Amazon restructures Wondery: 110 jobs gone

Amazon's restructuring of Wondery signals deeper issues with their podcast strategy as they distribute operations across Audible, creator services, and advertising divisions while losing approximately 110 jobs in the process.

• Amazon's track record with podcast acquisitions has been underwhelming, including Art19's low market share and unfulfilled promises for high-profile shows
• Dan Granger from Oxford Road suggests the reorganization represents a recalibration toward more integrated audio ecosystems
• Sean King from Veritone emphasizes the importance of balancing host-read ads with other advertising forms
• Patreon creators have earned over $10 billion since 2013, now receiving $2 billion annually—equal to the entire US podcast ad market
• UK age verification requirements for mature content are forcing platforms like Spotify to implement face scanning or ID uploads
• Riverside has quietly launched a podcast hosting service that sends video to YouTube but only audio to other platforms
• New podcast technology includes Todd Cochran's GuestMatchPro for connecting content creators and specialists for interviews
• True Fans is testing a new advertising option called True Ads allowing creators to purchase placement on the homepage

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Pod News Weekly Review uses chapters In Spotify.
You'll see the chapters in theepisode page on the playback
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be a grown-up and listen to thewhole thing.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
The last word in podcasting news.
This is the Pod News WeeklyReview with James Cridland and
Sam Sethi.

Sam Sethi (00:20):
I'm James Cridland the editor of Pod News, and I'm
Sam Sethi, the CEO of True Fans.

Dan Granger (00:25):
There were a lot of smart people that made that a
real prestige brand in the space.

Sean King (00:30):
Dan Granger from Oxford Road with his thoughts on
the Wondery Reorg Plus thatrestructuring kind of, is a
little bit more of arecalibration into more
potentially integrated audioecosystems.

James Cridland (00:42):
Sean King from Veritone on the changing world
of podcasting, and Riversidebecomes a podcast host.
This podcast is sponsored byBuzzsprout with the tools,
support and community to ensureyou keep podcasting, start
podcasting, keep podcasting withbuzzsproutcom.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly
Review.

Sam Sethi (01:04):
James, let's kick this show off.
Then Amazon is shutting downits Wondery podcast studio.
Well, is it fully shutting itdown?
It's sort of reorganising it.
There's a number of people thathave been let go, unfortunately
.
Come on, what's been happening.

James Cridland (01:19):
Yes, they are definitely not shutting it down.
And if we say that we'reshutting it down, we will get an
email from Amazon saying we arenot shutting it down.
And if we say that we'reshutting it down, we will get an
email from Amazon saying we arenot shutting it down.
So let's be very clear.
They're not shutting it down,they are reorganising it,
they're breaking up thecompany's operations.
Essentially, the narrativecontent is going to Audible and

(01:39):
all of that is going in there,including the chief content
officer, Marshall Louis.
He's moving to a new role atAudible.
Also, the personality-drivenpodcast, because, of course,
Wondery owns New Heights, forexample, Kelsey Brothers and
Armchair Expert.
They are going to be part of acreator services team, which is

(02:00):
all very exciting, and theadvertising and sponsorship side
of Wondery will be formed intoa new team, also working with
Amazon Music's advertising unit.
Again, let me be very clearthose teams are merging together
, yes, but they're not mergingtogether.
They're both creating anentirely new business unit.

(02:21):
Don't go thinking that they'remerging together, because if,
again, if I say that they aremerging together, I will get an
angry email from Amazon.
That didn't bother to, you know.
Send me the internal memoexplaining it all until after I
asked.
But yes, go on.
Do you know?

Sam Sethi (02:35):
why, james?
Yes, do you know why?
Because it messes up the orgchart internally.

James Cridland (02:40):
Yes, I think quite a lot of it is.
Look at me, I'm very important.
I've got another unit answeringto me.
Yeah, exactly.
So anyway, ignoring all of that, hernán López has posted
something yesterday saying thathe is obviously very sad, but
saying that he's not going tosay much more until he can get
his thoughts in order, and Ithink that that's probably fair

(03:01):
enough.
Probably fair enough.
It looks, reading the internalmemo which we've got, it looks
as if Amazon is trying to blamevideo, and video killed the owl.
As I've been saying, I thinkit's possibly a little bit more
than that, but what wasinteresting is seeing that the
revenue was going up, and that'sgood, but necessarily not quite

(03:23):
as much if they have made 110people lose their jobs,
including the CEO, jen Sargent,who, from all accounts, is an
excellent person and it's agreat shame to see her go.

Sam Sethi (03:36):
I would say Amazon is the only company slower and
more disorganised and moredisjointed than Apple, and
that's saying something, becauseI've said it on this show in
the past Amazon music, whichsomehow contains podcasts, but
it doesn't say it.
Wondery Twitch, you can go on.

(03:58):
They're all siloed businessesand now they're reorganizing and
they still didn't reorganize itto actually bring it together.
So that's the other thingthat's frustrating.
If you're a customer from theoutside looking in and now
they're reorganising it and theystill didn't reorganise it to
actually bring it together.
Yeah, so that's the other thingthat's frustrating.
If you're a customer from theoutside looking in, I go to
Spotify and I go, I pay mysubscription, I get music,
podcasts, audio books, video,bang, bang, bang.
I don't understand thehierarchy or the organisational

(04:21):
structure of Spotify becauseit's not been made obvious to me
With Amazon, it is so obviousthat there's an organisational
structure there.

James Cridland (04:30):
Yeah, it's a mess.
It's not just what Amazon hasdone with Wondery, it's what
Amazon has done with everythingthat they've bought.
So they bought podcast hostingcompany Art19, you might
remember Vaguely that neverachieved more than a 1% share of
total episodes published.
If you compare Art19, you mightremember Vaguely that never
achieved more than a 1% share oftotal episodes published.
If you compare Art19, which isan enterprise podcast host, you

(04:51):
compare that with the otherenterprise podcast hosts
Megaphone, Simplecast or Tritonare all four times as large.
It's astonishing the differencethere.
So Art19 has underperformed.
Amazon spent $80 million on theSmartless podcast, but that deal
only lasted three years, soclearly they must have failed in

(05:11):
terms of that, becauseSmartless have moved on.
Amazon spent $100 million forNew Heights.
In their press release theypromised international audio
adaptations, which haven'thappened, and live events.
Well, as soon as Amazonpurchased New Heights, they
haven't done a live event, sothey failed on that as well.
And then, of course, you've gotAmazon Music, which started

(05:33):
slowly adding podcasts in 2020.
It's got a 13% market share formusic in the US.
I find astonishingly 13%, butin the US only gets a 1.6 share
of podcast downloads.

Sam Sethi (05:47):
Every single thing that amazon has touched hasn't
worked, and I find that quiteastonishing well, we could add
to that the podcastingintegration with the alexa,
which is just non-existent,alexa skills, which don't work.
The list goes on right, I meanmy Alexa now is a brilliant
timer for cooking, and that'sabout the sum of it.

(06:08):
We still haven't seen AlexaPlus rolled out, which is meant
to be their new super-duper AI,so yeah, look.

James Cridland (06:18):
I don't think this is going to make any
difference, basically, but Ithink I find it most annoying
that they turn around and theysay, oh well, it's because
podcasts are going into video,and that's the thing as just
throwing a grenade in the roomas they leave.
And it's just.
You know, it's not true, it'sbecause you've messed it up.
You've messed up a number ofthese individual organisations,

(06:38):
a number of these differentthings that you have purchased,
including Wondery, and then youturn around and you have the
gall to turn around and say, ohwell, it's because video, it's
just ridiculous.
And the fact that the haplessPR people, of course, are
querying about my use of mergeinto rather than no, merge with

(06:59):
rather than merge into.
You know, I mean, if that'sreally the only thing that you
can be focused on with myreporting, then heaven knows.
And Audible, by the way, such amess.
You can't even link to shows inAudible because the link is
different in every singlecountry and you can't actually
buy here in the UK, here inAustralia, there in the UK.

(07:22):
You can't buy from a US Audiblelink.
It just says no, it's notavailable in this country.
It's just a mess and you know.
So, amazon having the gall tothen turn around and say, oh,
but it's because podcasting isgoing to video, is just more raw
, you know, raw blood for theidiots who think that podcasting
is only going to work if wemove over to video, and it just

(07:45):
as you can tell it makes meslightly irritated.

Sam Sethi (07:48):
Yes, now Steve Boom is the guy who heads this all up
from every little thiefdom.
I wonder if Steve would evercome on the show and talk about
what their strategy is, becauseNot now he won't.
Well, look, you know, hey, ifhe's got his big pants on, he
should come on, because you knowthere's no point hiding behind
a PR story.

(08:08):
Let's get a Q&A with him andyou know I doubt he will, but
let's do it very hard to workwith them when they were putting
podcasts into Amazon Music andgot absolutely no traction.

James Cridland (08:28):
So I don't think they care about podcasting, but
it frustrates me that theywould, you know, fart in the
elevator before getting out.

Sam Sethi (08:37):
So okay, given that they threw the grenade in and
said video is the thing, what istheir video strategy then?

James Cridland (08:44):
in and said video is the thing.
What is their video strategythen?
Well, yes, I mean, what istheir video strategy Exactly?
I think Wondery is doing a bitmore in terms of video.
Interestingly, I mean, wonderyis the number one podcast
publisher for turning theirpodcasts into TV.
They've done tremendously.
They just won a couple of Emmysfor one of the shows that they
converted into a TV show.

(09:06):
The Dying for Sex show recentlyscored nine Emmy nominations
for that show, which went on toFX.
Of course, dr Death also endedup on TV as well, and they've
got a bunch of other things.
So you know, they've got astrategy there in terms of
taking their IP and getting themost out of it, or at least they
had one, but I'm not quite surewhat that strategy is going to

(09:29):
be as we move forward.

Sam Sethi (09:30):
Yeah, weird, because you know they've got a channel
called Prime which they can pushthings through, and most people
get that with their Primeaccount.

James Cridland (09:38):
Yeah, well, I mean, having said that, I did
talk to the folks at Netflixthis week.
Netflix have just launched acompanion podcast to Wednesday,
which is, of course, one oftheir big hits.
They've launched a companionpodcast to that, which shows how
the thing was made and you knowand all of that, and it's
available in audio.
Everywhere you get podcasts andit's available in video on

(10:02):
YouTube.
Available in video on YouTube.
Okay, hello Netflix.
If only Netflix, you owned avideo platform that you could
put this video podcast on thatyou've just made.
But oh no, it's not availableon the.

Sam Sethi (10:17):
Netflix video platform.
I do wonder.
I mean, these are meant to besenior executives with a brain
cell, and this is their strategy?
I mean, do they walk into aroom and with a brain cell?
And this is their strategy?
I mean, do they walk into aroom and go now we'll put it
onto YouTube, I mean, andpromote another platform.

James Cridland (10:32):
Yeah, I mean what a strategy that is.
Anyway, I've said quite enough,but I did think it was
worthwhile having a quick chatwith a few other people.
Said quite enough, but I didthink it was worthwhile having a
quick chat with a few otherpeople.
So, firstly, I spoke to SeanKing from Veritone and asked him
what might have gone on atWondery.

Sean King (10:50):
At the end of the day , all these organisations make
strategic decisions about whattheir priorities are in the
organisation and then especiallyin an organisation as big as
Amazon.
You know what are thosedownstream implications.
You know broadly speakingacross that organisation of
those downstream implications.
You know broadly speakingacross that organization.
But you know, in my opinion, Imean it really kind of that
restructuring kind of is well,I'll consider a little bit more

(11:17):
of a recalibration on theirshift potentially for more of
that traditional studio modelsinto more potentially integrated
audio ecosystems.
I mean, obviously, with havingWondery and having Audible and
having these different groups,there's a natural opportunity to
kind of consolidate thosedifferent ecosystems and also,
at the same time, kind of setthemselves up.
I mean, more and more podcastsare becoming video orientated

(11:37):
and more platform agnostic.
Even in those Like even when Igo through my social feeds these
days, just how many videos I'mwatching, that is basically just
a recording of a podcast that Iwould likely listen to as well.
And you're just starting to seedifferent ways in which the
medium is being consumed and, atthe same time, allowing their
brands to potentially be able tonavigate some more of their

(12:01):
kind of what I'll considerplatform control, distribution
and monetization, and obviously,in an organization that has so
many assets in it from Amazon ifyou just think about it, from
their audio divisions, theirfilm divisions, their you know
their streaming platforms,across that, you know, having
these abilities to be able toconsolidate.
I mean, it's typically what youwould expect to see in these

(12:22):
organisations.

James Cridland (12:22):
Yeah, yeah, and I mean it's interesting.
We were looking at how Wonderyhas done.
Wondery has done more podcastto TV conversions than any other
company has done.
They've done particularly wellin terms of that.
They've obviously released amassive amount of content but,
of course, amazon being Amazon,we can't quite see whether or

(12:43):
not that was a sustainablebusiness model.
What's your gut feel in termsof that?

Sean King (12:49):
Well, I mean, it's a game of numbers and those and
look at the end of the day,content is still king.
I think a lot of the successthat Wondery had in that even
dates back to Hernan and thefounders and having background
in Fox and everything elsethat's there.
So, being able to, you know,make the right bets on what type
of content and what content andwhat things may be able to

(13:11):
transcend platforms andtranscend, you know, from an
audio only, you know medium intoyou know more storytelling from
those.
But, again, to that point, whata wonderful opportunity in
these areas and why I've alwaysloved the podcasting space from
those is the barrier to entry inpodcasting and being able to be

(13:31):
able to create this and be ableto do this, to be entertainment
supply chains is, and I think,just looking at Amazon
specifically, and knowing thatfrom an audio to potentially a

(13:53):
streaming platform, to Twitch,to video, to you know movies and
everything else that they do, Imean they have the entire stack
, so to speak.

James Cridland (14:01):
Is the revenue for the podcast industry still
very much focused aroundhost-read ads?
I mean, clearly, when you lookat some of the content that
Wondery was producing, host-readads are quite difficult in that
sort of narrative experienceanyway.
But are we still essentially ahost-read ad industry or are we
moving to something a bit morecomplex?

Sean King (14:23):
Well, I hope we're going to something that's a
healthy medium.
Before you know, I always lovedabout the.
What I always still love aboutthe podcasting space is, you
know, it reminds me of, you know, driving to work in the
nineties and I had my favoriteentertainment that I would
listen to and it was structuredin the timeline that I would
listen to it and I would go tothose and it's the trusted

(14:46):
voices.
It's on demand but theaccessibility of it is just
great and I think the host readads is a special key component
to podcasting.
But for podcasting to continueto scale, to continue to evolve,
there has to be a healthybalance on being able to create
and develop what I'll considerthe relationship and the

(15:07):
engagement.
And how do you support that withother ads?
I mean, we see this all thetime in traditionals.
You know you have.
You know, let's pick on TV fora second, okay.
Well, yeah, you want to haveyour Super Bowl ad, you want to
have that tent pole opportunity,but as a standalone basis, it's
really hard to make thattentpole event work if you don't
have a supporting cast ofadvertisements and other medias

(15:32):
and other things taking place tomake you leverage that the most
.
And so it's similar here, in myopinion, on the podcasting
spaces, you have to leveragethat relationship that you have
the opportunity to with the host, but you also have to support
it with everything there to makesure that you're staying
consistent.

James Cridland (15:49):
What's coming?
Who's the stranger at the gatethat your dog is barking at?
What should we be worried aboutin the future in terms of the
podcast industry?
How are things changing?

Sean King (16:03):
I mean, I think things are changing so much as
we're seeing such accelerationand all of these other different
platforms and I do apologizefor my, I'm afraid to go down
and don't worry about the dog200 dog downstairs is 200 pound
dog but.
But I think what is changing isbeing able to find and where and
navigate the connections acrossthese multi-platforms.

(16:25):
You know what is your corepodcasting group that's
listening to it.
Are you live streaming that andthat audience on YouTube?
How does that transcend over tothe different social networks,
either on Instagram or Facebookor TikTok or any of these others
?
You know your audience justpool, just got much more
fragmented, and how do you makesure you're staying connected

(16:49):
and, as a brand, how you'remaking sure that you're trying
your best to uniquely be able toserve the target customer that
you're trying to see withoutinundating them all over the
place?
It's a challenging balance.
That's a requirement of youknow, smart people and good
technology and better data thatwill allow you to be able to

(17:12):
help make the right decisions.

James Cridland (17:13):
Sean, it's been great to chat.
Thank you so much for your time.

Sean King (17:16):
My pleasure.
Thanks for having me, James.

James Cridland (17:17):
There's more of that in our sister publication
listen to me the podcastBusiness Journal on Friday.
You can find that atpodcastbusinessjournalcom.
And obviously, when I say onFriday, I mean today.
Obviously don't.
I and Sam.
You spoke with Dan Granger fromOxford Road and he gave his
reaction.

Dan Granger (17:37):
I'm sad for the beautiful brand that Hernan
built with so many others.
There were a lot of smartpeople that made that a real
prestige brand in the space.
I think that they helpedadvance a format that is in
decline and may resurge in thefuture, and I'm sorry for the
people that lost their jobs.
But if we're just looking atthe business mechanics of it

(18:03):
look, I don't have intelligentviews about Amazon as a business
.
I can tell you on the podcastside of the business and the
streaming side of the business,you can tell when there's a lack
of focus and you can tell whenthe priorities go away.
From who are we serving?

(18:24):
There's audience and there'sthe other constituency that
matters is the brands that fundit.
Right, I think that there'sfundamentally three major lanes
of monetization.
When we think about somethingthat is a podcast and if we can
expand that beyond even yourpodcast definition and go toward

(18:47):
other shows too.
The first model isimpression-based buying, where
you're buying audiences, right,and that's increasingly becoming
a digital programmatictransaction, highly impersonal,
even though they'll try to jamin some endorsements, but at the
end of the day it's getting outof the relationship business.

(19:08):
On the other side of thespectrum, you have this big
splashy personality businesswhere you're selling cover art
on a show, where you're sellingmaybe some appearances or some
deeper integrations and maybethere's 360 components and
assets that spin out into otherchannels as well.

(19:30):
And those are expensive deals.
Those aren't deals where you'vegot a lot of performance brands
that are really living anddying by how many customers they
get from the purchase.
And what I see happening out ofthose kind of two worlds is a
lot of publishers and platformsbelieve that those are the only

(19:53):
two that should exist and theydo it at the peril of the third
group, which is the really triedand true endorsement business,
and we had 100 years virtuallyto shape this model.
The podcast business that I gotinto was an improvement upon the

(20:16):
radio business, but the radiobusiness had something good you
could buy your impressions, youcould do your big splashy brand
integrations, but you could alsobuy a Monday through Friday
endorsement on a daily radioshow or you could buy a weekly
spot on the specialty show andyou could become a part of the

(20:37):
fabric of that content throughthe constant reminders, where
the ads carry the trust andintimacy of the host who imputes
that trust onto the audience.
And that transfer of trust isthe real oil in this industry.
It is the most precious assetthat we have, and when you
ignore that part of the business, which is the foundation of

(21:00):
podcasting and what built thefirst billion dollars in this
industry and delivers both brandand performance, when you leave
that out of the party, you missa key pillar and sometimes the
walls end up falling down.
And I think it's a potentialcautionary tale to everybody

(21:23):
else who may be hitting somestruggles that it's time not to
make this so binary and thinkabout what you want the business
to be.
But look at the business modelthat has been the foundation of
it.
Look at the history of thismodel and I'm not saying it's
all or nothing, I'm not sayingthat's the only piece need
impression based buying andbrands need bigger, more complex

(21:45):
deals with different needs tomake a splash.
But the tried and true is aboutthe relationship between the
host and the audience andputting the brand in the middle
of that on a recurring basis.
And a lot of folks have takentheir eye off the ball and I
think our business is built toaccommodate all three of those

(22:06):
execution types.
But platforms that aren't aregoing to continue to have
problems and, at the end of theday, I think it comes down to
listening to your customers.

Sam Sethi (22:17):
So why is Amazon reorganizing now?
What does it think it's goingto do by?
Is it going to compete withspotify?
Is it going to compete withyoutube?
Because I don't see amazondoing video at the moment.
I think live is in twitch, Ithink audiobooks is in audible.
I mean, I can't make a singlepurchase requirement.

(22:39):
So if I went to amazon and Isaid I want to pay one
subscription and get music,books, live video, that doesn't
exist, right, it doesn't existover there.
So why or how are they going tocompete with the other two
platforms?
I think Apple, by the way, isanother one that needs to wake
up a bit more.
It's not doing video.

(22:59):
So what can Amazon do to getback in the game?
Because just getting rid of 110people.
I don't think it's going to makeany difference.

Dan Granger (23:09):
No, and look, I don't know what their game plan
is here.
They've not reached out to us asthe largest buyer of podcast
media, at least not to me to sayhere's the plan, here's a view
of the future.
But that's when I talk aboutcommunicating with your
customers that matters andhelping the people that you've

(23:30):
been transacting with beprepared for the change and to
see your vision of the future.
I don't know, I wouldn'tpropose to know.
I do know that Amazon knows howto sell advertising at scale
and I think they may make the Ithink they may be half right and
half wrong that they can takethese content assets and throw
them into the other models thatare working and that will get

(23:55):
some monetization.
But again, I feel that thatreally deals with two of those
three pillars, if that itdoesn't mean it does it well.
But I have faith that Amazon'sgoing to figure that out.
What I hope is they don't losethe part that is interesting.
When you've got content that isdriven by the spoken word is

(24:18):
specifically conducive to ahost-read model.
What they're willing to investin from a content side, I have
no idea.

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James Cridland (25:03):
Right.
Well, let's move on to othernews outside of Wondery.
What else have we got?

Sam Sethi (25:08):
here, sam.
Last week we were talking aboutthe UK age verification and how
bad an idea that was, and youwere talking about in Australia
how they are gatekeeping 16 yearolds and under away from social
media, which has good elementsand bad within it, but it
depends on the implementation.

(25:29):
But on the back of this,spotify surprisingly came out
and said they're adding ageverification for users in the uk
to access mature content.
It's using a service calledyachty, which I've never heard
of, and it's asking you to face,scan or upload an id.
Of course, that's never goingto be lost or or hacked is it no

(25:51):
?
no, nice and safe now, one ofthe things that I noticed though
let's just assume this doesextend to podcasting, james
right, so you talked about, youknow, spotify with the explicit
tag might have to include someof that within it.
So, looking at other apps andputting my true fans hat on, or,
let's say, fountain or pubverseor any of those other apps, do

(26:13):
we have to comply with this yet?
Do we have to put agerestrictions in?
But do we actually because thisis my bigger worry do we have
to now start to check everypodcast for potential harm or
any other content?
Because we aren't.
We're just assuming that thecontent within the podcast audio
is what it says it is and wejust have to let it run through.

James Cridland (26:45):
Yeah, I mean, if you read the law, yes, you are
absolutely bound by this.
Any website of any size isbound by this.
I know of small bloggers in theUK who have taken the comments
section off their blog becausethey're concerned about what
might get posted there.
I mean, that really is as faras we go Now.
Ofcom have since turned aroundand said oh, you know, we won't

(27:05):
worry, we'll be looking for bigtransgressors, and you know, and
you know it'll be proportionatebecause of the harm involved,
and blah, blah, blah.
But the facts are that the lawwhich has been passed by the UK
government is essentiallymeaning that you know, podcast
apps like True, fans andFountain and everybody else will

(27:26):
have to take part in this, andApple Podcasts, by the way,
let's not forget.
And then, on the other side,we'll have, you know I mean you
know, we'll have to look at eventiny little mastodon instances
and everything else.
It's a very strange world.
Now, I suppose, on the otherside, what does that mean for

(27:48):
checking whether or not somebodyhas correctly marked something
as explicit?
What even does explicit mean?
Because we've never really hada clear definition of what
explicit means.
It's been very self-policed sofar and I suspect that we're
going to see people all of asudden prosecuted because we've

(28:10):
carried a podcast that you knowis outside of this law, and then
where do we go from there?
But yeah, it's a very strangeidea, very strange thing Well
there's two thoughts in my head.

Sam Sethi (28:21):
One is it forces us to all have to do transcripts
and then check the transcriptand then verify against the
transcript.
That might be one way that weall have to do it.
I mean, I hope not, becausethat's a massive cost.
And then the other question wasdo we need better rating?
Do we need to go to the filmtype rating?
So don't label everything asexplicit or not explicit, but

(28:44):
actually put ratings around it.
If we are doing ageverification, so 15 plus you
know, U ratings?
I don't know what they are.
I think there's R ratings, Uratings, and you know, if you go
to Netflix, they don't usethose, they use 15 plus, 18 plus
.
I mean, do we have to go to adeeper granularity in podcasting
around what explicit means?

James Cridland (29:05):
Yeah, and who's going to police all of that
anyway?

Sam Sethi (29:08):
Those are all of the questions too.

James Cridland (29:10):
But one thing just to bear in mind is that, on
average, last month there was anew podcast episode posted
every 0.8 seconds.
This isn't going to be an easything for anybody to manage that
.

Sam Sethi (29:25):
The other thing I will say, apart from the robust
age checks, the safer algorithmsthat they're requesting.
It says you know the algorithmsneed to ensure children are not
presented with the most harmfulcontent, and you also need to
have an effective moderationsystem.
You must have contentmoderation in place to take
swift action against contentthat's harmful for children, and

(29:47):
one of the things that I knowwe do at True Fans we've had it
from day one is a flagmoderation system.
So any podcast episode that yougo to and you think there's
something that's wrong, you canflag it and also put a reason
why you flagged it, and we willthen review that.
I looked at all the other apps.
I can't see them yet havingthat.

(30:08):
No, there is a little bit inApple.

James Cridland (30:13):
In Apple Podcasts there is a flag, this
episode.
There's also one in Spotify, Inotice, but I haven't seen it in
many other smaller apps, andthat is you know.
I mean, where do you go withthat?
I mean, for example, antenapod,which is the Android open
source thing that doesn't evenhave a list for itself, it uses

(30:36):
Podcast Index, it uses ApplePodcasts, and so it doesn't even
have central servers.
So who are you reporting thatto?

Sam Sethi (30:44):
Yeah, I mean.
We had a support request thisweek from a woman who says that
her ex-husband is bullying herthrough a podcast.
I've now had to listen to thatpodcast and make a judgment on
whether I take that podcast downor leave it up.
It's not a pleasant place tosit, I have to say.

James Cridland (31:02):
No, indeed.

Sam Sethi (31:05):
Now a story that's again slightly broke last week
but has been rumbling on thisweek as well, and there's been a
lot of chatter on the backchannel that you and I are both
on.
Riverside quietly launchedtheir video hosting service
thanks to a hat tip from JustinJackson, who alerted me to it.
What are Riverside doing?
I mean, are they reallybecoming a full-blown host, or

(31:27):
is it just hosting the stuffthat they have on their own
platform?

James Cridland (31:31):
Yeah, I mean, you call it a video hosting
service.
I think it's a podcast hostingservice.
It sends the video to YouTube,which is interesting.
It only sends audio toeverywhere else, including to
Spotify, which is fascinating.
So Flightcast, which is StephenBartlett's video host they, I

(31:53):
believe, are the only companywho so far can get video
directly onto the Spotifyplatform.

Sam Sethi (31:59):
They will once they launch.

James Cridland (32:01):
Well, once they launch yes, I think that's
probably fair enough.
I mean even Riverside, who, ifyou remember, last year, when
Anka pulled out all of theediting tools in their app or in
the Spotify for Creators app,they basically said, yeah, we're
not doing this anymore, and inwhich case we are going to just

(32:21):
recommend that you use theRiverside app.
So hurrah, but you know.
You would have thought,therefore, that Spotify would
have a special relationship withRiverside, but clearly not the
only way of putting the video.
What they seem to have fromtheir help pages is they seem to
have a way to kick the videoupload off, but you still have

(32:45):
to go to Spotify for creators tocomplete the video upload, so
there's no sort of easy way ofworking all of that stuff out.
So that's interesting.
The other interesting thing isthat, in terms of Podcasting 2.0
, they are declaring the newpodcast namespace in there, but
they're not using any of thetools in there, including

(33:06):
transcripts, which, given thatRiverside has transcripts of
everything, seems a little bitweird that they wouldn't include
the transcripts in the RSS feed.
One other sort of weirdness isthat they are talking about the
audio which is in the feed isall variable bitrate audio which
, as anybody that works inpodcasting will tell you, is a

(33:28):
no-no, because it doesn't helpwith seeking and with chapters
and everything else.
It seems to break quite a lotof things, which is why no
podcast hosting company is usingvariable bitrate audio apart
from this company.
So it almost seems as ifthey've launched this stuff
without really consulting ortalking to anybody in the

(33:49):
podcasting world, and that seemsa little bit strange.

Sam Sethi (33:52):
Consensus generally on the back channel was they're
doing this because they want toput themselves on the purchase
chopping, purchase choppingblock.
They've raised so much moneyfrom investors that eventually
they have to give a return back.
I can't see an ipo forriverside, so it's an
acquisition, and everyone seemedto point that spotify is the

(34:12):
only one who might be able tobuy them and seem to have given
them a miss.
I mean, amazon could buy them?

James Cridland (34:20):
Yeah, they could .
I'm obviously saying that as abit of a joke, but I suppose
Amazon could buy them.
But yeah, I mean Spotify.
You would have thought thatSpotify would have bought them a
long long time ago.
And what do they really offer?
They offer video editing, Iguess.

(34:45):
They offer audio editing andthe remote recording, but that's
you know.
Is that enough for Spotify tobuy them?
Is this is the actual tool thatthey have, something that can
be relatively easily self-codedso you can actually move quite
fast anyway and you know Spotifylooking at Riverside or looking
at Descript, because you knowclearly Descript has much of

(35:06):
this stuff.
Why would Spotify want apodcast hosting feature when
Spotify already has two of those?

Sam Sethi (35:13):
I mean Zach from well , formerly Squadcast, now
Descript, did ping me and saywhen I said that you know, is
everyone becoming a host?
He said, well, descript'salready doing this.
And I went actually, you're not.
What you do, is you allow me toupload it to a Descript URL
that I can make public?
But it's really not hosting itfor me.

James Cridland (35:33):
Yes, that's not really a podcast.

Sam Sethi (35:34):
No, that I can make public, but it's really not
hosting it for me.
Yes, that's not really apodcast, no, exactly.
And I sort of tried to pointout to him as well.
But you know, they do allow youto upload directly to your
existing host, your originalhost, let's say like a
Buzzsprout or a Transistor.
But again, I haven't found thatservice to be slick enough.
It's quicker sometimes just todownload it and then upload it

(35:56):
manually yourself.

James Cridland (35:57):
still, I love their top apps.
In their analytics they havetop apps and they have Spotify,
apple Podcasts, youtube andother.
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's notyes.

Sam Sethi (36:15):
But is everyone now a host, James?
I mean we still haven't had theofficial announcement from
Fountain about their merger withRSS Blue to be called Fountain
Blue, but we do know it exists.
Apple is a host with ApplePremium.
You can't send your content toApple Premium subscriptions
without uploading it directly tothem, so technically they're a

(36:38):
host.

James Cridland (36:38):
I mean Substack's a host, so is Patreon
.
Yeah, exactly so is everyone ahost.

Speaker 1 (36:44):
Yeah.

James Cridland (36:44):
I mean I guess so, and I think this probably
points to the fact that if youare a podcast host, you need to
have more strings in your bow inorder to actually offer other
things other than just a podcasthost, because those are too a
penny.
And so, you know, that'spossibly why we've seen rsscom
launch paid monetization tool,which obviously some of these

(37:07):
other tools don't have.
That's clearly why we've seen,you know, captivate really dive
deep into quite a lot of theworkflow tools like guest
booking and calendars and allthat kind of stuff, and why Todd
at Blueberry has launched a newthing which we'll get onto as
well.
I think you know, if you'rejust a podcast host these days,

(37:28):
then your time is probably alittle bit numbered in terms of
what you have to offer.
And I think you know the proofof the pudding there is Libsyn.
If you were to ask people nowwhat that company stands for,
actually most people will nowturn around and say they sell
ads, don't they?
For podcasts, because that'swhat they're now focusing very

(37:51):
heavily on and the fact thatthey have a heritage.
You know, podcast host is kindof not here or there really.

Sam Sethi (38:00):
Well, we will see whether the Riverside new
hosting service is any good, Ithink so far.
I think you pointed out there's82 podcasts already in the
podcast index from Riversidewith a strange user agent.
But yeah, it is a Riversideagent anyway.

James Cridland (38:16):
Yes, so that was .
That was at the end of lastweek, but it does seem to be
growing relatively quickly, asyou would expect, because I'm
imagining that they have quite alot of customers who all of a
sudden will go oh, hang on aminute, I get free hosting now.
Well, great, I'll do that then.

Sam Sethi (38:31):
Moving on then, james , just a slight one that's
related to Rumble, which isn't aplatform I've ever gone to,
because of its politics possibly, but anyway, they've done a
deal with Cumulus Media.

James Cridland (38:42):
Yes, they have.
So Cumulus will be, I think,helping Rumble with podcast
advertising but also doing alittle bit of work.
I mean, obviously Cumulus willbe making shows that obviously
also go on to Rumble, but alsothe Cumulus Podcast Network will
be taking some shows fromRumble and turning them into
audio podcasts as well.

(39:03):
So it's all a little bit of athing.
Cumulus Media has quite a lotof right-wing podcasters and
media people anyway, and so itprobably fits quite nicely in
terms of that.

Sam Sethi (39:17):
Now this story you had in Pod News Daily.
You just had a little paragraph, but I thought it was the
biggest story you had,personally because of the
amounts of money involved.
Now Patreon released their newfigures, claiming that Patreon
creators have now earned over$10 billion since the platform
first launched in 2013.
That's a sizable chunk of money.

(39:38):
The company is now payingcreators more than $2 billion
annually, which is still thenumber that we use for the
advertising for the total USpodcast market, and there are
more than 25 million paidmemberships on the platform.
I keep saying this.
I think you know content behinda paywall, which is what I see

(40:02):
a lot of quality content doingnow, whether it's Apple
subscriptions or Patreon orMemberful etc.
Is outstripping possibly the admarket.
If those numbers are correct,and Joe Budden's making $1
million a month and othercreators are making tons of
money, I think direct-to-fanpayments are a longer, more

(40:23):
secure, sustainable market forrevenue for creators than
advertising, where CPM rates goup and down and where you might
not get them anyway.
I don't know.
This seems like a really bigstory to me.

James Cridland (40:36):
Yes, I mean it was certainly a big number $10
billion that Patreon have sharedwith creators that was
definitely a big number, I mean.
I guess I come from all of thisjust to point to the wider
trends going on at the moment,and the wider trends are it's a
move away from raw advertisingmoney to a mixed economy of

(40:58):
advertising.
Then you've got brandpartnerships, then you've got
membership programs such asPatreon, then you've got merch
and live shows, and diversifyingthose revenue streams is really
good for everybody in thisindustry because we see much
more protected revenue.
We see the majority ofmemberships and subscriptions,

(41:20):
for example, being purchasedyearly, according to Apple, and
not monthly.
That really helps with cashflow and that helps with
production costs, and Patreon isdoing much the same sort of
thing in there as well,particularly given that we're
going into what's clearly goingto be a volatile economy as
tariffs go up and down and whoknows what is going to happen.

(41:43):
So a reliance on advertising Ithink seems a bit unwise, and I
think it's nice to see manypodcasters looking at diversity
of revenue coming in, andPatreon is very much part of
that.
It's a very well known andtrusted brand for supporting
creators, which is good.

Sam Sethi (42:04):
I'd love to talk to hosts about secure RSS at any
time they want, because we justsaid a few minutes ago you know,
hosting is now a commodity andeveryone's doing it, and so it's
services that they layer on topof hosting that is actually
going to give them either futurerevenues or differentiation.
And again, if patrons makingthese large numbers, this is the

(42:26):
pot of money that hosts couldbe going after.
This is the money I see hostsshould be providing.
So we've talked in the pastabout hosts being the analytics
dashboard for first party dataand how they get to do that,
because that's the best placefor that type of dashboard.
I also think that this is thebest place for hosts to go and

(42:46):
provide premium content feeds inthe hosting, in the single RSS
feed, and not allowing companieslike Patreon and Memberful to
take that revenue away from thehosts.
That's the competition I seethat 26 is going to be all about
.
I don't think it's anadvertising fight.
I think it's a paywall fight.

James Cridland (43:06):
Well, it'll be interesting to see how that pans
out.
Certainly, if you want tosupport this show,
weeklypodnewsnet is where to goNow.
Certainly, if you want tosupport this show,
weeklypodnewsnet is where to go,like Neil Velio or Ms Eileen
Smith or Clay Wake Brown, whoare all supporting us and very
kindly, and I would see thatthat sort of revenue is going to
be a bigger thing for otherpodcasters to come.
Shall we have a look at someawards and events?

(43:28):
Sam, yes, and the award that isworth taking a peek at is the
20th Annual People's ChoicePodcast Awards.
That's announced this year'sslate of nominees.
There is a final voting pool of25,000 random weighted
listeners, both fat and skinny,I would imagine, and 500 random

(43:49):
podcasters.
No, and 500 random podcasters.
So they will join the votingpool now and we will get the
final results of that onInternational Podcasting Day.
I would guess Todd Cochranrunning that one.
And a decent event, of course,is the podcast movement thing
going on in Dallas.
The podcast movement thinggoing on in two weeks, that's in

(44:12):
Dallas and Texasas.
And, by the way, that will bethe next time that you hear from
us, because we are both havingour holiday next week for
various reasons, not together Ishould point out no, no, we're
not more going wise.
Yes, be more up to date.
No, exactly so.
So that's all good, but I'mlooking forward to to being in
in dallas and I'm very muchlooking forward to being in

(44:33):
Dallas and I'm very much lookingforward to the fine immigration
officers allowing me and verymuch looking forward to that
into their excellent country.
Other things going on RadioDays Asia is happening in
Jakarta, in Indonesia, Septemberthe 1st to the 3rd.
There's also Pod Summit YYC,which is September the 19th.
That's in Calgary, in Alberta,if you know your airport codes.

(44:53):
And CrookedCon.
This is an interesting one, Sam.
This is a political conferencewhich is being run by Crooked
Media, who, of course, run PodSave America.
It's happening in earlyNovember in Washington DC.
That's a really interesting one.
If you're a political podcast,then to be running a political
conference is very smart.

Sam Sethi (45:15):
So I'd actually love to go to that.
I would love to go to that yeah.
I'd love to.
I just don't want to go toAmerica Learn a little bit more
Yikes about that.

Speaker 2 (45:25):
The Tech Stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland (45:29):
Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday
in the Pod News newsletter.
Here's where Sam talkstechnology.

Sam Sethi (45:35):
Well, this is an interesting one.
Daniel J Lewis has launchedcanipodcastcom Now, dan and I
spoke about this probably acouple of years ago, before
podcasting2.org was launched.
We were trying to work out whatwe could do to copy or
replicate.
Can I use dot com?
So again, so dan's basicallylaunches.

(45:58):
I have nothing to do with it.
So well done, dan.
And it's a podcasting list oftags and some granularity around
them.
So, yeah, well done excellent.

James Cridland (46:07):
Well, looking forward to seeing that when it
gets going.
Um, you say he's launched it.
He's launched a waiting page.
Oh, okay, yeah, so when helaunches the final version it'll
be interesting to see what isthere.
But many congratulations to afull launch from Todd Cochran
and the Blueberry team.
Guestmatchpro it says what itdoes on the tin.

(46:28):
It is a tool designed toconnect content creators,
specialists and agencies forinterview opportunities.
Hooray, finally something thatwill do the job instead of
getting a ton of pointlessemails.
It's 100% free for everybodyfor the first 90 days.
It'll always be free forBlueberry customers.
You see, that's an example ofpodcast hosting companies doing

(46:51):
more than just hosting.
And if you use guestmatchpro,you'll find me there already
wanting to be your guest, sofeel free to go and take a peek
at that.
I've given him some productfeedback, which Todd is.
Probably I'm going to ignore it, but anyway we'll see how that
works.
But it's a very cool thinganyway, so worth a peek.

Sam Sethi (47:13):
Yeah, I think Podhopper launched theirs as
well some time ago works, butit's a very cool thing anyway,
so worth a peek.
I think Podhopper launchedtheirs as well some time ago.
I think there's a few others inthe market, but it's great.
It's one of those I think I'vesigned up in the past of them
and then you get random requestsfor interviews, which you then
have to still vet anyway.
But good luck.
That's what I'd say.
When I saw guestmatchpro thoughit wasn't a podcast hosting or

(47:35):
guest matching service that Ithought about I'm so far down my
paddle world I thought it wasanother paddle app that I could
go and sign up to.

James Cridland (47:42):
Oh good Lord, it's got nothing to do with your
little ball game, Sam.

Sam Sethi (47:48):
That's what went through my little brain anyway.

James Cridland (47:52):
Nothing to do with that, wondercrafts.
Good news from them.
They were about to launch aproduct called Wunder Fish,
called Wunder.
Yes, I don't know what thisproduct is, but anyway, they
haven't launched it.
I do know what it is.
Oh, do you?
Well, they said that they'vegot some exciting technical
reasons, technical issues, andthey're going to be launching it

(48:14):
on August the 19th instead,which is the opening day of
podcast movement.
I can't help but think thatthere's something going on there
.
So what is?

Sam Sethi (48:22):
Wanda, then I can't tell you, as long as you cut it
out this is a jingle to cover upan edit on the Pod News Weekly
Review.

James Cridland (48:32):
Oh, is it so?
Well, there you go.
Anyway.
What else have we got?
A new tool called pod2bookai.
This is quite clever.
It's a tool to help podcasterstransform their podcast episodes
into books, which seems quite anice plan, particularly if
you've got 200 episodes with 200interviews in it.

(48:52):
That would make quite a nicebook.
You would have thought,wouldn't it?
I'm not doing it.

Speaker 2 (48:58):
Boostergram, boostergram, boostergram, super,
super comments, zaps, fan mail,fan mail, super chats and email
.
Our favourite time of the week,it's the Pod News Weekly Review
Inbox.
Inbox.

James Cridland (49:13):
Yes, what have we got in our inbox?
Well, I'll tell you.
Firstly, we've got an umbralnode that works again, so that's
nice.
So I can actually get somemessages, although only one.
But thank you, bruce, the uglyquacking duck.
Of course it had to be him,didn't it?
Sending us a row of ducks.
Thank you, bruce.
Look forward to the new episodeevery week.
However, I am running behind onthe episodes lately.

(49:39):
Thanks for the new episode.
Good luck on the judging, sam73.
Excellent, very good to hearfrom you, bruce, and thank you
so much.
Yes, as you've probably guessed, the whole boosting thing is up
and running again.
So if you do want to send us amessage with a little boost,
then that would be excellent.
Just use a new podcast app todo that, like true fans, or
fountain, or podcast guru ormany other ones which did bruce

(50:00):
the ugly quacking duck use, Iwonder, pod verse.

Speaker 1 (50:03):
No, no, pod podcast guru yeah, there you go play the
game so name them all.

James Cridland (50:11):
Yes, go through the whole lot.
So thank you so much for that,and thank you also to our 21
power supporters who arespending money with us to keep
this show going every month.
That includes Brian Entsmingerand Dave Jackson, pod pages,
dave Jackson and Matt Medeirosand Marshall Brown.

(50:31):
Thank you so much for that muchappreciated and sam and I share
all of the treasure that youshare with us every single week.
So what's?

Sam Sethi (50:40):
the other 200 staff get a cut of it so what's been
happening for you this week, sam?
we started testing a, a newadvertising option for creators
called true ads.
I mean, whether it stays thatname or not, I don't know, but
the idea is that if you want tobuy space on our homepage in the
hero header or you want to buyon the country carousel, you can

(51:03):
now do that.
So, using your wallet with Satsor paying with Stripe, apple
Pay, you can buy a day a month,sorry, a day a week a month.
You know, you can set your ownrequirement.
Obviously it's limited by thenumber of slots available.
So version two we will allowyou to extend out to categories

(51:24):
so you, instead of just being onthe country category, you might
want to be on a comedy categoryor a news category.
And then version three we'replaying with now is where we'll
add a ad below the audio player.
And again, we're going toexperiment and see what the
feedback is.
But one of the ideas is that if, for example, somebody added an

(51:47):
ad below the Pod News weeklyreview page, then we would get a
split of that ad revenue.
So it's on our page.
We've created the attention,we've driven the user to come to
the Pod News weekly review pageon TrueFans and then they see
an ad.
Therefore, some of that admoney will go back to us as

(52:10):
creators of that page.
So that's one of theexperiments we're playing with.

James Cridland (52:15):
It sounds very exciting and always worth
experimenting and seeing whatworks and everything else.
One of the things that I foundwhen building the system that
sells the Pod News classifiedsis that when you look at payment
, then actually racking theprice up depending on demand is
really interesting.
So, yeah, that's certainlysomething that I ended up
playing with, so very nice.

(52:36):
You can see that right now attruefansfm or indeed in the
TrueFans app, which you willfind in Apple and in Google's
app stores.

Sam Sethi (52:46):
Now, one of the other things that I spotted this week
and it's one of the reasonsthat I think Spotify wins most
of the time is theirintegrations.
You know, you go to an Alexathat's a Spotify app.
You go to your car there's aSpotify app.
This week, weirdly and I don'tknow if it's just brand new, but
I've only noticed it lots andlots of more music tracks are

(53:08):
appearing in my TikTok feed andsuddenly you can just click a
little icon at the bottom and itwill automatically add it to
your Spotify playlist.
Not Apple, not Amazon andnowhere else, just Spotify.
And it's really weird howSpotify always seem to be the
company that does that.
I'd love to be able to usetheir API and have a true fans

(53:30):
button when you've got a podcasttrailer clip and then it clicks
through to True Fans.
But Spotify do, again, make itso simple to integrate with them
.

James Cridland (53:40):
Yeah, Spotify is very good at that sort of thing
and you know, and clearlythey've got an awful lot of
people working on those forms ofintegration because they're
good at marketing for thatparticular company as well.
So, yes, very smart.

Sam Sethi (53:53):
Now you mentioned we're going to be away next week
.
I'm at the Edinburgh FringeFestival, actually for the first
time ever.

James Cridland (54:00):
Oh, are you.
So where can we go and see yourshow?

Sam Sethi (54:04):
Yeah, that'll be in the Burger King behind whatever.
Yeah, I don't think anyonewould come and pay to see that.
No, I'm going to see MiriamMargolis, nina Conti and a
couple of other American artistswho are coming over.
It's just great.
I've never been.
I'm looking forward to it.
It's a week of comedy and plays.
Yeah.

James Cridland (54:23):
Yes, very good.
Well, I hope you look forwardto it.
If you are doing a show at theEdinburgh Fringe, then you
should tell Sam all about it.
Just drop him an email weeklyat pointnewsnet.

Sam Sethi (54:34):
Yeah with two tickets .
Please no joking.
Joking James.
What's happened for you thisweek, mate?

James Cridland (54:42):
Yes, I bet the hotels are going to be expensive
as well.

Sam Sethi (54:44):
No, we're Airbnb-ed it.
Yeah, we booked it in January,right in the middle of the town.
So it was quite funny.
It was a game of whack-a-mole.
You, literally on January 1, webooked it and it was like four
in the middle of town were leftand we're like right, and then
we booked one and suddenly allthe other ones went as well and
now, if you haven't booked, youcould be 25 miles out of

(55:06):
Edinburgh and having to drive inor bus in or taxi in, whatever
you do yes, yes, well, yes, well, there you go, anyway, things
that I've done this week.

James Cridland (55:15):
I, rather boringly, have written I'm quite
busy on my personal blog.
Actually, I've written a veryboring piece about how to listen
to BBC Radio overseas.
I know what a thrill, but it'sjust that it's become much more
complicated.
So that is there.
Also, what is there is atribute to a broadcaster called
James Whale, who died earlier onin the week.

(55:38):
He had been suffering fromcancer for some time and he was
the person that got me intoradio in the first place.
Wow, so I wrote a little thingabout that, which is also worth
a peek.
I bought something fromAliExpress, you know.

Sam Sethi (55:53):
Well, I'm just reading the word here in the
script and going get going.
Then what's that?
Aliexpress?

James Cridland (56:00):
So I ended up buying because you know I've got
a new car right and there'sthis little electric, my
electric chariot, which somebodydrove into last week.
But you know, park that thingno pun intended.
You have to plug in your phoneto make it work on the screen.

(56:20):
So you plug it in and then allof a sudden Apple CarPlay
appears on the screen andeverything else.
And I was getting a bit boredplugging it in and I thought
it'd be nice if I could justleave it in my pocket and it
just connects through wireless,like some other cars have.
So I had a quick look aroundand found a little dongle that
plugs into the USB port fromAliExpress, which is, I guess

(56:44):
you know, a Chinese eBay, and itwas for sale brand new for $3.
That's three Australian dollars, by, by the way.
So that's about two us dollars.
Right, that includes postage.
I have no idea how anybody madeany money, but I ordered it last

(57:04):
week.
It came today.
Yeah, I've, I've put it in thecar.
It's brilliant, it's absolutely, it's absolutely fine, it
worked, it worked perfectly.
Not just it worked right, it'sgot over-the-air updates.
So one of the first things thatI did is I plugged it in, I
connected to it.
You can program it to say, turnon 30 seconds after the car has

(57:27):
started, because you need thatlittle buffer so that it
actually wakes up correctly.
So that's really clever, andthen you can say oh, and, by the
way, can I have the latestfirmware please?
And it goes off and updates.
That Unbelievable and you know.
$3 or something.
It was the.
It was what a bargain.
I've got no idea how anybody'smade any money out of that.

Sam Sethi (57:50):
But yeah, that was astonishing Chinese government's
just listening into every oneof your conversations.
Made any money out of that?

James Cridland (57:53):
but um, chinese government's just listening into
every one of your conversations.
It's subsidized.
Well, I mean, it's a chinesecar anyway.
So there you go fully a memberof the you know the red brigade
now not only is it a chinese car, but if you say hello, mg, it
goes hi, I'm here and you go.

Speaker 1 (58:07):
Oh, no, really really it's very scary, yes really
genuinely it's got its own.

James Cridland (58:11):
It's got its own dreadful siri type thing and I
noticed it's very scary.
Yes, really genuinely, it's gotits own.
It's got its own dreadful siritype thing and I noticed it's
also got so it's got a dataconnection in there.
It's got a sim card andeverything else.
So it's got.
It's always got data connectedto it.
It's got its own maps thing,which I looked at and I assumed
was just google maps under adifferent skin.

(58:31):
It turns out that no, it's areally bad maps thing because
the map data isn't updatedonline.
So the way for you to updatethe map data in the car is you
have to go and buy map data andthen put it into the car using a

(58:53):
usb key.
Wow, it's like, it's like 1990all over again.
It's the worst, weirdest thing.
And so, of course, I don't usethat anyway, because I use, I
use the phone, and now I don'teven have to plug the phone in.
So that's an amazing thing.
So hurrah for aliexpress.
I've got no idea how much, howthey can possibly earn any

(59:14):
amount of money from that, butyeah, it was super good.

Sam Sethi (59:17):
And how's your gym membership going?

James Cridland (59:20):
Yes, and the reason why I'm sounding so tired
is this time last week I didn'tdo gym because I was.
Can you rearrange that sentence?
I didn't go to the gym, yes, Ididn't go to the gym because I
think they'd broken me the weekbefore right, and I had to go
back today and I'm I am, I amquite tired.
So, uh, yes, that's probablywhy.

(59:41):
So I will disappear and go andhave a lie down.

Sam Sethi (59:46):
That's it for this week well, I was gonna say
before you do so, I'm overdoingmy paddle, because I'm playing
once or twice a day.
Oh yes, paddle.

James Cridland (59:53):
Once or twice a day, yeah.

Sam Sethi (59:55):
I know, and I've now got tennis elbow, oh no.
So a week in Edinburgh to relaxand rest is actually what I
need to do.
And then the other one that youmight find funny is we've
bought a little mini convertible.

James Cridland (01:00:11):
Because of course you have.

Sam Sethi (01:00:12):
Yeah, and it's obviously the hairdresser's car.
So there you go.
So I go with my littlehairdresser's car to play paddle
.

James Cridland (01:00:19):
So yes, you can see the image already.
Why aren't you going in yourbig Range Rover?

Sam Sethi (01:00:25):
Well, because the wife's nicking that and going on
longer distance drives.

James Cridland (01:00:29):
So I get the little one to go locally.
That makes sense, but youdidn't buy an electric for that.

Sam Sethi (01:00:34):
No, no, I have to say .
Anyone who's got a complete,100% electric, well done you.
I have enough fear where myphone's got to 5%, let alone my
car getting to 5%, I mean Jesus.
It would be like, oh my God, isthere a petrol station near
enough?
Or whatever.
It would be the equivalent ofyeah, no, couldn't do it,

(01:00:55):
couldn't do it.

James Cridland (01:00:57):
You should hire one for a couple of weeks, see
what it's like.
See what it's like really.

Sam Sethi (01:01:02):
No, my stress levels aren't high enough as they are.
I don't need to add a car intothat as well, please.

James Cridland (01:01:07):
Well, there we go.
Anyway, that's it for this week.
You'll be glad to know all andwe're away next week.
Yes, so the next time you hearfrom us, I will be a podcast
movement.
Uh, sam will not be no, and uh,we'll be doing something.
Not quite sure what, to behonest, not quite sure where
we'll record, whether or notwe'll record live on the show
floor, which we did last year,or what else we might do.

(01:01:28):
It might just be a maybe.
It might just be a quick one whoknows, maybe we do our first
ever video podcast no no, okay,I'm giving away stickers at
Podcast Movement, so if you aregoing, then you should be
grabbing those beautifulstickers from me, and my views
about video are quite clearbased on those stickers.

(01:01:48):
So that's a lovely thing, butthat's it for this week.
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James Cridland (01:02:17):
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