Better podcast analytics with PodAnalyst, plus TikTok doesn't launch a podcast

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Announcer (00:00):
Next week, the industry looks back at the year
and forward to 2026.
This week, it's just these guysagain.
The last word in podcastingnews.
This is the Pod News WeeklyReview with James Kridlin and
Sam Sethi.

Sam Sethi (00:15):
I'm James Cridlin, the editor of Pod News.
Hello, I'm Sam Sethi, the CEOof Tree Fantasy.

George Lejnine (00:20):
We have all the telemetry that we really need
to make at least a directionallycorrect, if not a perfect,
representation of your show fromthe data that Apple Spotify
provide.

James Cridland (00:31):
George Lechneen talks about Pod Analyst, a new
way to see how your show isreally doing.
Plus, Goalhanger's really goodyear, Sounds Profitable's very
good data, and the Podcast Hallof Fame.
This podcast is sponsored byBuzz Sprout with the tools,
support, and community to ensureyou keep podcasting.
Start podcasting, keeppodcasting with Buzzsprout.com.

Announcer (00:52):
From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly
Review.

Sam Sethi (00:57):
James, let's kick off this long show of 2025 for us.
Goal hanger.
They shoot and they scored ahat trick this week, it seems.

Yes, show of the year from Apple Podcasts.
It's the first time that ApplePodcasts has given the accolade
of show of the year to a showthat isn't from the United
States, which is excellent.
The rest is history, is theshow, of course.
And they managed to interviewthe hosts Tom Holland and
Dominic Sandbrook as well.
So good news for them.
Yes.

Sam Sethi (01:28):
Now we had some financial news about Goalhanger.
Again, not much because theydon't have to declare a lot, but
it seems that they've tripledtheir basically their their
investments.
They've got 4.6 million now inthe bank in the last seven
months.
It imply a profit of 3.1million.

(01:50):
They're doing very well.

They are doing very well, yeah.
So if you're in the UK, as youknow, Sam, you have to send your
accounts to Company's House andthey publish those.
They are still a small, a smallbusiness, so therefore they
don't have to publish all oftheir profit and loss, but they
do have to publish some stuff.
So yeah, they've basically gotquite a lot of money in the bank

(02:13):
now, which is nice.
So they do seem to be doingpretty well.
And that is to the end ofDecember 2024.
That was a weird seven-monthperiod because they've changed
the way that their accountsworks.
And so we'll have to wait for,gosh, another 12 months to learn
anything more about theirfinancials.
But it does seem that they'vedone pretty well.

(02:34):
According to reports, thecompany has doubled the total
number of employees.
They now have more than 50different employees, which is
quite impressive.
But there again, they do haverather more shows, including the
rest is Science, which haslaunched only a couple of weeks
ago.

Sam Sethi (02:48):
Yeah, and they've also seen some of their shows
like Goal Hanger hit more than200,000 paid subscribers for the
first time.
And they're doing 70 millionfull episode streams per month.
I mean, I think they've hit theuh, you know, the secret source
of how to grow now.
I think they know what they'redoing.

Yeah, I think they do.
And, you know, very clearlythey are big enough to sign big
stars, they're big enough tohave some really good sort of
network effects between the restis stuff.
I find it interesting that, forexample, Piers Morgan has
launched a new show calledHistory Uncensored, and you can
imagine that there will bescience uncensored and

(03:26):
entertainment uncensored and allof those sorts of things coming
soon from that company.
So clearly, Goalhanger havetotally understood how all of
that stuff works.
So, yeah, I think that that'spretty impressive.
And of course, there's theNetflix signing.
Uh the rest is football, willbe on Netflix uh next year
during the American World Cup orthe Yeah, not the rest is

(03:47):
soccer.

Sam Sethi (03:48):
Not the rest is soccer.

No, indeed.
And so uh yeah, they seem to behaving a fantastic time of it.

Sam Sethi (03:55):
Yeah, and of course, they announced their uh The rest
is Fest, which is out nextSeptember.
And uh Tony Pasta, who's theco-founder and CEO of Goal
Hanger, we've had hoped to haveon this week, but he is Super
Mac, so we will have him in thenew year.
But he has said he will come onthe show.
So very excited for that.
One other person who tends todo something similar or is

(04:16):
trying to do something similar,he said he wanted to create the
Disney of podcasting withStephen Bartlett.
It looks like he signed onemore new talent to the stable, I
guess, the Flight Studiostable.
It's called Hot Smart Rich, andit's basically a new podcast
that they're going to bebringing out.
Now he doesn't do what you knowthe rest is does.

(04:39):
He doesn't have a synergybetween each of his podcast
brands.

No, he's not he's not got that.
And uh, I mean this Hot SmartRich thing is from a journalist
called Maggie Sellers Rayum, andI hope I've pronounced her name
correctly.
I've never heard of her before.
Now, uh apparently it's apowerhouse media brand, Hot
Smart Rich.
But you know, it's reached over1.8 million total downloads,

(05:04):
half a million audience membersin less than its first year,
apparently.
Stephen Bartlett does very,very well in the hype.
I I've yet really to see toomuch about how he can actually
bring all of these disparatethings that he's investing in
together.
I mean, clearly he's donepretty well with uh he's got

(05:24):
another show out on Flight Storyas well, which was in the top
25 of the UK charts not so longago.
I do think that the secret withGoalhanger is that they have
understood how to cross promote.
And actually, just likeMcDonald's, if you see a The
Rest Is show, you know what toexpect.

(05:46):
You know that it's going to bea show that comes out bi-weekly,
you know that it's going to bea show with a couple of big
stars, you understand how thatis going to work every single
week.
And I think it's a reallysimple, straightforward, you
know, move.
And I am, you know, it it it'sit'll be interesting to see how

(06:07):
Stephen Butler, for example,pulls all of these different
shows that he has uh together,because that you know is
obviously is obviously animportant thing.

Sam Sethi (06:15):
Yeah, I think talent selection is uh massively
important.
I mean, when they came out withthe rest is US, the rest is
politics basically US version.
Um Anthony Scaramucci was not anatural person I would have
lent to, right?
He'd what had 11 days in thefirst Trump administration,
didn't really strike me assomebody.

(06:37):
He's brilliant, I really likehim, but he would not be when
they picked him the first personI would have chosen.

No, no, but he's been really good in terms of
that.
He's done very, very well.
So well done, Stephen Butler,and indeed well done, uh
Girlhanger.

Sam Sethi (06:54):
Moving on, then, James, in the new year, we're
going to have the inductees ofthe 2026 Podcast Hall of Fame.
Um, some of them have beenannounced.
The Hall of Fame, which will beat Podfest on January the 16th.
Who's in it, James?

Yeah, well, all of them have been announced.
Apart from, my understanding iswell, there's one person who is
uh waiting to get a properannouncement.
But apart from that, somereally good names in here.
There's Mark Asquith, founderof Captivase.
Yes, he is one of the firstBritish people to be made an
inductee of the podcast hall offame.

(07:30):
So congratulations to Mark.
I have already been joking withRob Greenley that he'll need
subtitles so that the Americanswill understand him.
Also on the list, some realpodcast royalty.
Uh, Dan Carlin, who of coursedoes hardcore history, Pat
Flynn, who is well known to alot of people, who does smart
passive income and variousthings in the podcasting world,

(07:53):
podcast royalty in terms ofsales as well and management.
So we've got Kerry Hoffman, sheis CEO of PRX, big, big podcast
company and indeed radiocompany in the US.
Also, Sarah Van Mosel, who hasworked everywhere.
Worked for Stitcher, worked foriHeart, Sirius XM, New York
Public Radio.
She has, if she doesn't knowwhere the bodies are buried,

(08:17):
nobody knows where the bodiesare buried.
So she will be there, which isgreat.
And also Veronica Belmont, whoI used to listen to on Buzz Out
Loud, which was a long, long,long time ago.
So some really good people onthat list, which is great.
Oh, and I should mention theinternet's Arielle Nissenblatt.

Sam Sethi (08:35):
Yes.

Yes, founder of Earbuds and a lot of other
things too.
You she's sort of infectious interms of her excitement for all
things podcasting.
So great to see her beinginducted into the podcast hall
of fame as well.
Now, James, uh I've noticed oneother name on this list.

Sam Sethi (08:53):
Um a certain James Cridland.
Congratulations.
Yes, you're right.
What have you got in?
Thank you.

What are you?
Now you know why I'm having togo to Orlando in January.
Yes, yes, very excited to findout.
I was hoping that I would bethe only non-American to be in
this list, but uh Mark Asquithis also there as well, which I'm
delighted for.
So there'll be two of us whowill speak a different language.

(09:18):
So uh yeah, no, it's uh it'sit's very exciting.
So excellent.
I'm I'm very much lookingforward to going over there.
Yeah, you've got to hand overfive years worth of your social
media before you get in, though.
They're American, they don'tunderstand what Mastodon is.
That's fine.

Sam Sethi (09:37):
Excellent.
Right.
Well, congratulations toeveryone on that list, all very
well deserved.
And uh, I look forward to thephoto with you with a shiny
little trophy somewhere.
I don't know where, but uh anduh you and Mark sharing a pint.

Yes, that would be nice, won't it?
Yes, I'm looking forward tothat.

Sam Sethi (09:54):
Moving on.
Now, Sounds Profitable releasedtheir Creators 2025 report.
It was very interesting.
There was a number of thingsthat Tom Webster pulled out that
I thought was worth discussing.
He's talking about a retentionproblem within our industry.
People starting podcasts, butyou know, leaving the industry
after a period of time.

(10:15):
He said that 35% create videoonly shows, 36% work across both
video and audio, and 29% remainfocused on audio only.
So did you have a chance toread this report as well, James?

Yeah, I've read bits of it, and you know, it is
as good as a sounds profitablepiece of work is normally.
I I should obviously say thatSounds Profitable has a 50%
business relationship with PodNews, which is I believe the
phrase that we use.
So I would say that, wouldn'tI?
But it is a great piece of workwith some really good data in

(10:51):
there.
And yes, it does sort ofconcern concern you about some
things.
Now, interestingly, there is agender gap for podcasts.
If you remember, we weretalking about the USC research a
couple of uh weeks ago.
There is a gender gap inpodcasting, but only in terms of
currently creating podcasts,people who are currently making

(11:15):
podcasts, people who are stillmaking podcasts, so the
retention rate is actuallyhigher just for females than it
is male.
So actually, there is some goodnews once you've started making
once you've started making apodcast, then there's some good
news in terms of you willcontinue making a podcast,
equally if you're a boy or agirl.

(11:36):
But that isn't necessarily thecase when it comes to obviously
starting podcasts as well.
Some really, really interestinginformation also about video as
well, and how people areproducing video, and what
they've done is they've split alot of it up based on both uh
gender, but also based on raceand based on age and all of that

(11:59):
kind of stuff.
So you end up seeing, you know,yes, half of video creators are
producing audio, for example,and all of that kind of thing.
There's some really good uhinformation on there.
It's uh highly recommended togo and take a peek at it.

Sam Sethi (12:14):
He said if you mainly listen to podcasts as audio
only but try to create videocontent, you are setting
yourself up to quit.
Ie, he's saying that if theplace that you consume content
is audio, then don't try and dovideo.
But if you actually consume alot of video, i.e.
YouTube, then yeah, probablyyou would want to go and create
a video piece of content aswell.

(12:35):
Yeah.
Um stick to your lane, I guess.

Yeah, and I think I I'm always surprised
talking to some podcasters whoyou say, Well, what other
podcasts do you really enjoy?
And they say, Oh, I don'treally listen.
And I'm always surprised bythat.
I I I find that really weird.
How can you possibly do a greatpodcast if you're not listening
to other great podcasts?
It's just bizarre.

(12:57):
It totally confuses me.
So, yeah, it's some it's somegood data in terms of that.
So, yes, very much worthwhiletaking a peek at.
Soundsprofitable.com is whereyou'll find it.

Sam Sethi (13:10):
Uh moving on then, Fountain Friends of the Show,
Oscar Mary, Nick as well, andDovi Das.
They've just announced thatit's time to make video open.
They've launched their videohosting platform.
So a few months ago, they came,well, RSS Blue and Fountain
merged together and then theylaunched audio hosting.

(13:32):
So they've just launched theirvideo hosting, James.
Have you had a chance to play?

Yeah, it's video hosting that uses the the
alternate enclosure, and thatseems to work nicely.
And yeah, so from that point ofview, that that's great.
It's kind of what you wouldexpect Fountain to end up doing.
Now, Triton Digital has alsoannounced video podcast hosting
this week, but they're not usingthe alternate enclosure.

(13:58):
I'm told that they have accessto it in case people ask, but
they're not using the alternateenclosure otherwise, which seems
a bit of a miss.
And in terms of how Fountain'sthing works, it looks it looks
fine.
The interesting thing aboutwhat Fountain have said is if
you're using their website, thenthe video will be the thing

(14:21):
that plays because you're on abig screen, and so therefore it
expects you to want to use thevideo.
If you're using the mobile app,then the audio will be the
first thing that plays becauseit expects you to use the audio
on a mobile app.
And I think that that is areally interesting idea because
surely uh you you know the usecase differs depending on what

(14:43):
type of device you're actuallyon.
Uh so I thought that that wasinteresting.

Sam Sethi (14:47):
I thought it was a great decision.
It's something that we're goingto copy here at TrueFans
because it was one of thosedilemmas.
I posed the question onMastodon, you know, what should
we do?
And yeah, this seems to be thelogical choice, and it makes
sense in hindsight.
It doesn't stop you switchingback to the audio on the desktop
or switching to the video onthe mobile.
No, no, indeed.

It it's just where it starts.
Now, you could argue that thespec says what the default
format is, and I think thatthat's a fair argument, but I
also think that actually thereshould be a conversation around
what you want showing on the,you know, on a desktop
experience or indeed on a TVexperience, because it would be

(15:30):
stupid if you were using a TVapp for you to connect to a show
that has video on it, but notshow the video.
Because the specification saysthat the audio is the default.
I mean, that would be thatwould be nonsense.
So and I don't think anybodywould argue against that.
And so there's a conversationthere, I think, to be had in
terms of where you override thatparticular default to make it

(15:54):
you know more obvious.

Sam Sethi (15:55):
Yeah, I mean, again, you know, we we tested it in
TrueFans and it worked firsttime.
It was very good.
So yeah, I thinkcongratulations to the guys at
Mountain.
Well done.

Yeah, so Fountain are doing some
excellent work in terms ofhosting.
Now, you on this show have beentalking about hosting for the
last six months.

Sam Sethi (16:15):
No, not six, at least since September, I'll give it
that.

Um for the last three months.

Sam Sethi (16:22):
Tell us, tell us if anything has changed.
Well, until you get a pressrelease, it's not released.
That's the official answer.
No, I keep teasing it outbecause we're working on it, and
you know, it's great that weare doing it.
We we are behind a few monthsbehind the guys at Fountain, so
congratulations to them.
But I'm really excited thatboth of us are pushing the
boundaries forward.

(16:43):
We've got our audio hostingworking now, and we've got our
streaming analytics working, andwe've also got people from our
wait list now moving across.
So cautiously, very pleased.
But again, you know, I don'twant to go throwing it
pre-Christmas, you know,everything at the wall.
So I think you'll get a pressrelease, James, first one from

(17:05):
me, probably, in the new year,and you know, maybe a second one
following behind it veryquickly.
So the the idea is yes, we willalso be going and using a video
with HLS.
We will like Fountain use thealternative enclosure.
We already do.
And the third part of that, andI'm sure Fountain's working on

(17:26):
it as well, is going with liveas well, having a live streaming
option.
So I think they're the threeaudio, video, and live will be,
you know, in early 26.
I think both of us will havethat in the market space.

Yeah, indeed.
Which pulls us back to YouTubebecause one of the things I I
noticed that YouTube TV, whichexists in the US, which is a
full, you know, TV service onYouTube, they're making some
changes to how the how thepackages work, and you'll be
able just to buy news if youwant, or just to buy
entertainment or sports if youwant.
But it did occur to me, whyisn't YouTube TV a thing

(18:02):
anywhere else?
Because surely there's a realopportunity there for YouTube to
roll out that technologyeverywhere, because it kind of
exists everywhere, to use all oftheir backbone, to use all of
their stuff for TV channels.
There are enough globallyavailable TV channels these days
now to be able to rollsomething out, even if it's five

(18:24):
or ten channels for premiumusers.
I'm r I'm surprised that therearen't you know noises from
YouTube saying, well, we'lllaunch YouTube TV across Europe
or in the UK or in the UK andIreland.
Because to me that seems like areally obvious one.

Sam Sethi (18:41):
Well, don't give them ideas, James.
I've got enough domination ofthe industry.
Please give us let us have alittle slither of the industry
left.
Maybe that's yeah, no, itagain, I'm pretty sure given all
of the machinations going onwith Netflix and Paramount and
Warner Brothers, there is goingto be a lot of MA in the media
world and a lot of peoplescrambling for attention.

(19:03):
And I'm sure YouTube will besitting there looking at how
they can get in front ofpeople's eyeballs as well.
Um more than just, you know,the standard stuff they do
today.
James, moving on then.
TikTok didn't want to keep themout.
The uh news, TikTok haveannounced they're gonna do a
live podcast series launchingwith Demi Lovato, uh, and that's

(19:24):
going out while it went outyesterday, December the 11th at
6 p.m.
They've started to do podcasts,James.

No, they haven't.
No.
No, it's not it's not on ApplePodcasts, it's not a podcast.
Oh I am beginning to get I'mbeginning to get a bit more
grumpy now about the fact thatpeople are producing things that
they're calling podcasts, andthen you go, well, where where
is it in the podcast apps?
Because it's not there in inApple Podcasts, it's not there

(19:53):
in Spotify either, so thereforeit's not a podcast.
It it's a it's a it's a cheapTV show on TikTok, well that's
fine.

Sam Sethi (20:03):
They are doing the appropriation of the word
podcast just as YouTube did theappropriation of the word
podcast because it's quickmarketing to people to
understand the format.

Well, I mean, you know, is it in YouTube?
No, it's not in YouTube.
So no.

Sam Sethi (20:19):
And I get that.
And I think, you know, a coupleof weeks ago I was saying to
you, I think we talk about theterm podcasting, but we actually
don't market the benefit ofRSS.
I really don't think we do.

I think No, I I I would agree, although I I
think it does come back to whata podcast is.
And one of the things that Iwas doing when I was walking
around podcast movement inDallas is I was wearing a
t-shirt that said something foryour ears when your eyes are
busy, because that's what apodcast is.
It's as simple as that.
It can have video, absolutelyfine, but it's something for
your ears when your eyes arebusy.

(20:53):
If you just put it on a on a ona video-only platform, that
that's not a podcast.
That that that's that that's aTV show.
If it's something which alsoworks just with audio, it's a
podcast.
Something for your ears whenyour eyes are busy.
And one of the things I washaving a chat with the folks at
Certified Crucial earlier onthis week who make who make

(21:14):
merch for podcast for podcastsand for podcast companies and
for things like that.
And I was saying, you know,what should we be doing?
What should we be doing?
And we were kicking around someideas, but I think one of the
ideas that I was kicking aroundis is a tote bag that says on
the side of it, this is not apodcast.
Because it's not.
And just because you call itsimilarly, and so just because

(21:37):
you call it a podcast, you know,no.
And similarly, you know,TikTok.
Yeah.
I mean, great that they've sentout a press release that says
that they've launched a livepodcast series, but it's not a
podcast.

Sam Sethi (21:48):
No, I I I get what you're saying, and I think I
wonder whether we're we'refighting the King Canute battle.
I think it's it's themainstream of people now just
use the word podcast.
They know what they think theymean it means.

Okay, well, so if there's advertising in this
show, where is it going to comefrom?
Is it going to come from the TVbudget?
Is it going to come from theonline video budget, or is it
going to come from the podcastbudget?

Sam Sethi (22:15):
Oh, it'll come from a podcast budget because we are
clearly an audio podcast, right?
We aren't but No, no, no.

But if there's advertising for this TikTok
show.

Sam Sethi (22:24):
Oh, I see.

I see.
I don't know.
Well, where where will thatmoney come from?
Well probably.
And in fact, if you if you werethen to ask that agency how
much money have you spent onpodcasting, would they include
TikTok in the mix?
No, they wouldn't.
Of course they wouldn't.

Sam Sethi (22:37):
Not yet.
But maybe next year.

And so what we end up doing is we end up doing
the industry down because moneythat's going into this thing
that's called a podcast thatisn't, is then not even going to
be re reported as podcastrevenue because it isn't.
Yes.
And so therefore, the $2.4billion that we're getting for
advertising in the US will godown.

(23:01):
And so people will think, well,podcasting has had its day and
it's all video now.
And and all because we'resitting on our hands and going,
well, you know, it reallydoesn't matter.
You know, Rob, whether or notit's a podcast, whether or not
it's an Apple Podcast, it reallydoes matter.
It might have video.
It's all nonsense.
And the more the more that wedo this, then the worse it's

(23:26):
going to become for podcasting,surely.

Sam Sethi (23:29):
Well, you could do the Hernan Lopez thing, which is
appropriate all the revenuethat's gone into YouTube as
podcasting.

Yes, of course.

Sam Sethi (23:38):
Right?
So you could go the other way.
Right.
How big's the podcast industry?
It's 7 billion in advertising.
Well, how did it go from 2billion to 7 billion?
Well, we just took all theYouTube advertising web.

That's not that's not what Hernan did.
But yes, I think.
But yes, I know what you mean.
He he he he also included allof the international stuff,
which that 2.4 billion doesn't.
But yes, uh anyway, uh good forTikTok for launching another
cheap TV show.
Excellent.
There we go.
And yes, and the special guest,Demi Lovato, will she'll next

(24:09):
week.

Sam Sethi (24:09):
Well, don't knock her down.

We'll talk with Jack Coyne of Trackstar about
the process of recording herlatest album.
That sounds like a thrill,doesn't it?
Co-produced and sponsored byT-Mobile.
Excellent.
So so count me out.
I I will be sitting next to myTikTok machine just in case
anybody has the city idea oftrying to turn it on.

Sam Sethi (24:32):
So I found the Grinch.
Anyway, moving on.
Substack.
They've just launched desktoplive streaming.
Now, Substack is uh one ofthose companies I tend to watch
quite closely along withPatreon.
And again, they already havelive streaming and now they've
brought it to the desktop aswell.

(24:52):
Again, going back to what Isaid about Fountain and TrueFans
and I think many other of theapps, we all have to do video
and live, and it's showing herenow that live streaming is
coming to Substack.
YouTube's had a good run at itand they do it very well.
Surprisingly, Spotify doesn'tdo it yet, James, but it's good
to see that Substack's doing it.

(25:13):
I've long said that the lit tagis underused within podcasting,
and I hope that you know morelive podcasting will happen in
26.
And this again isn't podcastingper se, but it's good to see
that they're bringing creatorsthe ability to do live.

I agree.
I agree.
It'll be interesting to watchhow Substack works.
Now, Pod Analyst, very smartnew tool.
Launched in September.
It helps podcasters unify theiranalytics across Apple,
Spotify, and soon to be YouTubeas well.
It was built by a man calledGeorge Legnin, who uh who is

(25:53):
very clever.
He's worked for a bundle abunch of different uh people,
and it was also advised by theformer head of product at
Cadence13, Jim Saraco.
And uh the good news is thatpodcasts with under a thousand
listeners can use the productfree forever.
So you had a quick chat withGeorge, and you started by

(26:15):
asking, tell us more about PodAnalyst.

It's a new analytics platform, and we're
following the ethos that Bumperand Dan Meisner have established
of, you know, the famousarticle that they wrote, The
Death of the Download.
Back in the day, we had the hitcounter of the internet on your
eBay page, and that wasconsidered sophisticated
technology.
But now that Apple and Spotifyand YouTube are offering far

(26:41):
greater telemetry, I think fromthe perspective of how am I
performing, you really shouldjust be looking at that.
Downloads should be just anassist, really, for covering the
overcasts and the podcastaddicts out there that don't
share telemetry yet.
But John Spurlock has thatproject going on, but I'm not

(27:02):
gonna hold my breath for smallerpodcasts to implement anything
to the degree that Apple andSpotify have done.

Sam Sethi (27:08):
The idea is that you use Pod Analyst to get
first-party data back from yourApple account and your Spotify
account, and later on, we willhave a version that gets the
YouTube data as well.
So they're the big threeplayers in the market, we
understand.
When you get the data back intoPod Analysts, first of all, is
it you accessing your ownSpotify for creators and your

(27:32):
Apple creators dashboard,pulling in the data?
Is that how you do it?
Or is there a more automatedway?

Yeah, so the general onboarding process from
the perspective of thepodcaster, they go into Apple
Podcasts and to Spotify forcreators, and they simply invite
our special email address as ifyou're literally inviting us
for the analyst role, whichallows us to read your data and
we have some automation set upto be able to pull in your data

(27:58):
really quickly.

Sam Sethi (27:59):
So once I get the data back into my pod analyst
dashboard, again, what is itthat I get to see?
What's the critical things thatyou've done that are uniquely
different from what everyoneelse has done?

So I think everyone has to have kind of
some table stakes measurements,which is unique listeners.
That's the big one, listeninghours or whatever variation of
that terminology you want tocall it.
And of course, you get plays,followers if you still care
about that metric.
But the big thing that we arereally focusing in on is your

(28:32):
listener retention functions.
We have a really interestinguser interface to basically show
you all of your episodes thatyou have done.
And quickly at a glance, youcan start seeing outliers beyond
just like, oh, this episode hada thousand listens, this
episode had a 700.
What happened here?
When you're looking at 100episodes, you might get lost.

(28:55):
And so we use a lot of color tokind of visually represent how
you're doing in terms of coolthings like someone creates a
promo episode saying, like, hey,you know, vote for us in some
award show.
And it's interesting, we sawthey got like one-fourth of the
amount of starting listeners,but their retention was almost

(29:17):
perfect.
So everyone who was listeningwas either washing their dishes
and just couldn't press skip onthe episode, or these are your
super fans.
But like that's the kind ofstuff that you just wouldn't
even be able to do by looking atApp or Spotify's, you know,
they provide you this data, it'sputting it together that is the
real value in using PodAnalyst.

Sam Sethi (29:39):
So when you say putting it all together, so what
would I do with the data thatyou've given me?
How would I improve my podcast?

So that's the interesting thing.
You know, we don't want to godown this AI route because quite
frankly, I don't see it workingreally well right now.
I'm not gonna speak for thefuture, but this is kind of the
thing that I was talking withyou before the show about the
difference between, say, abumper and a pod analyst.
You need to come in and stillapply some analytical thinking.

(30:11):
We're gonna give you all thedata and present it to you in a
very visually appealing way, butyou need to look at the
numbers.
Like we're saying, hey, thisepisode performed incredibly
poorly.
Why?
Well, you need to go look at itand and you can click into an
episode and and go into yourretention curves and see, hey,
we had 50% of people drop offbecause they they they heard

(30:35):
your pre-roll and they're notinterested.
But that's a very commoneffect.
Or why did people just straightup leave halfway through the
show?
Like, was the content I wasdoing poor?
We provide you the ways to seethat.
But you at the end of the daystill have to make that
interpretation.

Sam Sethi (30:52):
Okay, so I get to see the histogram of how my episode
has uh flowed.
I can then make subjectivechanges to my next episode based
on that.
Oh, okay, lots of people felloff at 60 minutes of my show's
one hour eighty.
Clearly, no one's listening.
Let's shorten the show, or thattopic about a new product

(31:13):
didn't really strike withanybody.
So maybe I've got to be carefulof what topics I use.
Okay, so that's how you'relooking at doing it.
Now, it's currently in betafrom what I understand, so so
it's free for everyone still touse.
And there is a version that yousay that's going to be free for
life, but there is two pricepoints.
What are they?

Oh, so so the the two price points is one is
free, one is $49 a month.

Sam Sethi (31:35):
Right.
Again, what would I get for myextra $49 then?

So I like to think of it as if you're on the
free forever, the way we measureit is we say you can add all of
your podcasts, so there's nolimitation on that.
What we do is we say, okay,across your podcast in the last
30 days, how many uniquelisteners did you have?
If you had less than athousand, we consider you a free
forever user.
You get basically almost theentire tool set.
You miss out on some of theteam planning type stuff, you

(32:03):
know, bringing your whole teamwith you.
In the future, there's going tobe some tools to see at a
network level how your wholenetwork is performing.
But those are really not tools.
If you're running five showsand you get 200 listeners each
per month, that's not relevantto what you need as a podcaster
at that point in your growth.
On the other hand, if you havemillions of downloads, sure, 50

(32:24):
bucks a month for the premiumplan, you get everything.
Plus, you get better supportdirectly from me.

Sam Sethi (32:29):
You recently leased a new version.
That's still in beta, I assume.
So you're not actually arelease yet.
So 2026 is coming up.
What are you planning onbringing to the platform?
When do you think it'll be afull release one candidate?
And what else do you think youwant to do in 2026?

Yeah, so we're getting closer and closer to
that finish line.
And when I say we, I do want tomention this is a team of one.
So I am the founder, I'm alsothe developer, I'm also the
support.
But also I want to shout out toJim Sarico.
He is my advisor.
He's formerly of Cadence 13.
Great guy, really helpful.
So going back in terms of 2026,January is probably where we

(33:11):
want to cut it and say, hey,we're delivering you value.
You know, from the hobbyist tothe professional, there's
something here that is now worthit.
And we're already seeing thiswhere I think it's something
like 25 to 45 percent of ourweekly active users are just
coming back.
There's a certain proportionthat isn't surprisingly large

(33:32):
amount that comes back literallyevery single day.
I'm looking at these peoplelogging in, and you can start
seeing some patterns.
But the big thing that I wantto bring to 2026, which I have
hinted on LinkedIn in commentsand stuff, is to be able to
share your podcast measurementinformation.
And I want to really caveatthis up front.

(33:53):
We are not in the business ofselling your data.
If you don't want to have thisfeature, it isn't opt-in.
You have to explicitly statethat you want to share your
data.
You want to provide as granularof capabilities to this, going
all the way from, hey, I want toinvite my advertising partner.
We've been doing this forever.
You know, say, like an acquiredand JP Morgan.
Let's give Jamie Diamond apermanent access to this whole

(34:16):
platform, let them see what'sgoing on.
Or, hey, we're working withHelloFresh, we're gonna just do
these next three episodes, showthem these three.
They don't need to seeeverything else.
Maybe we'll show them a fewprevious episodes, like this is
how we normally perform, so theycan set a good return on ad
spend metric for themselves.
And going all the way to, hey,I want to, you know, when

(34:39):
Spotify said, hey, we're gonnashare your numbers.
And if you were in the club ofawesome, I want people to know
how I'm doing, then we want tooffer, hey, here's your public
information.
And the huge advantage forpodcasters and advertisers here
is as a podcaster, you'reprobably used to, hey, you know,
I'm Sam from Sam's awesome adagency.

(35:01):
Please invite me to Apple,please invite me to Spotify.
Let's hope that there's notechnical issues.
You know, that's just a hugewaste of time.
One login, one invite for theadvertisers, no in login at all,
just to type in a code orsomething like that.
Just really simplifies thewhole process.

Sam Sethi (35:17):
Now let's just go back a little bit about George.
So you've been in a developermode for quite a while now.
One of your first products yousold to a company called
radio.co in Manchester, what wasthat product?

It was an iOS app called Pocket Streamer.
It's still in the app store.
And basically what it lets youdo is if you have a Shoutcast
compatible radio station oryou're a radio.co customer, you
could go live directly from youriPhone.
So, you know, there's anawesome YouTube demo that they
have done where they went out todo an interview in in some area

(35:52):
of London and you know, theyjust brought a microphone,
walked around.
So that was kind of culminationfrom me having worked at Live
365 previously.

Sam Sethi (36:01):
And another product that you built was PodcastDB.
What was that one?

So Podcast DB was basically think of like the
closest competitors, I wouldsay, is Listen Notes and
Podchaser.
So kind of a zoom info forpodcasters is the best easy
description.
And that one has been sold andhas just recently been sold
again to some company in Dubaiof all places.

Sam Sethi (36:26):
Now, with this one, I mean, what is your exit
strategy?
It sounds like you're going tobuild a really cool uh analytics
platform with a big threeeventually Spotify, Apple, and
YouTube data.
It does feel like it's one ofthose products that would live
within another product as well.
As in, I can imagine a hostingcompany saying, Yep, we want

(36:47):
this because this adds superquick value.
It could be an Aqua HigherStroke product purchase.
Is that your thought process oris it too soon?
You're just building a product.

I would say it's probably too soon.
I've definitely it's definitelygone through my mind about what
this could turn into.
I don't think Daniel Eck fromSpotify is going to be writing
me an email anytime soon for anacquisition, given that he
already has half of the data,but maybe he's interested in the
other half.
And you know, I'm open to thatconversation.
But it's actually aninteresting question.
Working with hosting companies,I've heard so many people

(37:20):
mention that to me, and I wouldlove to do that.
If BuzzSprout, I believethey're one of your sponsors.
I love their show, Buzzcast.
Listen every single Friday.
I listen to this show everysingle Friday too.
But you know, it would beawesome to work with them.
I think it would just be a veryawkward conversation with Apple
and Spotify of like, hey, so wehave a hundred thousand logins

(37:42):
that we need to handle.
Like, what do we do at thatpoint?
I think it's a more of alogistics problem rather than a
technical problem.
But it would be an awesomething.
So just to put this out there,the reason that we're even
offering the free forever planis because we want to encourage
the whole industry to adopt thatdownloads are the new metric.

(38:03):
And no one else is offering afree plan for anything right
now.
I'll call out my competitorsand my friends here.
So we've got obviously bumper,we've got listener.com, we've
got podstock.io.
They're all on the samemission.
Hey, downloads is the new thingthat we need to be doing.
I'm gonna come in and say, hey,I'll take one for the team,

(38:24):
I'll offer a free plan becausethis is what we need to be doing
as an industry.

Sam Sethi (38:29):
You say downloads.
I'm still not a believer thatdownloads is the metrics.
I'm a believer that listen timeis the metrics.

It's still early in the morning here in
California.
I meant unique listenersepisode consumption.
I said totally threw you for aquick one there.
Here's the thing, we don't evenmeasure right now.
We would we would like to addsupport for a few of the big
hosting companies because weshouldn't throw away downloads
because depending on your show,for example, accidental tech,
you know, they constantly say,hey, a huge portion of our

(38:56):
listeners come from Overcastbecause obviously that same show
is creating that podcast app,you know, Marco Armin.
For them, downloads mightactually make sense to analyze.
But for the majority of shows,we have all the telemetry that
we really need to make at leasta directionally correct, if not
a perfect representation of yourshow from the data that Apple

(39:17):
and Spotify provide you.

Sam Sethi (39:18):
I think downloads are a good indicator.
They are a metric.
I think it's really interestingwith a platform like yours is
that people can see theirconversion rate from I don't
know, let's say 4,000 downloadsto 600 plays.
That again is a good metric tounderstand.
Why am I getting all thesedownloads, but people aren't
auto-converting into playing?

(39:40):
That's another metric to lookat.

I think something that has been on the
mind, you know, theuncomfortable question of like
me as a podcaster, right?
Let's just pretend I've beenworking with Nike and we told
them, hey, we have 50,000downloads, they cut us a check
every month, they have a fairlyconsistent return on and
Investment return on outspend,however you want to call it, and

(40:03):
we have George Nike 50 couponcode, and so they can track
where it's coming from.
And I think what's interestingto kind of look at here is well,
if you were getting 50,000downloads, but you're actually
getting 10,000 unique listeners,and 10,000 of them actually
listen to that ad, nothingchanges fundamentally for Nike
because they put in say $100 andthey generate $300.

(40:26):
That doesn't change.
But now what you can say is,hey, we can now assign actual
dollar values to listenersrather than back in the day
where it's like, hey, maybesomeone went crazy and started
doing fake downloads to yourshow.
Might be your hands might beclean, but you don't know that.
We need to rip off theband-aid, have everyone

(40:47):
establish a new baseline andwork with that because the new
baseline, which is you know,unique listeners and you know,
retention consumption of thecontent, what portions consumed,
should be the thing that we'relooking at.

Sam Sethi (40:59):
Now, one of the other challenges that I've seen is
currently AI bots all over theplace consuming content.
We did some analytic reviewsrecently and we were seeing
Claude and OpenAI and theFacebook bot and the Google bot.
And they are not justdownloads, they're actually
listen bots as well.
They are actually playing thecontent and consuming the actual

(41:22):
podcast.
How are you dealing with that,both in the download number, but
also more importantly, in theunique plays and the listen
retention time?
Because what you don't want tobe doing is conflating the
listen time number with botlistens.

So the good thing is if you're using app or
spotify, I really hope thatClaude is not smart enough to be
able to access iPhone apps.

Sam Sethi (41:49):
We are seeing the bots actually.
I mean, it might not be iOS,but web-based.

But but web-based access web-based is
again going back to the downloadnumbers.
So with App on Spotify, you canactually even see this in your
iPhone.
You can go to the podcast appand tell Apple to reset my
identifier.
And then that way you getdelinked.
Or you're now being tracked asa new listener.
But I think in terms of theamount of listener fraud and the

(42:15):
whole bot activity, I think asfar as Spotify and Apple is
concerned, we're talking aboutgetting that data from Apple and
Spotify, not from your hostingprovider saying Apple and
Spotify, because I can lie aboutmy user agent too.
I can be on my Android phoneand tell you that I'm listening
from Apple Podcasts.
It's very, very trivial.
This is not trivial to break.

Sam Sethi (42:35):
So I think this is the world that we're in.
I think I agree with ourinterview that we did with Dan
Meisner and this interview here,that this is the new metric.
We've been banging this drumnow for a couple of years, and
it looks like the tools are nowappearing.
We still have the ultimateproblem, which is I like the big
number of the download, and Idon't like the small number of
the unique listeners.

(42:56):
That's the problem.

If you want a pat on your back, then go look
at your download numbers.
But if let's just say your yourvalue of creating your podcast
is to spread the message, not togenerate ad advertiser
interests, then you shouldn't belooking at the download number.
You should be looking at youractual consumption because at
that point you're just lying toyourself.

(43:18):
You can still use pod analystsand you keep selling to Nike
with your downloads.
Because now what you can do isyou can look at your content and
see that hey, that pre-rollthat we do, we lose 40% of our
listeners every single time.
People are not even getting tothe content.
We can see this, the data isthere.
Spotify and Apple and YouTubeare telling us that.

(43:39):
Let's remove, let's go oneepisode without a pre-roll.
Or you know, maybe we do a coldopen, we do 30 seconds, and
then we throw in.
I guess it's not technically apre-roll at that point, but not
a mid-roll either.
See how that impacts it.
Because let's just say a friendtold me to listen to this
podcast, and I'm listening tothe 50th Geico ad this week.
If I'm in a bad mood, I mightjust not listen to it.

(44:00):
And maybe this podcast couldhave become the one that I
listen to for the next decade.
So you want to improve yourcontent.
Why wouldn't you want to dothat?

Sam Sethi (44:07):
George, if I want to get onto the beta and onto
testing pod analyst, where wouldI go?

Podanalyst.com.
Just click any of the buttonsthat say start free forever.
Right now, everybody, itdoesn't matter the size of your
podcast, how many podcasts youhave, you can join 24 hours
after you sign up, your datawill start appearing there.
And then somewhere in January,probably we're gonna switch over
to a subscription.

(44:34):
But as I said, the freeforever, let's push the industry
forward, let's encourageeverybody to adopt this metric.
And I would love to see peoplestart using once the share
feature comes out to see morepublic large podcasts come out
and say, hey, this is actuallyhow the numbers really look.
Because I think that's theother thing.
Get everybody comfortable.
Hey, 10 million downloads, 1million listeners.

(44:56):
Same return on ad spend.
But now you have that precisionand you can see it.

Sam Sethi (45:00):
George, congratulations.
Thanks for coming on the show.
Happy Christmas to you.
Thank you.

Happy New Year.
You too.

Sam Sethi (45:06):
And good luck with the release candidate in
January.

Absolutely.
Thank you so much.

Announcer (45:10):
The pod news weekly review with Buzz Sprout with
Buzz Sprout.
Start podcasting, keeppodcasting.

Sam Sethi (45:19):
James, in other stuff, it looks like LibSin,
which I thought we announced acouple of weeks ago, but it
seems the story's come back, hasannounced a price increase
that'll start from January the1st.
Is this going to be somethingthat the hosting companies are
doing across the board?
I know that Blueberry increasedtheir prices in October.

Yeah, so this is something that Libsin is doing
across the board for all oftheir prices.
So all of their prices aregoing up by around $5 each.
And it's unusual because quitea lot of the podcast companies
are putting up the prices fornew customers, but not for
existing customers.
Blueberry and LibSin now arethe two companies that appear to
have put it up for existingcustomers.

(46:02):
That's the big change that theyhave made.
You could say that that wasbecause their billing systems
maybe couldn't necessarily copewith putting up the prices for
new customers or not.
I don't know.
I don't think that that wouldbe necessarily fair.
But certainly the changes arethere.
Now, I would expect morepodcast uh companies to probably

(46:24):
put their prices up at somepoint, but Libsyn putting up
their prices is quite risky forthem given that there is a large
amount of attrition from thatplatform at the moment.
They're on their lowest figuresever, according to uh LiveWire.
And you would expect Libsyn tobe doing all that they could to
keep their customers, andclearly whacking up the prices

(46:46):
is going to be a thing for them.
So it'll be interesting to seewhat happens there in terms of
what that does to their churnfigures even more.

Sam Sethi (46:55):
Yeah, I mean, I think sadly, I think we're seeing
prices going up all over theplace.
We've talked about Spotifyprices going up.
I think one interestingcommentary I heard was if
Netflix does get WarnerBrothers, then they have market
dominance and expect to see theprice go up there.
I don't know.
I think we're going to find alot of people putting their
prices up next year.

Yeah, no, I'm sure that that will happen.
Sure that that will happen.
Hey, Cloudflare fell overagain.
I noticed.
Brilliant.
And so that for a very shortamount of time pulls down
Bunsprout and pulled down OSHA.
Now it was only down for 25minutes, and it was only

(47:35):
specific sites that had specificCloudflare setups and things
like that.
But gosh, that's not good foranother another failure of
Cloudflare.
So interesting to spot thatgoing on.
What else is going on?
Well, good news in terms ofglobal ad revenue.
That's apparently going to berising 8.8% next year, which is

(47:59):
an improvement on what peoplethought that it would increase
by.
So that's pretty good news.
The Walrus, uh, which is aCanadian uh journalism company,
they have bought a podcastcompany called Lead Podcasting.
I'm assuming it's calling LeadPodcasting and not Lead
Podcasting, because that wouldbe a really weird name for a
podcast company.
Amanda Coupideau, who is theirfounder and CEO, says, I could

(48:22):
not have picked a better home.
They've been working togetherfor some time now.
Lead Podcasting is a brandedpodcast company, and the Walrus
produces a lot of brandedcontent.
So I think that that fits quitenicely.
So congratulations to them.
And Vulture have published anexciting thing with Nick Khoir,
of course.
Uh the 10 moments that definedpodcasting in 2025.

(48:43):
As ever with Nick Khoir, it'svery uh eclectic.
The end of WTF makes it inthere.
There's not that much otherthings that I recognised having
written about the industry forthe last year, but but it's
worth a read and you can read itoutside of paywall, so it's
probably a good thing.
Now, next week, what'shappening on this show, uh Sam?

Sam Sethi (49:05):
We're taking we we're off, we're gone.
We that's it.

Aribert cheeks.
Yes, we're off, except we'renot.
We're not, no.
Because we've got lots and lotsand lots of people.
We're having a virtual party,except except there won't be
actually any partying going on.
There'll be a lot of people, alot of our friends, giving their
2025 highlights and their 2026predictions just to whet your

(49:30):
appetite for next week.
We've got people from Spotify,we've got people from who else
have we got?
We've got some new Hall ofFamers.
Well, yes, and we've got peoplefrom Apple.
Yes, who'd have thought it?
An Amazon.
Yeah.
So it's going to be a biggie.
You will definitely want to beusing chapters, which of course

(49:51):
should be out by then on ApplePodcasts for everybody.
But uh, yes, it'll be anexcellent show, and that's next
week in this here feed, the witha pod news weekly review.
Moving on, then James, peopleand jobs.
What's grooving?
Well, yes, people.
So uh somebody called MishaGlenny uh is the new presenter

(50:12):
of In Our Time.
What's in Our Time?
Well, it's one of the world'slongest running podcasts.
Who's he replacing?
Well, he's replacing LordMelvin Bragg.
How do you pronounce his name?
I don't know, but I'm assumingit's Misha Glenny.
When does the show return?
Oh, it returns in January.
Thank you for asking.
Sony Music.
I'll get my coat if you'regoing to do your co-hosting

(50:32):
yourself.
Sony Music Podcasts.
Hey, big changes in Sony MusicPodcasts.
Uh, Steve Ackerman, who hasworked for that company for 25
years.
It used to be called SomethingElse.
It was then purchased by Sony.
But he's worked for thatcompany for 25 years.
He is one of the nicest peoplein the world.
And he's to leave.

(50:53):
He's to leave Sony MusicPodcasts.
Lots of people on his LinkedInexpressing surprise, obviously,
but wishing him all of the best.
And uh frankly, if anybody hasearned a rest, it's Steve.
So congratulations, Steve.
You you've you you have someexciting news about Steve.

Sam Sethi (51:09):
Yeah, well, I pinged him and we had a little chat,
and I said, Look, you know, whenyou're ready in the new year
and you've got something to tellus about your new project, do
come on.
And he said, Yes, I'd love to.
So looking forward tointerviewing Steve in 2026.

Yeah, well, there you go.
Uh that'll be well worthlooking forward to.
Laura Mayer has joinedTalkhouse as head of podcast.
She, of course, did theShameless Acquisition Target
podcast, which she was trying toget bought by a lot of money.
It ended up being bought byGilded Audio for not an awful
lot of money, but still, youknow, an amount of money.
So that's nice.
She was also at uh ABC News, ofcourse.

(51:44):
On the Time front cover, uh,CEO of the year is YouTube's
Neil Mohan.
Who would have thought it?
So good to see Neil Mohanthere.
I'm not quite sure why, becauseI haven't read Time.
So there we are.

Sam Sethi (52:01):
Yeah, Time is owned by the guy who owns Salesforce,
Benioff.

Oh.

Sam Sethi (52:06):
Weirdly.
Well, they've all bought allmedia.
So uh anyway, it's good to see.
I mean, I think one one of thethings that was interesting that
Neil Mohan said in the articlewas he likes to be the quiet man
of the industry.
He doesn't want to be going anddoing other flashy things that
other CEOs do.
He doesn't want to be on, youknow, many other podcasts.

(52:27):
He says, I've got one job, andthat's to run YouTube.
It's quite nice that he's he'she's gonna say, I'm focused, as
opposed to a lot of other peoplewho want to make a lot of noise
elsewhere.

Yeah, no, I think it's a good thing.

Sam Sethi (52:39):
Now, awards, James.
I mean, we've talked about theuh the award that you're gonna
be getting, but there are otherawards as well.
What are the other awards?

What are the other awards?
Well, the Golden Globes, I'veheard of them.
The 83rd Annual Globes.
That's your next one.

Sam Sethi (52:56):
Make a bit more space on the shelf.
Yeah, yeah, right.
Two Webbies, one Amby, alifetime.
My God.

Yeah, yeah.
Well, yes, so the 2026 nomineesfor the 83rd annual Golden
Globes were announced,including, for the first time
ever, awards for the bestpodcast.
There are six major shows whichhave been shortlisted for the
new award.
Armchair Expert, Call HerDaddy, Good Hang, Smartless, the

(53:24):
Mel Robbins podcast, and upfirst.
And the winner is Good Hang.
Oh no, sorry, I can't tell youthat yet.
The awards are on January the11th.
They will be they'll be on thetelly.
Although, interestingly, thepodcast nomination and
announcement was made beforethey turned the TV cameras on.
Right.
Just just bear that in mind.

(53:44):
Just bear that in mind.
Congratulations, Sirius XM, whohas half the nominations.
So that is very good.
And uh there were a few othershows in there.
There were some sports showsfrom The Ringer and stuff like
that.
And there were a number ofpolitical shows, none of which
have got in, which I thought wasvery interesting.

(54:06):
So Ben Shapiro was paying a lotof money to promote himself.
He was on the inside frontcover of The Variety magazine,
which doesn't come cheap.
He was on a great big TimesSquare billboard, which again
doesn't come cheap.
He was on a round table for theHollywood Reporter, which again
doesn't come cheap because thatwill have been paid for as

(54:29):
well.
But he failed to be nominated.
But then so did, I think theMidas Touch was in there.
I think Pod Save America, JoeRogan, of course, yeah.
I think Making Catholics.
Oh, and uh and the TuckerCarlson show.
So none of those shows werenominated, and all of the
coverage of the nominationsbasically said that this was the

(54:52):
Golden Globes judges playing itsafe and spotting these people
and thinking, no, we're notgoing to have those on the stage
talking.

Sam Sethi (55:01):
So to be fair, I think that's the right thing.
Look, it's the first timethey've included it, they don't
want it to be controversial.
There's probably enough in theglobes themselves that might be,
you know, more controversial.

So the one thing that I found very interesting
was you have out of the sixnominees, uh you know, they
they're all very good.
Uh Up First from NPR on theGolden Globes website has no NPR
branding at all.
The name of the show is UpFirst from NPR, but on the

(55:35):
Golden Globes website, it'scalled Up First.
The Up First logo has no NPRlogo on it.
Whereas if you have a look atSmartness or if you have a look
at Good Hang with Amy Polar,who's going to win, or if you
had a look at uh Call Her Daddyfrom Alex Cooper, maybe might
win.
One of those two.
Or indeed Wondery or you know,etc.

(55:55):
etc.
They were all plastered withthe logos of the network that
they came from.
But NPR probably must have madea a decision not to brand it
NPR and has just branded it upfirst, which I just thought was
interesting.
Why would they do that?

Sam Sethi (56:15):
I have thoughts, but I'm not going to share them.
Moving on.
Yes.

I should hope so.
Yes.

Sam Sethi (56:21):
After your hey, I've been admonished so many times by
the Godfather.

After you're telling off.

Sam Sethi (56:27):
Oh, I'm all the time, mate.

All the time.
Indeed.
I'm in the naughty corner.
Uh yes, in the naughty corner.
Now, talking about awards,there are some new awards.
The NYC Podcast Awards.
Confusingly, you win a LibbyAward for the NYC Podcast
Awards.
I know.
Don't don't don't at me.
Uh anyway, the organizers sayit's launching in direct

(56:49):
opposition to the download firstculture dominating podcasting.
The Libby Awards recognizecraft, sound design, writing,
acting, engineering, and thecreators themselves as highly as
audience size.
Anybody would think that theyhave it in for the Golden
Globes, but I think, well, goodfor you.
So if you want to enter that,it's very cheap to enter.
You've got until January the10th.

(57:11):
I don't know whether you needto be a New York podcaster in
order to take part, or whetherwe can enter.
I simply don't know.
But anyway, you'll find it inthe Pod News newsletter this
week.

Sam Sethi (57:21):
Yeah, we won't be, though.
Just to be clear, we won't be.

We won't be what?
Entering.
Entering, won't we?
Why?
I've entered this show once.
We come second every time.
I've entered the show once.
I might enter it again.
Okay.
Rumour is rumour is that thePod News Daily podcast has been
entered for the Ambys.
Oh.
Not by me either.
I should say.

(57:45):
Well done.
And not uh and not in acategory that I have any chance
of winning.
Sports and entertainment, yes.
No, no chance of winning that.
Actually, no, weirdly, best adread.
Best ad read.
Nice, yes.
Yeah.
So I I stand no chance ofwinning because Conan O'Brien is
going to win that one,obviously.
But yeah, so I th I I I meangreat.

(58:07):
I'm I'm super looking forwardto winning, but I won't be
winning.
Okay.
So let's not forget that.
And in terms of events, this isreally exciting for the UK.
PRX and Audio UK have announceda 2026 Podcast Creator Summit
in London.
It's on Friday, the 6th ofFebruary.

(58:27):
It's being organised inpartnership with Apple Podcasts,
and it will be in the ApplePodcast offices in Battersea
Power Station, which is veryfancy.
There's sessions, there'sworkshops and stuff like that.
It's free to go to.
Presumably, you need to be inthe UK.
Well, I mean, you can beanywhere, I suppose, if you want
to travel.
That's absolutely fine.
You can sign up with a linkthat you'll find in the Pod News

(58:48):
newsletter.
I think that's really excitingand interesting seeing PRX
finally moving out of just NorthAmerica and doing stuff in
other parts of the world and uhworking with uh Audio UK.
So again, it goes to show howmuch more global podcasting is
becoming.

Sam Sethi (59:08):
I might even go to that one.
That's quite nice.
Right, moving on.
Should we go to the tech stuff?

Yeah, we'll do that.

Announcer (59:16):
The tech stuff.
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.
Well what have you got for us,Sam?
Lots of good lots of good news.
I'm hoping.

Sam Sethi (59:29):
Uh yeah.
Well, I didn't I'm not surewhere to start, but we'll start
with this one, which isn't goodnews.
Podium.page has stopped.
It was a podcast AI tool, andit suddenly announced it's to
close.

Yes, so this was a tool that produced
transcripts, produced AI writtenshow notes and blogs.
Uh, it was white labeled by anumber of podcast hosting
products.
I mention a bit coily in podnews this week.
One of those was BuzzPro, oursponsor, but you will have
noticed.
That you are still gettingtranscripts and AI written show

(01:00:04):
notes and blogs and all of thatstuff on Buzzsprout.
So clearly they have beenworking cleverly behind the
scenes to make sure that it allstill works.
So congratulations to them fordoing that.
But uh yes, it's always sadseeing a company closing.
It's sad seeing a companyclosing very, very quickly.
And when that happens, probablyone of two things has has uh

(01:00:28):
happened.
Firstly, it's justcatastrophically run out of
money very, very quickly.
Or potentially there's been uhmore personal reasons why that
company has ended up uh closing.
But yeah, it was a very sort ofyou know shocking message that
was just posted on theirhomepage, just basically saying
totally, totally abruptly, andwe sincerely apologize.

(01:00:51):
So we hope that everybody thereis uh is all okay.

Sam Sethi (01:00:56):
Now, John Sperlock, friend of the show, has got
LiveWire, which is his analysisof podcast companies and of
episodes and and many, manyother things.
It's called OP3, and we'vetalked about it lots and lots.
But he's now saying he'sspending elbow grease filtering
out auto-generated shows.
He added a new note about TTSpodcasts.

(01:01:19):
What are TTS podcasts, James?

James Cridland (01:01:21):
Well, TTS podcasts is text-to-speech, or
as as many people would call it,AI slop.
And so some of those shows, butparticularly, he seems to have,
from the data that I can see,he seems to have taken all of
the inception point AI showsout.
Because, you know, he he justsays they're not a reflection of
the health of the podcastingworld as it's been measured

(01:01:44):
since 2021, and it just servesto obscure everything else.
So he's pulled all of thatinformation out.
So as a result, you'll seePodTrack, for example, going
down very, very fast in thetracking information because all
of those 32,000 episodes thatuh Inception Point AI is
releasing every single week,that figure may be 3,200.

(01:02:06):
I think it probably is.
But anyway, all of thoseepisodes are all measured with
PodTrack, and those will be nowno longer in the the live wire
information.
I think it's interesting.
I'm not necessarily sure that Iagree, but but I think it's a
good, you know, it's it's goodthat John has been open and said
this is what I'm doing.

(01:02:26):
And so, yeah, what are yourthoughts on that, Sam?

Sam Sethi (01:02:29):
Well, before I have my thoughts, I mean, what don't
you agree with?
I mean, I'm curious.
I mean, you're the one who, youknow, on this show, together
we've talked about, you know,Inception Point AI, we've talked
about AI slop, and John's takena proactive decision not to
include it to mess up with allof the other people's data, I
suppose, because it it doescause a massive spike.

(01:02:51):
I mean, Spreaker must see theirnumbers drop massively on live
wire as well.

I mean, Spreeker's figures are down, but
then everybody's figures areactually down in this month.
All of the big podcast uh hostsuh figures are all down this
month, and I'm not quite surewhy that is, but you know,
Spreaker is, you know, clearlydown.
The reason why I don'tnecessarily like it is look, at
the end of the day, we're allthe these are still competition

(01:03:19):
to us.
Those 4,000 million shows thatInception Point AI are pumping
out without checking any of thecontent first, are still
appearing in the podcast appsalongside ours.
So they're still part of the ofthe industry.
They're still taking the adrevenue from programmatic

(01:03:39):
advertising, they're stillbumping up the figures from you
know a number of different o anumber of different
organizations.
So I do think that they arestill part of the of the
industry.
Now, you know, if it was up tome, I would be saying, take
them, you know, produce twodifferent versions of the chart,
one with and one without thethe AI slop, and then and then

(01:04:02):
we'll actually know how big theAI slop is, then.
We'll actually know how big theproblem is.
But at the moment we've justseen those numbers just sort of
going away.
And I'm not sure that that's astransparent as we should
probably be in this industry.
So that's why I'm a little bitsad about it.

Sam Sethi (01:04:20):
I I like the comparative nature of that.
That that's a lot of work maybefor John, but I think that
would be an interestingcomparison.
As you said, it we we wouldknow the extent of the AI slot.
Should apps be blocking itthen, James?

Oh, I mean, you know, you would hope that apps
uh not blocking it, but youwould hope that apps would be
downgrading this sort of stuffin their search anyway.
And uh that that's probably howthe how the algorithms are
working.
I can't imagine people, and Iknow that Inception Point AI
won't necessarily agree with me,but I can't imagine people

(01:04:57):
staying listening to episodethree, four, and five of these
AI-generated shows unlessthey're using them to fall
asleep.
And so therefore, you know, youyou would you would imagine,
therefore, that the searches inpodcast apps would be
automatically downgrading themanyway.
I'm never a particular fan ofbanning things.

(01:05:18):
I am a fan of of making surethat they don't appear as high
in the algorithm as you knowreal human beings stuff does,
because I think at the end ofthe day, the game that they are
playing is to play the SEO gameof we just want to, you know, we
just want to steal the trafficfrom human beings and instead,

(01:05:40):
you know, throw our stuff in.
So if you do a search forBiography Flash, for example,
Biography Flash is one of theirbrands, Inception Point AI's
brands.
Uh, and it's not just InceptionPoint AI, by the way, there are
plenty of other things in in inhere as well.
But Biography Flash has thesebiographies for anybody that you

(01:06:03):
could think of, is in there.
I mean, the number one isCharlie Kirk, of course, but
then you've got Freddie Krueger,Dean Withers.
Freddie Krueger's not evenreal, uh, Dan Bungino, Rachel
Maddow, Catherine, Princess ofWales, Zach Bryan, Kat Williams,
uh, Warren Buffett, and so onand so on and so on.
And they are all automated.
They are all produced by uhscraping a Wikipedia entry.

(01:06:28):
You know, I mean, fine, but atthe end of the day, it's not
going to be particularly,particularly exciting, is it?

Sam Sethi (01:06:36):
No, I mean, I I just did a quick search on uh true
fans.
I mean, we don't have themincluded, but we we index them
from the podcast index so we cansee them all here.

Yeah.

Sam Sethi (01:06:50):
Again, you know, the way that we do it in TrueFans is
the way that I think you taughtme how to do it, James, which
is we'll index it and show it ifyou do a search, but we won't
add it to our database until theuser clicks on it and and
requests it.

Yeah, until the user clicks on it, and that and
that's how my my system works aswell.
But you know, I mean, if you doa search for Dan Bongino, then
in Apple Podcasts, then numberone is Vince, which is what used
to be the Dan Bongino show.
And number two is the DanBongino biography flash.
And similarly, doubtless, ifyou were to search for Charlie

(01:07:25):
Kirk, which I'm doing now, thenthe first thing in there is
going to be the Charlie Kirkshow.
This, of course, is where theis is where the Apple Podcasts
search API falls over.
I can't tell you.
But yes, the number one is theis the Charlie Kirk show.
Actually, weirdly, now no.
The number three is the CharlieKirk show.

(01:07:47):
The number two and the numberone are both AI AI slop, AI
produced content.
And the number one right now inthe pod news search, which is
essentially Apple Podcasts witha little bit of a little bit of
additional spice in there.
Yeah, the number one isInception Point AI, a show that

(01:08:09):
just says Charlie Kirk.
And and I I just look at thisand I go, the reason why this
podcast is doing so well is isall to do with SEO and nothing
to do with content.
Is my honest opinion, but youknow, anyway, we will we will
see.

Announcer (01:08:29):
Booster gram.
Booster, boostergram, supercomments, zaps, fan mail, fan
mail, super chats, and email.
Our favorite time of the week,it's the Pod News Weekly Review
inbox.

So many different ways to get in touch
with us.
You can use fan mail by usingthe link in our show notes,
super comments on TrueFans,boosts everywhere else, and we
uh share the money that we makefrom this podcast with
ourselves.
It doesn't go anywhere elseinto the exciting pod news HQ.
So that's basically how thatbit works.

(01:09:03):
We got we were talking about aSpotify recap, weren't we, last
week?
And we were spotting about uhSpotify wrapped, YouTube recap,
Amazon delivered, and all ofthat.
And and I think I blew my mouthoff and said, Why don't podcast
hosts do any of this stuff?
Podcast hosts should really bedoing it, it would be a really
good idea, blah, blah, blah.
Something to that effect.

(01:09:23):
Something to that effect.
And Kevin from BuzzSprout, oursponsor, said.

Sam Sethi (01:09:29):
Did you not remember that Buzz Sprout has been doing
a year-end recap for the lastsix years?
Oh my word.
Yes.
The last two years we've calledit Backtracks, and this year
we're calling it playback.
We'll send it out in earlyJanuary so you get all of your
2025 data.
Yes, we did.

Well, thank you, Kevin.
Sorry, Kevin.
Yes, but yes, I will.
Uh in fact, I'm looking forwardto that then.
So, yeah, interesting change.
Calling it playback.
So uh yes, I'm just trying tothink if I uh do do do I
remember that?

Sam Sethi (01:10:06):
I mean, I'm sure you press releases.

I'm sure.
Well, it might not be a pressrelease, that's the thing.
It might not be a pressrelease.
But I was wondering if I had itin my email from last year, and
I I can't necessarily find it.
But yes, very cool.
Uh, in fact, yes, I can findit.
It it says your 2024 podcastrecap for Pod News Weekly
Review.
Being fair on us, it was senton the 14th of December, this

(01:10:33):
time last year, and there was alink to go and and uh check it
out.
Is that link still going towork now?
12 months afterwards.
No, yes, 12 months afterwards,and the quick answer is not sure
it will.
But uh very cool.
So thank you.
Uh Kevin.

Sam Sethi (01:10:50):
What was the answer?
I didn't, it skipped it.
No.

Uh but thank you, Kevin.
That's very kind of you.
Also, thank you to SethGoldstein, who says, or
Goldstein Goldstein, I neverknow.
Sorry, Seth, uh, who says, Mygoodness, everyone has a recap.
It's gone.
Recap crazy, sending us amessage through TrueFans.
Neil Vellio, isn't much ofpodcast ranking made up.

(01:11:13):
Oh, now now.
Claire Wake Brown, what a goodidea for hosting companies to
give podcasters a year-in-reviewstyle roundup.
So good, in fact, that BuzzSprout already do it.
Yes, all right.
Anyway, if you want to get intouch with us, then uh please
do.
You can uh hit that uh thatthat uh comment button or a fan
mail button or however it isthat you want to communicate

(01:11:34):
with us, or indeed email weeklyat podnews.net also works.
And thank you to our powersupporters, including Lycia,
Martin Lindescog, Ralph EstepJr., who I notice has now become
a supporter of the podcastindex as well.
So thank you, Ralph, EliasStrand, and uh Star Tempest for
all being monthly supporters.

(01:11:54):
That's very kind of you andexcellently kind of you, in
fact.
So, what's been happening foryou this week, Sam?

Sam Sethi (01:11:59):
Well, I've spent the week getting all the audio clips
together for our highlights andprediction show, which has been
fun.
You have, you've been busy.
Yeah, but it's been good.
And thank you to everyone whowho came back.
So that's been great.
And as I said earlier, we'vestarted to migrate some of the
podcasters on our wait list umover to live hosting now.
So again, we just want toslowly do that, make sure that

(01:12:22):
everything works.
It's the most scary thing forme because screw that up, and
I'm sure the world will knowabout it.
So you do it with caution.
Make sure it works before youstart shouting about it.
So, yes, we're we're quietlyconfident, but yes, that's what
we've been working on.

Always a good thing to make things make sure
that things work.
Indeed.

Sam Sethi (01:12:44):
Indeed.
So, what's happened for you,James?

So, what's happened for me?
Not an awful lot, really.
It's been an interesting weekhere here in Australia because
the ban on social media hashappened.
Oh, yes, and and so that's beenfun.
So very unhappy daughter.
Uh no, she's absolutely fine.
I mean, she'll be slightly moreunhappy when I block Pinterest
from working on the uh uh on theuh home network uh this

(01:13:07):
evening, which she doesn't knowabout.
But but she thinks that wedon't know that she's using it
anyway.
So um right, so there we are.
But yes, I mean, you know, Iwrote a blog post about it,
having a bit of a grump aboutYouTube being on that list,
because firstly, YouTube isn't asocial media platform,
obviously.
And secondly, it doesn't meanthat she won't be able to use

(01:13:27):
YouTube, it means that she won'tbe able to use YouTube signed
in.
So it means that she'll getads, whereas signed in she
wouldn't because we pay for it.
She'll see gambling ads and adsfor alcohol because she can't
opt out because she can't signin.
And it's it's just ridiculous.
And I can't control anythingthat she sees.
Genius.

(01:13:48):
Another genius thing by by theAustralian government.
But you'll love the front pageof Rupert Murdoch's newspapers
on the day that the uh ban camein.
Ah, the front pages were justridiculous.
The Courier Mail, which is ourlocal paper, today childhood
will be rebooted.
Today is the day humanityreboots childhood.

(01:14:10):
With Australian kids the firstin the world to be banned by law
from using social media untilthey turn 16.
Not true.
Lives will be changed, liveswill be saved.
These are laws that willunshackle our kids from an
online world that they are notold enough to handle.

Sam Sethi (01:14:27):
So, anyway, I'll say one as a parent who's now got
children who are 26 and 21.

Yes.

Sam Sethi (01:14:35):
One of the things that we, our generation of
parents, don't go outside, don'tgo to the park.
There's paedophiles everywhere,don't do this, don't do that,
stay at home, never go anywhere.
So when we were kids, it wassee ya, mum, I'll be back for
dinner.
Mobile phone didn't exist.
So we were out and about, wegot into scrapes and we did all

(01:14:56):
sorts of things, and we camehome and then we had our dinner,
and that was it.
We are a nanny parenting state,right?
We nanny our children to death.
And we say, Don't go out, don'tgo anywhere.
It's scary out there, stayhome.
And then we say, you know,those digital playgrounds that
you've created.
Yeah, now you can't go thereeither.
So, what do you want them todo?
What do you want kids to dothese days?

(01:15:18):
They're going to circumventwhatever there is.
You've just said yourdaughter's going to use YouTube
in a way that it wasn't intendedfor you as a parent for her to
use.
It frustrates me.
We we we clamp on them on oneside, we clamp on them on the
other side, and we never havethat as our own childhood, but
we do it to our children.

(01:15:38):
And I'm afraid we're gonna growup with snowball narcissistic
children who are scared ofeverything because we won't
allow them to do anything.

Ladies and gentlemen, Sam Sethy has spoken.
Well, I just I find itfrustrating.

Sam Sethi (01:15:53):
We we say don't go out, they stay home, and then
when they stay home, we saydon't do this, don't do that
either.

I agree, I agree, and and I see this
sanctimonious nonsense.
The only reason that this hashappened, let's be clear, the
only reason that social mediahas been banned in Australia is
that there was a lot of money inadvertising in terms of social
media.
This is hurting the socialmedia companies.
Reddit has just announced it'sgoing to take the the Australian

(01:16:20):
government to court about it.
And and the beneficiaries ofthat are the legacy media like
Rupert Murdoch's newspapers.
And that's why Rupert Murdoch'snewspapers have been
campaigning for the last threeyears for social media to be
banned, as well as Google to payfor absolutely everything that

(01:16:41):
they take with the CourierMail's permission from the
Courier Mail's website.
You know, all of that nonsense.
You know, the Google News andhaving to pay for linking to the
Courier Mail when their entirebenefit, you know, their entire
business relies on links fromGoogle to the Courier Mail.
It's it's all nonsense, butit's all Rupert Murdoch.

(01:17:03):
And it's there's one man who isstill alive and he's still
looking after the Australiangovernment, whoever is in, the
Australian government sits thereand says, Yes, Rupert, no
Rupert, three bags full, Rupert.
And one day that won't behappening anymore.
And that'll be an interestingday.

Sam Sethi (01:17:23):
I keep wishing for that day, but um I'm afraid his
son will take over and he's notas uh lenient as we hope either.

So yes, but I I wonder whether or not his son is
actually not necessarily aspowerful as uh true as as uh as
Rupert is.
But yes, you know, yes.
Uh anyway, there's plenty ofexcitement there.
Anyway, that's it for thisweek.
So next week we will have allof our friends on telling us

(01:17:50):
what to what they've enjoyed of2025 and what to expect in 2026.
But until then, all of ourpodcast stories for this week
taken from the Pod News DailyNewsletter at Podnews.net.

Sam Sethi (01:18:01):
Yeah, please keep supporting us with streaming
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Supporters atweekly.podnews.net.

Yes, our music is from TM Studios, our
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Announcer (01:18:31):
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