Faith, Radio, and Podcasting 2.0 - Adam Curry and Dave Jones

We talk about Godcaster, and also catch up with the week's news. (A long interview with Adam and Dave on Monday here).

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Friday, the 7th of March 2025.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
The last word in podcasting news.
This is the Pod News WeeklyReview with James Cridland and
Sam Sethi.

Speaker 3 (00:12):
I'm James Cridland, the editor of Pod News, in a
blowy Brisbane, and I'm SamSethi, the CEO of True Fans, in
a very misty, cold, wet England.

Speaker 4 (00:21):
We really made this whole thing about first party
data, understanding what peopleare doing.
You can really see what'sworking.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
That's Adam Curry.
He's talking with Dave Jonesabout Godcaster Plus.
How powerful are live podcasts?
What does Apple verifiedactually mean?
What's happening with Wonderyand YouTube?
One billion listeners, really.
This podcast is sponsored byBuzzsprout, with the tools,
support and community to ensureyou keep podcasting, start

(00:50):
podcasting, keep podcasting withbuzzsproutcom From your daily
newsletter, the Pod News WeeklyReview.

Speaker 3 (00:58):
Now Adam Currie, the co-inventor of podcasting, and
Dave Jones, a key innovatorbehind podcasting 2.0, have a
new project called the Godcastergodcasterfm if you want to go
there.
It's a new podcasting platformwith a simple mission to empower
local broadcasters, churchesand ministries to reach wider
audiences through innovativepodcasting and monetisation

(01:20):
tools.
Have you been to Godcaster yet?

Speaker 1 (01:23):
James, I have been to Godcaster.
I think it's a very interestingsolution to a particular
problem in that part of themedia.
You started by asking AdamCurry what is the Godcaster and
why did he want to bring it out?

Speaker 4 (01:38):
The Godcaster came about over a year ago.
Someone who had seen me speakat the Spark Media Conference in
Houston came to me and he saidyou know, I've got this thing.
It's not an app, it's a service.
It's for radio stations.
I hear all these cool thingsabout the podcast index.
Can you tell me about it?
So I chatted with him and thenhe came back again.

(02:00):
He had some more questions andby the third or fourth time his
name is Gordon Marcy.
By the third or fourth time hisname was Gordon Marcy.
By the third or fourth time Ihad started to put together what
was going on, and he's been inthe radio business all of his
life at big networks like Salem,and these are all faith-based
broadcast organizations andstations.
The solution he had was apodcast player for radio

(02:24):
stations and as I was talkingwith him more and more, I
learned that there's a realconundrum with radio, not like
we didn't know it.
Local programming has gone away.
Most of this is nationallysyndicated content which also is
available on a podcast.
The stations are literallysending their audience away to
places where they can getpodcasts.

(02:45):
This is an interesting part offaith-based radio in the United
States.
It's pretty much value forvalue.
The stations ask for support,and between the stations and the
content programming, there'sbeen this issue for 40 years of
how do I know that someone waslistening to your program on my

(03:05):
radio station, gave you adonation, but I don't know about
it, and so we're supposed toshare revenue.
In some cases, the big contentproviders will buy the airtime.
Again, they need to know wheredid it come from, and it's been
this big problem that's beendiscussed even at the National
Religious BroadcastersConference, where I was last

(03:25):
week, where 5,000 people show up.
It's been this issue where theyjust can't figure out what they
call attribution.
This can all be easily solvedwith a lot of these 2.0 features
that we've developed over time.
The oh wow moment of all thesebroadcasters who said wait a
minute.
Now the station knows thatsomeone hit donate and we know

(03:45):
it as well.
Why, yes, oh, you've solved a40 year old problem, seems
simple to us.
Sometimes you just need somefresh thinking.
We really made this whole thingabout first party data,
understanding what people aredoing in the player, whether
it's in a podcast app or whetherit's their own app.
You can really see what'sworking, and this is another
thing.
Well, in podcasting in general.

(04:06):
We've never really had that.
As of yesterday, we now have, Iwant to say, 249 stations who
are using Godcaster.
Any radio station could use it,obviously, but for Dave and I
it has the added advantage ofwe're doing this for Jesus, so
we're super happy about it.

Speaker 3 (04:28):
Okay, dave, hello, how are you?
I'm good.
Sam, now Adam Curry, you'veknown for how long.

Speaker 5 (04:33):
Oh gosh, 15 years, 15 years.

Speaker 3 (04:37):
Yeah, adam's come to you on several occasions to say
hey, I've got a great idea for abusiness, how about you do it
with me?
The last one being the podcastindex, obviously.
So what did you think when hesaid I've got this great idea
for Godcaster?
And what did you think, yeah,let's do it all.
Oh, my God, not again.

Speaker 5 (04:56):
There's always an equal amount of both involved in
every one of those.
But my standard answer to Adamwhenever he says hey, let's and
so is yes, and then we'll figureit out later.
We'll figure out actually howto do it later.
So I just always answer yesfirst and then figure out later
if it's actually possible, youknow.

Speaker 3 (05:16):
So, yeah, the same same thing here I love it that
jim carrey film yes man where hesays yes to everything exactly,
exactly okay.
So let's, let's take a littlestep back.
How long is it taking you tobuild this platform?
And where did you start?
I mean, you've got a blankpiece of paper, you're looking
at it and you're going how do Ibuild this thing?

(05:37):
So what did you do?

Speaker 5 (05:38):
We sort of took over an existing product with
Gordon's product that was calledGlorystone, and so I determined
early on that I was just goingto rebuild that thing from
scratch.
It was an older platform, Imean.
It still worked well.
It was an older platform thathad been sort of upgraded over
the years to have sort of moremodern features, but the core of

(06:01):
it was still sort of an oldLAMP-based application, php
MySQL that was just showing itsage.
So I just determined to buildfrom scratch and initially
replicate all the features thatwe thought that the current
customers couldn't live withoutand then at the same time sort
of weave in the newer stuff thatwe knew we were going to be

(06:23):
needing to bring the product upto what we wanted it to be.
So it took I mean it was rapidlots of you know late night,
early morning coding sessions toget this thing up and running
in about five months.
So it went from zero to youknow launched in five months to

(06:45):
be ready for discussion about itand selling it in RB for people
who would want it.
So that was the time frame.
We pretty much hit everythingwe wanted to achieve by then.
The way me and Adam have alwaysworked has kind of been that
way.
We just go, go, go, go, go asfast as possible and then trying
to hit a target, and then atthe end we kind of sit back and

(07:06):
say, okay, where are we at,let's go clean up the mess,
let's go.
You know polish things up hereand this kind of thing, so
that's, we're kind of used toworking that way.

Speaker 4 (07:14):
We were building it, you know, building the airplane
in flight, to be honest, youknow, because we had customers.
There were existing customerswho had migrated over, and it
would literally be the customerwould say hey, you know, my
window popped out here, I'mabout to get sucked out of the
airplane and we go Dave, we'vegot, we're losing passengers,
man.
So it was, it is the way we'veworked.

(07:36):
It's nothing more fantasticthan working with live customers
.
It's also nothing more scarywith working with live customers
.
And I just want to say, as yousaid, I've worked with Dave on
many projects.
Some things have just been forus.
Some things have podcast index,which is the most successful,
but of course we have, we havezero income from it, which is
which was never the intent.
The things that Dave builds arerock solid.

(07:59):
They stay the system, stay up,and he's never really done a
user interface.
He's done user experience, a UX, but really a beautiful UI is
something he's never done and,man, he knocked it out of the
park.
It really it's a beautiful,beautiful product.

Speaker 3 (08:19):
Thanks, congratulations to you both.
So what is the platform?
Because it's not what I wouldhave thought you would have gone
for originally, which would bea native iOS app.
That's what we're all told todo, so why did you make the
decision to go and build whatAdam's nicely called a universal
web app rather than aprogressive app?

Speaker 5 (08:36):
Like with everything that we do, it's a little hard
to explain.
This really isn't a podcast app.
This is something reallydifferent than that.
The thing about the linear todigital transformation for radio
is that if all you do is justtransfer that broadcast linear

(08:57):
audience to a website player,you've really done nothing.
The problem with Glorystone,the old player, was that it was
purely just a website player.
It was no different than apodcast app.
But you just had to go to thisradio station's website to do it
.
So that's just as restrictiveas broadcast, maybe even more so

(09:17):
.
What we did was we said okay,you're going to have a web
player because that's helpful tothe customer.
Their audience wants that.
We're going to build a webplayer that's installable on any
radio station's website andthey can plug in all the
different content, all thedifferent podcasts that they
play on air in a player on theirwebsite.

(09:37):
But every player they buildalso spawns an RSS feed that has
all of those shows in it andthat RSS feed is branded to the
station.
So the station gets their ownRSS feed that will hold all of

(09:58):
the podcast content and getsessentially redistributed back
out to the podcast index andother directories so that now
KHCB's customers or listenerscan subscribe, not to just Focus
on the Family.
They can subscribe to KHCBitself and by doing that,
they're going to get Focus onthe Family and all of KHCB's

(10:21):
other national content andKHCB's other national content
and KHCB's local content.
They're going to get all ofthis stuff in a single feed that
they can then subscribe to in anormal podcast app, something
like True Fans, apple Podcasts,overcast, podverse, podcast,
guru all the 2.0 apps.
It's a standard podcast feedwith 2.0 namespace enhancements

(10:44):
in it.
Standard podcast feed with 2.0namespace enhancements in it.
That's the thing that we tookto.
It is we, yes, our player,we're proud of it and we're glad
that it, that it works well.
But we're just as happy forpeople to not even use our
player at all but instead tosubscribe to these radio
stations podcast feeds in theirown podcast app.

(11:04):
Now you're allowing yourlistener as a station.
You're allowing your listenerto listen to you, including your
live broadcast, because it useswe use the live item tag.
Now they can listen to you intheir own most convenient,
preferable way, which is thepodcast app.
It really doesn't matter who'slistening to your content and

(11:26):
where.
We want to accommodate all ofthat and then give them some
stats that will show them what'shappening.
We support the live tag, wesupport funding, support the
value tag chapters.
We pass all that stuff throughand then we add some of it as
well for like location tag.
We also support pod ping, ofcourse, for live broadcasts and
all that stuff through, and thenwe add some of it as well for
like location tag.
We also support pod ping, ofcourse, for for live broadcasts

(11:48):
and all that kind of thing.
A lot of that stuff isinterdependent and we built it,
built that out.
But then we also have this otherhuge list of things we have to
support and that's going to bewhat comes next.
So we have, you know, we'regoing to be supporting
soundbites and transcripts,publisher, publisher feeds, all
the value time splits, justpretty much all this stuff is on

(12:19):
the to-do list to allow theradio stations to make it easier
to push their own content outthrough the traditional podcast
hosting platforms that we alwayshave had good relationships
with you know Buzzsprout, rsscom, blueberry, all these you know
all these guys, and then even inthe newer 2.0 focused hosts as

(12:39):
well.
So we're going to leverage allthose you know relationships
we've built over the last, youknow, nearly five years to help
the radio stations build uptheir own content catalog and
then we'll be able to put allthat stuff into a publisher feed
like you're talking about.
Then the radio station hastheir own master feed that shows

(13:01):
their brand and everything andthen underneath that all of
their content.
So yeah, I think you're justsort of anticipating where we're
headed as well.

Speaker 3 (13:09):
So, with all of this now out in the open and you've
got a clear pathway forward,just very quickly you've got
this other project, podcastIndex 2.0.
Where do you see that takingshape in 2025?
What's going on in your headsthat you think you know we're
healthy?
This is happening.
Where are your thoughts on itcurrently?

Speaker 5 (13:31):
You know, I would say that I think we're.
I think we're in a good place.
You know, the podcast index andthe namespace they've hit a
point where things are.
People are comfortable with thetechnology, I think now, and so
we just had a big discussionthis week about the images tag
and about how to read, you know,re-engineer that thing to be to

(13:52):
be good.
And so now we're looking at youknow, I'm processing things
mentally as how do we need tosort of shape, uh, the way we do
tags and the way we donamespace work, going forward to
sort of fit this new model?
You know, in the beginning itwas nobody knew what we were

(14:12):
doing, nobody understood any ofthis stuff.
You know we're having to dealwith pent up demand for new
features for the, you know, for15 years worth of content.
So we were just going to, youknow, go, typical fashion, just
go, go, go, go, go as fast as wecan.
That really has changed and sonow things are at a slower pace

(14:33):
and I think, you know, goingforward, I think we're probably
going to focus on just one ortwo things with each phase of
the podcast namespace, becausethere's still I mean there's
still, I mean there's stilldozens of apps out there that
don't even support a single tag.
You know, even though there's600,000 feeds out there that

(14:55):
support the Podcasting 2.0namespace.
You know there's maybe morethan that.
I haven't counted in a while.
There's so much content thathas the Podcasting 2.0 namespace
tags in it, but many, manypodcast apps just still don't
even support number one, thevery first one, something easy
like transcripts.

(15:15):
So I think there's no need tojust rush, rush, rush anymore,
but at the same time I think weneed it's.
It's good, because now we canjust slow down, have our focus
on one thing and then, with thenamespace and then on the index
side, you know, I think we'reshifting focus to decentralizing
, because we don't want to justbecome another Apple with a

(15:37):
directory that everybody'sdependent on, even though we're,
you know it's, it's open.
So we want to decentralize thatas we can we, I think we're.
You know it's it's open, so wewant to decentralize that as we
can we.
I think we're getting to thepoint in the index and the
namespace where we were we're amature technology and now we're.
Our focus gets to shift to asort of mature, more important
things.

Speaker 4 (15:58):
So what Dave said about decentralizing the index,
you know we have kind of said,from the get go, the podcast
index, our job is to eliminateourselves, and that means
there's.
You know we have kind of said,from the get-go, the podcast
index, our job is to eliminateourselves, and that means this
you know, whether it'sdistributed hash space or
however, we wind up doing it andthere's some amazing things
being done.
I would love to see Podpingintegrated more.

(16:19):
I did a presentation at NRB inthe ballroom and I showed the
tilespodpingorg and people justtheir minds were boggling like
wait a minute, this exists.
How does that happen?
How do I get my podcastupdating that way?
And with Godcaster itself, Ihope that we can show a path for

(16:39):
developers.
You know you're doing this withTrueFans is to show that you
don't have to just createanother podcast app.
You can create an experience oran interface or a service for a
group of people who want to usepodcast technology and
specifically podcasting 2.0,since there's so such a rich

(17:03):
environment.
So this, I think, is where youwe can have great success
instead of, you know, as Ilovingly call the podcast
industrial complex, focusing onwhat share does this app have?
Well, that's going to remainkind of the same for a long,
long time.
But meanwhile, as we've provenwith value for Value in general,
you can make a living, you canmake your product successful

(17:28):
with a smaller demographic inthis highly connected world.
Its own beast is to show moreof that, and as more of these
experiences are developed, Ithink you'll see the rest of the

(17:50):
industry come along with that.

Speaker 3 (17:52):
Adam Curry.
Dave Jones, I could talk to youfor hours on this, but thank
you very much.
Now, where would anyone go,Adam, for getting more
information about the app itself?

Speaker 4 (18:03):
Well, the the service , Godcasterfm, godcasterfm, and
really appreciate the work thatyou do, Sam, and that James does
.
Power, as we call it.
Power is certainly one of myweekly listens.
I wish we would havecoordinated better for this
interview when we all would havehad a glass of red wine to go

(18:24):
with it, because we know thatthat's usually how you're
listening to our show absolutelythe only way.

Speaker 3 (18:31):
And dave, um, for anyone wanting to help get
involved with it, um, maybe giveyou some uh, you know, get
involved with the api.
Where would they go for any ofthat stuff?

Speaker 5 (18:41):
just just reach out to me and we can.
Uh, we can help them out onthat.
And you know, we the the thingabout Godcaster is under the
under the under the hood, youknow don't sort of double under
the hood, it's all podcast index.
So, uh, anybody who is alreadyfamiliar with the index and the
way can help here too.
So we're sort of eating our owndog food in that way.

Speaker 3 (19:03):
And on behalf of the community, just for me, I'd like
to say thank you to you, bothpublicly, for all the work
you've done for the podcastindex.
It's massively appreciated.
You may not hear it all thetime, but just know that we do
appreciate what you do.
Thank you, sam.
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (19:17):
Adam Curry, the co-inventor of podcasting, and
Dave Jones.
There is a much longer versionof that interview that you will
hear in this very feed on Monday.

Speaker 3 (19:30):
Sam, what did you think of that?
Well, it's great that theybuilt on podcasting 2.0 and the
podcast index so they built aapplication platform for
themselves.
I mean, adam's track record inradio gives him an insight into
some of the problems that radiostations are now facing with
audiences moving away from amfmto streaming and how those
platforms are not getting, Iguess, the details that they

(19:55):
need to give advertisers thecertainty that people are
listening to the radio station.
So, adding things like thefunding tag, adding things like
management tools, I guess itgives those radio stations
things that we in the podcasting2.0 community have already been
using.
But now it's coming to theradio stations themselves.

Speaker 1 (20:14):
Yeah, no, all of that certainly sounded very
interesting.
There are new figures that havecome out of US radio this week
and, interestingly, everything'sup.
Most age groups are up 16% interms of time spent listening,
and radio listening itself interms of people is up by 3%.

(20:35):
That's amazing news.
Do you know how they've managedto end up doing that, sam?

Speaker 3 (20:40):
No, because I don't know how they get the reports
that everything's up as well.
But there you go.

Speaker 1 (20:44):
Well, exactly.
So what they've done is, untilthis year, a radio listener used
to be somebody who would listento five minutes of a radio
station or more.
This year, it's three minutesto a radio station or more.
So, surprise, surprise,everything has gone up.
So, yes, it's a very differentworld and I think, listening to

(21:05):
the Podcasting 2.0 show lastweek, what's very clear from
Adam talking excitedly abouttalking at a conference is that
everybody was super thrilled andsuper excited about everything
that Adam was talking about andbecause they are coming at this
from a completely differentworld and we think that we have,

(21:28):
you know, solved this and thisis old news and everything else,
but, my goodness, not to manyof the people that he was
talking to.
He's brilliant when talking ata conference.
I wish he would do it more, butsuper good.
So, yeah, that was reallyinteresting, I thought.

Speaker 3 (21:43):
Yeah well, I'm looking forward to the time when
that report then says 30seconds, so maybe they'll get to
1 billion listeners.
That'll be the way to do it 30second listens on radio.
We have 1 billion listeners.
We'll talk about that morelater.
But the one thing that adam anddave did talk about is the lit
tag and the live item tag, and Idid ask them about whether they

(22:06):
would be a provider of servicessuch as hls or shoutcast and
the answer was very clearly no,which means that the onus is now
back on to podcasting hosts, tothat, and I'm sad to say that
I'm not seeing any tractionthere.
Rsscom were very keen to do itand they got 95% of the way with

(22:26):
all of the fields for it, butnot the last bit, which is the
server right?

Speaker 1 (22:32):
Yes, no exactly.
But there again, the serverneedn't necessarily be run by a
podcast host.
It'd be easier if it was, Ithink, what we need to do, and I
certainly learned this when Iwas working on a piece of
technology.
It was interesting Againlistening to the Podcasting 2.0
show last week.
There was one point where Adamstarts talking about listening

(22:53):
to a radio station over the airand driving away from the
transmitter and he was sayingyou know, cars these days, if
the signal goes too bad, it'llsay would you like to continue
listening to the station online?
And Adam was very excited bythat.
You know what?
That was my technology.

(23:14):
That was the technology that Iwas a co-founder of 15, 20 or so
years ago, and so wonderful tohear Adam talking about that too
.
Hooray, well done you.
But I think that what I learnedwith that technology is that's
actually relatively easy andstraightforward to do.
It needs a file putting on yourweb server and it needs one

(23:39):
additional entry in your DNS.
And it's as simple as that.
And we thought a man calledNick and I who came up with the
original specification with helpfrom many others we thought
well, that is so easy, everyradio station will be able to do
it.
The quick answer is no.
I mean even talking about yourDNS server and adding a text

(24:01):
field to your DNS server oradding one, you know, xml
document to your website.
That was beyond the knowledge ofa lot of these radio
broadcasters.
So I think you know, with allof this, it's very easy to come
up with.
You know, here's the lit tagand this is what you have to do.

(24:22):
And you know, I mean even, even, you know, getting a podcast
host to support it.
But at the end of the day, it'sstill hugely, hugely
complicated to most people outthere, and so it needs to be as
easy as possible, and theAmerican way is to just hire
that in, and so if you'veconvinced yourself that there's
a business in there, you justhire somebody in to come and fix

(24:46):
all of that for you.
You never even learn how any ofthat stuff works.
I happen to believe that that'sthe wrong way of doing it, but
nevertheless, that's theAmerican broadcast radio
standard way of doing it.

Speaker 3 (24:58):
I think it needs to be a radio live service in a box
, right?
Yeah, I think people need tohave it as simple as that.

Speaker 1 (25:05):
Well, maybe we should be talking to the likes of
Radioco, which is a companybased in Sheffield which also
hosts podcasting podcastco.
I think I know them well.
So either we need to talk tothose folks or, of course,
Live365, because who ownsLive365?
Soundstack and we had RockyThomas on the show a couple of

(25:29):
weeks ago.
So if there's anyone that wouldbe really good and potentially
actually to test some of thisstuff out, maybe Rocky is the
right person here.

Speaker 3 (25:41):
Yeah, now I connected her with Adam and I'm having a
loop back with Rocky to talkabout some other stuff to do
with live, so I'll let you knowwhat goes on.

Speaker 1 (25:50):
Talking about Soundstack, as we were.
Congratulations to them.
They have achieved version 2.2of the IAB podcast measurement
guidelines.
This week Also achievingversion 2.2 are OmniStudio,
triton, voxnest and Spreecat, sothat's actually pretty good
news because that means thatpretty well all of the people

(26:10):
that were visibly dragging theirfeet have now achieved the
recertification, which is a goodthing Moving on Now.

Speaker 3 (26:20):
James, you shared a story with me for a company
called Tunefm.
Who or what is Tunefm?

Speaker 1 (26:26):
Yes, and I didn't cover this in the Pod News
newsletter because it's notreally podcasting, but it's
definitely something of interestto this podcast, which is well.
I will read what the websitesays when the music gets played,
the artists get paid.

Speaker 3 (26:45):
I thought that was lovely.
Actually, I thought that'sreally well put this sounds.

Speaker 1 (26:48):
Yes, this sounds similar, though, doesn't it?
It sounds like the idea behindthe Booster Ground Ball and you
know, and streaming payments andall of that stuff, and
streaming payments and all ofthat stuff.
So, yes, it is essentiallyanother solution for the artists
, because you earn somethingcalled jam Jam today, jam

(27:09):
tomorrow.
You earn jam for every secondyour music is streamed.
I'm assuming that's some formof cryptocurrency or something.
Yeah, our micropaymenttechnology enables instant
settlement of streamingroyalties.
Yes, earn upwards of 10 to 100times more than you can on
Spotify or Apple Music.
Well, yes, because that's howall of this works.

(27:30):
And then they start spoiling itall by talking about NFTs.

Speaker 3 (27:34):
NFTs yeah.

Speaker 1 (27:35):
And you know, I mean not only are we giving you
things called jam, but we'realso giving you things called
NFTs.
Yeah, and you know, I mean notonly are we giving you things
called jam, but we're alsogiving you things called NFTs.
So, yes, but our cutting edgetechnology, it says, delivers
cutting edge.
What you mean five years agowith the podcasting 2.0 thing?
Yes, anyway, our cutting edgetechnology delivers
micropayments at the rate of onepenny per minute, streamed.

(27:58):
You know we are doingsignificantly more than that
with streaming payments.
So, yes, so you know Tunefm.
It's another one of thesethings where it's frustrating
that companies like this don'tlook around before they launch a

(28:18):
product, because they could beearning quite handsomely out of
streaming sats, and you know,and so that's a little bit
frustrating, but the way thatthey are talking about it is
quite nice.
So, yeah, so it's a good thing.

Speaker 3 (28:35):
Yeah, I mean the things as I said.
You said it already when themusic gets played, the art gets
played.
I think that's so succinct, andI liked that they do talk about
tokens and not sats.
They do talk about Web3 alittle bit too much, but for
every second the music's played,so they're talking about
pay-as-you-go value for value.
I couldn't work out though,though this is the critical part

(29:03):
who pays the 1p per minute ofstream, or one cent, right?
Is it the listener, who has thena wallet, who then gets given
tokens, these jam tokens?
How do they get the jam tokens?
What's the mechanism forpurchasing them, and then, how
do they actually give them?
Because if it's a token, thenit's not actually a physical one
cent or 1p stream, it's a tokenof value.

(29:23):
Is that token now worth 1p?
All of these are questions thatI you know.
If I could interview the ceo,andrew antar, I would be asking
because I don't think it's veryclear from the website what is
the way that they actuallyenable all of this?
They talk about the things thatwe talk about in podcasting.
Is the way that they actuallyenable all of this?
They talk about the things thatwe talk about in podcasting 2.0
, but they actually don't talkabout the how, and that's the

(29:45):
problem yes, indeed, I mean, itwould be lovely to talk um with
them.

Speaker 1 (29:49):
Now, weirdly, they they sent me a press release.
I I looked at it and I thought,well, it's not, it's not a pod
news thing, but I thought thatyou you might find that
interesting, given you know truefans and everything else um.
And so, yes, I've reached outto them.

Speaker 3 (30:02):
That makes a bunch of sense and yes, and they haven't
really.

Speaker 1 (30:04):
They haven't really said anything, have they?
They haven't, they haven't comeback to us as yet.
Um, now, we're recording thisslightly earlier than normal
this week for reasons you'llfind out in.
Uh, in james and sam's week, um, but uh, so I don't know.
It just says all the waythrough this artists receive

(30:24):
instant royalty payments forevery second their music is
streamed.
Well, every second in thisparticular deck that I'm looking
at, not every minute, but yeah,but, as you say, it's not very
clear where that money isactually coming from.
You do, though, get demographicinformation about your
listeners, which is interesting.
Also built in to the app isdirect messaging.

(30:47):
Not quite sure how that works,and I do notice in one of their
decks, they do have a screenshotof the app and it says wallet
on the top of the screen.
So, yeah, so there is a walletgoing on there.
There is something called a jamprice and a rate per minute,

(31:08):
and all this kind of nonsense.
I mean, you know again why theyhave to make it so complicated.
It was complicated enough withsats and now it's all about jam.
Uh, yes, but, but you know,really interesting, and I I wish
that it would be good to talkto these people and learn a
little bit more.
I should say that they have um,got 20 million dollars in

(31:32):
funding, um, so, um, they'veclearly got some cash there,
okay.

Speaker 3 (31:39):
I can now see who's paying.

Speaker 1 (31:43):
Well, yes, exactly, exactly.
So, yeah, and they've, you know, and they've got some nice
coverage in things like RollingStone and TechCrunch and Fast
Company, so you know who knows.
But anyway, that's certainlyone to look at, because you know
.
I mean, why shouldn't they betalking about podcasting as well
in there?

Speaker 3 (32:02):
Now moving on, james.
There's a couple of storiesabout Wondery I've been
wondering about and I thoughtwe'd have a little chat about it
.
Yay, yes, amazon's Wondery hassaid that there are a number of
small job layoffs in the company, and we talked last week about
how they've closed operations inBrazil and Mexico.
So what's going on with WonderyJames?

(32:24):
Are they in trouble?

Speaker 1 (32:25):
I don't think they are in trouble.
I think that they are doingwhat any good company does and
looking every so often at thecost base and going, oh, we're
actually making money out ofthat.
Well, let's stop doing that,then.
And I mean, they have cut whatthe company calls a small number
of jobs.
Someone talking to Reuters, whohad this particular story, said

(32:47):
that the number of affectedpeople was dozens and dozens.
Amazon says no, no, it wasn't.
I would suspect that for Amazon, it is a small number of jobs,
but for human beings it's quitea large number of jobs.
So I suspect that's how thatworks, because Amazon is so
large.
I mean, I think it's tellingthat both content and

(33:09):
advertising teams have beenaffected as well.
So, yes, not quite sure, butcertainly, having a look at you
know the wider picture.
There have been quite a lot ofright-sizing I believe might be
the phrase there in terms of howAmazon's staffing actually

(33:33):
works.
The new boss there, who iscalled Jassy Andy Jassy the CEO
yeah, I'm sure he stays in yourvillage.
Andy has apparently alreadyslashed tens of thousands of

(33:53):
corporate jobs at Amazon andhe's reorganising business units
in order to reduce the ratio ofmanagers to individual
contributors.
And, of course, you know, sharesclosed up.
So I don't think it's anythingthat we should particularly
worry about.
I think it's really more just,you know, keeping an eye on.

(34:16):
It was an interesting Mondaybecause I was covering news
about what was going on atAmazon, but also news that was
going on at WNYC.
Who've lost jobs, I think MonkStudios in Berlin has lost a
managing director and itbasically looks as if that

(34:38):
company is all but closed, andso on and so forth.
It did look a pretty miserableMonday, so you know hence why.
Hence why you know the onlypositive story ended up making
you know the main headline,because I don't really like
negative stories.
So yeah, you know I thoughtthat was interesting, but I
don't think there's anything toworry about.

Speaker 3 (34:59):
I think they're all suffering a case of the Elons.
Let's just cut, cut, cut andsee what happens next.
Yes, great, I think they're allin that mode where they think
you know, well, look, you know,I talked to my wife is on a
number of PLC boards and they'reall doing the same thing, right
, Not in the digital space.

Speaker 1 (35:18):
And they all think, yes, DEI gone, yes, closing all
their DEI Job cuts gone, yes,exactly.

Speaker 3 (35:23):
Yes, AI will replace that horrible cost of humans
with automation.
Let's all go that way, andthat's all you ever hear them
talk about nowadays, so I canexpect that as well.
Now look, talking of Amazon andAmazon Web Services, and Andy
Jassy, who used to work there,was the head of it before he
took over from Mr Bezos.
You asked the question ishosting a podcast on Amazon Web

(35:47):
Services a good idea?
What was the answer?
James?

Speaker 1 (35:50):
Yes, I did, given that I've been doing it for the
last five years, and what wasinteresting is going back and
essentially I was updating apost which I had made way back
in 2019 to basically go OK, whatdoes it look like now?
The interesting thing aboutAmazon is that they have a free
tier and they have recentlychanged the free tier which is

(36:12):
why I updated it, becausesomebody asked me and their free
tier is pretty generous now interms of CloudFront, so serving
files, it's a pretty generousfree tier and it does mean that
if you were to look at thePodNews Daily, which I host on

(36:32):
my own server, then normallylet's ignore what's currently
going on, but normally thatwould be about a price of about
US$42 a month to host thePodNews podcast, which then,
because Amazon has a big freetier, essentially means that it

(36:56):
will be free.
Big free tier essentially meansthat it will be free.
So yay in terms of that, except, of course, the Pod News daily
podcast is only six minutes longand if you were to turn that
into a one hour show, then itwould cost $513 to serve.

(37:18):
So the quick answer is yes,it's good for us, but no, it's
not good for most people, but itwas interesting doing that.
This is why podcast hosts existthat, actually, if you are a
proper podcast host, you have amuch better deal with whether
it's Amazon or whether it'ssomeone else, and so therefore,
you can actually do quite nicelyin terms of the numbers that

(37:40):
you end up doing.
But, yes, it is very expensiveto do it for yourself.
There are cheaper ways of doingthat, but they're nowhere near
as effective, and, of course,you need to write your own RSS
feeds.
You need to do all of that kindof stuff and everything else.
The interesting thing, though,that I did see is, if you look
at our costs, you know ourmonthly costs, then $42 to serve

(38:06):
our audio, but also $11 just toserve our RSS feed.
We've only got one RSS feed,but it's costing us a quarter of
all of the audio just to servethe RSS feed.
So it just goes to show thatthe conversations that we've
heard in the past, especiallyfrom our sponsors, buzzsprout,
about being cautious, not to addtoo much to the RSS feed, is

(38:30):
absolutely well founded If youcan see that.
You know, 25% of our cost isactually just serving the RSS
feed.

Speaker 3 (38:38):
Moving on, james and right.
So last week we heard thewonderful stat from YouTube 1
billion viewers, active monthlyviewers and we thought, wow,
that's amazing.
Well done YouTube.
Not everyone's quite convincedthat that's true, or maybe they
might think what's behind thatnumber.

(38:58):
So John McDermott, friend ofthe show, wrote a Substack blog
post about YouTube's claim for 1billion monthly active viewers
and then he did some stats,james, what did he do?

Speaker 1 (39:10):
Yes.
So he pointed out and maybe Ishould have done this when I
blindly reported the YouTube 1billion monthly active viewers
of podcast content.
He pointed out that thepopulation of the world is 8
billion, so already YouTubepodcasting reaching one in eight
people.
He also points out the factthat 60% of podcasts are in

(39:33):
English, which would tend tosuggest.
Which would tend to suggest Imean, certainly not everybody in
the world speaks English,certainly good enough to enjoy
an English language podcast, andactually only 5.5 billion have
internet access.
So if you were to look at this,you could go okay.

(39:56):
So YouTube podcasts, look atthis, you could go OK.
So YouTube podcastsrealistically, youtube podcasts
are reaching about one in fivepeople online.
One in five people online.
Is that creditable?
Is that a believable stat?
I don't know, but I don't knowwhat a believable stat is.
Spotify claims that it has 170million people using podcasts on

(40:20):
a monthly basis.
Is 170 million believable?
Probably what would bebelievable from a YouTube point
of view?
A billion, 500 million, 250million?
I don't know.
But it was interesting becauseit did make me sort of stop and
think.
Are YouTube podcasts reallyreaching one in eight people on

(40:43):
the planet?
And I wasn't necessarilyconvinced that eight, nine, ten
actual plays.

Speaker 3 (41:06):
But then John points back very clearly it's active
viewers, not views.
So my whole argument is thenbroken down.
So that's what I originallythought.

Speaker 1 (41:15):
Your argument is sort of slightly broken down, but
what I would say is what thisdoesn't say is logged in viewers
.
It just says 1 million viewers.
Now, if I use YouTube and Idon't sign in here at home, and
then I use YouTube and I don'tsign in at work, then I'm two
people.

(41:36):
I mean, I work from home, butyou get my point.
So, and actually, if I look atYouTube on Monday, wednesday and
Friday, then I might notactually have the same IP
address every single timebecause you know I might have

(41:56):
had four hours without any powerand it's reset my IP address.
And so therefore, you can seethat if YouTube's figure is
signed in viewers, well that'svery impressive.
If YouTube's figure is usingthe IAB definition of a listener
, which is a unique IP addressand user agent, well you know

(42:20):
you can imagine that that mightbe rather larger than it is,
which is why Spotify's number of170 million is interesting,
because 170 million in terms ofa number is 170 million signed
in users, because you can'tlisten if you're not signed in
to anything on Spotify beyond 30seconds.
So I think there's definitelysort of something there.

(42:46):
The devil is in that detail,and I don't think we've
necessarily got that detail fromthe folks at YouTube.

Speaker 3 (42:53):
I do worry that we talked about earlier radio,
reducing the listener from fiveminutes to three minutes to
increase what would seem theamount of time people are
listening to radio.
Um, I'm getting a little bitworried that we have this
attention economy where clearlythere's a lot of people watching
YouTube, there's a lot ofpeople listening to podcasts,
because the numbers are alwaysgoing up.

(43:14):
Yeah, more going to radio, moreto TV.
I mean, where are these people?
I don't have more than 24 hoursin a day and my attention span
cannot increase, but seeminglythe world is increasing the
amount of time it spends onlinewith all of these services.

Speaker 1 (43:29):
The world is increasing the amount of time it
spends online with all of theseservices.
Yes, and Edison's Infinite Dialis showing a bit more and
Edison's share of ear studiesare showing, you know, numbers
in terms of total audio.
Certainly, numbers in terms oftotal audio consumed in the UK

(43:51):
is going up, which isinteresting, and you know, and
so you get those sorts offigures.
I have to say I'm mostinterested in the number that we
never see, which is time spentlistening, and I would much
rather have you know, attentionis hard to measure, but time
spent listening shouldn't behard to measure.
But we can't measure that um,and you know that that is much

(44:15):
harder um to look at in terms of.
I mean, we don't get that interms of podcast stats unless
you go and sign into the um.
You know apple podcast connectand so on.
Um, that's that's the thingthat I'm most interested in is
time spent listening.
Actually, reach or QM is muchless interesting to me than

(44:36):
total time spent listening andwe have no open data which
really shows that.
The closest we can get is RageRin the UK has just released
that 9% of time spent listeningin the UK to audio is to
podcasts 9% Now, 28% of peoplein the UK are listening to

(45:00):
podcasts, but only 9% of timespent listening is to podcasts,
which shows to me that there isconsiderable space in the growth
of what we can achieve in termsof podcasting, because if
everybody listened twice as long, we could really succeed there.

(45:22):
So I would love to see more ofthat data, but that data is much
harder to come by.
Interestingly, both Apple andSpotify both have that data.
I've asked Apple and they won'ttell me how long people spend
listening.
Youtube are unlikely to tell methat, spotify unlikely to end

(45:45):
up telling me that either, butthey are the people with that
data and it'd be fun to find out, wouldn't it.

Speaker 3 (45:51):
Well, that, I think, is what the bumper dashboard is
trying to do, isn't it?
It's trying to aggregate thatfirst-party data into a client
view.
And as you said earlier,they're not doing it through an
official API.

Speaker 1 (46:03):
They're getting their clients to give them access.

Speaker 3 (46:05):
Yeah, yeah, indeed, now we were sent an um from a
friend of the show who has moreconcerns about youtube numbers.
They said I've discoveredsomething kind of suspicious
that youtube is doing withpodcasts and of course that
raises our interest.
Um, some of the channels Iwatch, including buzzsprout,

(46:26):
have a bunch of random playliststhat are not intended to be
podcasts, but they've beenmarked as podcasts.
Now you, you've read this aswell, james.
What were your thoughts?

Speaker 1 (46:35):
Yes, it's interesting .
So you know, youtube sometimesjust elects the fact that you
have a show that looks a bitlike a podcast and then ticks
the podcast box in YouTubeStudio.
So therefore it counts as apodcast for that 1 billion users
number.
And this listener tells us thatYouTube appears to set a show

(47:03):
as a podcast if the creator usesthe word podcast in the title.
So that's an easy way forYouTube to guess that it might
be a podcast, except it mightnot be, and there are some good
examples of something that isweirdly marked as a podcast even
though it really isn't.
So, yeah, so that I thought wasinteresting, because actually

(47:29):
we got last week the definitionof a podcast from YouTube and
that definition was the creatorhas ticked the box marked
podcast.
Anyway, it now turns out thatYouTube is ticking that box for
creators in some cases as well.
So there's a thing.

Speaker 3 (47:49):
Now Spotify, spotify Open Access, which I think is
badly named.
I don't know why it's calledOpen Access, but we'll come back
to that in a minute.
Ivoox, or however you'resupposed to say it, has
announced an integration withthe Spotify Open Access.
What have they done, james?

Speaker 1 (48:05):
Yeah, so iVoox or iVoox, I don't actually know,
james, yeah, so iVoox or iVoox,I don't actually know.
They're a podcast hostingcompany and they have a system
with their app which allows youto pay for a podcast, pay access
to a podcast, but of course itonly works on their app, and so
they've signed up with SpotifyOpen Access so that, if you want

(48:27):
to, you can also listen to thatshow through Spotify as well,
and I think you still have tosign up on this podcast website.
But you can then listen in yourSpotify app rather than in the
Evux app, and you know that's apretty standard Spotify Open

(48:47):
Access thing.
That isn't meant to be anythingmore than you know.
You've paid for this content.
You can listen to it in theSpotify app because that's where
you listen to everything else.
So there's no conversationaround security or you know
anything else.
It's just a no-auth sign-inSuper easy, super

(49:07):
straightforward.

Speaker 3 (49:09):
But I would say it is security, because what they're
doing is passing a token backthrough the oauth to say yes, we
confirmed that this content hasbeen paid for.
Therefore, you can allow it tobe streamed on spotify.
That's the way it works, and Ithink um, that's certainly,
that's certainly security.

Speaker 1 (49:26):
But what they're not doing is the recent way of
downloading that content as aspecific file, as there would be
in an open podcast player,because Spotify doesn't work
that way, and YouTube, sorry,spotify seems to be doing the

(49:49):
same.

Speaker 3 (49:49):
We also had an email from somebody saying that the
numbers are out now for theSpotify Partner Program related
to video, and the highlight ofthat email to me was video
versions of their podcast.
This is clients of this company.
Throughout January, whoenrolled in the Spotify Partner
Program actually lost themnearly a thousand dollars.

(50:10):
Yes, how do you lose a thousanddollars?
I mean what do you negativelyplace something?
I mean I don't get that.
How do you lose a thousanddollars, james?

Speaker 1 (50:18):
Well, so this story and we covered it this week in
the Pod News newsletter.
It's from Amanda McLaughlin whoworks at Multitude, but it's an
anonymous client of hers, andthis particular podcast was
using Span, the Spotifyadvertising network ie ads in

(50:43):
the middle of a show.
Audio ads was using that tomonetize, but getting an awful
lot of their plays through theSpotify platform.
Now, as we know, when you turninto video, then it takes the
audio from the RSS feed away andall you get to listen to in
your Spotify app is thesoundtrack of the video, and

(51:07):
that essentially means that youcan't do any programmatic
advertising anymore.
You can't do any dynamicadvertising built into that, it
is just purely the soundtrack ofthe video.
So therefore, actually, yes,they got a payout in January
$579.
Hooray but they didn't get thenormal payouts that they would

(51:33):
have done through Span from thedynamic ads that were put into
their audio of somewhere like1,500.
So, as a result, paying all ofthis extra money to make videos,
then uploading those up toSpotify, has ended up

(51:54):
essentially losing them $1,500from the podcast and they only
earned $597 from the videoversion.
So it's clearly not worth theirwhile and they're opting out of
that.
So it's clearly not worth theirwhile and they're opt video and

(52:28):
it was a mistake for them tostart uploading the video stuff,
quite apart from the additionalcosts of that.

Speaker 3 (52:37):
I love the line here she goes.
This stings particularly for uswhen Spotify just claimed that
the Spotify partner programmemade hundreds of podcast
creators $10,000 plus in January.
That claim sounds impressive onthe face of it.
She says but how much of thisspan revenue did those creators
lose?
Again, what did they get?
So she's actually her clienthas decided to opt out of this

(53:01):
partner programme from Spotifyand stop pivoting fully to video
.
And again, yeah, as you said,devil in the detail, and the
detail seems to be.

Speaker 1 (53:11):
It's not worth it right now, and I'm surprised
that Spotify hasn't clearly donethe maths in terms of that,
because, you know, one wouldassume that Spotify would have
worked out how to get the mathsto balance so that you would
earn more from the video stuffthat they clearly want, rather
than from the audio stuff, butthey seemingly haven't actually

(53:33):
done that, which is, you know, asurprising thing again.

Speaker 3 (53:37):
I've just got to read it from what she said.
My client and I decided to optout of the spp program, spotify
partner program, um, but in themeantime they're requiring
podcasters to give up a provenrevenue stream for an untested
programme with secretive maths,that is it.

Speaker 1 (53:54):
You can't say it better than that really yes, no,
it's really good.
So, yes, it's well worth a peek.
You'll find that in Wednesday'sPod News Daily newsletter.

Speaker 3 (54:05):
Let's move on, James.
Let's fly around the world alittle bit.
What's going on in Canada?

Speaker 1 (54:10):
Yes, let's do this nice and quickly.
So in Canada there's a newonline magazine for Canadian
podcasters launched.
It's called Canadian Podcasterand it's free.
If you prefer a newsletter, youcan also, of course, get Pod
the North, which is very good.
Down in Australia, ARN, whoruns iHeart.
They have announced a costcutting exercise over the next

(54:33):
three years.
Flat revenues for that companyhere in Australia.
It actually went up overall,but only because they own some
posters in Hong Kong, would youbelieve.
But anyway, flat revenues herein Australia yes, but their
digital online revenues are up28%, which arguably means that

(54:53):
their broadcast radio revenueswere down, but anyway, they only
made 15.7 million US dollars interms of digital audio anyway,

(55:22):
but, and so that may be one ofthe reasons why they're looking
at a cost-cutting exercise.
Of course, sca, which is theircompetitor, made a ton of
redundancies, eliminated a tonof roles, according to their CEO
, lafontaine Oliver, who saidhow much that it was sad and
that it pained him.
So far as we can work out, he'searning around $800,000 a year,

(55:42):
probably not paining him thatmonth.
Monk Studios in Berlin appearsto be not having a particularly
good time of it.
They've lost their managingdirector and it looks as if that
, uh, that company is windingdown, although Monk Studios
elsewhere seems to be doingquite well.
And finally, in the UK, um, moredetails from Rajar in terms of

(56:05):
podcast listening.
Rajar saying that um podcastlistening is 26% of all British
adults, but, as I may havementioned earlier in this
podcast, if I haven't edited itout only 6% of all audio
listening.
Even, by the way, the mostpopular age group for podcasts,
which is 25 to 34s, which Ithought was interesting, but the

(56:28):
most popular age group forpodcasts.
Podcasts only get 11% of allaudio time, live radio, of
course, doing significantlyhigher in terms of that.
I was interested in seeing thatpopular age group for
podcasters thing being 25 to 34.
What is going on with the 14 orthe 15 to 25 group, I wonder?

Speaker 3 (56:53):
They're still stuck on TikTok and Snapchat and all
those other things.

Speaker 1 (56:56):
Well, yeah, and if they're still stuck on that,
then in 10 years' time they willbe the 25 to 34s, and will they
be switching over to podcastsby then?

Speaker 3 (57:05):
I don't know, I mean anecdotally a on a sample of two
.
Um, but uh yeah so, so don'thold me for this.
People but um, yeah, I look attheir age and taste changes.
You know they're in theattention model of tiktok and
you know that quick fix and theneventually they get a little

(57:26):
bit more into commuting and thenthey're going on trains and
they're getting into work andother people have influenced
them yeah, there's the commuting, which is a definite, a
definite thing.

Speaker 1 (57:35):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, absolutely, um, uh, people news
, uh, congratulations ruthfitzsimons, um, who many will
know from audio boom or fromsports social or from pod front
uk.
She is now director of digitalfor bauer media in Ireland, so
congratulations to her.
They own radio companies overthere and magazines and things,

(57:58):
so that's nice.
And Christopher Avello hasjoined Libsyn as VP of Marketing
Now.
He is an interesting person.
He'd worked for Audible for aconsiderable amount of time 14
years, I think and so hecompletely gets how to market
audio, completely gets that.

(58:19):
He's also worked for an audiobook seller as well, called
Chirp, and now he's working forLibsyn, which, of course, has a
new CEO relatively recently.
So I would expect him to be atEvolutions, so it'd be
interesting to see if I can bumpinto him and have a chat, but

(58:39):
that looks as if Libsyn has madea good signing there.

Speaker 3 (58:43):
Now talking of Evolutions, James, let's talk
about events and awards.
You're going to be there.
I'm not going, but there'sgoing to be an exclusive that
you announced about Ira Glass.
What's going to happen for him?

Speaker 1 (58:56):
Yes, he's going to win an award at the Ambiance
Hooray Hooray, Ira Glass.
Yes, he's winning theGovernor's Award at the Ambiance
from the Podcast Academy.

Speaker 3 (59:13):
So they're giving an award to an American.
Who would have thought, well,it's the American Awards anyway,
so what's the point?
It's no surprise.
Who would have thought yeah, aswe say, you know, name a
foreign podcast and announce itat the Ambiest.

Speaker 1 (59:24):
And many people are going to Athens in Greece this
weekend.
There's a big radio andpodcasting conference going on
there, radio Days Europe, whichstarts on Monday.
I am down as a speaker onMonday and I'm down as a speaker
on Tuesday, and we'll see quitehow that works.

Speaker 3 (59:46):
Whether you get there More details coming up.

Speaker 1 (59:55):
Quite how that works.
More details coming up.
Let's do the oh.
And there is one more thing,which is, of course, the PodCamp
podcamplive, to find out moreinformation about that which is
happening in London the sameweek as the podcast show in
London.
How is that going for you, sam?

Speaker 3 (01:00:09):
It's going well.
I mean we've got more speakerslined up.
I've got a very important calltoday, straight after this, with
Jason from the London PodcastShow.

Speaker 1 (01:00:19):
Oh yes.
So, I really hope.

Speaker 3 (01:00:22):
Am I asking a favour?
Of course I'm asking a favour.
Black steel and burrow yes, yes, Please, please, please.
And then after that I willreally accelerate into what
we're doing, but it is a case ofwe've had to tread water.

Speaker 1 (01:00:38):
Yeah, we've had to tread water.

Speaker 3 (01:00:39):
And it's not what I wanted, but we'll get there,
indeed.
So more details, fingerscrossed, next week.
The Tech Stuff on the Pod NewsWeekly Review.

Speaker 1 (01:00:52):
Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday in the
Pod News newsletter.
Here's where Sam talkstechnology.
Gosh, we've talked technologyquite a lot already, but let's
have a little bit moretechnology.
Trident Digital, you say.

Speaker 3 (01:01:02):
Well, I don't really, I just copied what you wrote.
So you say Go on, you tell me.
So you say go on you tell me.

Speaker 1 (01:01:07):
Well, our good friends at Omni Studio have
announced a thing called podcastfeed drops, and it's
essentially an easy way forpodcasters to get additional
shows into their feeds.
If you're a big podcaster, likeARN in Australia, who've been

(01:01:31):
using this already, it allowsyou to cross-promote new shows
that you have, and they've justbasically built the tools to
enable that to happen, sothey've built a few other
interesting things there as well.
Interestingly, omni Studioapparently hosts over 70,000
podcasts across the world, sothere is a thing.

(01:01:52):
What else is going on?
Spotify seems to be launchingsocial things.
Have they actually launchedthat yet, or is this still sort
of playing around?

Speaker 3 (01:02:04):
Yeah, some of it's launched, some of it's coming.
So if you go to your usersettings, you can now see the
social settings in your player.
They are going to allow you toshow what playlists you have on
your profile and who's listeningto what and who's currently
active.
Some of that was there before,when they had Spotify, the

(01:02:26):
sidebar, which linked intoFacebook, but now they're
bringing that back into theirown platform and then in the
beta they've got new emojisaround comments and stuff, so
now you can put hearts, likes,thumbs up, all those sorts of
silly things.
So they are trying to get moreinto social.
I'm not sure how well it willbe when you move it to mobile.

Speaker 1 (01:02:49):
Yeah, I mean of course, that's what you've got
in terms of YouTube social.
I'm not sure how well it willbe when you move it to mobile.
Yeah, I mean, of course, that'swhat you've got in terms of
YouTube, which has a bunch ofsocial things, lots of comments,
lots of you know thumbs up andthumbs down and everything else,
which even works in terms ofYouTube music as well, so
perhaps they're just chasingtheir competitors there in terms
of that YouTube music.
By the way, this week sayingthat they now have 100 million

(01:03:12):
paid subscribers to YouTubeMusic, which is nice, we need to
check those numbers as well,though, james Albeit, 265
million are subscribed toSpotify, so they've still got
quite a long way to catch up.
True Fans, which apparently isa podcast app do you know
anything about, uh, true fans,sam?
no, let's move on um, you're nowsupporting opml both in and out

(01:03:37):
, uh, which is a nice thing.
Opml is not quite as easy as itlooks, is it?

Speaker 3 (01:03:41):
no, um, but I actually the standard's pretty
good, I mean, although most theapps or I say the apps implement
it two different ways.
It's like some apps implementopml1 and some apps implement
opml2, so there's just adifference in one of the tags.
So we decided to support themboth at all.
And then we started supportimport and export.

(01:04:02):
And then we looked around fortesting, so we did fountain, we
did antenna, pod, pod verse, allthe others.
They all work.
We got them working and then wenoticed quite a few of them
don't do export and we thoughtoh yes, funny that you can get
your data in, but it'll neverleave.

Speaker 1 (01:04:17):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (01:04:19):
And you did ask me why I didn't name them.
And I'm going to say nowbecause I do this show.

Speaker 1 (01:04:25):
And well, no, genuinely look, don't feel that
you're here.

Speaker 3 (01:04:29):
No, look, I have to tread a fine line.
James One, I'm very cognizantthat Pod News is your brand
right and True Fantasy is my.
You know SEO, but you know Ican't.
If I shout out certain apps whoare my competitors and I go ha
ha ha, you don't do it, we do it, blah, blah, blah, right.

(01:04:50):
Then when I want to interviewthem for this show or you need
them, then I think I might, youknow, cause an issue.
So I am very careful andcautious not to be negative and
call people out.
I will say you can go and lookand see for yourself and it will
become very obvious and lookand see for yourself and it will

(01:05:13):
become very obvious, but Iwon't name them.

Speaker 1 (01:05:14):
No, a couple of other things going on.
Deepcast has done someinteresting things rebranding
their Deepcast Pro product,which I never fully understood
who that was for.
It's now called DeepcastCreator.
They've launched a thing calledPodsites, which is a turnkey
website solution for podcasters.
One of the things that I'mactually waiting for is I'm

(01:05:36):
waiting for somebody toessentially make and maybe
Godcaster is the closest to thissomebody to essentially make a
thing that looks like a podcastapp.
It might happen to be on awebsite, but it looks like a
podcast app, but it's just forone podcast.
I think that's probably wherethe future is, and quite a lot

(01:05:56):
of these pod sites or pod pageor you know other similar
services are busy building afull, a fully featured website.
I think just having a playerthat looks like an app basically
would be a really interestingidea.
So, yeah, that's a thing.

Speaker 3 (01:06:14):
Yeah, I think you know we talked about it a few
weeks ago.
How you know, a lot of thehosts have their own webpages
and again, I can see these beingimproved over time.
Again, there was a proposal inthe podcast in 2.0 for a banner
tag and there was a wholediscussion which I actually
tuned out of, actually aboutimages last week.

Speaker 1 (01:06:35):
Yes, I don't blame you.

Speaker 3 (01:06:36):
Yeah, I was like should I listen to images or
should I go out with my wife?
I'm going out with my wife, soI haven't really heard.

Speaker 1 (01:06:44):
I don't blame you, I did enjoy.
There were two things that Ienjoyed about the Podcasting 2.0
show last week.
One of them was Adam Curryagain saying how much he enjoyed
speaking at a conference andhow amazing it was and how he
got so many people oohing andaahing about Podcasting 2.0 and
then in the next breath sayingbut I'm not going to do it again

(01:07:07):
.
So I thought that was great.
But also, secondly, dave Jones,who has been implacably opposed
to getting rid of the podcastimages tag because it has
completely failed, then turnsaround and says well, maybe we
deprecate the podcast images tag.
And I go really.

Speaker 2 (01:07:27):
Boostergram, boostergram, boostergram.
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.

Speaker 1 (01:07:41):
Yeah, so many different ways to get in touch
with us.
There's fan mail by using thelink in our show notes, the
super comments on True Fans,boosts everywhere else, or email
, and we share any money that wemake too.
Now I have had four hours of nopower, and one of the things
that hasn't rebooted cleanly ismy home assistants, and
therefore I'm sitting in mostlydarkness now, and the other side

(01:08:05):
is the Umbral Box, which hasalso failed, which I need to
give a tickle to, so there mayvery well be boosts waiting for
me on the Umbral Box.
My apologies, but I won't beable to read those this week.
However, we do have someexcellent news.
We have a 17th supporter, asweet 17 supporter.

Speaker 3 (01:08:28):
I feel there should be a jingle right now, but I
don't know what it would beRight.

Speaker 1 (01:08:31):
Yes, yes, well, yes, exactly.
So thank you to BrianEntsminger.
Brian is super helpful anduseful in the Hindenburg
community on Facebook, amongmany other things.
Super useful in terms of that.
So, brian, thank you so muchfor that.

(01:08:53):
You join the rest of the powersupporters, who are David John
Clark, james Burt, johnMcDermott, clare Waight-Brown,
mazzalene Smith, neil Velio,rocky Thomas, jim James, david
Marzell, si Jobling, rachelCorbett, dave Jackson, mike
Hamilton, matt Medeiros,marshall Brown and Cameron Moll.
We really appreciate that thatmoney is split equally between

(01:09:16):
Sam and I.
I know that Sam spends it allon wine.
No, he doesn't spend any of iton wine.
I don't spend any of it on wine,because I'm a wine importer.

Speaker 3 (01:09:24):
I don't have to.

Speaker 1 (01:09:25):
Yes, of course, no, of course, no.
He spends it all on True Fans,I believe.
So that's always a good plan.
That's so true, and yes, and Isave it for a rainy day, but we
really appreciate that.
So thank you so much for that.
Now we would like to know isthere anything?

(01:09:45):
Obviously, if you're a powersupporter, you get to come on
this show once a year and youget to tell us what the future
of podcasting will be, which wedo at the end of every year,
which we will be doing again.
Is there anything else that youwant from us, power supporters?
If you would like somethinglike a WhatsApp group to annoy

(01:10:06):
everybody else with, orsomething else like that, I
don't know what would you like.
Is there something that youwould like, or are you perfectly
happy just supporting us?
We would love to know.
You can send us an email weeklyat podnewsnet and, even if
you're not a power supporter yet, you can say what might make

(01:10:28):
you become a power supporter.
Is there something that youwould like?
Is it a meet up at Evolutionswhere I put some money behind
the bar and you can drink yourmoney back again?

Speaker 3 (01:10:37):
I don't know one straw, one bottle.
That's all he does, mate.
Yes, one straw, one bottle.

Speaker 1 (01:10:41):
That's all he does, mate.
Yes, that'll be because I'm nota beer importer.
Then please do let us know.
Weekly at podnewsnet is theright address to catch both Sam
and I.
So what's happened for you this?

Speaker 3 (01:10:57):
week, Sam.
Well, first of all, I spoke toDavid John Clark and I found out
his secret, but I'm not allowedto tell you now anymore.
So now I know I can't say soyes, but there you go.
So congratulations, David.
By the way, yes, Well done toyou.
Now, moving on, we obviouslydid the OPML which we talked

(01:11:17):
about earlier.
We've also added, finally, theOAuth support to blue sky, which
is an absolute dog.
So well done to transistor fordoing it.
It took us hours to do that one.

Speaker 1 (01:11:30):
Um right.

Speaker 3 (01:11:31):
And and and you know I don't understand why they've
made it so complex, but now youcan publish, uh, your activity,
not just comments, out of truefans to your profile if you wish
, and of course in out ofTrueFans to your profile if you
wish, and of course in your usersettings you can choose what's
published, anything or nothingor something.
So yeah, so things like you canpublish your play listen time,

(01:11:53):
whatever you want.
Comments James, you had a bitof a comment about LinkedIn this
week.
What would you like to sayabout LinkedIn?
Because I've got it here if youwant.

Speaker 1 (01:12:03):
What I like about Mastodon is that I can say
things and very few people readit, and so that's okay, or at
least I think that's the case.
But certainly when a slightlyrude comment about LinkedIn that
I posted, basically saying it'sfull of self-important wankers
trying to show off and bragabout fake accomplishments, and

(01:12:28):
then adding and if you'reAmerican, a very rude word
coming up if you're an American.
If you're not an American, thisis absolutely fine.
But I then added I try to keepup, but honestly, it's a shower
of utter tits, isn't it?
Yes, I wasn't necessarilyexpecting that to reach as many
people as it did, but there weare.

(01:12:48):
Yes, gosh, I hate LinkedIn.
I really do hate LinkedIn.
But yes, if you think that itwill be useful to auto-post to
LinkedIn, then I'm sure thatthat's a wonderful thing.
Yes, but you're going to alsolaunch a social sidebar.
It's almost as if you've lookedat Spotify and you've gone oh,
that looks like a good idea.
I'll do that.
But, why not?

(01:13:09):
But why not?
I think that's a great idea.
I would love more social stuff.
I mean, obviously be carefulbeing a social podcast app, but
I would love more social stuffand certainly in terms of
Spotify.
I discover new music that waybecause I go, I respect this man
or this woman I'm listening to.

(01:13:30):
You know, I noticed thatthey're listening to such and
such.
I'll go and listen to that andthat is all it is.

Speaker 3 (01:13:36):
Yeah, so we're recording on Wednesday, but by
Friday you'll be able to clickon an icon in the header which
will just show you the peopleyou've chosen to follow and
those people what they arecurrently playing live or what
they played in the last sevendays.
So it's their last activity.

(01:13:56):
We're not going to give you thelast 25 things they've done.
You can then go and look atthat in another way.
That's available, but no, it'sjust a nice social sidebar which
allows you to go and look atthat in another way.
That's available, but no, it'sjust a nice social sidebar which
allows you to go and discoverquickly yeah, yes, no, that is
um.

Speaker 1 (01:14:09):
That is all all excellent.
Um.
You've also launched a podcast,uh, which is called fan zone.
Um.
Now you say it is now onnewpodcastsnet I don't say that.

Speaker 3 (01:14:20):
I said it's going to be.

Speaker 1 (01:14:22):
Ah, there you go because I was there looking at
the approval queue and going no,it's not, no, no, not yet it's
been really interesting lookingat newpodcastsnet, looking and
seeing who's using it, who'ssticking stuff in, how they're
writing it, because I'm going inand rewriting them.
But it's much easier going inand rewriting than starting from

(01:14:43):
scratch.
So, yeah, so it's been reallyuseful doing that.
Newpodcastsnet, if you want totake a peek, don't go to http
slash newpodcastsnet, becausethat I discover doesn't work at
all at the moment.
For some reason I need toforward non-secure stuff over,

(01:15:05):
but I'll get that sorted at somepoint.
But yes, so that is going well.
It says here investor meetings,that's investor meetings for
true fans.
Indeed, yeah, that's soundingpositive.

Speaker 3 (01:15:17):
Very so again we are very, very close to announcing.
But then I got taken last nightto another investor circle,
jerk, where basically Was it onLinkedIn.
Oh, I think they all were.
I certainly had people askingme for it.
No, it was just that I haven'tbeen to these for years and it

(01:15:39):
was one where you get the.
I've made my 55 million quidand this is how I did it.
I was a scrappy this and theysit at the front and tell you
their life story of how they'vemade it and everyone in the room
oohs and aahs at the things andthen everyone tries to get to
that person or they try to.
It was just awful.
I hated every minute of thatmeeting last night.
I just wanted to leave.

(01:16:00):
I'm happy to take your money,but please don't make me do
those things again.
They are boring, they reallyare.

Speaker 1 (01:16:07):
Well, there we are.
There you go, yes, well, yes, Iwould love to avoid any of
those.
Are you doing any more of theseThames walks?

Speaker 3 (01:16:16):
Yeah, we're just going to, you know, obviously
have tea with Charles.
Now Zelensky's left, we'regoing to go and pop into Windsor
, have a little cup of tea withCharles and head over to Henley.
So that's the next stage of ourwalk.
Yes, looking forward to that.
Very nice, come on, james.
What's happening for you?
What's?

Speaker 1 (01:16:33):
happened.
It was announced at the end oflast week that I will be
co-presenting the Infinite Dial2025 from Edison Research.
Congratulations.
Yeah, I'm super excited I'vegot no idea why, but super
excited Presented in a freewebinar on Thursday, march the

(01:16:53):
20th it's at 2pm Eastern time,which will be very early in the
morning for me, but I would verymuch appreciate your company on
that.
Edison Research Vice PresidentMegan Lazarevic is doing all of
the hard work and I amoccasionally butting in and
asking some questions.
I have a feeling.
Thank you to Odyssey andCumulus Media and SiriusXM Media
for paying for some of theresearch as well.

(01:17:15):
But yeah, it's a piece ofresearch that I have been
reading for the last 15 yearsand I'm super excited to be
actually co-presenting it.
No idea why, but that's goingto be great fun, so very much
looking forward.

Speaker 3 (01:17:29):
Never meet your heroes but there you go.

Speaker 1 (01:17:31):
I know Very much looking forward to doing that.
The Pod News Report card closeson Sunday and that has been
really interesting to run thisyear.
We've got a few questions toask you.
If you haven't yet filled it in, please do.
Podnewsnet slash report card.
It essentially helps podcastcompanies prioritise the work

(01:17:54):
that they have to do the bigpodcast platforms, so that would
be really useful.
This year we managed to gettargeted by bots.
So I know that I've had 20,000people taking part, but I also
know that 19,500 of those arerobots.
But the good news is I've gotsome code on that page which is

(01:18:18):
sorting that out for me.
So it's one SQL query and thenthey've all gone, which is
significantly more than Imanaged last year.
So, yes, I'm very much lookingforward to that.
And why are we recording onWednesday?
Well, we're recording onWednesday because of tropical
cyclone Alfred.

Speaker 6 (01:18:34):
Good morning from what has been a wild night here
on the Gold Coast, cycloneAlfred now just hours away from
making landfall.
Right now, across southeastQueensland and northern New
South Wales, everyone is feelingthe full force of this storm
the southern Gold Coast coppingwind gusts of 100km an hour,
recording wave heights of around12 metres, and across the
border, the Northern Riversregion already drenched 150mm of

(01:18:58):
rain, falling in Lismore injust the last 24 hours.
And the worst of theseconditions is still to come.

Speaker 1 (01:19:05):
It's going to be pretty damaging.
I mean, everything is talkingabout everywhere is closed from
tomorrow, thursday, on, andwe're suddenly planning to lose
power again and to lose internetand everything else.
I'm going to be writingFriday's pod news later on today
, wednesday, just so that it'sthere, just so that I've got

(01:19:26):
something.
So yeah, it's the firsttropical cyclone that I've ever
lived through and, my goodness,it's quite scary.
It's quite scary.
The only slight problem thatI've got is I am supposed to be
flying to Radio Days Europe inAthens in Greece on Friday
afternoon.
I wouldn't do it.
That plane lands into Brisbaneairport, should be landing into

(01:19:51):
Brisbane airport Friday morningat 6.30 in the morning.
It won't be.
I'll tell you that for now, andso therefore, I'm definitely
not flying on the Friday.
I don't think I'll be flying onthe Saturday because I don't
think there'll be a plane readyand waiting for me, because, of
course, it has to land Saturdaymorning and you know, friday is

(01:20:11):
the big day.
So I have a feeling that I'mgoing to have to call off going
to Athens, which is a real shamebecause I've been to every
single radio days that have everexisted.
So that's a frustration, butstill, there we are Better to be
, you know, alive.
I suppose I think the word'ssafe than sorry.
Yes, exactly exactly, but yes.

(01:20:33):
So if you're wonderingparticularly why the Bodneys
newsletter has looked a bitsparse over the last couple of
days and I've not replied to anyof your emails and that's
probably why I've had quite alot going on.

(01:20:55):
So we'll see how all of thatworks.
But yeah, I've never listenedto as much ABC local radio as I
have.
But learning all about stuffhave.
But you know, learning allabout stuff.
I mean sandbags, for example,because obviously a cyclone
brings floods, and so sandbags.
You live on a hill, I know Ilive on a hill, but lots of
people don't and a quarter of amillion sandbags have been given

(01:21:18):
out over the last couple ofdays.
It's astonishing.
I mean really, really quitesomething.
So you get an awful lot of youget wind up to 120 kilometres an
hour, and then you get all ofthe rain, and it's the rain
which is going to be really hard, and then everything finishes
and you go, oh, that's lovely,and then you realise that you're
in the eye of the storm andthen everything happens all over

(01:21:42):
again.
But yeah, it's going to bequite a thing, anyway so there
we are, so good luck for me.

Speaker 3 (01:21:49):
Look on James's YouTube channel for videos of us
.

Speaker 1 (01:21:52):
Yes, don't look on my YouTube channel, because all
you'll see is, you know, randompictures of me finding bugs in
pieces of you know homeelectronics.
But still, but yes, it's goingto be an interesting time, shall
we say.
Anyway, that's it for this week.
All of our podcast storiestaken from the Pod News daily
newsletter podnewsnet.

Speaker 3 (01:22:13):
You can support this show by streaming sites.
You can give us feedback usingthe Bus Brow fan mail link in
our show notes.
You can send us a super commentor become a power supporter,
like the sensational.
Now it's got to be the sweet 17, now, hasn't it?

Speaker 1 (01:22:25):
james weeklypodusenet yes, our music is from studio
dragonfly.
Our voiceover is sheila d.
We use clean feed for our audio, we edit with hindenburg and
we're hosted and sponsored bybuzzsprout.
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Speaker 6 (01:22:46):
Tell your friends and grow the show and support us,
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