
with this one specific partner.
What we did was, when peoplewere uploading a podcast onto
hub hopper in, you know, let'sjust say, mp3 we were taking the
mp3 and we were converting itto m3u8 into small chunks, ts

(01:16:29):
chunks and this was basicallyallowing us to continue to let
them make the large number ofrequests that they were making,
but except they were makingthose requests in small chunks
at that period in time.
And now for us, this was great,because an automatic benefit
that happened was, of course,there was a cost benefit to us,
but then the secondary benefitto us was we suddenly started

(01:16:52):
seeing patterns of consumptionin terms of how long people are
consuming for, and this feltlike a goldmine, not just in
terms of retention metric, butalso in terms of what it could
mean for the advertising space.
Hls was also moved a lot forwardin the last three years.
Now there's low latency HLS anda few other technologies, but

(01:17:12):
this basically begs the questionof why did we abandon it if
everything seemed to be goingright?
Yeah, so we basically had aproblem statement, which is that
these platforms, which are verylarge in their own right and
have a large number of users intheir own right, they still want
to follow the blueprint of thewestern or global leader in the

(01:17:34):
space.
So they will take the globalleader, whether, in this
circumstances, an Apple or aSpotify, and whatever the
blueprint is that is beingfollowed by them.
They would basically want toape that blueprint, whether it
makes feasible sense for themfrom a latency of content
perspective or not.
They just believe that, okay,the research has been done there

(01:17:55):
.
We don't necessarily want to gothrough the Rnd, and I
understand their perspective aswell.
So there was a lot of internalpressure on the dev team in this
specific organization sayingthat what you guys have done is
working phenomenally well, butwe should just follow what is
right.
And that unfortunately caused alittle bit of a pushback on us

(01:18:19):
trying to be innovative in thedissemination of content and we
had to revert back to the oldways and the old guard.
But it was a good experimentNonetheless.
We enjoyed it, we went throughthe ringer with it and, yeah, we
saw the utilities of it.
Like I said three years ago,it's just that this is a
tendency of something that doeshappen in eastern markets.

(01:18:40):
In eastern markets, there isthe general notion that what has
been built in the West is theright way of having to build it.
Let's not question it, becausethey've been doing this for 20
years, so rightfully so they doknow exactly how this needs to
be done, so let's not crossquestion it.
And so you comply and youbasically build according to

(01:19:01):
those protocols, and that'sexactly what happened.
So it wasn't us that abandonedit, it was market forces that
made us put it on the backburner.
That's basically a betterexample.

Sam Sethi (01:19:13):
I would say that the West doesn't always know what
it's doing.
I'll give you a good example InAfrica they bypassed fixed-line
broadband and had micropayments,called M-PASA, way, way before
the West mobile-to-mobilecommunication payments, because
necessity required it and Ithink, where you are, in India,

(01:19:34):
I think bandwidth costs and datadelivery and the ability for
HLS to do now, with low latencyHLS, one second chunking, so the
immediacy for the userexperience to have streaming
audio or video without having todo the full download, and the
cost model of course associatedto having to do the full

(01:19:54):
download, even if the of courseassociated having to do the full
download, even if the user thenonly listens to 10.
I think you'll find from themeeting in london at the podcast
standards group that there is astrong leaning back now into
hls and there's a heavy pushthat we want as an industry
group to put on Apple, whoinvented HLS, to say look, adopt

(01:20:19):
it now.
Come on, apple, get your onedeveloper that you have for your
one year annual feature, makethat one feature, please.
Support for HLS and hopefullyApple will comply.
But you know let's not hold ourbreath on this one.
But again, for you to re-enable.

HLS.
What would it take?
Exactly that, and I'll tell youwhy Because the second that
that happens, it creates atrickle-down effect of the fact
that a behemoth and a megalithlike Apple has done this.
So it must be right, and so wewill follow this protocol.
The alternative for us is veryhard, we've done it, we've even

(01:21:03):
succeeded at it but trying to goto the platforms that a hub
hopper distributes to that isbasically only get their podcast
from us and then trying to goto them and tell them that all
the biggest folks in theindustry are doing it this way.
But let's do it this waybecause this is the right way to
do it or maybe not the rightway, but it can benefit you.

(01:21:23):
In abc I don't want to speak inblack and white terms or like
binary terms.

Sam Sethi (01:21:28):
You know, unfortunately, that conversation
won't go too far one thing thatwas said by ellie rubenstein,
who heads up Pocket Casts, wasthat they support HLS.
Fountain, true Fans, podverse,podcast, guru all support HLS.
So actually what would beuseful is for hosts to now

(01:21:49):
support HLS Again.
Maybe add it to the alternativeenclosure to begin with, which
means your feed doesn't getbroken when you serve it to
Apple or Spotify, who don'tsupport it, but in the
alternative enclosure, which,again, all these apps support,
the user could then switch tothat feed and to that

(01:22:12):
distribution, which would thenagain start to see the market in
knowledge and learning andcapability.
Oh look, if I switch to thisHLS version, it loads faster or
it's quicker or you can promoteit better.
So I think it's a two-stepfocus.
One is can we as an industryget hosts to support HLS?

(01:22:32):
Can we get apps to support HLS?
Can we get apps and hosts toput it in the alternative
enclosure and then can we applypressure to Apple and Spotify
and others to then actuallysupport it at the mainstream as
well?

I couldn't agree more with you, and I
definitely do believe that thebest and least path of
resistance on this would beApple, given that it is their
invention, and I think it couldbe beneficial for the industry.
Something as small as HLS couldhelp in creating a foundation
that is a good breeding groundfor innovation, but it does

(01:23:08):
constantly beg the question ofthe fact we do need one of the
biggies to support it, and astaggered approach, like you
mentioned, is one way to do itfor sure, and yeah, I think that
causes a ripple effect, andthat domino is what we're all
sort of hoping for.

Sam Sethi (01:23:23):
Gautam Rajanand, ceo of Hop Hopper.
Thank you so much, thank you,my friend.

Announcer (01:23:29):
The Pod News Weekly Review with Buzzsprout.
Start podcasting, keeppodcasting.

Are you doing anything specifically?
You were talking when we weredoing our live version of this
show last week, which, of course, didn't make it to this feed,
but you were talking about truefans becoming a podcast host
last week, um, which is exciting, which might bear repeating

(01:24:02):
because I'm guessing that youare also going to be doing hls
for video as well, will you?

Sam Sethi (01:24:08):
yes, so, uh, announcement here on this show.
It's not uh, final.
I haven't put out a pressrelease, but obviously, james,
you'll get that when it comesout.
Um, we've signed a deal withour partner, soundstack.
We are going to be using themas our content delivery network.
Um, we're going to be takingthe most popular shows to begin

(01:24:28):
with and putting those into hls.
Um, but we will be supportingaudio video and live um, and
I'll be coming out very, veryshortly with a timeline of when
we'll deliver that as well asthe pricing.
But we already support videoupload into TrueFans.
We do audio upload.

(01:24:50):
We have done that for a while.
We've just added private feeds,so we needed that CDNn.
We didn't have that delivery ifwe were going to do the hosting
part ourselves.
So, yeah, and why did I do it?
Because I've been battering myhead against a brick wall to try
and get hosts to provide liveservices, to provide video

(01:25:12):
capability and, apart from thisshow, it felt like I was talking
to a brick wall and so Ithought you know, if you can't
beat them, join them, you know,and become a host.
I think I'm not the only one.
I think you know the roomaround the show is that RSS,
blue and Fountain are going tocombine forces.
So, again, I think you knowhosts have all of this within

(01:25:36):
their realm.
Um, it doesn't mean that theycan't do it themselves as well,
but yes, we are.
And, um, yeah, watch this space.

We will be announcing um more about this in
the coming weeks very excitinguh elsewhere going on, pocket
casts is um now supporting umpod role, except they're not
calling it that because they'reintelligent and they're calling
it Recommended Shows by theCreator.
Hooray, good for them.
And that is now available inthe App Store.

(01:26:07):
You can just make sure thatyou're running the latest
version of Pocket Casts and itappears in there, which is a
nice thing and looks very pretty.
Of course, podroll is supportedby our sponsor, buzzsprout, as
well as by Transistor, rsscomand plenty of other podcast apps
.
I think this really helps withdiscovery of new shows and I

(01:26:32):
think it makes perfect sense forany podcast app to implement um
uh, particularly podcast appsthat get told off, because you
only support the big ones, don'tyou?
Uh?
Well, no, you can support uh asmany different um as many
different uh shows that creatorswant to promote as uh as
possible in this way.
So I think it's a good thing.

Sam Sethi (01:26:53):
It's a great thing and I think more more apps
should do it.
Um, the other one that I wouldlike apps to support is the
publisher feed.
I know again, true fans is theonly one that does it right now.
It was an idea from Oscar andDovidas that we implemented.
Um, they work really well.
They're like uh, pod roles, butfrom publishers to show all the

(01:27:16):
shows that they create.
So, if I liked the rest ispolitics I can click on
Goalhanger, see the publisherfeed and then see all the other
shows from that, and it justmakes sense.
It's a great discovery tool,but so far not a lot of adoption
.

No, well, you know, I mean partially.
Adoption is being driven bypeople that see the value in
those particular feeds and Ithink you know it's a
conversation to have in terms ofwhether or not it's.
You know.
The benefit for the audience istotally clear in terms of that.

(01:27:55):
But yeah, you know, certainlyit's always a good thing to add
more data in there to make iteasier to recommend other shows
to people.
Two podcast apps doing someinteresting things with AI.
Firstly, podsqueeze.
It's a tool which has just beenlaunched which uses AI to

(01:28:17):
automatically find great clipsfrom your podcast to share on
social media.
If this sounds familiar, it'sbecause Headliner does a similar
job and many others as well,but it's nice to see that
appearing.
Also, the podcast app Metacasthas added AI generated podcast
summaries, which is quite cool.

(01:28:38):
So they're little short.
You know one paragraph summariesof what is talked about in a
particular show.
But what I thought was quitenice is that those summaries are
also used in search, are alsoused in search.
So, and we linked to one ofthese in Thursday's Pod News

(01:29:00):
newsletter where you can veryclearly see, you know, for this
show it's delved into all of thethings that we have talked
about, and that means that evenif we haven't put anything in
our you know show description orwhatever, it will still appear
in search in that particular app, which I thought was quite nice
, so worth a peek.

(01:29:21):
That app also plans support forprivate RSS feeds in future L4.
And are you going to talk to meabout Bitcoin?

Sam Sethi (01:29:31):
Yeah, you can go make a coffee while I do this, if
you want.
It's not a big thing, but butagain, it's the arrow of
direction which gets me excited,square, which is the payment
from Jack Dorsey.
It's that little box you canhave, you know.
You see, vendors have it inshops or at fairs and events

(01:29:51):
they have.
At the Bitcoin show in Vegasnext um, they're going to allow
merchants to use the lightningnetwork to make payments and so
they've added it to the umsquare I don't know device or
platform so that you can doreal-time bitcoin payments from

(01:30:12):
your wallet to buy t-shirts,hoodies and hats, and they're
going to have a, a pop-up storewhere you can do that.
And I think again, all this is,you know they call it everyday
money, they also call it Bitcoinas an internet's native
currency, and I think you knowwe've been trying to push this
rock up a hill quite a lot.
You know micro payments,bitcoin sats, and they're like

(01:30:40):
at the end of the tunnel.
I mean Square doing this isgreat.
I think you know, for example,as much as I dislike X.
They are talking aboutproviding a micropayment service
.
We are seeing gamers nowbeginning to provide
micropayments within games.

But buying a hat or a t-shirt is not a
micropayment.
So what is the benefit for anormal human being to use
Bitcoin instead of just gettingtheir MasterCard out of their
pocket?

Sam Sethi (01:31:09):
I guess, if you've got Cash App as your wallet and
you're using this and you've gota combination of, you've earned
something and you want to useit as your mechanism again, is
it the goal of trying to havemicropayments or Bitcoin sats as
the internet's native currency?
And if that's the case, thenthis is what they're trying to
do.

(01:31:29):
They're trying to bring it tothe masses.
I think that there is analternative way of paying.

But the 25 cents cost for a MasterCard payment
is tiny when you're buying a $20t-shirt.

Sam Sethi (01:31:48):
I understand that yeah.

Yeah.
So I'm not quite sure whatthey're trying to achieve here.
And the internet's money?
Well, the internet's money isVisa and MasterCard
overwhelmingly.
It's only when we start talkingabout micropayments, and the
whole micropayment thing can befixed very easily by Visa and
MasterCard dropping their youknow, dropping their fee.

(01:32:12):
If Visa and MasterCard said, ifyou're spending less than 50
cents, then we're not going tocharge you any payment fees
whatsoever, then that would beinteresting, wouldn't it?
Any payment fees whatsoever?

Sam Sethi (01:32:25):
then that would be interesting, wouldn't it?
Oh, no, completely.
I mean hello, yeah.
I mean imagine Apple says youknow, we will make Apple Pay, a
micropayment system, right andwe won't charge you for doing
that quick transaction.
I mean again, I fully agree.
I think what you're seeing hereis somebody trying to show that
the Lightning Network isn'tjust for micropayments, but it

(01:32:47):
can be used for coffee andT-shirts and whatever.
But and is this the way forward?
Maybe it is, but you know, Iagree with you, it could be all
killed very quickly if Visa andMasterCard or Apple suddenly
remove that fee structure andeveryone will then go well, yeah
, do I really want to jumpthrough these micropayment hoops

(01:33:08):
with Bitcoin and SaaS?
Not really, I'll stick topound-to-pence.

It would be really interesting if they were
to drop the if for any 50 centpayments, and obviously you'd
have to be, you know, sort ofrelatively careful.
You know, not to accept 20, 50cent payments, obviously.
But if you were to say that forevery 50 cent payment it will

(01:33:32):
cost you one cent or half a centor something, rather than the
25 cents or whatever it is thatit currently is, then they've
pretty well fixed the.
You know the issue here.
I suppose you know the issuehere.
I suppose you know the onlything that they need to be
careful of is the amount ofadditional stress that that will

(01:33:52):
put on the Visa and MasterCardpayment systems.
But you know, with that, youknow there's no technical reason
why they have to charge themoney that they're actually
charging.
I suppose.

Sam Sethi (01:34:03):
Yeah, no, again it could be historical.
I hope they do it and then itmakes everyone's life simpler.

That would be interesting, wouldn't it?
Yeah, wouldn't that be fun.

Sam Sethi (01:34:17):
Well, I also think you've got to also look at
payment structures in othercountries, like Swish in Sweden
or UPI in India.
I think they bypass the Visaand Masterard systems and allow
micropayments, so there areother ways that this could
happen.
I think there's a whole fluxgoing on around digital
currencies and you know, we evenhaven't talked about where does
stablecoin fit in this andwhere does the so-called

(01:34:39):
sterling digital coin and theeagle American digital coin fit
in?

There are so many ways yeah, I, you know, I
do wonder how much of this isdriven by america, which has a
banking system from the 1970sstill, um, and actually how much
of this if, if the world wasslightly different and europe
was leading things rather thanthe folks in Silicon Valley, I

(01:35:06):
wonder whether or not we wouldactually see any of these weird
small money currency thingsgoing on.
You know what I mean?

Sam Sethi (01:35:22):
Yeah, I mean, look, we've seen this before.
Twitter came about because theyhad a crappy non-SMS system in
America, whereas Europe had itfixed.
I think Uber is because they'vegot a poor transport excuse me,
because they've got a poorpublic transport system in
America.
They don't have a good networkrail network, and they don't
have a good tube network, solet's have Uber everywhere.

(01:35:45):
I mean, when I was in LA, itwas like I said to my cousin
I'll take, I'll take the I don'tknow what they call the tube
there.
Um, he went no, you won't gothere.
There's just druggies andmurderers on there, right?
And it was like so everyonejumps in a car.
But the system to fix it wasthen create Uber, whereas we
fixed it by creating a betterrail network.
So you know, there's differentways of doing it.

Announcer (01:36:05):
Boostergram, boostergram, boostergram, super,
super comments, zaps, fan mail,fan mail, super chats and email
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Our favourite time of the week,it's the Pod News Weekly Review
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Yes, there are so many different ways to get in
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money that we make as well.
Yes, we've got some boosts,haven't we, sam?

Sam Sethi (01:36:35):
We have indeed, it's a row of ducks 2222, from the
ugly quacking duck aka Bruce.
He says thanks for taking uswith you to the podcast show 7-3
.

Yes, indeed yes, it was fun last week to wander
around the podcast showrelatively early on the first
day and say how did you find thepodcast show?
And everybody lying.
So that was fun, I guess,because they'd only been in
there for an hour.
It wasn't as if anybody knewhow the show was going to be,

(01:37:07):
but actually such a positivevibe coming from that.
So, yes, thank you, bruce, itwas fun to do.
And also another row of ducksfrom you.
I enjoy podcasts and podcastingbecause it's like talking with
your group at work.
You know the ones that enjoythe same things.
I really like you two and thepodcast.
Great episode.
Thanks, 73s.
Well, thank you, bruce.

(01:37:28):
That's very good of you.
Silas on Linux Now, he was inour audience last week and we
got him to read out some of hisgrumpy.
We didn't because he wouldn't.
Well, yes, he didn't and hewouldn't in the end of it.
But yes, and he then saidthanks to the audio gods for
destroying the tape.

(01:37:49):
Now no one is going to hear howmuch of a failure I was.
You know you come to arecording of a podcast.
What do you expect?
So many people on LinkedIn havesaid oh, yeah, and we really
enjoyed going to the liverecording of the Bond News
Weekly Review which was quite athing, it was quite fun.
Yeah, it's a shame.
It's a shame that the audiodidn't work and Matt Cundall

(01:38:13):
sent us a boost actually at theevent, watching us, watching you
live now in London.
Great job, there you go 5,150sats.
Thank you, matt.
Had we noticed, we would havegiven you a shout out from the
stage, but I hadn't actuallynoticed.
But, matt, thank you.
Yes, it was a great.
It was a great, great fun to doall of that.

(01:38:35):
Also great to meet Elias Strand, who is our newest supporter,
one of the noteworthy 19, withloads of other people on there,
including who else was there aswe were recording.
Matt Medeiros wasn't Dave.

(01:38:55):
Jackson wasn't Dave.
You should come over to theGreat British Podcast Show.
Rocky Thomas was there, wasn'tshe?
So that was fun to see.

Sam Sethi (01:39:06):
Rocky Clairway Brown was there.

Clairway Brown was there, and plenty of other
people that we should bethanking as well, including Star
Tempest, brian Entsminger andDavid John Clark.
If you would like to join andbecome our 20th supporter, then
that would be a wonderful thing.
Weeklypodnewsnet is where to go, and Sam can pay off some of

(01:39:29):
the bar bill with thatWeeklypodnewsnet.

Sam Sethi (01:39:33):
Not really.
No, it might take a whole yearfor that to happen.

Well, yes, so there we go, but yes, so that
would be a wonderful thing.
So what else has happened foryou this week, sam Well?

Sam Sethi (01:39:45):
apart from recovering from the podcast show, I
decided to walk 25 kilometres ofthe Thames again.
So we went from Goring toCullum.
We passed George Michael'smillhouse in Goring, agatha
Christie's graveyard at Chelseaand George Orwell's grave at
Cullum.
I didn't really know this.
His real name was Eric ArthurBlair.

(01:40:06):
Oh yes.
Well, there you go.
Pop quiz or pub quiz here yougo.
And we ended up drinking andyou'll be glad it wasn't wine,
james, it was a dark stout in a13th century pub in Cullum.
It's called the Barley Moe.

Ah, very good.

Sam Sethi (01:40:23):
So that was part of what I did to recover.
I'm not here next week, hooray,says somebody else, not me.
I will miss it, but I'm offcycling in France and
Switzerland, I'm going toStrasbourg and Basel and I'm
wine tasting all the way around.

So, yes, oh, very nice too.
Basel is a fun place to go, ifonly because if you know where
to go, then you can actuallywalk around a flagpole and you
can walk into three countries inless than 10 seconds, I seem to
remember.
It's a bit of a lie, becausethe flagpole isn't actually
quite where the three countriescoexist, but that would be in

(01:41:03):
the middle of the river thatyou're next to, so that will be
quite hard, but um yeah it's afun thing to do.
Now you did.
You did say that you have anapp coming out for true fans.
Yes, How's that?
How's that?

Sam Sethi (01:41:15):
going then it's getting one step closer, god.
It feels like slow, um, but weare trying to get there as fast
as we can.
We are submitting the firstversion, uh, hopefully today or
tomorrow.
Um and uh, again, the wwc iscoming up, so they've announced
a new solarium ui design that'sgoing to be for all apps.

(01:41:37):
So I don't know where we sitbetween whether we'll get it
approved before that or after.
I don't know what's going on sothat's what?
apple, yes, apple that's theapple solarium, their new ui
design um, and they've changedthe name.
There was no ios 20, james, doyou know this?

well, yes, so they say that they are moving,
uh, the names of ios to the year, which is the dumbest,
stupidest thing that they couldpossibly do, but apparently
they're doing that, so that'sgoing to be exciting, isn't it?

Sam Sethi (01:42:09):
Yes, so again, we are submitting Now.
This first version is 0.01.
It's a totally stripped backversion.
It's bare roots, right.
So it's podcast page search,episode page, user settings.
It doesn't have things likecharts, super fans, any of that
feature or function.
We'll build those over thecoming weeks, but we haven't got

(01:42:30):
those in as we speak.
So, yeah, that's where we are,but we just need to get that
going really.

Very good.
Well, I'm looking forward to atleast two months of Sam in this
bit of this podcast moaningabout the Apple and indeed the
Google Play review process andhow dreadful it all is and how
unfair everything is.

Sam Sethi (01:42:54):
Yes, the other thing.
I'm hoping, and it looks likeit's happening.
It came out yesterday.
We talked about the US casewhere Apple's getting fined for
the Epic court case.
So they're opening up in the USwhere you can put a link out of
your app to a website.
Well, the EU has just finedthem again, or has given them

(01:43:18):
notice that they will fine themagain in the next 30 days unless
they comply in the next 30 days, unless they comply.
So they're under a time limitto actually open up in the same
way now the App Store withexternal links to a website for
payments.

Well, there you go, watch this space, as they
say, but that should all be fun.
In two weeks' time, because youare not here next week, in two
weeks' time, we will be talkingall about L402 Secure RSS.
You'll be talking to Oscar Maryas well, who is doing something
similar, and so that should bedefinitely something to look

(01:43:55):
forward to.
If you want to go diving deepinto all of this tech which
should be good, and, I shouldsay, if you want to co-host this
show next week, then you've gotuntil Sunday to email us
weeklypodnewsnet.

Sam Sethi (01:44:10):
No weekly and podnewsnet.

If you want to co-host this show next week.
Otherwise I'll have a thinkabout how we do it and what we
do.
We only need do 50 shows a year, sam.

Sam Sethi (01:44:25):
Oh right.

I am thinking to myself maybe we have a week off
next week.
No, because we only need do 50shows a week a year.
Anyway, we'll see how all ofthat works.

Sam Sethi (01:44:39):
Okay.
So what's happened for you,James, since you got back from
the London podcast show?

Well, yes, so obviously made my way all the
way back.
Now here's a customer supportstory.
On my way back I was still ineconomy, although in premium

(01:45:04):
economy.
I used some of my points to goback on the long flight back
home and I was woken up after 14hours of flight.
I was woken up by one of theflight attendants coming to me
with a flat white, which is thecoffee that I order from the
business section.
Because you don't get flatwhite if you're an economy.
You just get whatever it isthat comes out of that urn.
So they came to me with a flatwhite and a Qantas key ring and

(01:45:29):
a little card saying I hopeyou've enjoyed your flight with
likes is flat white.
That's a pretty impressivething.
So it just goes to show justthose little things you know are

(01:45:51):
quite smart.
Prior to going all the way backhome, I actually went up to
Wellin in Hertfordshire to see afriend of mine, which was very
good fun.

Sam Sethi (01:46:04):
Is it still called Garden City?
Is it Welling Garden City?
It's now been shortened toWelling.

No, I think there's Welling Garden City.
I went up to Welling North,which is, I believe, a different
place, but yes, we went to thelocal pub and the local pub was
this sort of farm, you know, ina farmyard, and I was expecting
Jeremy Clarkson to appear anyminute now and, you know, with
some sheep or something, but itwas.

(01:46:29):
It was all very, very country.
So it was all, it was all nice.
So, yes, that was a nice endingto a week in London and a week
running around and doing anddoing things.
So, yes, that was a veryenjoyable thing.

(01:46:51):
And for the last three or fourdays I've been waking up at
three o'clock in the morning,brilliant.
I'm looking forward toeverything going back to normal.
My next flight apart from aholiday in Darwin, my next
flight is um August to podcastmovement in Dallas.
So, um, we'll see if, uh, we'llsee what happens uh, closer to

(01:47:14):
that point.

Sam Sethi (01:47:14):
I think so time for you to get in that swimming pool
and do your lengths.

Great, uh, yes, except of course it's winter
here.
So no, there'll be no swimmingpool.
Yes, I'm in my gym wear todaybecause Thursdays is gym day,
but I'm quite chilly now, so Ithink I should probably work out
.
I mean, it's only 18 Celsius,so I think I should work out

(01:47:40):
some way.

Sam Sethi (01:47:41):
It's warmer than where we are I know.

So yeah, but unfortunately our houses are
made out of sticks here, so 18Celsius outside is 18 Celsius
inside, but yeah.
So what I need to properly dois to, yes, get some workout
quite what I should be wearingafter gym day.
I've not done any of this gymstuff.
I don't really understand whatI'm doing.

(01:48:04):
Anyway, that's it for this week.
All of our podcast stories, ofcourse, taken from the Pod News
daily newsletter at podnewsnet.

Sam Sethi (01:48:12):
You can support this show by streaming sats.
You can give us feedback usingthe Buzzsprout fan mail link in
our show notes.
You can send us a super commentor become a power supporter,
like the naughty but nice 19.
I don't know if that's theexpression, I think.
What do we call them?

they're not naughty, but nice, we call them
the.
The noteworthy 19 is, I think,what we called them.

Sam Sethi (01:48:33):
But yes, that's right .
I don't know why I've putnaughty but nice.
I think it sounds better.

Anyway, uh, at weeklypodnewsnet our music is
from tm studios.
Our voiceover is sheila d, ouraudio is recorded using clean
feed, we edit with hindenburgand we're hosted and sponsored
by buzzsprout.
Start podcasting, keeppodcasting get updated every day
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Sam Sethi (01:48:54):
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