Inside Riverside Hosting and RSS.com’s Free Podcast Hosting

Episode Transcript
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Announcer (00:00):
The Pod News Weekly Review uses chapters.
The last word in podcastingnews.
This is the Pod News WeeklyReview with James Cridlin and
Sam Sethy.

Sam Sethi (00:11):
I'm James Cridlin, the editor of Pod News.
And I'm Sam Sethy, the CEO ofTrue Family.

Kendall Brietman (00:16):
We're the only platform now that you can
record, edit, and host yourpodcast on.

James Cridland (00:22):
Kendall Brightman unveiling Riverside's
new hosting product.
We've got our costs pretty lowand we can help media
developers.
Russell Harrower on Pod2's newcloud hosting.
Plus, RSS.com launches a newfree podcast hosting plan and
how to use your own dot com withlightning payments.
This podcast is sponsored byBuzzSprout with the tools

(00:43):
supporting community to ensureyou keep podcasting.
Start podcasting, keeppodcasting with BuzzSprout.com.

Announcer (00:51):
From your daily newsletter, the Pard News Weekly
Review.

Sam Sethi (00:55):
Now, James, what's that famous expression?
You know, like a London bus,you wait for ages and then three
come along at once.
Feels like hosting's doingsomething similar.
You wait for ages, no newhosts, and suddenly a ton of
them come along at once.
Now, the first one we're goingto talk about, unsurprisingly,
or maybe not so, is Riverside.

(01:16):
They've just announced they'regoing to be hosting James as
well.
What are they doing?

They have just announced that they're going to
be hosting.
I thought, well, in the absenceof any press release, because
they've not bothered to send apress release out, I thought,
well, let's find out from thefolks themselves.
So I spoke to KendallBrightman.

Well, I am Kendall Brightman.
I am the community lead atRiverside, which basically just
means that I am kind of thebridge between our product and
the community that uses it.
So communicating about newfeatures, but also being the
voice within Riverside thatspeaks for the people that are
using it.
So what they care about, what'simportant to them, what they

(01:55):
struggle with, what they love,all of that.
Just kind of being the personto represent that voice.

So let's start with the basics.
What is Riverside?
At least what has it been untilnow?

We are a recording, editing, and now
hosting platform.
So really all in one end-to-endcontent creation platform.
So you can record your podcast,you can edit it right on there,
make your clips, get yourtranscript, and now be able to
also publish it all throughRiverside.
So that's kind of a verygeneral, broad overview of what

(02:29):
Riverside is.
But there's just a lot packedinto it.
AI show notes, your AI clips.
There's there's a there's a lotof different things that you
can be doing on Riverside, butour whole goal is to make
podcasting and content creationeasier, faster, but keep it
professional.
So what I mean by that is thatall of the recordings you can

(02:49):
record in up to 4K.
So you just have anduncompressed audio.
So you have the highest qualityaudio and video possible to
really make your content justshine and stand out.

So there will be quite a lot of people who have
used your product a long, longtime ago.
I mean, I remember writingabout Hillary Clinton.
Remember her?
Who was a big fan of theproduct, what, in 2021, maybe?
Maybe 2021, maybe, maybeearlier.
You've you've launched a lot ofstuff since since uh then.

(03:24):
I don't remember being able toedit or any of that kind of uh
thing.

Yeah, I mean I'm old enough to remember when
I joined, it was I think that wehad just started the editor.
Like it was we've come a crazylong way.
I've only been here for two anda half years, and when I
started, it was just starting tobecome more of a robust editor.
But we're putting out newfeatures every week.
It's we were just joking, meand a few of my colleagues, that
it gets hard to keep upourselves.

(03:49):
So if you've checked outRiverside before, I recommend
checking it out again justbecause there's been so much
change happening.
And by change, I just meancontinuing to iterate.
So when we started, it was verymuch focused on that recording
quality, that it was the highestquality that you can get for
remote recordings.
And so that's still true.

(04:11):
But on top of that, now we'vejust built a really incredible
editor.
We've now built hosting intoit.
So yeah, there's definitelyit's if you haven't checked it
out in a while, I highlyrecommend it.
I know I'm biased, but that'swhat I think.

So this week you launched podcast hosting.
There are tons of podcasthosting companies.
So what makes you different?

Yes.
So that is a big announcementthat we just had that Riverside
now supports podcast hosting.
And what makes us different isthat I believe we're the only
platform now that you canrecord, edit, and host your
podcast on.
So for anyone who already has apaid Riverside plan, it's
already included in youraccount.

(04:51):
And if you sign up forRiverside with any of our paid
plans, hosting is now includedat no extra cost.
So I would say what makes usdifferent is one being that
all-in-one solution, being ableto do everything in one place.
I mean, I hear from podcastersall the time the amount of just
kind of file shifting that youhave to do.
You're recording, downloadingit, getting it into an editor,

(05:12):
go doing that, and then takingthat, downloading it, and then
uploading it to your podcasthost.
And it's just such a tediouspart of the process.
So to have everything all inone place is just really great
for the workflow.
But then number two, as I wassaying, is that it's recorded,
it's included in your paid plan.
So what that also means is thatit's one less subscription that

(05:35):
you now have to pay for.
Because so many of thesepodcasters that we speak to are
doing it because it's somethingthat they're passionate about.
And maybe they're monetizing abit, but surely not in the way
that just it's you're able toalways cover all of the
different tools that people areusing.
And so to be able to cut outone of those subscriptions and
have everything done in all inone place is, I think, what

(06:00):
really sets it apart forcreators who are using Riverside
to do it.

Well, you quietly introduced this a while
ago.
I remember trying to get Stevento talk about it at podcast
movement, and he he just blankwalled me.
He wasn't going to answer anyquestions at all.
But this has been, you'veyou've been rolling this out to
some of your customers already,haven't you?

Yes.
So what we started with is westarted with new podcasts, so
non-existing RSS feeds.
We'd create that RSS feed foryou.
That was kind of the first stepof it.
But then the obvious next stepwould be to be able to import
your podcast that's alreadybeing hosted somewhere else.
So that's what the big launchis now is that we've already
been supporting hosting for anew podcast.

(06:41):
But if you have been podcastingand want to bring your podcast
into Riverside to make that allin one workflow, you can now do
that.
We now support that.

Now, obviously, Sam would be wanting me to ask
about podcasting 2.0.
What sort of features from thatare you supporting?
I'm guessing you must besupporting transcripts, but what
else?

As far as like included in the hosting?
Yeah.
Okay.
So we are when you're uploadingyour podcast, when you're
hosting it, we have you areputting up your podcast art,
able to schedule it, put in thedescription, set if it's
episodic or if it's part of aseries, which is how we
communicate to Apple Podcastsand Spotify, really how to show

(07:21):
your podcast.
Also connected to YouTube.
So you're able to publishstraight to YouTube.
There is also analyticsincluded.
And one thing that I'll say isearlier I was talking about like
if you haven't checked outRiverside for a while, check it
out again, is that we're alwaysadding to Riverside.
So right now we have analyticsthat's able to tell you how many

(07:42):
listeners that you had for yourfor your show, where they're
coming in from.
But as we continue to buildthis out, we're going to be
adding more analytics.
For example, being able to lookepisode by episode at some of
those, at some of those numbers.
And so this is really a firststep into what you're going to
be able to do with RiversideHosting.

Okay.
So for now, you supporttranscripts on the platform, but
not necessarily in terms of thepodcast hosting to get those
transcripts out to PocketCastsand Apple Podcasts and all of
that.
How about support for chapters?

So basically, if you also record on Riverside,
what a great part of it is isthat you already get your
chapters created for you by yourrecordings.
And you can also update thosechapters when you edit, of
course, because when you takeout those edits, your chapter
time codes are going to change.
So what happens is when you'rerecording on Riverside and then
you go to host that episodethrough Riverside, you still

(08:38):
have all of that information.
So you can take those shownotes, you can take those
chapter timecodes, and it'sautomatically you're able to put
that into your episodedescription.
So there's no need to reinventthe wheel, no need to do that
twice.
It's we already have all thatinformation, so you could easily
just put that right in yourepisode description.
So yes, chapters are included.

Okay.
Riverside's famous for video,of course.
Will you be hosting video aswell for people who want it?
Or are you just exporting toYouTube, I guess, by the sounds
of it?

It's audio only to Spotify and Apple.
But users, after they claim thepodcast on Spotify, can
manually add the video to theirpodcast through Spotify.

Yeah, it's interesting that, you know,
Flightcast, for example, hasaccess to a Spotify upload API
for video.
And I'm told by Spotify thatthat API is available for
everyone, but nobody else isusing it yet.
Even companies like Riversidethat have such a good long
association with Spotifydirectly, which is really
interesting.
Who gets access to podcasthosting?

So anyone who's on a paid plan through
Riverside gets access to podcasthosting.
And again, it's at noadditional cost.
So if you are already recordingand editing on Riverside,
you'll see already in Riversideaccount added that you now have
hosting.
And if you sign up forRiverside, it's not like we are
going to ask you about hostingas part of your package.

(10:04):
It's just the same price.
You sign up, you also gethosting.

Very cool.
And are there limits on howpopular you can be?
Is there a download cap oranything like that?

Nope, there is not.
There is, you can only haveone, you can only host one
podcast per account.
So hosting will only supportone podcast for now.
Yeah, as far as the amount ofdownloads, there is definitely
no cap.
And we are excited to see howmany downloads and everything
that you're able to get throughhosting on hosting on Riverside.

Very cool.
And is the monetization inthere as well?
Ads and that sort of thing?

Not right now.
So again, as we continue topush hosting, maybe those
opportunities will be coming inthe future.
For now, monetization is notreally included.
But that is, I again would saythat as we continue to roll this
out, you're gonna see thatwe're going to continue to
iterate and improve and expandon hosting.
Because like at Riverside, whatI've found is that we want to

(11:05):
get the most stable, mostimpressive feature to you out as
soon as we can.
And so from there, we iterate,we add.
And so that's how, for example,with the editor that I was
talking about, like we couldhave waited years and rolled out
an editor with all of thesefeatures that were already
packed in.

(11:25):
But what we like to do is welike to deliver you something
that you're able to use andlove.
And then as we continue, we cancontinue to add features to
that that you're also going tobe able to use in love.
So podcast hosting is anotherexample of that that you're
going to see that as wecontinue, it's only going to get
better and better and have morefeatures.

So, where can people go to find out more about
hosting?

So we have a webinar that we're going to be
launching very soon after thelaunch.
Actually, by the time thiscomes out, we'll be able to sign
up for that.
So that's riverside.com/slashwebinars.
And you'll see on there, we'llhave a full walkthrough of
hosting.
You'll also see it on ourYouTube channel, and I'll be
posting it in our community onFacebook.
It's Conversation Creators byRiverside.

(12:08):
So we'll have informationthere.
Also, when you log into youraccount, you'll be able to get a
step-by-step walkthrough of howto use hosting.
And our just our YouTubechannel always has a ton of
different videos that are notjust walkthroughs, but best
practices.
So that's where you can find alot of information.

And of course, uh, riverside.com is the place
to go.
One other question, if I may.
Uh, you've recently lostStephen Robles, the the bearded
shortcuts guru himself.
Who is the new Steven?
Is that gonna be you?

It's not me, but I we are actually we have
the position open on ourwebsite.
So I believe it's careers.comor riverside.com slash careers.
And we are looking for, Iwouldn't say we're looking for
the next Steven because there isno other Steven.
Steven's the best, but we'relooking for somebody that's uh
wants to come and representRiverside, help us grow our

(13:04):
YouTube channel.
So if that sounds like you, wehave the job posting up online
right now.
So yeah, we're definitelyaccepting applications, but I
will just say that I lovedworking with Steven.
He is going off to go at italone to do his own thing and
start kind of making his owntypes of videos.
So already I'm I'm seeing ahuge increase in in Apple

(13:28):
shortcut videos from him.
So um I am really excited tosee what he does.
It's a lot of fun working withhim.

Yeah, I know absolutely.
Well while you're on, I meanit's it's just us, right?
And nobody else is having alisten.
I don't know whether you've gotanything that's coming around
the corner, perhaps, that youcould tell us about.

Yeah, so so we just announced hosting, but I
will say that what we're findingis that a lot of people are
really seeing the value inediting on Riverside and all of
the things you could do beyondremote recording.
So that's what we wereoriginally known for that remote
recording, adding the editor.
And so with all of the featuresthat we've added, there's a lot
of value in Riverside, andpeople are seeing that more.

(14:05):
But maybe you're not recordingremotely.
So there are a lot of peoplethat are recording in person,
and we definitely hear you.
So we've added the ability tohave two mics and record two
different mics onto your accountso that you can edit that audio
separately.
But stay tuned in that spacebecause we are definitely going
to be adding more in regards toin-person recording.

(14:27):
So stay tuned on that.

All sounds very exciting.
Very excited.
Yeah, Kendall, thank you somuch.
Yeah, of course.
Kendall Brightman fromRiverside.
So, Sam, what do you think ofall of that then?

Sam Sethi (14:39):
Let's start with the positive, shall we, James?
Good on them to get into thegame.
I think what Kendall was tryingto say was you know, we're a
one-stop shop now.
You can you can come toRiverside, you can get it for
free, we'll host your stuff.
I think they were focusingcorrectly on new podcasters more

(14:59):
than existing podcasters.
I know that that's what theysaid they've just announced, but
you know.
That's the positives.
And again, as Kendall said, youcan, you know, record, edit,
clip, all the good things.
I I think I've called them thefive P's, you know, that you can
do the pre-production,production, post-production,
clip promotion.
There's no monetization withinthere, so there's no profit

(15:21):
element.
But I think it's very, verybasic, don't you?

Yeah, very, very bare bones.
I think MVP is the phrase,isn't it?
Minimum viable product.
Well, I think the M's areincluded.
Or the V for that matter.

Sam Sethi (15:36):
Yes, exactly.
More like the V.

No, I mean it's it's um yeah, I mean, uh so
analytics, you heard Kendall saythere that that'll give you,
you know, a number of listeners,and you know, and that's about
it.
They won't even give you quiteas yet details per episode.
So it's a very first product,you know, very V uh V0.1.

(15:59):
I am really surprised that andyou possibly heard it uh
slightly in my uh in myinterview.
I'm really surprised abouttranscripts.
You know, Riverside hastranscripts, they have chapters,
they're not supporting eitherof those within the RSS feed.
There was a bit of talk fromKendall about, well, you know,
we've got the information so youcan paste it into the into the

(16:21):
episode notes.
I mean, uh how you can launch abrand new podcast hosting uh
platform in 2025 and ignorepodcasting 2.0 completely,
ignore what Apple have beendoing for the last three years
completely.
I find that really weird.
But, you know, it's a firstthing.
And you know, and I think fromthat point of view, I suppose uh

(16:43):
i it can only get better, andit's good that there is another
podcast hosting company here.
I doubt that we'll get verymany serious people using it
because uh one podcast peraccount is a big thing.
That that's gonna really bitethem, I think, if they weren't
capable of producing more thanone podcast per account.

(17:04):
There may be a good reason interms of uh in terms of not
wanting to spam things, youknow.
That that may be a good reasonnot wanting to sp to have lots
of spam on their platform.
But that's going to stop quitea lot of people who are spending
you know relative money uh onthat product being able to use

(17:24):
them for a podcast host.
Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.

Sam Sethi (17:26):
I I think you you know they would do well to get
somebody like you as an advisorin.
The podcasting two oh featuresare all there.
They're just hanging therewaiting for them, as you said,
transcripts, chapters, persontags.
They've done nothing.

Yeah, the difficult job of of putting the
podcasting 2.0 features into apodcast host is that all of a
sudden you need to get all ofthis information.
But they've got all of thisinformation.
That's what Riverside willhave.

Sam Sethi (17:52):
That's the weird thing.
Yeah, it's just hanging there.
You know, the alternativeenclosure, audio and video sound
bites for their clip.

I mean, they've got they've even got pictures of
the people that were theguests.
I mean you couldn't ask foranything more.
So early days, but it's greatto see a new hosting company uh
in.
If you want to find out moreinformation, I may have said
riverside.fm or potentiallyriverside.com, I can't remember.
But anyway, the full address isriverside.com slash

(18:21):
podcast-hosting.

Sam Sethi (18:23):
Now DScript tried this a couple of years ago.
They started off by allowingyou to edit everything within D
script and then upload it to thehost directly from within
DScript.
But the upload process was solong-winded, it was quicker for
me to download and upload by thetime it uploaded into
BuzzSpratt as an example.

(18:44):
They do host your editedversion, but it's a D script
URL.
I've told them for years andyears and years this is no use
because you know people want tohave a branded URL.
I wonder whether Riverside nowgetting into hosting in this way
will trip DScript into doingsomething more in the coming
months.

Yes, who knows?
But I mean, you know, th ththere's a a good thing to add
that sort of feature in there.
The I think the other thing,and I said it really as an
aside, not that Kendall would beable to comment anyway, is I
have heard Spotify tell me thatthey have an open API to post
video.
Surely, given the closerelationship that Riverside has

(19:28):
with Spotify and the fact thatRiverside are making 4K video,
not to be able to actuallyupload that into the Spotify
platform is really weird.
Really weird.
So yeah, so early doors, but I'msure it'll get better as we
move forward.

Sam Sethi (19:47):
Now, bus number two coming along rss.com launches
free hosting.
What what's going on?

What what what is going on?
So, firstly, I am an advisorfor rss.com, so I can't be an
advisor for Riverside.
So let's just get that out.
But yes, they have launched anew product which is called Free
Local and Niche, or indeed FreeLocal and Niche.
Uh, it's the free podcasthosting plans for specialized

(20:16):
creators.
I mean, to be honest, you couldprobably use it for everybody.
But the idea is that it it'sbasically proper free hosting.
Our sponsor, Buzzbrat, willgive you free hosting to a
point, but it's only a couple ofepisodes, and then you have to
start taking it seriously.
With this, you can publishunlimited episodes, for example.

(20:36):
You can get on every podcastapp, you can access all kinds of
things from RSS.com.
The interesting thing with thisis, as I understand it, that
rss.com does support somepodcasting 2.0 uh features.
And the one which is mandatoryif you're going to take
advantage of this free podcasthosting from rss.com is you have

(21:00):
to put in a location.
How exciting is that?
So we'll actually get a bunchof shows with locations and very
specifically talking aboutspecific locations and places.
So I think that that's quitethat's quite exciting, really.

Sam Sethi (21:16):
Is that why it's called local and show?

Indeed.
Right.
You guessed it.
You guessed it.
Yeah, so it's uh it's good.
You can see the uh the uh thedifferences between that and the
paid model at rss.com slashpricing.
You don't get any access, forexample, to paid ads, so you
won't money from this, althoughyou do get value for value up to
a point.
But uh yeah, so you get you geta fair amount of things.

(21:40):
But transcripts or ads or thatsort of thing is left to the
paid users as it probably shouldbe.

Sam Sethi (21:47):
So there has to be a limit on what's available.
I mean you said it BuzzSproutgives you a couple of episodes.
That's your intro intoBuzzsprout, but you know, if you
get beyond semi-serious, youyou you have to go and upgrade.
Captivate doesn't allow free,for example.
So RSS.com must be doing thisas a you know bait and switch,

(22:08):
right?
Get you in and switch you over.
So what that is is it sixhours, two hours, one episode?
I mean, there has to be somelimit, otherwise no one's gonna
switch over.

No, I mean there's no limit in terms of
podcast hosting.
So the pricing page is prettyclear.
Unlimited episodes, unlimitedaudio, you get a proper full RSS
feed.
Uh you get analytics up to 90days.
So you know, you won't getanalytics forever because those
are expensive, but you basicallyget much of what you get with
all of the paid plans.

(22:39):
But if you want to earn money,if you want to stick your
podcast onto YouTube properly,if you want to, you know, have
an embeddable podcast player, ifyou want to do various things,
uh that's an embed a version ofthe embeddable podcast player
without any branding on it, ifyou want to do all of those
sorts of things, and of coursetranscripts as well, then you do
have to start paying.

(23:00):
And the analytics is, you know,for longer than 90 days, up to
180 days if you're on theall-in-one podcasting and for
podcast networks, you get it, Ithink forever, I'm gonna say.
No, for a year.
So yeah, so it's it's uh thereare differences there, of
course.
I think the probably the uh thebig one there is the

(23:20):
programmatic ads, because uh youyou just tick a box and you get
ads in your podcast, you earnmoney from that.
I've got my first payment ofthe very small show that I do
called Radioland.
So yeah, so that that bitworks.
But I think that's really uhone of the reasons why people
will will you know sign up forthat.

Sam Sethi (23:40):
We've seen with Spotify that free drove market
share.
Do we expect or does RSS.comexpect then their a major uplift
given that they've gone freefree?

I mean you would expect that that is one of the
reasons why they're doing it,I'm sure.
Yes.

Sam Sethi (23:57):
Well, uh I I only ask is uh uh are we now having a
race to the bottom?
Is this is this where hostingis now?
Is it a race to the bottom?
Is it is it purely the StephenFry model?
I don't know wine, but I knowprice.
And so the cheapest price isthe one I want.
And is this what we're seeing?
Are we really going afterpeople who can't even want to

(24:17):
pay a minimal price?

Well, at the end of the day, you get a better
product than you do withSpotify, which is free.
So the there's a there's athing there.
But I think, you know, at theend of the day, what we're
seeing in lots of podcasthosting companies is that there
are plenty of upsells there.
There are upsells with Baspera,our sponsor, if you want to

(24:39):
gain access to some of the magicAI stuff that they have, their
co-host AI.
There's upsells if you want themagic mastering, which we use
to get rid of quite a lot of theums and the errors.
That is a pretty standard wayof most podcast hosts working
these these days.
So I don't necessarily see thebeing a particular issue, given

(25:01):
that we've got the biggestpodcast hosting company, uh
Spotify, which is you know stillgiving all of their stuff away
for free, and there are plentyof others available out there.
I think this is one of thebetter free hosting services,
but I guess to an extent I wouldsay that, wouldn't I?
But I think certainly it's notnecessarily a race to the

(25:22):
bottom.
I think that there've been freepodcast hosting services for
quite some time.

Sam Sethi (25:27):
Now the third bus coming along is in Australia,
and this one is Pod 2.
They've launched what I calledlast week Haas, which I still
think is a better name, hostingas a service, but they want to
call it infrastructure as aservice.
You caught up with RussellHarrower.
What's Pod 2 up to?

Well, they've launched the Pod 2 Cloud, and
it's a cloud platform builtspecifically for media, offering
global storage anddistribution.
I chatted with him during anormal Australian working day to
find out more.

Russell Harrower (26:01):
My name's Russell Harrowwer, and I'm the
CEO and founder of Pod 2.
We do podcast hosting, and justthis week we've launched Pod 2
Cloud, which is ourinfrastructure as a service
product.

So infrastructure as a service, I
think Sam last week called ithosting as a service, which was
kind of nearly right.
What is it in a nutshell?
What would your elevator pitchbe?
Or since we're both inAustralia, what would your lift
pitch be?

Sure.
So we know the struggles thathosting providers and media
developers have with CDN costs,storage costs, and we believe
that Pod 2 is in a uniqueposition where we've got our
costs pretty low, and we canhelp media developers access the

(26:46):
storage CDNs with an easyone-click solution, which as
someone who's used Google, youhave to go and search for all
these add-ons.
Simple.

Yeah, and you try setting something up on
Amazon AWS, and my goodness, ithurts your head.
So you've you've you've fixed alot of that.
So you are ki kind of, I guess,sort of an equivalent of of
Amazon S3, you know, the storagestuff plus a cloud network plus
a CDN on top.
Is that about right?

Or yeah, so uh at the core, as I've always
said to my mentors, I said Pod2is just a fancy storage bucket
and CDM provider.
You can s shove whatever youwant on top of it and it will
work.
So we have developed our own S3compatible storage engine to
actually allow creators to justuse the AWS S3 SDK out of the

(27:44):
box.
And one of the unique thingsabout us, which I don't know if
it's on the market anywhereelse, but we also offer
analytics.
So if they use metadata thatthey can send when they upload a
file, like episode ID, creatorID, etc., then they can actually
use them in queries with ourpod 2 SDK and actually get

(28:06):
analytic data back, as inconsumption data, which apps
downloaded it, how many botsdownloaded it, um, and and all
that kind of stuff.

Very nice.
Are you using some of the opendata in terms of in terms of the
OPORG stuff for that?

Yeah, we definitely use as much open
source technology as possible,but then there's also data that
we collect.
We've been doing podcasting nowsince 2023 as pod two, and it
allows us to collect a lot ofuser agents that a bit spammy.
We have a database of of bad IPaddresses, just like any
company would.

(28:42):
And we we always check and washas much data as as we can.
Of course, it's the differencebetween pod two and pod two
cloud is we don't wash out thepod 2 cloud's data unless our
clients ask us to.
So that's an opt-in feature.
Where if you're just a indiecreator using pod two, then
clearly we look after that sideof it.

Cool.
And so pod two cloud, I'mguessing that the advantage for
people is that is the pricing uhI'm guessing it's much cheaper
or something, or what what whywhy would you use pod two apart
from it being simpler?
Why would you use it for yeah?

Yeah, so for for us, we try to keep it not
cheap, like we're not trying tobe be like your two dollar
store.
We are trying to be a littlebit cheaper than Google, at
least 10%.
And for people who aredevelopers who are doing 500
terabytes of CDN data, thenclearly we'll do a custom price

(29:44):
for them because we want to lookafter them, they're doing a
huge amount of data, and if wecan support them on their
journey, then of course we will.
So if you are a media developeror a wanna be podcast hosting
provider, then reach out because

And you say we, how many people are at uh pod
two?
I know very little about thecompany actually, and I'm just
sort of wondering how many howmany people you have working
there.

Sure.
So I have me, um, which is we,and we have four cats, so and a
lovely partner.
So we are looking at hiring inthe in the New Year, but where
we I I speak in we terms becauseit's just what you get trained
immediately, you just gotta useit.

No, well, exactly, exactly.
So but but what happens?
I'm I'm assuming you have uhsuch things as buses in Perth,
although they're nowhere near ascheap as they are in Brisbane.
But what but but what happensif you if you walk under a bus
tomorrow?

Okay, well we have safety measures in place
for that.
We have people in my networkthat I that had that can easily
get access to all the all theservers and data and all that
kind of stuff.
Nothing's gonna happen to me.
But you know, this this is thejoys of being self-funded as
well, because we we don't haveVC capital money, and if I did

(31:06):
have VC capital money, thenclearly there would be a team of
people.

It's one of the But you've got but you've got
this pl the the plans there incase in case anything happens,
which is always useful.

We've got everything written down,
documented, very welldocumented, and and there's a a
what to do just in casesomething does happen to me.
And and I think every companyneeds it.
Like we've just had in theindustry Todd sadly passing
away.
And that was a wake-up call, Ithink, for everyone in this

(31:38):
industry.
If you own a hosting provider,or if you own anything that
hosts other people's data, youneed to be able to make sure
that it continues when you'renot here.
And and I think that's that'sthe beautiful thing about
PolyToCloud is at the momentwhen you have let's say you're
an indie creator and you host onone of the let's just say pod

(31:59):
two, and let's say pod twodisappears and your RSS feed is
broken, there hasn't really beena way to get your data back.
By using Politia Cloud, ifthere's a hosting provider that
uses our API, we can justautomatically just redirect it
to their account.
So we don't actually have torely on an active RSS feed to

(32:21):
get your content back.
Which I don't think AWS does.
So do you have any customers asyet?
We've got our foundationpartner, which is Sam from
TwoFans.
He's a great guy.
Um go that far.
He's been talking about hostinghim and I was I was like, look,
if if I'm happy to help you ifyou want to.
And and I didn't fight thefirst time he he asked me, but I

(32:46):
was like, okay, well, I justfinished an accelerator program
here in Perth called the PlusAny Accelerator Program.
And during that, it was like,okay, well, what outside of your
business can you actually do?
And I was like, well, we dostorage and CDMs really well.
And I was like, okay, we'lloffer that as a service to other
people.
So that's that's kind of amicro pivot.

(33:07):
To me, it's just doing what wedo really well.
I'm glad that Sam is enteringhosting.
We've got Fountain FM who'sentering who's who has started
their hosting journey.
So I think a lot of the wholecasting 2.0 players I see in the
future that will have a lotmore hosting providers.

Yeah, no, I think so.
I think so as well.
And Sam has been talking aboutdropping an awful lot of hints
about the fact that he will havebetter statistics than pretty
well anybody else in terms of interms of audio downloads and
audio plays.
Is he leveraging yourtechnology for that, or has he
built something clever on top ofyour tools?

So he's definitely leveraging our
technology, but the technologyis something that that is Pod2's
done since mid-2024.
We tested it and made sure itwill work.
And that's the the joys of ofbasically being a developer and
and understanding how theinternet works and the other

(34:09):
packets get sent everywhere.
And if you know, it's it's justa bit of fun.
And when I found out, oh look,I can do this, I thought, well,
this is basically what Spotifyoffers, but now we can do it for
every single player.

Really interesting to uh see.
I think I have lost count ofthe amount of times that people
have recently been saying AmazonAWS is just way too
overcomplicated for you knowsimple things that people want
to end up doing, host media,host a website, all of that kind
of uh stuff.
So yeah, so there's definitelya market need here.

(34:44):
So I wish you all the best.
Russell, it's been it's beengreat to have a chat.

Thank you very much, James.

Sam Sethi (34:49):
Okay, there's Russell Harrowett.
Yes, pod two cloud.
Now, Russell and I probablyspeak every day, actually,
James, is it's quite weird,really.
We started speaking about twoyears ago, and every day on my
dog walk, because it works outabout eight o'clock in the
morning, nine o'clock in themorning, I have a good old chat
with him.
And we we have collaborated inthe past on things like the pod

(35:12):
fund, which sadly didn't goanywhere, premium RSS, which we
hope will go somewhere, andwe've now started collaborating
on this service.
I had a need, an itch, ascratch.
I was frustrated with the speedor lack of speed of adoption of
podcasting 2.0 features andfunctions that I needed for true
fans.
And Russell and I spoke, andthe result I think is much of

(35:36):
what we're seeing today fromRussell.
Again, like Dan Meisner, I'vebanged the drum about something
called listen time percentcompleted rather than downloads,
which I think, as Dan Meisnernicely says, a download is not a
play.
So, yes, in TrueFans, weimplemented those in the app
about two, three years ago usingactivity streams.

(35:59):
So, yes, Russell's workedreally hard on all of this, and
you know, what I do think isreally cool about what Russell's
done is he's created all theAPIs, the the CDN, the data
storage, the hostinginfrastructure, and created a
set of APIs that apps likeTrueFans can then extract the

(36:20):
data, and then that data can bemanipulated by us into a UI and
a UX experience, which is whatwe've done.
No, it's a great little featureand function.
But the key part is it's allabout streaming data, it's not
about downloading the file andthen playing it back, and I

(36:41):
think that's going to be theUSP.
So the data is streamed insix-second packets, it's not
using HLS, but it's using a formof HLS, it's using the same
methodology that HLS uses.
And for video it will be HLS,but for audio it's not.
But what that allows us to dois to know exactly across all

(37:03):
the apps how long you'velistened to the episode, and
then we can display back in thecreator's dashboard the amount
of storage streamed, we can showyou the cost of that, so you
can work out how much thatepisode actually costs you based
on the number of plays, basedon the number of apps that have
actually used it.
And yeah, so we can give you atotal listen time, and later

(37:27):
this week we'll break that intoa listen time metric per app and
a number of plays per app aswell.

So you say number of plays, I mean it's
number of downloads, isn't it,really?

Sam Sethi (37:36):
Well, we've had yeah, okay, you you you are going to
stay pedantic on that one.
I I would say it's the minuteyou press play.
So it's not a passive download,though, so it's not like the
other hosts who we can go andlook at the download numbers,
and I can tell you that halfthose downloads might not be
played by those hosts whodelivered that that episode.

(38:00):
But we know every one of thoseusers has actually physically
actively clicked play.

Apple Podcasts or and Spotify and all of those
services?

Sam Sethi (38:08):
Exactly, yeah, exactly, with those as well.

So how how do you how do you do that?
Because I mean it's it's a it'sa download of a of a file.

Sam Sethi (38:17):
It's a six-second packet that's been initiated.
Yes, it's a download.

No, not not if it's not not if it's downloading
to my phone overnight, it'snot.

Sam Sethi (38:26):
But we don't download it to your phone overnight.

But Apple Podcasts downloads shows to my
phone overnight.
So so how are you gonna knowwhen I press play for a
downloaded show like that?

Sam Sethi (38:38):
Because w wh why is Apple downloading it to your
phone overnight?
Because I've asked it to.

Okay.
You you you um when you followa show, it downloads the latest
three episodes for you anddownloads every new episode when
it when it sees that coming outand when it knows that it is in
a good state to download that.
So if it's connected ontopower, if it's connected onto
Wi-Fi, that's when it w willdownload the audio files for

(39:11):
you.

Sam Sethi (39:11):
Yes, so it's gonna request of us the latest three
episodes, is what you're saying.

Yeah, so it'll request the full the full audio,
won't it?

Sam Sethi (39:21):
I'm not sure.
I I need to come back to you onthat one.
I I genuinely don't know.
The way that we've designed itis that we basically do not want
to download.
That's not what we want to do.
I'll come back to you on thatgenuinely.
I don't know.

Yeah, cuz the because the thing is, you you so
there's nothing new necessarilyin what you're talking about
here.
Omni Studio launched somethingback in 2018, which they did two
things.
They used they used partialcontent, so I think it's the 206
code.
Yeah.
They used that, but they alsomanaged to make their podcast

(39:58):
audio servers capped at 128kilobits a second, which I
thought was a really cleveridea.
So uh so if you were to pressthe play button on a podcast
show, then regardless of howfast that person's internet was,
it would never go faster thanthe actual audio was.
So you could you you could seeevery second.

Sam Sethi (40:20):
Which is what we're doing.

Now now obviously, obviously, you don't
know uh if if somebody isdownloading a show, well it'll
it'll just take a long time.
Um but you don't know ifsomebody is downloading a show
on Apple Podcasts or on or onSpotify where you can do that,
or on Pocket Casts, or onOvercast, you don't you you you
don't get play information fromthat, or rather you do, but

(40:43):
it'll just look as if it as ifit was played in the middle of
the night and it'll go all theway through.
Um but what you will but whatyou will see is you will see the
play information of shows whichare being in averted commas
streams, which is the phrasethat people use, even though
it's not it's not actuallystreaming.
And actually from that youshould be able to, you know, I

(41:06):
mean it's relatively easy to go,okay, that was a download or
that was a streamed play ifyou're making sure that you
can't download faster than youknow X, you know, X percent or
whatever, because then you canactually see people sticking
with it and and and you know,and and and actually playing
that and you can see wherepeople dropped off.

(41:27):
So you you know, I'm I'm I'malways I'm sort of slightly
nervous about anything that thatsays we've come up with this
great idea, but we're not goingto document it.
We we've got no documentationhere.

Sam Sethi (41:40):
Well, we we are.
I mean, I mean, look, let'slet's be clear.
I mean, we we we're basicallytrying to change the way that
the industry works, and it I'mnot saying what we've done is
yeah you uniquely new, but Ithink what we've found is a
method, and as you said, OmniStudio did it before, and you
told me about that in the past.

(42:01):
I mean, I think when you lookat HLS, the way HLS works
basically takes a streamingpacket from what's the server,
and then when the person says,Okay, I've stopped streaming,
you get that message back to theserver, which is what we're
fundamentally doing as well.
So I need to talk.

(42:21):
Russell and I will probablyhave a long chat about this
straight after this show.

But sorry.

Sam Sethi (42:27):
No, but but but at the moment, the data that we are
seeing as an example is we arewe are seeing the number of
plays that we believe, and we'reseeing the number of apps that
have requested it.
We know the amount of data thatwe've sent to those apps.
Apple may be the the outlierthat we have to work out how we
can do it.
I don't know.

Well, uh yeah, I mean, any any automated
download will will be somethingthat you need to work on.
But I think uh being able to,if you can spot the automated
download versus theuser-initiated play or the
user-initiated download, which Ithink is the phrase, if you can
spot the differences in betweenthose two on any platform,
because you know, AntennaPodwill do that, Pocket Cast will

(43:10):
do that, Podcast Addict will dothat, so on and so forth.
But but you should be able tospot which differences are.
So you could actually give youruser this is how this is the
percentage of your of yourlisteners who are automatically
downloading your show.
This is the percentage of yourlisteners who are not.
That's actually a really usefulthing because you can get from

(43:33):
that the subscription numbers,which you normal normally can't
get a full uh a full number fromyou know, people like Overcast,
which is a bad example becauseyou can, or people like you
know, Pocket Cast, you can't,for example.
So that would be actually quitea quite a handy thing.
But more data is always a goodthing, of course.
Dan Meisner has a lot of datain terms of actual playstats

(43:56):
from the individual apps fromApple, Spotify, YouTube, and uh
others.
And I believe that we have Danon this very show at some point
uh in the next oh there you go.
Next one.

Sam Sethi (44:11):
He is a very busy man, and then very funnily he
said to me, I'll I'll come onand we'll do the interview on
the Twitter for the week.
Great, okay, no problem.
And then he was waiting on acall this Tuesday.
I said, Dan, you're a weekearly, mate.
He said, Oh, yes, yes, I am.
Yes, sorry.

Yes, well, he will be he'll be doing that with
his radio voice.
Yes.

Sam Sethi (44:32):
Uh from sunny Canada.
Is that where he is?
Sunny Canada?

No, uh he's in uh oh yes, Sunny Canada in
Vancouver.
Yes, I was just thinking, SunnyCanada, there's no such thing.

Sam Sethi (44:43):
An expression that's never been used before.

Of course it has because it gets blisteringly
hot in the summer.
My goodness, Montreal in thesummer is quite a thing, and
Montreal in the winter is quitea thing, and there's about uh
there's about two weeks whereit's actually nice to live
there.
Anyway, let's move on.

Sam Sethi (45:01):
Now, James, okay, apart from apart from thanks for
giving me a load of problems.
Sorry.
No, it's fine.
And look, you know, this isthis is the learning curve.
But one podcast host thatyou've talked about in Pod News
Daily is called Soundwise.
And um, there's a slightrecommendation of do not use

(45:22):
them.
Go on, what have they done?

Yes, don't use Soundwise.
If you're thinking abouthosting your podcast with
Soundwise, that would be afoolish thing.
Also, by the way, Podcast AI.
Don't host your podcast withPodcast AI.
That's an officialrecommendation from me.
I should point out that's justmy own opinion.
And I was very careful insaying uh that it was an
opinion.
Uh, but yes, the reason why youshouldn't host with those two

(45:44):
podcast hosts is that they areHotel California in disguise.
You can check in anytime youlike, but you can never leave.
There's no redirects out ofthere.
So if you get yourself apodcast on there and then you
decide that actually Soundwiseis rubbish or podcast AI is
rubbish and you wish to move toa good podcast host, could I
recommend Buzzsprout?

(46:05):
Then that's uh absolutely fine,but you won't be able to take
any of your audience with you.
So that is a bad thing.
So both Soundwise and PodcastAI get the finger wiggle of
don't do that.
Can we have the British Tut?
Yes.
Yes, that's what you get.

(46:26):
Uh yes, very bad.
Whereas if you sign up with oursponsor, BuzzSprout, for
example, then there is abeautiful help page, as there is
for everything that Buzzproutdoes.
A beautiful help page all abouthow to do redirects and stuff.
And it couldn't it couldn't beeasier and simpler to do that.
Just go to the go to the help,type in redirect, and it gets

(46:50):
you all kinds of informationabout uh how you can do that.
And I can confirm that it worksbeautifully.

Sam Sethi (46:55):
Excellent.
There we go.
Uh-oh.
Well, no, I had to move oneshow, one of our shows, and and
obviously test with it everyhosting platform out there to
see the redirect does or doesn'twork.
It worked beautifully.
Now, Apple, it's the end of theyear, clearly.
They've been releasing a set ofrankings for the most popular

(47:16):
shows in each country.
Anything that we should beaware of.

Yes, you know what's going to happen soon.
Spotify wrapped, that's what'sgoing to happen soon, and
everybody will be very excitedby that.
But this is Apple uh notreleasing any of that nonsense,
but instead releasing theirglobal rankings for shows in
each country.
Now, I worked out, I comparedTriton's ranker data with
Apple's top shows rankers, and Ithink that Apple's top shows

(47:44):
are total plays, which wouldkind of make sense, wouldn't
they?
Rather than total audience ortime spent or anything like
that.
Now, you will have seen all ofthe coverage has been Joe Rogan
is number one, and Joe Rogan hasbeaten the daily, and that is
all that anybody has printed.
It turns out that there are 70different countries, and I

(48:05):
worked out a way of scrapingthem from the Apple Podcast's
website and publishing them.
So I've got a full list thatyou can go and see on the Pod
News website.
Joe Rogan also appears in thetop tens for Australia, Canada,
New Zealand, and South Africa,by the way.
So there's a thing.
And Goal Hanger, though, Ithink is this story really.
They have done tremendouslywell.

(48:27):
So in the UK, the rest ispolitics, is number one.
There are four goal hangershows in the top ten, two more
in the new show ranker,including the rest is classified
at number one.
And if you look in total acrossall 70 countries, then goal
hanger shows appear 19 times inthe full lists.
So they have done tremendouslywell.

(48:48):
Good hang with Amy Polar is themost cited show.
Although I would point out thatsome of the charts are shared
between countries, so you won'tnecessarily get all of that.
But uh, yeah, some reallyfascinating data in there.
It's well worth a dig intounderstanding really popular
shows in each country and whatthose shows are all about and

(49:11):
everything else.

Sam Sethi (49:13):
Now, one thing that stood out to me is they are
comparing basically those topshows by measuring total plays.
Yeah.
So this is clearly Apple'sfirst party data that they have
locally, rather than bylisteners or time spent.
But what is a play on Apple,James?
Is it click stop, and that's aplay?

I have a feeling that yes, a play is somebody
pressing the button to play ashow.
I think it's one play perepisode, is the way that they do
it, because otherwise it'sreally easy to game.
So it's one play per person perepisode.
So I believe that that's howthey end up doing it.

(49:52):
But I think plays make sense interms of I mean, you know, the
daily is only 15 minutes long,Joe Rogan is two and a half
hours long.
I if this is a list of topshows, it's not the longest
show, it's not the show that cango on for the longest amount of
time.
So I think from that point ofview, probably plays is the
right move.

(50:12):
You could do audience instead,which would be easy enough for
Apple to work out, but I thinkplays is probably a little bit
uh a little bit better.
But you know, what w what doyou think they should be
measuring there?

Sam Sethi (50:24):
Well, no, I mean look, I I think in the way that
you just described, if they weregoing to measure it by the time
spent, you're right.
That's it's not about the bestshow that's listened to longest,
it's the show that's played themost.
I think the play should havesome sort of metric, so because
Apple, like Spotify, have anauto-trip over into the next
show, and so some of those playswill be spurious numbers.

(50:48):
And yeah, uh again, withlisteners, again, you don't have
to log in, do you?
I I'm not 100% sure with Applethese days.

Well, I I you don't have to log in, but they
aren't counted.
Right.
So, yeah, so the way that we,you know, certainly digging into
the Apple stats as I did, youknow, quite some time ago.
Apple, I mean, for a start,they're responsible for about
40% of all podcast downloads onaverage.
So they're they're big, right?
They are pretty large in termsof that.

(51:19):
A play is literally a tap ofthe play button.
Now, there was a time when itwas any tap of the play button,
including pausing and unpausingan episode.
Um stop slows and if you wereyeah, but particularly if you
were driving, then it pausesevery time it tells you to turn

(51:39):
left in 200 yards or 200 meters,depending on where you live.
And so, of course, that wouldhave counted as well.
I I I would I would hope strokeimagined that they have fixed
it.
Um but but yeah, but you willsee.
I mean, so for example, the PodNews Daily podcast, for
example, we actually see quite alot of plays in comparison to

(52:02):
audience.
So there's a big uh there's abig article on the Pod News
website all about how podcaststats work, and there's a
screenshot of one of our of oneof our shows with 32 listeners
but 232 plays.
How does that work?
And that was something to dowith plays being, you know, any

(52:24):
tap of the play button.
I think they're a little bitcleverer than that now.
But even so, uh I was able topretty well crosstab uh the uh
the chart information that youcould see in Apple with the
rankers in the Triton, you know,ranker where you could sort by
total downloads.
So you could see that they werein the same order.

(52:45):
Of course, Triton doesn'tinclude everybody, and so it's
not gonna be perfect, but i youcould see that they were in the
right kind of order if you justlooked at at you know a download
stroke play.

Sam Sethi (52:55):
Indicatively, the the type of rankings will be
correct.
I mean, yeah, you might haveone that should have been at
number five, but that was numberseven, but you're not gonna get
some strange anomaly.
You know, Pod News WeeklyReview isn't suddenly gonna
appear number one in America byby chance.

What are you saying?

Sam Sethi (53:13):
Well, massive in India, but not not quite yet
there in America.
Yes, indeed.
Got a lot of cousins in India.
Yes, indeed.

Now, let's take a break.

Announcer (53:25):
Hey, you with the ears.
If you are enjoying this show,you should also be enjoying the
Pod News Daily Podcast.
It's five minutes long everyday with your daily update for
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It's like the email newsletter,but ideal for you if you can't
be bothered reading that or youcan't read at all.
No judgment.
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Artificial intelligence, don'tmake me laugh.

(53:48):
Anyway, you can find the PodNews Daily Podcast at
podnews.net slash listen.
Now back to these two guys.
The Pod News Weekly Review withBuzzSt.
With BuzzSprout.
Start podcasting, keeppodcasting.

Sam Sethi (54:04):
There is a report out that says there's a lack of
diversity in podcasting.
Now, I think that's the mostbleeding, obvious thing that's
been said.
But this report has gone alittle bit deeper.
What's it said?

Yeah.
I mean, they used the wordwoeful in here at one point.
Oh, nice use of the word, yes.
And I mean, it is a it's quitean emotional report, and
potentially it shouldn'tnecessarily be, but you can have
a look at the numbers, and thenumbers don't lie.
It's really, it is not a goodstory in terms of diversity, all

(54:41):
forms of diversity.
So if you're looking at maleversus female, for example, if
you look at they looked at thenot just the top 100 podcasts,
but they also looked at uhnearly 600 different shows, and
they found that basically athird of all podcast hosts were
female, 33.2%.

(55:01):
So men outnumbering women twoto one.
That means that podcasting isworse in terms of gender
diversity than movies, than TVshows, than music artists.
So podcasts does particularlybad there.
It gets even worse when youstart looking into individual

(55:22):
genres.
So if you're a business andtech show like this is, then
males 92% are boys, 7.7% aregirls.
It's not a great story all theway down.
In fact, the only categorywhere women outnumber the men,
they only do just 53 to 47%, andthat is true crime, which is

(55:46):
90% white, and also uh obviouslytrue crime, uh, most of those
stories are about men doingdreadful things to women.
So it's it's not great, and itgoes on and on and on.
Now, what I would like to seeout of all of this is I would
like to see a bit ofunderstanding of what the

(56:07):
industry is like as well.
So in the UK, for example,Ofcom, which is the media
regulator, Ofcom does a verygood job, but you know, they
have the regulatory stick behindthem saying every year, Mr.
Broadcaster, you have to fillin this form, which tells us how
diverse your employees are, andwhere they are on your, you

(56:30):
know, on your list, you know,how many people of colour do you
have in your boardroom, youknow, how many LGBTQ people do
you have, etc.
etc.
Just so that Ofcom know interms of the industry how
diverse the industry is.
And we don't have any data,zero data in terms of how

(56:51):
diverse the podcast industry is.
And that is important forevents, it's important for news
coverage, it's important for allkinds of things.
But at the moment, I can't turnaround and say the pod news
skews more male than female interms of the industry because I
don't know what the industry is.
And so right now it's a it's areally difficult thing, but it

(57:14):
is an eye-opening report.
And you go through all of this,it gets even worse, by the way,
if you're on video.
You're more likely to be maleif you do a video a video
podcast for pretty obviousreasons.
And so all the way throughthis, it's it's not a great
story.
Sam, what do you think of itall?
Well, thank God you've got me,eh, James.
You know.

(57:36):
Balances it up, you know.
Yes, there we are.
There we are.
Yes.
I've got I've got a mid-brownposh man.
Brilliant.
That's what we mean.

Sam Sethi (57:48):
I think I think there is a lack of diversity, but
look, I I have mixed feelings onthis one.
One is is there a real barrierto entry?
As in monetary barrier, maybefor some people, but is there a
real barrier to entry to get amicrophone and to get online?
We talked about rss.com andSpotify doing free hosting.

(58:09):
I do think there is an element,you know, I my wife used to run
MSN UK and we used to jokeabout how men would go for jobs
when they're underqualified andwomen would wait till they're
overqualified.
Why that is, I have no idea.
You know, is it testosterone?
Does that lead us to danger?
Do we think we know more thanwe we actually know, but we're

(58:30):
not worried about, you know,getting behind a mic and saying
it?
I don't know.
I can't see that there's anyreal barrier other than you
know, people feel they don'twant to get on mic and be
publicly judged by others.

I I think that's definitely some of it.
I I I would point to radio, andradio is also a very male, a
very male industry, and I thinkquite a lot of it is playing
around with tech, playing aroundwith techie things, which
podcasting still is, issomething that does lead to men

(59:08):
doing it more than women, and Ithink that there is that, and I
think easy, straightforward uhtools like Buzzsprout, our
sponsor, but also like Riversideand others, that make it easier
for everyone to be involved isimportant.
So I think that that's sort ofone side of it, and I do think

(59:29):
it it interesting that thisreport compares podcasting to
movies, TV, or music, butdoesn't compare it to radio.
My my suspicion is that radiois actually even worse in
inverted commas than podcastingis in terms of this.
There are so many middle agedwhite men on radio that, you

(59:51):
know, ten years ago there had tobe a real big push in the UK,
fifteen years ago, there's areal big push in the UK to
actually get more women on theair.
So, given that 50% of radiolisteners are women, and by the
way, about 50% of podcastlisteners are women as well.
So, you know, so I do thinkthat there's something there in

(01:00:12):
terms of that.
But and I also think you'reabsolutely right, events have
the same issue that you getwomen who don't put their hand
up and men who say, Oh, yeah,I'll go on stage and I'll talk.
And and I think that, you know,that's something that event
organizers have realized and arevery careful to uh push.

(01:00:34):
Every event that I haveorganized that has gone ahead as
I organized it has had a goodamount of women, although not
50%, because the industry isn't50% yet.
But when when the industry, youknow, when if you can at least
mirror where the industry is, Ithink that's a that's a better

(01:00:54):
start.
But right now, gosh, it's it'sit really doesn't look good.

Sam Sethi (01:00:58):
So two things you've said there, I just want to come
back on.
First one you talked about areport that Ofcom might produce.
Here's a stat that you mightnot know.
On the London Stock Exchange,there is not one single person
of colour that is a CEO.
Not one.
Wow, there you go.
And yet America has a plethoraof them, you know, from

(01:01:23):
Microsoft to IBM to Adobe.
I mean, the list YouTube,right?
So strangely, all the smartpeople of colour go to America
and not one smart person ofcolour is in the UK.
Or is there something elsethat's causing that issue?
Um, I won't go there, right?
Yeah, yeah.
And I think reporting it mightbe useful, but you know, my
wife's on numerous boards, andoften it's it's a token, it is

(01:01:47):
tokenization of it, you know.
Um and the boys with the toysstill talk about their cars and
going golfing, and they talkabout, you know, whatever what
toy they've got.
So I think you know, it mightbe a useful thing to identify
the problem, but I don't know ifit'll fix the problem because
it hasn't in other areas.
Uh, the other thing I'd Iwanted to say was I sent both my

(01:02:10):
girls to all girls' schools forthe very reason that you
described about putting yourhand up.
I realize that in a mixedclassroom, boys will put their
hand up and girls will retreatback in.
Not all, clearly, but but in anall-girl classroom, that
doesn't happen.
Equally, things like makeup andworrying about what you look

(01:02:30):
like.
You know, we were talking aboutvideo.
Again, the girls, my daughterswere less worried about what
they look like each day becauseafter the initial going to
school and the after initial 13,14, 15 of messing about with
makeup, they just got bored ofit all and then they got back to
schooling.
And I think, again, withpodcasting, I think you know, we

(01:02:51):
we spotlight a lot of womeninto this, you know, they they
get nasty comments in the videostreams that you know.
I mean, Jessica Tarloff, who'san amazing reporter from Fox,
she's a Democrat who's doing oneshow with Scott Galloway.
And she says, you know, thecomments that she gets, you
know, from sexualization to whatdo you look like today, nothing

(01:03:14):
to do with what she said.
It's all so I don't know ifwomen want to put themselves in
the firing line, whereas men Ithink maybe have a little bit
more whatever, don't get thatsort of commentary and also a
little bit more thick skinned.
I don't know the answers tothese questions, by the way, but
it is worth reading thatreport, I think.

James Cridland (01:03:32):
Yeah, I think it's definitely worth reading
that report and also worthreading the Ofcom report, if
only because my dog is furiousabout it, um, but only only
because they do a really goodjob in podcasting.
They do a really good job inbenchmarking the UK as a whole,
and then actually showing you,you know, where where

(01:03:55):
individuals in the mediaindustry land, and they've very
brightly separated seniormanagers with the whole UK
employees.
So you can see, for example,that uh 16% of the UK is uh what
they call minority ethnic, butonly 11% of senior managers in
the media.

(01:04:16):
Having said that, 26% havejoiners.
So you can see that there issomething going on there,
although 23% have leavers.
So maybe they don't feelparticularly uh welcome.
And so on it goes.
There's some really usefulinformation in terms of how it
how it all works, and from apoint of view of just sort of,

(01:04:37):
you know, seeing where thebenchmark is and is the media
industry hitting the benchmark,I I would love to see that in
podcasting as well.
And I was on this week, I wason the media roundtable podcast
with uh Oxford Road, and theytoo are very much talking about
that as well.
And you know, I I think it'sit's just something that it

(01:04:58):
would be great, wouldn't it, ifthe maybe the IAB could do,
maybe Sounds Profitable coulddo, to actually get some kind of
information here about how goodthe industry is itself going
before we then turn around andhave a look at the shows that
are there.
The other sort of side on this,I would say, is this was

(01:05:20):
looking at the top 100 shows andthe top 500 shows with data
from uh Spotify.
It could be that some of theshows that that, if I can use
the phrase minority ethnicpeople are listening to are uh
minority shows and that wouldn'tappear on that top 600.
That could be part of thereason for some of this data as

(01:05:44):
well.
But at the end of the day, I Idon't think anybody really knows
why.
And it would be lovely to atleast get more data uh as to
why.
This is a fantastic start, andit would be great to see maybe
if they did this data again nextyear, whether or not we
actually saw any change.
Now my dog's decided to get inon the act.

Sam Sethi (01:06:04):
The issue I think is with a certain president, is
that DEI took a backseat, andagain, going back to corporate
UK, because I know from mypartner wife's conversations,
has become a back seatconversation that used to be a
you know a requirement on theforefront in every boardroom, is

(01:06:25):
now become and the last item ishave we got enough people of
colour?
And I suspect that as much asyou and I, James, might be you
know concerned about this, I'mnot sure that a lot of people
are gonna be concerned.

Yeah, and I don't think necessarily that
it's entirely right to point atjust a politician in terms of
this.
I think I think that you knoweverybody that runs a business
has this to have a look at.
And yeah, I think it's animportant thing that we should
all take a peek at.

Sam Sethi (01:06:57):
Now, James, I'm gonna give you your favorite line,
the one video kill thepodcasting style.
No, that's not true.
There's a report out that audiois still king, James.
Why is audio still king?

Well, audio is still the number one way to
consume podcasts.
If you look at um time, if youlook at total consumption, then
in spite of all of the chatterabout video, that's one of the
findings from a Cumulus Mediaand Signal Hill Insights podcast
download report that waspublished earlier on in the
week.
But some really interestingdata in there.

(01:07:29):
I would say, firstly, this isput together not by a company
that makes video podcasts, it'sput together by a research
company and a radio broadcaster.
So just bear that in mind.
But some really helpful data interms of, for example, over
half of podcast consumers onYouTube also listen to the same

(01:07:51):
podcasts on another platform.
So I and I found myself doingthis just this this uh morning.
I was watching a little bit ofthe rest is entertainment, which
is a podcast that I enjoy fromthe UK from Goalhanger, and I
was watching that on YouTube andthen continued to listen to the
rest of it in the car on ApplePodcasts.

(01:08:12):
So I think, you know, that thatwill have ticked a box in terms
of YouTube for numbers, butactually the majority of my
consumption was in audio form.
The other thing that they cameup with, only 8% just watch
podcasts, and that number hasn'tchanged since 2022, which is
fascinating.
I mean it's bounced around alittle bit, but it's not

(01:08:32):
actually increased, is probablythe phrase that I should be
using there.
So that I think tells a lie tothe fact that podcasting is all
going video, because it reallyisn't.
Video is adding a new way forpeople to find podcasts, but at
the end of the day, it seemsthat at least audio is the
beneficiary, and that's probablya good thing.
Good.

(01:08:53):
So can we put video to bed now?
Can we?
I'm sure that that will not behappening.

Sam Sethi (01:09:00):
Okay.
Now, zooming over to your partof the world, James, let's have
a look around the world.
What's going on with Australia?
Something called an audio ID.
Do not understand this, so overto you, James.

Yes, well, I will explain it to you and
you'll be horrified.
So there are four big radiocompanies over here.
There's Nova, there's SCA,there's ARN, and there's Nine
Radio.
So those four big radiocompanies all have their own
apps.
They all have live streamingradio stations, and they all
have obviously podcasts on thoseapps as well.

(01:09:34):
And all four of those apps areall you you register, you you
sign up to use them.
Now, one of the problems isthat I might listen to Triple M,
but I might also listen toGold.
Triple M is owned by SCA, Goldis owned by ARN.
And wouldn't it be useful if I,as the broadcaster, knew, oh,

(01:09:56):
this is somebody that hasalready heard this ad once on
Triple M, but now they'relistening to Gold and we don't
want to play them the ad again.
So some way of identifying meto all of the radio
broadcasters.
That's what they've launched.
It's called CRA Audio ID.
I think it's a hash of theemail address.

(01:10:17):
I don't think it's anythingmore complicated than that.
But what it essentially meansis that if you book ads with
Google's DSP and you ask,please, could I have this ad to
go out four times for everylistener, please, and no more,
then now it'll work becausethose listeners are given the
same ID uh no matter who they'relistening to, whether it's uh a

(01:10:37):
a show on SCA or a show on uhARN.
So Big Big Brother is trulywell and truly here and making
sure uh making sure in a privacyin a privacy way, I suspect
that they would say, but atleast making sure that uh that
that uh they can cross-tab mylistening in between all of the
different uh r radio output.

Sam Sethi (01:10:59):
I guess you'll get two IDs if you go in your car
and you're in your house,because that's two devices.

That won't be No, you won't.
That that's the whole point.
You'll get one ID becauseyou've had to you've had to sign
in.
Oh so it's it's all to do withthe sign in and all to do with
the email.
Now, I I don't know enoughabout the standard to know
whether or not I, as Nine Radio,for example, could work out

(01:11:24):
from your ID who you are.
I'm presuming that you theymust be able to because they've
produced the ID in the firstplace.
They've produced the hash inthe first place.
But I don't know whether thehash allows you to go back
again, if you see what I mean,if if it's a two-way hash or a
one-way hash.
And that may be the maybe thething.
I don't know.

Sam Sethi (01:11:43):
Didn't Dave Jones uh try and promote something very
similar to this called UUID,universal unique IDs for
podcasting?

He did, but it was almost the opposite in that
it was for any specific episode.
So the UUID was different forevery podcast and every episode.
So it would essentially just uhmake sure that it was the same,
you know, if you pressed theplay button three times or you
downloaded a show twice, itwould only ever count as one

(01:12:13):
person because you could seethat UUID.
So I think my understanding ofthat was that yeah, you couldn't
use that to track users.
In this particular case, I Ithink you probably can, but I'm
not quite sure.
I mean, presumably there's allkinds of things when you log
into one of these services andit tells you what's uh what's uh
going on, but I don't use anyof them, so I wouldn't I

(01:12:37):
wouldn't know, but I'm I mean,uh as you can possibly tell, I'm
um not the biggest fan of thisas a plan.

Sam Sethi (01:12:46):
Now, zipping over to uh France, uh Le Monde has done
something.
What have they done?

Yes, they've chosen ACAST for podcast
monetization.
They have uh one big show andtwo very small ones.
The big show is Le du Monde,the hour of Le Monde, which is
12.5 million listens since thestart of the year.
Le Monde, of course, being thebig newspaper, kind of the
equivalent of the Times, Iguess, in France, certainly in

(01:13:12):
terms of Gravitas.
So, yes, there's a thing.
Many congratulations, ACAST,who, as we speak, are trading on
the Nasdaq for the first timein Stockholm.
So, congratulations to them fordoing that.

Sam Sethi (01:13:25):
Well, before you move on, I was gonna say I'm I'm
going to the ACAST party soon,and everyone's gonna be very,
very, very happy there becausewe're all very rich now.

Yes, oh yes, the ACAST Party will be the place
to be.
You're coming over?
No.
I'm not coming over.
I may, I mean, I'll come overif they pay.
No, I won't.
I I may have emailed somebodyat uh at ACAST and said, many
congratulations on on this.
P.S.
Here is our here is ouradvertising rate card if you
wish to support us.

(01:13:55):
I'm not sure that's gonna goanywhere, but still talking
about companies uh growinglarger.
Shall I move on or not?
Yes.
Talking about companies moving,talking about companies getting
larger.
Uh platform media has madethree strategic senior hires.
Of course, they are part of themighty Pod X Empire.
They now have a new head ofproduction, head of legal, and

(01:14:18):
head of people.
So congratulations to them.
And Sabrina Tavernisi isleaving the daily after a
three-year stint as co-host.
She's going to move to thenational desk at the newspaper
for a while.
My wife used to fall asleep tothe daily, and the last words
that I would hear from her everysingle night was either it's

(01:14:38):
Michael Barbaro, or it's it'sSabrina Tavernese.
So I won't be having any of thatanymore now.
She fall asleep to anotherpodcaster instead.
Right.
Uh, but there we are.

Announcer (01:14:51):
Podcast events on the Pod News Weekly Review.

Let's move on to awards and events.
And uh, congratulations inIreland.
The All Ireland Podcast Awardswere announced.
Nikki Byrne won the SpotlightAwards, the Irish Independent
running away with two awards.
There weren't that many awardsto be given away in that
particular one, but it's greatto see an awards uh ceremony
going on in Ireland, down toOuter Roa or New Zealand, and

(01:15:18):
the big New Zealand PodcastAwards has just happened there
as well.
Podcast of the Year, sponsoredby ACAST, was Kelly Talton's
Final Treasure Hunt, which is ashow from RNZ.
We heard from RNZ a couple ofweeks ago, and it's a show all
about the untimely death ofKelly Talton and a team made up

(01:15:41):
of friends, family, and marineenthusiasts to complete one of
his final expeditions.
You can go and listen to that,and all of the other winners for
both the New Zealand PodcastAwards and the All Ireland
Podcast Awards on the Pod Newsnewsletter.
Ivooks announced its finalistsfor the 2025 awards.
VAT event is on December the3rd, and SF Sketchfest, which is

(01:16:06):
a comedy festival in Januaryand is easy for me to say, has
announced some of the livepodcasts that will be taking
part in that event, includingStuff You Should Know.
And On Airfest in Brooklyn hasannounced the first wave of
their headline talent andprogramming for that big
flagship festival, which isapparently incredibly crowded
but well worth going to.

(01:16:26):
So that's in Brooklyn in lateFebruary, and uh much of
podcasting will be taking placein January at Podfest in
Orlando.
If you're a fan of uh Orlando,then firstly, why?
And secondly, uh, you should begoing to Podfest.
That's where the the PodcastingHall of Fame is going to be
announced and various otherthings as well.

(01:16:48):
So, which is uh always worthgoing to.

The tech stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review.

Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday
in the Pod News newsletter.
Here's where Sam talkstechnology.
Sam, what have you got?

Sam Sethi (01:17:01):
Well, this week is going to be James Talks
Technology, actually, when youfind out what's happening.
Here we go.
Yeah, oh yeah, oh yes.
But let's start off with uh DScript.
They've announced that you cannow create and save your own
templates in DScript, and theservice also supports more
language materials fortranslation and dubbing.
So, you know, the platform isstill growing.

(01:17:22):
One thing I did note, you know,we we announced a couple of
weeks back that Vimeo had beenbought by Bending Spoons.
Their new CEO, Phil Moyer, didan event on stage.
And there's an interesting demoyou can look up from that.
They've come up with a toolcalled Agenic Video.
And when I first looked atthat, I thought, oh, is this
just a gimmick?

(01:17:42):
But allegedly you can nowinterrogate the video using AI
to find elements within thevideo very quickly.
So again, it's uh searchingthrough video but using AI.
Again, it you know, given theamount of video that's been
produced, it might be aninteresting way to find the
tidbits of information you wantwithout having to go through a

(01:18:06):
transcript or having to do itthrough a manual method of just
watching.
Well, very nice.
Very nice.
Now, uh Nathan Gathright hascome up with an idea, James,
that I think you've also chimedin on uh as an alternative to
the timed link that Apple cameup with.
So the idea that Apple had wasthat in the transcript, if it

(01:18:27):
found a book reference or anevent reference, it would
highlight that and link to anApple-related site.
And Nathan has come up with asuggestion of how we might do
that with podcasting2.0.
Tell me more, because you gotinvolved in the thread.

And I think it's actually the other way around.
So when you're uh listening toa podcast, then you can link out
to various places using usingApple's timed links, assuming,
of course, that uh Apple allowyou to link out to that
particular place.
In this particular case, whatNathan Gathright was wondering
is for any web page in theworld, can we say, oh, and if

(01:19:08):
you're interested in listeningto a podcast about this, then
here's where to get the podcast.
So can we actuallyautomatically show using some
hidden data in that web pagewhere the podcast version of
this web page is?
So for example, if you were tolink to the Pod News Weekly
Reviews page for last week, isthere anything programmatically

(01:19:33):
on that webpage from Buzzbrowwhich actually tells a podcast
app, ah, this is a podcastepisode, you can get it here so
that it can then automaticallygrab that and uh show you a
player.
I think that's what he islooking for.
He was looking for somecomplicated bit of JSON and
everything else, and I've puthim into in touch with schema,

(01:19:58):
which is a pretty standard wayof adding additional information
that uh Google uses and thatvarious other people are using.
Spotify used to use this intheir podcast pages, they don't
anymore.
I think iHeart still do.
Pod News certainly does, it'sall over the Pod News website,
and it's called JSON LD, whichis very tedious and dull.
But potentially that gives theinformation that a podcast app

(01:20:21):
would need to basically go, oh,I understand that this is a
podcast, a podcast episode, Iwill go and get that.
In this particular case, theinformation that I'm putting in
is significantly more.
But uh yeah, so I'm not quitesure where that's gonna go, but
I think you know, hopefully thatwill give the alternative for
you to basically understand,okay, this webpage has a podcast

(01:20:44):
attached to it, and now I knowhow to get how to get hold of
that.
Good.

Sam Sethi (01:20:48):
Okay, we'll see if that goes anywhere.
Now, as I said, this is JamesCridlin's tech corner.
Clearly, you're not flyinganywhere.
So let's start off with you putout a little bit of code called
basically a way to add captionsto audio players using the VTT
format.
What did you do?

Yeah, so there is if you have a VTT transcript
on for your uh podcast episode,it'd be quite nice, wouldn't it,
if that actually showed up asyou press the play button.
I'm surprised how few podcasthosting companies have done that
yet.
But on my own personal blog, Ihave done that, and I've
published the code in terms ofhow I've done that.
Of course, Safari does itslightly differently to

(01:21:27):
everybody else.
But this is the reason why I'vebeen talking about using VCT
for transcripts, because they'remuch more helpful in terms of
that than any of thealternatives, because VCT is
understood by every browser,Chrome, Safari, and Firefox.
So if you want to see that,that's on my blog,
james.critton.net slash blog.
And it's an HTML audio playercode with captions and

(01:21:51):
everything else.
And the change that I made toit this week is to allow more
than one player per page,because I suddenly realized that
that would be useful too.
So that's that done.

Sam Sethi (01:22:01):
Now, you had a little discussion about what Adam and
Dave were doing on thepodcasting 2.0.

I mean, I think I may have used the phrase
idiots a lot, but uh yes,because they uh because they
they decided that they wouldpublish a getAlbi address for
everybody to use instead oftheir own.
And if there's one thing thatTodd Cochran taught us, it's get
your own.com.
So you can if you want to bepaid through Lightning, then
yes, absolutely, a getAlbi.comaddress will work perfectly, but

(01:22:30):
you're probably best using yourown.com so that at some point
you can change it.
I'm calling it an LN addressproxy, it's not really that at
all, but it's a really simple,straightforward way of uh of of
essentially setting that.
And again, that is posted on myblog as well.
It's a simple piece of PHPcode, but you can actually do it
statically as well if you don'tcare too much.

(01:22:51):
So that's hidden away in inthere as well.
It just means that you know, ifyou if you want to pay me using
Lightning, then you can pay meat james at podnews.net.
That will always work.
I don't know whether James atgetalby.com, which by the way
isn't my Alby address, will worknow.
I don't know whether it'll workin the future, even if it does

(01:23:13):
work now.
I've got no control over that,but I do have control over my
james at podnews.net address.
And so therefore, that's theone that is in this feed now,
and that's the one that is inthe podnews daily feed, because
that's how I want people to endup paying me.
So there's a good thing.
Nice.

Sam Sethi (01:23:30):
And finally, for some reason, but I'll ask why, uh,
you've switched over from usingthe podcast index to the Apple
Podcast Directory.

Why?
What?
How?
For one thing.
For one thing.
For one thing, okay.
Um and that is to so pod newshas a whole section which is uh
podcast pages.
And the reason why I did thatoriginally is that I wanted some
data about podcasts, and I alsowanted somewhere to link to,
because actually linking to apodcast is really hard for some

(01:24:01):
shows.
So I thought that would be theeasy and straightforward way to
link to a podcast would be tojust to have a simple podcast
page.
Now, the way that it used towork is it would look at the
podcast index, use that as thesource of truth in terms of
where the RSS feed was and whatits name was and everything
else.

(01:24:21):
Now it is still using thepodcast index as the source of
truth, but it's also using ApplePodcasts just to find out the
most up-to-date RSS feed.
And I think there'll be a talkon the podcasting 2.0 show this
week on the board meeting interms of that.

(01:24:42):
I kind of think that the ApplePodcasts directory for all of
the good and the bad that it is,is probably the right place to
go for the very latest RSS feedfor a podcast.
And I've seen a lot of showswhere the podcast index is out
of date and the Apple Podcastsdirectory is the one that's in

(01:25:07):
date, the one that has thelatest RSS feed.
And that's because we're alladmins of our own show on Apple
Podcasts, right?
So we we can change that.
We know that that's gonnachange about 40% of our
downloads.
If we change it there, it'llprobably trickle through to
everywhere else.
The one place where it's nottrickling through right now is
into the podcast index.
And I thought that that wasonly going to be a problem for a

(01:25:29):
couple of shows.
It turns out that that's aproblem for quite a lot of
shows.
And so I think there's probablya conversation that needs to be
had around whether or not youtreat Apple Podcasts as the
source of truth in terms ofwhere the where the RSS feed is,
or whether or not you stilltreat podcast index as the
source of truth.

(01:25:50):
So what I'm not saying is if itgoes away from Apple Podcasts,
get rid of it from podcastindex.
Absolutely not.
What I am saying is if it'sdifferent in in Apple Podcasts
than it is in podcast index, weshould probably overwrite the
podcast index, RSS URL, with theApple URL, if you see what I
mean.

Sam Sethi (01:26:08):
That sounds like a lot of work for somebody.
AKA Dave Jones.

Yeah, I don't think it is actually.
I think it's a I think it couldbe done relatively easily.
I mean, it could be done in anautomated fashion just by having
something that chunks throughone Apple Podcast show every 60
seconds and just goes chunk,chunk, chunk, chunk, chunk all
the way through.
And once it gets to the end,starts all the way from the
beginning again.
I think that that's one youknow simple piece of code.

(01:26:34):
I think that the harder bit iswriting some form of
programmatic way for me tobasically say change this RSS
feed to this.
So that I think is just an APIthat needs writing and that the
you know and and it needs thethe auth around it to make sure
that only a few trusted peoplecan end up doing that.

(01:26:57):
But I think if if you'vebasically got something that
just sits there and whirlsaround and takes a look at the
next Apple Podcast feed and justchecks that it's up to date,
not not necessarily autoauto-insert it, but just checks
that it's up to date.
I think that that would be auseful thing, and I don't think
that should be too much work.
I know that Dave has beenthinking about other ways of

(01:27:19):
doing that, and I think thatthat's a useful, a useful thing.
But I was quite taken aback byhow many things are different.
Now, some things are differentjust because feedburner, for
example, now accepts HTTPS asone thing, and so of course
that's going to be different.
There are weird things likeBuzzsprout changed what its RSS
feeds, you know, where they werefrom rss.buzzsprout.com to

(01:27:43):
feeds.buzzsprout.com, or perhapsit's the other way around.
I don't know yet.
You know, so you've got all ofthose little sort of changes,
and it would just be good, justa little bit of hygiene, just to
get everything working as itkind of should.

Sam Sethi (01:27:56):
Nice.
Well, nice catch anyway.
Let's see what changes comeabout.
Now, moving on from James'stech corner to Spotify.
Nothing major.
They're just they'reredesigning the podcast sharing
UI to provide a more fine-tunedcontrol over the starting point
for clips, basically.
It's very much like Headliner,I think.

(01:28:17):
But yeah, if you are usingSpotify and you want to create a
clip, you've now got morecontrol over it.

That's very nice.
So these are clips withinSpotify itself, not clips which
you share on the internet,because obviously that's not a
thing.
But uh, yeah, very nice.

Booster, Booster, Booster Grand, Super Super
Comments, Zaps, Fan mail, fanmail, super chats, and email.
Our favorite time of the week,it's the Pod News Weekly Review
Inbox.

Yeah, so many different ways to get in touch
with us at a fan mail by usingthe link in your show notes, in
our show notes indeed, or inyour show notes, so who cares?
Or super comments on TrueFansBooths everywhere else, or
email, and we share every moneyand we share any money that we
make as well.

Sam Sethi (01:29:03):
Okay, well, we have got some here I can read out for
you.
Seth Goldstein sent us one.
Your show's amazing, keep upthe good work.
Martin Lindescog segur stove isa great brand.
I recommend you check outGustav Dalen's museum and get
his pin with the motto, be anoptimist.
Okay, I don't know that one.

What's that about?

Sam Sethi (01:29:24):
Uh I don't know.
I think I mentioned I have anAuger at home here in the UK.

Oh, oh, oh, well, there you go.
There you go.
Yes.

Sam Sethi (01:29:31):
And then Martin again said, I will check out the
podcast magic service created bySublime.
I think it will work out withall the lightning addresses in
due time, but I'm a bit worriedabout some stuff as I'm reading
Dr.
Brian of London's post onpodcast index social.
I think the Starship will beable to navigate in cyberspace.
I'm I'm reading verbatim here,by the way.

(01:29:53):
1701 Satoshis with a digitaltelegram, i.e., boostergram,
supercomment, freedom.
Of expression is stillavailable with or without public
service companies like the BBC.
And I stop and breathe.
Oof.
Yes.
Well, there you go.
David John Clark said, I keepsaying on pod news, uh and to

(01:30:16):
true fan CEO Sam Seth, VivaWiiwon't become mainstream until
it's a system with a fiatcurrency, no wallets, no SATS.
So somebody who doesn't likethat.
And again, from Neil Vellio,aha, did nobody give Bob a
higher quality recording tool?
I can't remember what that's inrelation to.

(01:30:37):
But there you go.
There are a few more, but weshould move on.

Yes, and uh and I should say I can't see those,
but I can see them from Pod NewsDaily.
For some reason, I can't seethe Pod Newsweekly review at all
in my True Fans dashboard.
But also thank you to MartinLindiscog or Lyceum, as we would
normally call him.
I will let the late Bloomeractor be the number one super
fan of Pod News Daily for now.
I can't catch up on hislistening time.

(01:31:02):
LOL.
Time to chill out and relax.
I'm planning to do anall-nighter binge listening to
podcasts and value for valuemusic during the upcoming
Thanksgiving weekend.
Oh, that's very exciting.
When is Thanks Thanksgiving?
Is it now?
It's probably now, isn't it?

Sam Sethi (01:31:18):
Sometime soon.

Who cares?
Who cares?
Anyway.
I'd just like to say, I'm gladthe Indians gave him a turkey
and not a donkey.
It's next week, by the way.
It's the 27th of uh November.
Um so yes, all good.
But thank you so much for thosemessages.
I will work out how to readmore of those for next week.
And uh much appreciated.

(01:31:39):
Also much appreciated to the 22superfans, power fans, power
supporters.
What are we calling them?
Yes, that, who include peoplelike John Spurlock, like Mzileen
Smith, like Dave Jackson, orlike Neil Vellio, all of these
excellent people who aresupporters of us every single
month.
If you would like to do that,weekly.podnews.net is where you

(01:32:01):
can go with your with yourcredit card, and uh that uh
money gets shared directly withuh Sam and uh myself.
Uh much appreciated, and thankyou to Jim James as well for
your uh kind support.
So, what's happened for youthis week, Sam?

Sam Sethi (01:32:15):
Well, I I fell off my chair laughing, first of all.
$230, James, if you'd like anapple sock.

I know the apple sock.
The iPhone pocket is, Ibelieve, the phrase.

Sam Sethi (01:32:26):
Oh, sorry.
I thought somebody just cut thetop of a sock off and then sold
it for $230.
I mean, geez Louise, is thatthe best they can do now?
Izzy Mayaki, the designer madeit, so clearly that's the $228
worth of value there.
And I believe Tim Cook gave agold one to Donald Trump, so
there you go.
But I'm sorry, that is anyonewalking around with a sock is

(01:32:49):
someone to avoid.
An Apple sock, that is.
But the other thing is wetalked about a few weeks back
that Apple are intensifyingtheir succession planning for
Tim Cook.
It's time for Tim to leave.
And if the sock is the uhlatest product, it's time for
Tim to leave.

I don't know.
I think if you can if you canlaunch something that costs £230
and is a sock with a hole in itand will sell out, I I think I
think I all power to you.
I mean, that that's the sort ofbusiness that I would like to
be in.
But still, but yes, um Tim Cookon the way out at some point
next year.

(01:33:28):
I'm looking forward to ElonMusk as our new leader.

Sam Sethi (01:33:31):
Actually, genuinely, about five years ago when he was
head of Tesla and doing SpaceX,I thought he's a sort of Steve
Jobs mad type entrepreneur thatApple would need to sort of
kickstart them.
Like I, you know, an Apple cardidn't exist and it still
doesn't.
Um, I thought, ooh, I canimagine Apple could buy Tesla

(01:33:52):
because the stock price was lowenough for them to acquire it,
and that would be the Apple car.
I'm fundamentally this week,actually, Tesla included CarPlay
for the first time within theTesla upgrade.
So, I mean, I did think hecould have been until he lost
his uh mind and became a Nazi.
But other than that, I think umI was following Elon for a
while.

I was following a Tesla on the way to school
today because I was uh pickingup my daughter, and the there
was a sticker on the back thatsays, I love EV, not Elon.
Uh which I thought was quitegood.
So uh I think you have to putanything on, yes, you're Tesla.
Anyway, I'm I'm looking forwardto the Apple jock strap.
That's that's what I'm lookingforward to.

(01:34:35):
It's got a space in there for myApple Watch.

Sam Sethi (01:34:38):
Oh I make no comment moving on.

Careful how you sit down.
Exactly, yes.

Sam Sethi (01:34:46):
It's either text, or you're just pleased to see me.

Is there any is there any wonder that there are
no women in podcasting?

Sam Sethi (01:34:51):
Yes.
Dear, and then again, withTrueFans, where are we?
Um so to your point earlier, wearen't launched, so all these
lovely problems that you'representing me are problems.
Um thank you.
I was gonna say you threw meunder the bus, but that wouldn't
be true.
Not yet.
No, not yet.
No, he will do soon.
Um, no, we we we'll we'll comeup with it, and it may well be

(01:35:14):
that we can't fix that problem.
We just have to say, all right,this is 100% a download to
Apple and everyone else that canbe streamed to, can be streamed
to.
I mean, I don't know.
We we'll we'll try and look atit.
But we are connecting it now tothe TrueFans wallet and we're
connecting it to Stripe.
So, in terms of being able tobuy the plan, and as I said, one

(01:35:35):
of the things that we're doingis based on the data that you
don't use, we will then refundyou the amount.

So yeah, which I think is very is very cool and
very smart.

Sam Sethi (01:35:44):
Yeah, thank you.
So that's where we are.
So hopefully we will open thewait list in probably hopefully
midweek next week, or if wedon't achieve that the week
after for certain.
So, yeah, that's our timelinecurrently.

Yeah, no, that all makes sense.
Very nice.
What's happened for you, James?
Uh, I've had a nice quiet week,which is uh always nice.
I was due to be in Sri Lankathis time next week for various
reasons.
That is not going to happen.
So here as normal, which isnice, and yeah, I've I've just
had a nice, a nice, quiet weekdoing not very much, which has

(01:36:19):
been very good.
I read a fascinating piece onthe Carji uh blog.
Carji is a search engine that Iuse, it's a good Google
alternative for search, and theyhave AI on there if you want
it, but you have to basicallyask for it in terms of uh search
results and things.
And their head of AI haswritten a really good blog post

(01:36:42):
which I will add.
If you're using anything otherthan Apple Podcasts, then you
can click through on thischapter and you can read it.
And if you are using ApplePodcasts, then tough, because
they won't let me to linkthrough to it, then I'll find
another way.
But anyway, it's a really goodarticle, it's all about LLMs,
and it it basically says thatLLMs don't lie, but they're

(01:37:03):
really good at bullshitting,which I thought was a really
good way of pushing it.
And it explains exactly how anLLM works, it explains exactly
what LLMs are good for and whatthey're not good for.
Uh, it's a really good pieceand is well worth a read.
So that's uh hidden away in theCarji blog.
It's a good uh search engineand worth a play.

(01:37:24):
And by the way, if you areusing Carji, that's another
thing that I did over the lastcouple of weeks, is that I
worked out on some new specialRSS feeds for Carji.
So if you use the Carji Newsservice, which I think is
available to everybody,news.karji.com, it's a really
nice news aggregation tool thatonly updates once a day.

(01:37:47):
So if you if you find yourselfdoom scrolling through the news,
then try this because itliterally updates every day at
uh 10 pm my time.
So whatever that is, your time.
But it does a really good job,and there is a whole piece,
there's a whole section onpodcasting news, and it's mostly

(01:38:07):
pod news, to be fair.
Um, I've put a bunch of otherRSS feeds in there, but yeah,
it's a good it's a good tool.
So if you want to have a playaround with that, then do.
I heartily recommend it.
Uh and that's it for this week.
All of our podcast storiestaken from the pod news daily
newsletter, of course, atpodnews.net.

Sam Sethi (01:38:26):
You can support this show by streaming SATS.
You still can.
You can give us feedback usingthe bus browser fan mail link in
our show notes, and you cansend us a super comment or
boost, or better still, become apower supporter like the 22
Power Supporters atweekly.podnews.net.

Our music is from TM Studios.
Our voiceover is Sheila D, andthe other voiceover is uh
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Our audio is recorded usingClean Feed, we edit with
Hindenburg, and we're hosted andsponsored by Buzz Sprout.
Start podcasting, keeppodcasting.

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