Libsyn's John W Gibbons, and Android's fragmentation

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
James Cridland (00:00):
It's Friday, the 7th of July 2023.

Jingle (00:04):
The last word in podcasting news.
This is the Pod n ews WeeklyReview with James Cridland and
Sam Sethi.

I'm James Cridland, the editor of Podn ews
, and I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO ofPodFans In the chapters.
Today, android still highlyfragmented for podcast apps.
Podcasters are getting morecomfortable with AI tools.
The core audience for podcastsare men, age 25 to 34.
And rsscom adds more supportfor the podcast 2.0 namespace.

(00:36):
And also

John W Gibbons (00:40):
I am the CEO and Chief Product Officer of Libsyn
, and I'll be on later to talk alittle bit about the history of
Libsyn and then also wherewe're going in the future.

He will.
This podcast is sponsored andhosted by Buzzsprout.
Last week, 3,115 people starteda podcast with Buzzsprout,
Posting made easy with powerfultools and remarkable customer
support.
And now AI to help you publishyour show.
And by Pod News Live in Londonthis September.
tickets at podnewsnet slashlive.

(01:09):
From your daily newsletter, thePod News Weekly.

Sam Sethi (01:13):
Review.
So, James, let's kick it offthis week.
Android it looks like it's alittle bit fragmented Now.
Last week we spoke about theclosure of Stitcher, which was a
very popular Android app, Andnow this week we've got a report
out that Android's highlyfragmented.
Tell me more about this highlyfragmented platform you love

(01:33):
using.

Yeah, so this is data from OP3.
So it comes with a few sort ofwarnings in terms of it's just
data from OP3.
And OP3 isn't necessarilyrepresentative of everything,
but what is very clear is thatApple Podcasts it's basically
dominated by three differentapps.
The top three apps ApplePodcasts, spotify and then Apple

(01:56):
Core Media.
So you look at those three andthose are responsible for more
than 75% of all of the downloads.
If you have a look at Android,it's a very, very different
story.
Lots of very different apps inthere.
What you can see from this datais that iOS, everything is

(02:17):
basically Apple Podcasts orSpotify, but the jury is still
out in terms of Android.
Yes, spotify is very popular,but there's all kinds of other
apps in there as well, so we'restill really looking for a big
number two Android app, which Ijust thought was interesting,
it's your friends, isn't it?

Sam Sethi (02:34):
It's the bet.
They've got to do it, haven'tthey?

I keep on banging on about Apple getting
an Android app because kind ofthey have to, although I can see
that if they were trying tosell Apple Podcast subscriptions
which would be the businessreason why they would code an
Android app then clearly they'vegot a problem there, because
Google would want 30% of themoney, i suppose.

(02:57):
So maybe they'd have to buildout the website first so that
they can push people to thewebsite in order for them to.
I don't know, it's all a bit ofa mess, but clearly Apple is
missing out by not having anAndroid app.
But they're not stupid.
I'm sure they'll be working onsomething.
But yeah, what more can you sayabout that?

(03:17):
I guess?

Sam Sethi (03:19):
It's the reason for the fragmentation, though,
because you can sideload appsonto Android phones and you
can't do that through iOS.
Is that anything to do with it?
maybe?

I mean, you can sideload apps onto Android, but
very, very few people do Most ofthe time.
Yes, you can download an APK ifyou really want to, but
virtually everybody just usesthe Google Play Store.
So I don't necessarily thinkthat that's the issue.
I think that it's just morejust a case of There isn't a

(03:50):
clear leader, apart from Spotify, which has 42% of all downloads
on the Android platform in May.
Apart from that, there's reallyno clear leader.
Podcast addict at number twowith just 10%.
Cast Box at number three with10%.
Stitcher, by the way, at number10 with 2.5%.
That traffic will have to gosomewhere else, and Pocket Casts

(04:15):
, which is a very big app,doesn't actually tell you
whether or not somebody islistening on Android or on iOS.
So, who knows, maybe PocketCasts is the number two, but we
don't know that from the datathat they actually have.

Sam Sethi (04:27):
Now you've got an Android Watch, haven't you?
And I think you've tested thebrand new Pocket Casts app
that's on there where OS?

Yes, it's pretty cool.
It's only for Pocket Cast Plussubscribers, so you need to be
paying for Pocket Casts in orderto use it or be in the
grandfathered deal, as I am.
But yeah, it works absolutelyflawlessly.
Full playback, you get thespeed control, you get the
silent skipping, you get thevolume boost, all of that kind
of stuff.
It syncs kind of with yourwatch in terms of where it's got

(04:59):
up to in a particular podcast,kind of.
It's not brilliant at that, butit does a relatively okay job
at doing that And yeah, so formy daily walk with the dog to
the coffee shop, it seems towork quite nicely.

Sam Sethi (05:15):
Can it order you coffee yet?

Sadly it can't order my coffee, but the watch
can also pay for the coffee, soI suppose, on that regard, I
don't need to bring my phoneanymore.
Although, what would I read?

Sam Sethi (05:25):
Oh, there you go Now moving on.
Ai Cast No A Cast.
See what you did there.
Yeah, thanks, took hourswithout thinking.
It's got a new study out theyhave one every week, it feels
like but this one is thatpodcast listeners are
comfortable with AI tools beingused in podcasting.
It says that AI is most welcomeby listeners, including sound

(05:46):
enhancements, translatedcaptions, ai generated
transcripts.
The study claims that 79% ofpodcast listeners want
transcripts for searching and78% want closed.
So is it just a case of it'swhat I've said?
AI should stand for assistedintelligence, and it makes sense
about having tools that help us.

Yes, i've seen a lot of people using assisted
intelligence or augmentedintelligence or additive
intelligence, and I think thatthat's absolutely fair.
One of the things that I amcurious about is, if 79% of
podcast listeners four out offive want transcripts to help
them search, much the samenumber want closed captions as

(06:27):
well, why A Cast isn't actuallysupporting that.
You can't find any transcriptson any A Cast show website.
You can't find any transcriptswithin the RSS feeds either,
even though they actuallyproduce those for its
conversational targeting service.
So they're making thetranscripts, they're just not
publishing them anywhere, whichseems kind of a bit of a missed

(06:52):
opportunity.
you would have thought.

Sam Sethi (06:54):
Yes, we did talk to them about their support for the
podcast index namespace andthey seem keen to do it, but
they haven't, as you say, gonefull hog in.
I also noticed because I waslooking at one of their RSS
feeds, they've got their ownnamespace now.
This might not be new, by theway, but I just happened to have
noticed it myself and they'vegot a host of tags that they've

(07:17):
added into shows that they haveshow ID, signature, network,
imported feed.
I looked at some of theirproprietary tags and one that I
think would be really great forthem to submit is maybe A Cast
Network and maybe rename thatpodcast network, because it'll
be really useful to know whatnetwork the podcast was in or

(07:39):
from Producer pages could beproduced from that.
Anyway, let's hope that A Castactually do become more active
in the open ecosystem, and ifyou want to listen to the
interview that we did with ChrisKwame-Rodin, it's episode 24,
so you can always go back andlisten to what A Cast had to say
about the open ecosystem.

Other things going on in terms of AI as well.
Laszlo Montgomery has done avery clever thing.
He's taken the China Historypodcast that he's put together
and he's made the transcripts ofthose podcasts and then
rewritten them slightly toproduce a book.
It's called The History ofChinese Philosophy and you'll
find it on the Amazon websitenow, which I just thought was a

(08:22):
very clever idea to get the mostout of your podcast.
So that was quite neat.
There's a service called PodcastGrader, which analyses the
audio quality of your show anduses AI to give more precise
recommendations.
It says that Pod News Daily isperfect.
It doesn't like this showbecause it says there's too much
stuff which is too loud and toomuch stuff which is too soft,

(08:42):
which one of us is that I thinkthey've got it wrong because we
use Buzzsprout's magic mastering.
How could that possibly be thecase?
And there's a voiceover calledGreg Marston, who I used to use
20 years ago when I was writingradio commercials.
He is the voice of LBC 97.3from the LBC studios in

(09:04):
Leicester Square and the voiceof TalkBack 702 in Jo Berg.
This is Talk Radio 702 invarious other places.
He ended up finding out that in2005 he signed a deal with a
satnav company to basicallyrecord a satnav for them.

(09:24):
That deal has ended up beingresold by that company to a
company called Revoicer, whichis an AI powered text to speech
service.
So now, basically, he, as aprofessional voiceover, is now
in competition with his ownvoice.
It's just like the mostridiculous thing.
So you know how ridiculous isthat.

(09:48):
I have to say there was anepisode when I was reporting the
AI story from ACAST earlier onin the week, the pod news daily
was half voiced by an AI voiceand it didn't actually sound too
bad.

Podcast listeners are comfortable with
AI tools being used inpodcasting.
Says a new study from ACAST.

Sam Sethi (10:08):
You're going to be replaced, james, be careful.

I can't do that every day for the rest of my
life.

Sam Sethi (10:16):
And then there's another new podcast that could
strip out the ads from podcastsand share the money with
creators.
Audio is using AI to remove adsfrom the AM and FM stations and
could offer the same forpodcasters too.
Is that ethical?

I mean it's ethical if you've got the
podcasters agreement to end updoing that.
They send out all kinds ofentertaining press releases
every two weeks.
It seems to be one of thesecompanies who is valued on the
amount of press releases thatthey can send out and the amount
of jargon in there.
I mean it won't be jargon toyou.
You'll be familiar with DeNovo.
Mau growth data promises toreduce current burn and to

(10:57):
non-binding LOIs with a buy sideMNA strategy.
You'll be familiar with all ofthat.

Sam Sethi (11:04):
But to me it makes no sense.
I did take a degree in businessbullshit, So yeah, that's fine
with me.
I've got one of those and NBAmore bullshit than anyone else.
That's what they stand for.

Yeah, crikey, but I think it's one of those
companies where they're sendingout press releases like that and
you go oh well, they must knowwhat they're talking about, i
must buy some shares.

Sam Sethi (11:31):
But yes, unlike the company that our guest looks
after, Yes, So we talked aboutJohn W Gibbons being appointed
as the interim CEO for podcasthosting and monetization company
Libsyn.
He's been with the companysince January 2022 and he was
previously CEO of Pocketcasts,And we thought it'd be really
good to reach out to John andfind out what's going on with

(11:53):
Libsyn.
I started off by asking Johnwhat is the plan for Libsyn?

So yeah, as you said, i've been here since
January 2022.
I was hired as the chiefproduct officer and then also
served in the role of president.
My background that kind of ledme here is I've worked in
technology for 25 years now.
Most recently, previous tobeing at Libsyn, i was the CEO
of Pocketcasts, which is arevered podcast app.

(12:19):
It's my podcast app of choiceand was owned by a consortium of
leaders in this space,including NPR and BBC and WNYC,
and I also was the first advisorto PodChaser and a big fan of
those guys and what they'redoing there as well.
So the space is one that I'mvery familiar with and one that
I'm very passionate about and isvery much a part of who I am as

(12:39):
a person, as well as what I dofor a living.
And I guess, to answer yourquestion in terms of where
Libsyn was and where we're goingis you're well aware, but I
assume most of your listenersare.
Libsyn is a pioneer in thepodcasting space Because among
the first podcast hosts,starting in the early 2000s and

(13:00):
has grown since then and has anenormous amount of goodwill and
hosts tens of thousands of showsamong the largest in the
industry, and so traditionallyit has been a I think what you
can say is a vertical podcasthost, and we could talk a little
bit more about this detail, butwhere we're moving is we're
moving towards becoming ahorizontal services company.
So not only will we host yourpodcast, but we also will help

(13:23):
you record, we will help youmonetize and we will help you
become more professional, and wecan go into a little bit more
detail about that as we discuss,but that's kind of where we
came from and where we're going.

Sam Sethi (13:33):
So when you left a pocketcast, what was the
enticement?
As you said, pocketcasts great.
It's under the WordPress banner.
I know Matt from 20 odd yearsnow, Matt Molymburg.
So what was the hello, John,come on over to Libsyn.
What was the enticement then?

Yeah, i mean, i think, the enticement for me.
So if pocketcasts was anindependent company, they sold
to this consortium again thatwas made up of BBC, npr, wnyc,
wbz and this American Life.
So you can imagine sort of thecomplexity of that ownership.
Sure, it's a lot of wonderfulpeople in a single room.
So that was a wonderfulexperience that I had.

(14:11):
It was decided thatconfiguration of ownership.
It was working well foreveryone, but not fantastically
for the entire group.
So, as you mentioned, it wassold to Automatic, which is the
company that most people know isWordPress.
And so when the opportunity tojoin Libsyn came up, i had a lot
of discussions with them, theentire.

(14:33):
As you may recall and it's beenwell reported in pod news there
were a lot of complexitiesfinancially with Libsyn, and so,
to be totally frank, iinitially started meeting with
them because I was just reallycurious.
I thought I don't know whatLibsyn is and I'm really curious
what's going on with thiscompany?
I was just being a little bitof a gossip girl, frankly, to
sort of say, hey, what's goingon with this company?
And so that was the initialreason.

(14:55):
But also, as I mentioned, ihave been doing technology since
the late 90s.
My background is largely on aproduct person And I think for
maybe lack of a betterdescription or something it may
sound terribly generic I mean Iam a champion of integration,
customer excellence andexperience.
This is who I am as a person,and I happen to get to do it for
a living as well, and I'vealways listened to podcasts as

(15:18):
I've been building things, andit's always been around
creatives.
I've always been in service ofcreators in some fashion, and
that has been to help them buildproducts, to be discovered and
to make their content and thento also monetize.
And then it's also been inservice of advertisers, who I
view as a very strong customerof mine as well, to be able to
match them to the content thatmatches what they're doing.

(15:38):
And so when the opportunitycame with the Libsyn, i thought,
wow, this is a really fantasticopportunity to learn a little
bit more about what's going on,but also possibly take a legacy
pioneer in the space and be apart of its transformation into
the future.
I have a lot of experience indoing that as well, taking
legacy industries and pullingthem into the modern age, and so

(16:01):
that was really the mostenticing thing for me is like
here's this fantastic brand withmagnificent goodwill, with tens
of thousands of shows in anindustry that I love and one
that is clearly growing, andit's sort of it's generic to say
that it's been a, you know, awatershed moment.
I feel like we just hear thatstatement all the time, but it
genuinely has.
Like it's been at like thiswatershed moment for a long time

(16:22):
.
But the number of new peoplewho are listening and the sheer
number of podcasts that arecoming into this space And then,
most importantly, the sheeramount of investment that's
going into the space, like youjust can't ignore that we are at
this watershed moment, right,like it's taken us 20 years to
become a billion dollar industry.
It's taken us a year to become atwo billion dollar industry.
So, like you know, i don't needto be a maskiness to think like

(16:43):
, okay, well, like it's finallyhappening.
So long answer to the shortquestion, but that was the part
that really, like, made my tummytingle at the opportunity to
join Libsyn.

Sam Sethi (16:52):
Now, before you came on board, we've interviewed LC
Escobar before about Libsyn five, which came out, i think, last
year, which was a platformchange.
Is that the platform that'sgiven you the ability, as you
said, to go from being avertical player to a horizontal
player?
Is that the bedrock on whichyou're building And what are the
things that you've started toadd?
then I know you've got glow andyou've got advertised cast, so

(17:15):
maybe take us through some ofthe functions that you're
building on top of this platform.

Yeah, absolutely , i'll try to be as charming as
LC is.
That's a tough act to follow.
As you're aware, as yourlisteners are, she's the head of
our community development.
She's fantastic, and so, toanswer your question, yes, so
what the sort of legacy podcastindustry is familiar with is our
publishing services at Libsyn,which we call Libsyn, for It's

(17:41):
the fourth version of Libsyn,but it's a legacy product that
was developed many years ago And, while it has all of the
functionality to make a podcastsuccessful, it lacks a modern
aesthetic, it lacks a modern UIand UAC And it also lacks a lot

(18:02):
of the plugins that really willdeliver that services model,
that horizontal services modelthat I mentioned.
So Libsyn 5 is the nextiteration of that.
When new customers join, theywould join Libsyn 5 and that has
all of the same functionality.
That makes Libsyn 4 the reveredpublishing tool set that it is,
but it also has all thisoptionality to both serve

(18:27):
professional, enterprise levelpodcasters.
But it also is built to servethe next million podcasters that
we know are coming and wantingto be easy.
Right, most podcasters arefantastic at the topic that they
know, but they don't need to berecording engineers, right?
That prevents a lot ofwonderful voices from being able

(18:47):
to join the conversation and wereally want to eliminate those
barriers.
So the answer to the questionabout sort of the services that
we are focused on there, ofcourse, as I mentioned, it's
modern hosting tools.
So again, it's for advancedpodcasters And, of course, we
are very focused on the nextmillion podcasters.
We also are very focused onmonetization.
To be a podcaster, you don'thave to be focused on making

(19:09):
money.
We want people who are focusedon sharing their passion with
the world and making that aneasy process.
However, it does cost a littlebit of money to make a podcast
right.
If you can make money doing it,that's a good thing, and it
also shouldn't be a scienceproject trying to figure that
out.
It should be a button that youpush.
So the first form ofmonetization for us is
monetization via advertising.

(19:30):
We have two ways that we dothat.
There is integratedprogrammatic ad tech that we
have.
That effectively is as you'reaware your listeners probably
are.
There's the ability to be ableto dynamically insert ads via a
variety of leading VSPs And thatallows us to deliver very
quality CPMs and also very highfill rates, and there's a

(19:52):
relationship between those twothings that will probably bore
everyone who's listening to gointo great detail about that,
but those are two very importantthings that we're very focused
on.
And then the second one is hostread ads.
As you're aware you'relistening to, probably are We
also own a company calledadvertisecastcom, which is the
leading marketplace for podcasts.
Who are looking to deliveradvertising and then advertising

(20:14):
.
We're looking to be matchedwith the right podcast.
So we're also looking at doingintegration of host read
marketplace and then, of course,doubling down on the
advertisecastcom marketplace,which is agbostic.
So the integration is forpeople who are lips and
customers, and theadvertisecastcom platform is for
anyone they can host anywhere.

(20:35):
The second form of monetizationis monetization via
subscriptions tech.
So this is integratedsubscription services.
So in many cases, if you don'thave millions or hundreds of
thousands of downloads and youhave a smaller audience, but
they're very passionate aboutwhat you do they're willing to
pay you for a subscriptionservice to be able to get
exclusive content or to be ableto access things earlier,

(20:58):
whatever it may be, and we'revery focused on being able to
provide that service to ourlisteners as well.
And again, the idea is youshould be able to click a button
and be able to access thesethings.
You don't need to be atechnical whiz to know how to do
this.
The third is that we haveintegrated a recording service,
is a tool that we call studio.
It's for new podcasters andthen those who are just wanting

(21:20):
simplicity Those are, you know.
They're easy tools to be ableto build your podcast.
So I think I want to be able torecord, i want to be able to
develop building blocks thatwant to be able to auto level, i
want to be able to access musicand then I want to be able to
publish this easily.
So that's a tool that isavailable to all of our
customers and anything that theyrecord using studio does not
count towards their storage.

(21:41):
So we really want to be able toprovide that, that easy
recording tool for people.
And then there's a couple others.
We have a tool called connect,which is a browser based high
quality remote collaborationrecording tool.
It has integrated multi trackrecording, which allows for sort
of easier editing as acontinuous sync, very high

(22:01):
quality.
It has built in chat and thatis available to any of our
customers who are on the $20plus plan.
So the idea that someone'spaying for another service
elsewhere when they already haveaccess to.
It is something that we reallywant to be able to help people
save money with.
And then the last thing I wouldsay in terms of things that we
plug into Litsim five we alsoown a company called pair

(22:24):
P-A-I-R dot com, which is a webhosting company, and we are also
building in tools for people tobe able to easily access
domains and easily accessprofessional websites, and we're
using data and personalizationto be able to help people along
their professional journey.
And so again, very longstatement for short question,

(22:45):
sorry, but the idea is that wehave been a personal hosting
company for 20 something yearsAnd we believe that the market
has moved on and we really wantto support that market by
providing all these servicesthat are easy for people to
access and easy for them tounderstand, so that we can get
more voices into the podcastecosystem rather than fewer
because of barriers to be ableto do all these things that

(23:07):
seemingly can come off as verycomplex.

Sam Sethi (23:09):
No, it's really cool.
I call it the five P's ofpodcasting pre-production,
production, post-production,privatization and PR.
And those five allow you toreally look at all the elements.
So you know, for you it's likehelping people get ready to
actually build their podcasts,record their podcast And then
you can get ready to go aheadnow with connect, you know,

(23:30):
post-production with your tools,monetization with your dynamic
ad insertions and advertisedcast, and then the promotion of
the website and the whole thing.
So it's really cool that you'venow covered the full gambit.
You've also taken on a new CTO,or you've promoted a new CTO in
the company as well, and one ofthe questions that everyone
would want me to ask is you'vegone from what we call legacy to

(23:54):
now a modern day platform.
When are you going toofficially support the podcast
index namespace 2.0?

Yep.
No, it's a really good questionAnd we've had conversations
with them and it's a totallyvalid question.
We, as strong advocates ofindependent podcasting and also
of the open ecosystem, thepodcast 2.0 space, is something
that we do absolutely supportand want to be advocates for,
not just in word but also inaction.

(24:24):
With that said, i would say orI would share, rather that we
are a 20 year old company thatis relentlessly marching towards
modernization for our customers, and part of our service to
those customers is making surethat our technology is modern

(24:45):
and that we are doing a way tocheck.
that's potentially a boringpart of the conversation here,
but tech debt is a real thingand you can imagine anybody who
works in technology.
The tech debt that we areharboring here at our company is
enough that it's an area thatwe have to focus on.
So, not to dodge your questionby any means whatsoever, but I

(25:07):
think it's sort of one of thosethings that, in order for us to
be able to love on other people,we got to love ourselves first,
and we're still in the phasewhere, like, we've got to love
on ourselves by getting our ownhouse in order.
But I wouldn't say and I'm happyto say this publicly that we
absolutely support the podcast2.0 initiative.
We have verbally committed tothat to those groups And, again,

(25:30):
it's just in the DNA of who weare as a company.
We are strong advocates for theopen ecosystem, and that's not
just because it plays into ourbusiness model, which it
absolutely does But we believethat it isn't the best interest
for the industry And I thinkthere's a lot of signals to show
that's not just my opinion,that's fact, and I think the
last couple of years for thoseplayers who have chosen the

(25:51):
walled garden approach, that itdoesn't work.
And so the podcast 2.0initiative is absolutely one we
support.
We just have not gotten to ityet, and that's not just us
being selfish.
It is us being selfish,actually, but it's us being
selfish in the name of betterserving our customers, and we
will absolutely get there.

Sam Sethi (26:08):
Look, it's great that you are having that on your
horizon.
Looking at the feed, which isthe Libsyn podcast from LC and
Rob, you've already added thepodcast namespace into the RSS.
You've got support for thesoundbite and the locks tag.
That may have been manuallyadded rather than

(26:29):
programmatically added through aUI, but it's narrow of
direction, right, so could Ipress you on a time frame for
that?
Are you talking six months ayear?

Yeah, so this is moves for us And I think we
don't have to get into the greatdetail of the state of the
economy, but I'm sure we'll talkabout that at some point.
The evolution of our companyhas happened, from being a
public company And I'm surewe'll talk about this to
de-listing, why we de-listed andwhat we're doing, and we can be
happy to talk about any of thatstuff.
Our priority is to make surethat we are effectively

(27:02):
shepherding a financiallyresponsible company here, and
that's not just to becapitalistic pigs.
It is in service of ourcustomers.
The more that we can shepherd afinancially responsible company
, the better that we can serveour customers and the better
that we can serve the nextmillion podcasters who are
coming.
So, to answer your questionabout the timeline, we had

(27:24):
initially talked about thishappening in 2023.
The state of the economy in 2023has changed dramatically And we
also have been on a bit of anM&A's free, of which we're very
proud, and that we have reallyfocused there to make sure that
we are connecting everything theway that it should and are sort
of get our house in order phase.
So the podcast 2.0 initiativedid get pushed back.

(27:48):
This is not as specific, maybeas I would like it to be, but I
do spend a lot of time, alsoserve as the chief product
officer here, and so it has beenpushed into 2024.
And that is largely because ofthe acquisition that we've made
this year, the requirement todance properly with the economy
and also make sure that we'replugging in M&A activity that

(28:11):
we've done.
So my hope currently we cantalk again in the beginning of
next year and you can hold me tothis, and if I have to dance
around it, you can say John,sounds like you're dancing
around it, but our plan is H1 ofnext year for that.

Sam Sethi (28:25):
Okay, that's cool.
Now I will be back to speakwith you in about time.
Fred, now look, you touched onit and we said we would talk
about it.
Libcim obviously was on thestock market, was delisted.
That was probably before youwere on board, but now you are
in the hot seat.
This is your baby.
What is the plan to get back onthe market then?

Yeah, so when I joined, we were a public company
and the executive team tookover of which you know,
including myself there.
We made the decision to de-riskthe company in order to correct
financial adjustments that hadbuilt up over the year.
And I'll say this that we, likeany responsible company, our
product and business executionplans will prepare us for any

(29:06):
outcome.
Right Like we could go public,we could stay private, we could
merge as another company, wecould sell like we're setting up
the company for success, andthen we would have optionality
when we get there.
We, as a result of all the workthat we have done in Stee
Listing in 2022, we completedour 2022 financial audit in May
of this year.

(29:27):
Pod News reported on that andmany work can find that at
investorwipsoncom, and I'll saythat the interesting thing, i
don't count myself as a financeperson.
I am a product person but, as aresult of my roles, i'm
obviously around finance a lot.
But finance is one of thesethings that it's kind of like
being pregnant.
You can't be a little bitpregnant, right Like it's just
yari art And so being out ofcompliance financially.

(29:48):
It could be a billion dollarsor it could be $200.
And the financial adjustmentsthat have been built up over the
years, rather were simplythings that were like VAT taxes
that hadn't been collectedproperly.
It wasn't the gossip that I waslike kind of hoping for.
Like when I took it on, i waslike there's gonna be some good
juicy gossip here, and likethere wasn't.
Unfortunately It wasn't thejuice that I was kind of like

(30:10):
hoping for.
So, either way, to answer yourquestion again as I digress, is
that our plan right now is tocontinue to get ourselves in
order.
We've demonstrated that throughthe audits that we've released.
We are seeing fantastic growth,that we've seen 39% growth from
2021.
So we are near a $60 millioncompany.

(30:30):
We are doing fantastically as acompany and we're gonna
continue to invest in makingsure that we get our house in
order.
So we don't have an immediateplan for what we're doing, but
we are preparing to makeourselves beautiful and,
whichever direction we decide togo, we feel like we'll be
prepared for that.

Sam Sethi (30:48):
As an executive team.
That's wonderful because it'sthe second silver lining.
You can have your compensationpackages aligned to it and boom,
if you go back into the market,we get acquired And in the, as
you said, the economic downturn.
What a better time to sort thehouse out in preparation for the
uptime.

So that's exactly right.
That's exactly right, and Ithink also, as we were looking
at the areas to focus on,there's like a lot of nothing to
see here, frankly, but it'sjust easier.
There's so much compliancestuff that's really important,
but our intention is to uplistonto a market that has a broader
investor base and where we arein the company of the industry

(31:27):
in which we participate, and soto de-list and to do all that
work and then release our auditson our timeframe without having
the distraction of compliancerequirements.
Of course, our audits arecompliance.
It was just an easier process,but, yes, to be able to use this
time to get our house in orderand then decide what we're gonna
do has been a wonderful choicethat I'm really proud of us for

(31:49):
doing, and also our shareholders.
We have thousands ofshareholders, and our board has
been very happy with it.
We've, then, have received alot of support in that process.

Sam Sethi (31:59):
Now, one of the things that the industry has
been talking about is YouTube,the advent of video.
Daniel X been talking about100,000 video elements on
Spotify, and it's been thiswhole.
is YouTube a podcast, not apodcast conversation?
but putting that aside for aminute, Where does Libsyn sit in

(32:19):
the pantheon of what videowe'll do?
Are you gonna be supporting itas a platform or are you just
gonna leave that to others?

No, so we do support it right now.
In January of this year, weannounced a partnership with
YouTube in order to deliverreal-time metrics for our
podcasters in order to bettersupport their monetization
efforts.
So we absolutely support it asan open ecosystem advocate And,
dare I say, like the advocateright, like we are the company
that did this.
And that's the other reason whyyou asked me earlier why I

(32:48):
joined is that I was like man,like I salute that flag all day
long.
It's gonna be able to be a partof a team, because to drive
that forward is, frankly, a realpleasure, a real honor, and so,
yes, we absolutely support it.
We support creators being ableto share their voice And we
believe that the widestdistribution to do that is how
success is made, and that's notjust us being like generous

(33:11):
people, it's also we make moneyfrom that And we want our
creators to make a lot of moneyand we want them to be able to
find wide distribution.
So, yes, we absolutely dosupport video and are excited
for the growth that are seenthere.
I happen to be like an audiopodcast person.
I have the conversation withpeople all the time and they say
well, what do you think aboutvideo podcasts And this is just
me and like hopefully someonecan correct me on this, but I

(33:34):
just don't find video to bepodcasts.
I think those are videos Like.
That to me is like that's avideo.
You know what I mean?
It's chicken.
You're like no, it's notchicken, it's a steak.
You're like well, they're bothmeat, but it's a steak, it's not
a chicken.
It's like.
That's just me.
I know that people are gonna berolling their eyes and think
like that's so podcast.
We support people being able toshare their voice wherever it
goes, but for me personally, i'man audio person, so that's just

(33:57):
my two cents in the ring ofthis video podcast And I think
you just said it to video, not apodcast.
That's just me.

Sam Sethi (34:03):
No, we're in agreement.
Look, the other hot topic thateveryone talks about is AI.
I mean, again, have that toyour stack and suddenly,
strangely, vcs go oh, that'sincreased your value by a
bazillion dollars.
I mean, i've just seen moreemails and press releases with
you know the thing we were doingtwo years ago?
well, that's actually AI.
You didn't call it AI two yearsago, right?

(34:24):
And now I'm seeing all thesecompanies telling me that
they've got an AI solution.
So let's just clear the deck.
Where is AI and Libsyn, ifanywhere?

Yeah.
So for me, just being like apretentious technology person, i
agree I think people misuse thetitle the same way that they
misuse machine learning.
That was the previous term toJure, but like that right.
So I think we are the camp,like everyone else, that we are
trying to understand where AI isI don't want to use the word

(34:53):
disrupt but where it is going toenhance the podcast industry.
Like there's very clear ones,like you know, that AI.
They're now like AI driven newspodcasts I think I heard that
on pod news this week actuallyAnd so we're really trying to
figure out where can AI supportwhat we are doing for our
customers?
I think some areas that are sortof most obvious for this are on

(35:16):
our marketplaces foradvertisers and podcasters, like
how do we better connect them?
I think that's a reallyimportant thing.
I think that we can use AIagainst transcription to be able
to better categorized But again, that's also in the marketplace
dynamics of being able toconnect advertisers to podcasts
but also can be used for betterSEO for our customers.

(35:38):
So I think that's maybe alonger way of just saying we're
not really sure We are veryfocused on it, as is everyone
else I think cannot be payingattention to it.
It is what I think.
It's impossible.
I don't think you cannot payattention to it.
It's everywhere, right, but Ihave heard recently that the new
title that's coming up isC-A-I-O like your chief
artificial intelligence.

(35:59):
There's a thing on our.
It's the roll my eyes and can'tsee it because we're not on a
video podcast.
We can't see us rolling oureyes here, but I do think that
there is probably like a rolefor that And I have absolutely
no doubt This is not a profoundstatement at all, sam, but I
have absolutely no doubt at allthat it is an enhancing
technology for our industry Andwe are not in the wait and see

(36:20):
what everyone else does, butwe're absolutely in the stage of
like.
Let's begin to experiment withwhere it can help us and see,
and so I think, like everyoneelse, we're not entirely sure,
but absolutely know that it'svaluable.

Sam Sethi (36:31):
Now, last question.
One of my favorite books isfrom an ex-colleague of mine,
ben Horowitz, who used to be theCTO over at Netscape, and he
wrote a book called The HardestThings about the hardest things
And what keeps you awake atnight, john, It's a really good
question And this is like abusiness thing, but I have
children, so I think a lot aboutthat.

It's a different podcast perhaps, but I would
say what keeps me up most atnight is really around my themes
, and I know it sounds like ahumble bride here, but it keeps
me up at night about how myteams are connecting with each
other.
We again, as we sort ofdiscussed, we were a single

(37:13):
company that did hosting formany years.
Since the end of 2021, likebasically since I joined we have
purchased AdvertiseCast, whichis an enormously successful
marketplace again for podcastersto be able to connect with
advertisers And for advertisersto be able to connect with
high-value podcasts.
We have purchased Par, which isthe podcast ad reps, which we

(37:37):
rolled into AdvertiseCast.
We have purchased Glowfm, whichis a subscriptions service.
We didn't talk about this, butwe purchased a company called
Julip, which is the largestindependent advertising
marketplace in Germany.
That is also in Austria andSwitzerland and we've just
expanded into Spain, and then wehave a company called Parercom,

(37:59):
which is a domains business onthe website hosting business,
and so what keeps me up at nightis we are really focused on
bringing these companiestogether into a single solution
that can serve our customers.
And it's really difficult.
Building companies andmaintaining companies is
incredibly difficult.
It also is incredibly fun, butas I lay in bed at night and

(38:20):
sort of stare up at the fansspinning, i think to myself like
, oh, did I connect this personcorrectly to this person?
Did I communicate well enoughthat, while some of this may
feel bureaucratic, there's areal value to our customers and
there's a real value to us likejust selfishly, financial value
to us for doing this?
And so I really spent a lot ofmy time like concerned about the

(38:41):
culture that's being built andalso being insistent upon why we
are doing it, and also beingvery specific about holding each
other accountable.
I hope that I'm a relativelynice person, but I don't want to
be a nice person.
That's not my goal.
My goal is to be a fair person,And I want to make sure that I
don't fall prey into being likea people pleaser and trying to

(39:02):
do this with folks, but insteadbeing very fair and making sure
that we have agreements in placeas a company and that we are
all relentless about holdingeach other accountable to our
agreements not the expectationsthat we carry with each other,
but agreements And I lovepodcasting, i love audio, i love
storytelling and I lovecreative people.

(39:22):
I fancy myself a creativeperson and I have manifested
that creativity in buildingcompanies and creating search
and recommendations anddiscovery and helping
advertisers.
But the business really doesn'tmatter as much as the people do
.
And again I know this mightsound sort of disjure to talk
about.
Or you love your peopleactually wonderful, but it's
really hard and it takes a lotof control to give people the

(39:46):
freedom to not feel like they'rebeing controlled.
I'm not trying to be semanticthere, but like I spent a lot of
time trying to say here's howwe operate as a company and now
you're responsible for going outand being independent and
coming back and showing how youcontribute to us as a company.
And it keeps me up at night,both in a way that makes me
nervous and also that brings melike an enormous amount of
pleasure to see those teams andthose people celebrate their

(40:09):
wins and then to also gleefullytake trash that people throw at
me and then recycle it and giveit back to them.
So hopefully that doesn't soundlike a humble brag or a dodge
to the question, but that iswhat keeps me up, both in the
good and the bad way.

Sam Sethi (40:23):
I often say I'm the chief janitor in many ways, you
know cleaning up.

That's the exact same term.
We should start that as CJR onthe yes, but I think the only
way that I would I love you, canyou sum up Sam, because I talk
with him all the time.
But I think the other way thatI talk about it is you know,
unlike a janitor that throwsstuff out, i really want to like
have my people come andcomplain to me and tell me that

(40:49):
I'm not doing a job or that Iuse the wrong tone here, because
I need to like improve myself.
I, selfishly, am very eager tolike make myself better, even
though my feelings get hurtregularly about things, but to
recycle it and give it back tothem in a way that's good.
But yeah, it's so funny, i saidthe exact same thing.
I love it that you just saidthat.

Sam Sethi (41:06):
Now look, i haven't got this at the back of my mind,
but we've seen Spotify take onmultiple companies, parkhouse
being one and CharterBall andothers, and then they've had to
make these massive redundanciesrecently within their podcasting
stream.
How is the pressure now?
I mean, have you been able toretain your staff?
I mean, this is the culturethat you're trying to build.

(41:27):
How has Lib Tim been in thiseconomic downturn?

Yeah.
So I'm sure that differentpeople listening to this will
have different perspectives onmy answer here, but I personally
am very proud of how we havemanaged the downturn.
We have had some layoffs, butmany of those layoffs have not
been a result of our revenue.
Like we have grown And again Iwould just point you all back to

(41:53):
our audit that does havecompliance associated with what
we did, just like make it upright, like to real-audit And so
we have grown significantly.
Some of that has been theacquisition, but a lot of it is
organic.
Like we are growing as acompany, but again that's
because we're evolving as acompany and generating more cash
.
So I hear really good aboutthat.
The jobs that we have shed, jobsthat either we've been able to

(42:14):
consolidate and that's reallydifficult Like it's hard letting
people go like that probablyneed not be said, but it is.
It's very difficult let peoplego.
But again we are very focused onbeing a financially responsible
company And that's not justbeen toutowering to our board or
we are not public any longerbut or for press releases.
But again we're very focused onprofiting operational

(42:35):
excellence because we want tomake more money so that we can
make more things for ourcustomers and we can hire more
teams, that we can invest inthings like AI, like, if you're
not making money and you arejust on the principle of like,
we're here to support creators,which is great, but if you're
not making money, you can'tinvest in things to help them
grow and to help yourself grow.
So we're very focused on thatAnd I would like to think that

(42:58):
we're being thoughtful when wedo need to cut back in certain
areas And look, we're notperfect And I think, like other
companies, we've probably madesome mistakes along the way, but
we really have not had thisshed.
We haven't had the mass layoffsthat other people have had,
because, again, i think thatwe've been very responsible
about the way that we've grown.

Sam Sethi (43:15):
So you talk about increased revenues.
Sorry, and just for clarity,are you now profitable?

We are profitable across our business
sheets.
We are.
I mean, it changes right fromquarter to quarter, but yes, we
are.

Sam Sethi (43:26):
Well done, because you know, obviously Acast are
trying to get to that point andso it's both of the five?

Yeah, absolutely , i certainly pay attention to
our competitors when I pay moreattention to my customers in our
own business.
Those guys are dealing with awhole different set of
challenges than we are, and Iwould say likewise, we're
dealing with a lot of thosechallenges that they're not.
So I don't know if they'reentirely apples to apples, but I
would say for us, we are veryfocused on our finance And,

(43:50):
again, that is not just to bedirty capitalistic pigs It is
part of that But it's also thatwe are very focused on being
able to make money so that wecan reinvest it back into the
company and do stuff for ourcustomer.
We're focused on that.

Sam Sethi (44:03):
Final question, john, we started off with your title
of interim CEO.
Why interim, i mean?

what's the board waiting?

Sam Sethi (44:10):
for.

Yeah, yeah, that's a good question.

Yeah, so it's a really good question.
So, as I mentioned, my previousrole was Chief Product Officer
and President.
When I joined, we decided thatI was going to focus on product.
Product was really an area thatwe needed, and my role as
president was really sort oflike internal.
So I mean, i certainly had todeal with, like you know,
shareholders and I work with ourboard and work on sort of

(44:36):
relationships that we have, butI was really sort of focused in
that area.
As we've gone through thistransition to the board, it made
sense that I take on this role,as we kind of think about what
we want to do in the future And,as I mentioned, we delisted and
we're getting our house inorder and we have a lot of sort
of change going on And I'm in avery good position to be able to

(44:58):
help orchestrate that, and sothe agreement that we had was
that I would come in and elevatethat role to not just being
internal but also external Andthen we would evaluate it and
see what we want to do Not to gotoo far off in less fields here
, but like I'm married and Ihave kids and that's a really
important job to me, i think Iget it right, maybe like 87% of

(45:20):
the time, i don't know, but I'mvery focused on like closing
that gap right, like I want toclose that gap, but at the same
time I like the people I workwith.
I really genuinely like thepeople I work with and we have
the right people in place hereand I really care a lot about
the people here And I'm in thefortunate position in my life
where what I do for work is alsowhat I do for fun.
This is what I do on my freetime and I really like it.

(45:42):
And so the agreement that wehad was that I would take this
on and I'm happy to, and it's areal compliment that I don't
take lightly but that I wouldtake it on at the interim
agreement that we would kind ofevaluate if this configuration
is working out well, and so wedon't have like an immediate
timeframe on it.
But I would say that, as oftoday of our recording, our

(46:02):
board as generously hasconfidence in me, i have
confidence in our board and Ihave the confidence in our
company And, as far as I know,the company has confidence in me
, and so we're going to continuewith that for the time being
and then evaluate as we go.
I'm a product person and productpeople, we work in iterations,
right, and so I apply that toeverything in my life, so we'll
see where it goes.

(46:23):
But that's kind of the reasonit is a little complicated And
we talked about that And I waslike guys, i think we're
fighting questions And maybeagain there's like kind of
nothing to see here.
But I think for my ownwell-being, also for the board,
like we're like let's just callit in terms for right now, but
really like not a lot haschanged outside of the fact that
I'm just doing a little bitmore externally than I did
previously.

Sam Sethi (46:40):
Well, look, i wish you well with that, john.
Thank you so much.
It's been great catching up onLibsyn, and we wish you all the
best in the future.
Obviously, our doors open forJames and I, so please knock on
it and tell us what you're up to.
We'd love to report on it.

Well, thank you, i appreciate that, and I guess
I would also say that I soabsolutely appreciate what both
you and James do, and you bothare largely responsible for a
lot of the education that I have, and so, me personally, i'm
very appreciative, and then weat Libsyn are incredibly
appreciative as well.
So, yeah, thank you.

John W Gibbons, the interim CEO for Libsyn.
You can find out more, ofcourse, at Libsyncom, And thank
you to them for being oursponsor on the Pod News Daily
all this month as well.
Sam, I thought the days ofexclusive shows were over.
Spotify isn't doing any more ofthose are they?

Sam Sethi (47:31):
Well, we did think that that was the most sensible
strategy going forward, butnobody sent the email to Audible
clearly The thoughts becausethey've just announced a sci-fi
comedy called Third Eye starringNeil Gaiman, will Wheaton and
many others.
It's coming out in October.
I mean, audible is an entity toitself really.

(47:52):
I mean it doesn't feel part ofAmazon.
It sort of feels like theybought it but kept it separate.
They do have podcasts andaudiobooks in the same space,
but they just don't really talkabout podcasting.
They just call it exclusives.
So yeah, they're just weird.
That's all I'll say.

I think they're one of those first mover
advantage companies that aredoing pretty well and making
lots of stuff which at somepoint they will release onto
OpenRSS, but it may be a numberof years.
West Cork was one of those thatwas released onto OpenRSS a
couple of about a year or so agoand was very good possibly even

(48:33):
longer, but that used to be anAudible exclusive.
So perhaps they're doing that,but they're certainly very good
at signing up all of the bigstars Now.

Sam Sethi (48:41):
Audible's app.
Is that downloaded from iOS?
I can't remember when I so longago since I downloaded it, i
don't even know.
And if it is downloaded fromiOS, are they then paying the
Apple tax?

I think they are .
So they're part of Amazon And Ithink what they're doing is the
Audible's app, which you candownload from the Apple App
Store.
I think the Audible's app isone of those that allows you to.
You know it works on your phone, but you need to sign up on the
web first.
So I think that they're sort ofgetting and you know.

(49:17):
Coming back to the ApplePodcasts conversation, apple
Podcasts don't have a websiteversion.
They've got this thing calledApple Podcasts Preview, which
has been previewing there forthe last 10 years, so clearly
isn't necessarily fully there.
If they were to roll that outand make that a bit more of a

(49:37):
web app, then they've got thecapability of buying a
subscription on that way And sotherefore they can avoid giving
Google 30% of their cash.
And I'm sure that that'sexactly the same way with
Audible.
Certainly the Amazon Kindle appthat I have on my on an Android
tablet that allows you to readthe books that you have bought,

(50:01):
but if you want to go and buy abook, then it basically says no,
you can't buy a book from thisapp.
You have to go onto the website.
It doesn't even give you a link, it just basically says
amazoncouk or amazoncomau, goover there and buy a book, so
you know, and why not?
I suppose it's one way ofgetting past the Apple tax or

(50:23):
the Google tax, i guess, yeah.

Sam Sethi (50:24):
I mean, i get credits and then I go and use my credit
, so, oh well, just wondered howthey were getting around it.
Now let's move on Trends.
There's a bit of trends that wewant to cover.
Buzzsprout Friends of the ShowSponsors of the Show have posted
its platform stats for June.
James Apple, as we just saidjust now, is up nearly 2% month

(50:44):
on month.
What's caused that blip?

Yeah, well, i think this is continued work by
Apple to get rid of Apple CoreMedia.
You'll remember that it's stillthe number three in terms of
OP3, you know in terms of howbig it is But Apple Core Media
is basically the thing that yourphone calls upon car snap if it
doesn't know any better, andApple made that change slightly

(51:09):
earlier this year and it justtakes time for that change to
come through, i think.
So, yeah, so I think thatthat's essentially what's going
on there, but it's a fascinatingpage, buzzsproutcom.
It's well worth a peek becausethere's all kinds of stuff in
there, including not justpodcast apps, but devices and

(51:31):
countries and device types andeverything else, but also the
first seven-day download figures.
So if you're doing 1,109downloads, then you are doing
better than 95% of every singlepodcast out there.
If you're only doing 31downloads in your first week,

(51:53):
then you're doing better thanhalf of all podcasts out there.
So it's a great page to go andhave a peek at.
Okay, let's have a quick ziparound the world, James.

Sam Sethi (52:04):
In Spain, the Spanish language premium podcast
company Sonara, which charges€4.99 a month to access its
fiction and documentary podcast,is to switch to ad-funded
models.
Does this mean, James, thatsubscriptions don't work?

Well, it means that, certainly for Sonara,
which is owned by a big mediaconglomerate, basically sounds
as if patience has run out.
The co-founders are bothleaving, so we understand
they're going to cut staff Nowthere's about 40 staff that work
there.
They released 84 podcast titleslast year.
They didn't want to call thempodcasts, by the way.
They wanted to call thempremium audio because they felt

(52:44):
that they were a bit better thanthat.
They've realized that thatdoesn't work for them.
I have to say we're in themiddle of a cost of living
crisis.
Mortgage payments are going upand up and up and up and up.
€4.99 a month to listen to afew podcasts that you can
probably get the same sort ofthing free from other people is

(53:04):
quite a big deal, i think.
So, yeah, you can probably seethat the writing is on the wall
for that sort of company.
That said, Spain is full ofpremium podcast companies who
charge.
Podimo again is charging, evoxis charging.
68% of original podcasts fromthese large companies are only

(53:29):
available if you pay.
So perhaps what's actuallygoing on here is that Spain is
seeing a bit too many paid forpodcast companies And perhaps
there's a bit of rationalizationgoing on in that market.

Sam Sethi (53:43):
Well, yeah, i mean.
it's interesting, though, thatthey've got a culture of payment
, as opposed to several othercountries which don't have a
culture of payment.
Anyway, good luck to you,sonora.

In job news.
Not much job news at the momentgoing on, But one of them is
Ruth Todd, who is the newExecutive Vice President and
Chief Content Officer atBonneville International.
She'll oversee the content,vision and execution across
Bonneville International,including the podcasts that they

(54:18):
do.
Bonneville International is abig radio broadcaster in the US
as well.
There are still jobs going on,though, even though we are in
the middle of summer, in theNorthern Hemisphere at least.
If you want to find out whatthose jobs are.
Podnews has podcasting jobsacross the industry, across the
world.
Podnewsnet slash jobs.
The tech stuff On the PodNewsWeekly Review.

(54:40):
Yes, it's the stuff you'll findevery Monday in the PodNews
newsletter.
Here's where we do all of thetech talk.
Sam, where do you want to start?

Sam Sethi (54:48):
with this.
In May 2018, apple Podcastrequested that all podcast feeds
should be secure and that, inthe future, a secure feed would
be required for analytics and tosubmit new podcasts.
It's still not a requirement, ihear you say, but as of today,
the data from the podcast indexsuggests just 3.8% of the 4.1

(55:08):
million shows available are notserved using a secure feed.
In 2018, that figure was 83%,so it seems to have worked,
james.

Yeah, i think it's worked without them
actually having to make it therule, which is pretty clever,
and it's exactly the right thing.
Secure feeds are important.
Secure feeds make sure thatonly the right people know what
podcasts you listen to.
You need to be a little bitcareful of those podcast

(55:37):
companies who are doingindividual domain names for
their shows.
Those are visible to anybodythat can see your internet
traffic.
So that's not necessarily agood thing, but certainly having
a secure feed, one that startsHTTPS, is a good thing as well.
Apple, of course, have made twobig changes, one of them

(55:57):
talking about secure feeds andone of them talking about that
they don't want email addressesin RSS feeds anymore.
So many podcast hostingcompanies have taken email
addresses out for a moreenhanced privacy, but that does
mean that claiming podcasts onother services is a bit of a
nightmare, and so there'scurrently a very messy

(56:19):
conversation going on Very messy, very messy in the podcast
index, github, talking about anew field which might be called
podcast authorization.
It might be called podcastverification URL.

Sam Sethi (56:33):
Well, I mean, on Friday I was listening to Dave
and Adam and thanks Dave forpushing it forward for phase
seven as a priority.
But I was pulling my hair outbecause they were talking about
oh well, we could have the userupdate the podcast TXT field.
a bit like DNS.
It's very simple.
I'm going 99% of people can'tupdate their DNS.
Why do you think they're goingto be able to update the podcast

(56:56):
TXT field?
They don't know what that means, right?
So then Dave said, correctly,well, we can have a new tag and
that can contain a string withinit that sends the user back and
they can log in, but then wecan wait for it to pod, ping to
update.
I'm thinking poppings, not thatstable and the time that it
would take, and I'm thinking whyare we reinventing the wheel?

(57:18):
It's basically oh, i mean, i goto.
I mean, as Elon still can makeit work.
you know, i go to the TwitterAPI, i just put in my
credentials and boom, it bringsme straight back to my website
instantly.
That's it.
It doesn't have to be any moredifficult And the user
experience has to be that simple.

There seems to be an awful lot of you know foot
dragging because nobody wantsto do full OAuth and you know,
and fiddling around with otherforms of doing it, and nobody's
actually thought about what theUX really ought to work.

Sam Sethi (57:50):
Exactly.
And so when I hear the use ofwell, we just said it by popping
, i still feel, oh well, it'snot going to be simple, but
we'll keep knocking the door andsee what happens.
But yes, we'll see phase sevenof the namespace, where this
goes Now.
Moving on Now, one of thethings in my dim, distant past I

(58:11):
was at Netscape and I was inthe browser wall And one of the
things that we found worked verywell was being able to use HTML
naming numbers or whatever youwant to call them HTML three,
four, five, right, a short handfor new features and functions
that we were releasing withinthe browser.
And again, i think iPhone usesthat.

(58:34):
I nobody needs to know what aniPhone 14 feature set is.
They just know oh, you've gotan iPhone 14.
It's short hand.
Now my little idea and thoughtwas look, rss 2.0 has
fundamentally died on theHarvard site.
It hasn't been updated since2009.
There's nothing been going onThe advisory board.

(58:54):
I don't think are even activein extending it.
Adam is the inventor ofpodcasting and he is part of the
podcast namespace.
Look, why can't we like DaveWeiner did?
just simply, you know, he oneday announced I'm going to call
it podcastRSS2.0 and he justskipped 1.0 and took over.
Why can't we use the phases ofthe podcast namespace, 1 through

(59:18):
6, to delineate what I supposeare the version of RSS is being
used?
I wonder whether we can thentry and nudge people to go
faster or quicker by saying ohwell, that host only supports
the 2.04 version of thenamespace and that one is 2.06,

(59:39):
because at the moment most userswon't look at the detail around
what host or which app supportswhich features, so maybe we can
call it podcasting 2.01, 2, 3,4, 5, 6, and that is a way of
creating a label or a badge thatyou can put on your website or
in your app or on your hostingsite to say exactly what you do,

(01:00:02):
and then, when you click on it,it will take you to phase 6 and
show you exactly what'savailable.

James Cridland (01:00:08):
Yeah Well, I would certainly agree.
I mean, I think, look, I thinkone of the problems with the new
podcast namespace is that notall of the new tags are a good
idea.
Let's be frank, some of the newtags aren't a good idea And so
it's probably up to a separatebody, maybe the podcast

(01:00:28):
standards projects, to basicallysay we like these, we have wide
support for the transcript tag.
Let's just say as an example,and maybe the transcript tag is
RSS 2.1.
And if you support thetranscript tag then hey, great,
you're in RSS 2.1.
And if you support thetranscript tag and the location

(01:00:52):
tag, then it's RSS 2.2.
But you don't end up sayingthat you support 2.2 unless you
support both of those tags.
And I suppose the difficultyjust comes in finding tags that
everybody can buy into, thatsome people aren't going to get
upset about, And I suppose youcan see from Acast's point of

(01:01:13):
view, their transcript tag.
It won't work with dynamicallyinserted ads, So perhaps that's
one of the reasons why it's notthere.
I mean, I would only quote toyou what Wikipedia has said in
terms of calling it RSS 2.0,when Dave Weiner came up with
that idea.
Wikipedia says because neitherWeiner nor the RSS Dev Working

(01:01:34):
Group had Netscape's involvement, they couldn't make an official
claim on the RSS name or format.
This has fueled ongoingcontroversy citation needed in
the syndication developmentcommunity as to which entity was
the proper publisher of RSS,And so I think I'm just kind of
slightly nervous about takingDave Weiner's baby away from him

(01:01:58):
.
He's pretty good at calling outpeople he doesn't agree with.
I should probably just focus onlet's just call it the podcast
standard project, version 2.1,version 2.2 or away we go, But
then that would mean that thepodcast standards project
wouldn't actually do some work.

Sam Sethi (01:02:17):
And, on that note, the reason why Netscape didn't
respond, because I do knowbecause Mike Homer, who was a
head of marketing, died at thatpoint and Mike Homer was the
lead person who was pushingforward for portals and news
sites and using RSS.
So unfortunately, mikebrilliant guy, that he was
passed away.
So that's why I think it was alittle bit naughty of Mr Weiner.

(01:02:38):
But other than that, i thinkone of the reasons in the
browser ward that it works and Ithink if you could call it a
podcast ward now is that itgives the non-technical user a
way of doing it.
So web developers, for example,would say, oh, i've got to use
the latest version of HTML toget that competitive advantage.
And in the same way, hosts,hopefully, would say, well, i've

(01:02:59):
got to use the latest phase orthe latest version of RSS
namespace to get a competitiveadvantage.
And apps are like the browsersshould be also implementing
those features.
So in a co-operative marketspace I said earlier you know,
fountain and pod first don'tsupport the location tag, but
podcast guru and pod fans do.
So hey, i've got a competitiveadvantage there And I want to be

(01:03:22):
able to talk about that andtherefore have a label or a
badge that says hey, you're notthe latest, greatest version, i
am, and I'm ahead of you Andmaybe they'll be ahead of me in
the future.

I completely agree And I think you know,
having something and this in mybrain is something that podcast
standards project should havebeen doing is actually having a
pretty, a pretty easy,straightforward okay, if you
support this one tag, then youcan say that you support, you
know, version 2.1.

(01:03:55):
And if you support these twotags, then you can claim that
you support version 2.2.
But if you don't support eitherof them, then you can't.
And at the moment we've gotcompanies who are using the
podcast standards certified logowho don't support some of the
tags, and I don't think thatthey should be able to claim
that they support it, because atthe moment it's all or nothing.

(01:04:17):
If there was a standards group,which I've been talking about
for years and years if there wasa standards group, i think that
that will be a good thing.

Sam Sethi (01:04:27):
Anyway, there's my little idea.
See what people think.
Podcast events on the POD NewsWeekly Review.

Events coming up include the People's Choice
podcast awards.
We should mention those.
They are open, the nominationsare open now And you can
register and vote for whoever itis that you want to.
It's in its 18th year.
It's run by Todd Cochran.

(01:04:54):
It's a very good podcast awards.
There's even an award therecalled After Adam Curry, So
worthwhile giving that award aminute ago.
There are more than 30categories for you to enter at
the People's Choice podcastawards.
Let me just tell you what theURL for that is.

(01:05:16):
I think it's podcast awardscomAnd your owncom.
Yeah, yes, get your owncom,don't leave me, todd Cochran.
The Paris Podcast Festivalscompetition is looking for
entries.
You've until July the 17th.
More details about that in thePOD News website.
Just give a search for ParisPodcast Festival and you'll find
that Also.
The independent podcast awardsare taking place in the UK and

(01:05:39):
the International Women'sPodcast Awards.
You can enter for those rightnow And last week we had a great
interview with Naomi Mellortalking about events.
Podcast movement in Denver ishappening.
Of course.
It's the next big event in themiddle of August August the 21st
to the 24th.
Then the world will be going toPodcaste Asia, which is in KL

(01:06:02):
in Malaysia, on September, the6th Loads of really good
speakers speaking there.
Podcaste Asiacom is where tofind more information on that.
And, of course, there's PODNews Live in London on the 27th
of September.
Podnewsnet slash live has allthe details on that.
It's cheap to go to but it'sdefinitely worthwhile.

(01:06:24):
Tickets for that are sellingfast.
It will be a sell out, so youshould be getting in there and
buying your tickets now, whileyou still can.
Podnewsnet slash live is whereto go for that.
And there are more events, bothpaid for and free, at POD News
virtual events or events in aplace with people.
Pod Newsnet slash events iswhere to go.

(01:06:47):
Boostergram corner cornercorner on the POD News weekly
review.
Oh, it's our favorite time ofthe week.

Sam Sethi (01:06:56):
Sam Indeed It's a big Instagram corner, james.

Yes, And Gene Bean has sent us 10,000 sats.
While talking to the masses, Hesays I think we'd be well
served to refer to that simplyas an in app in ecosystem token
that facilitates sending moneythat can very easily be
converted back into fiat moneyby the recipient.
I agree wholeheartedly.

(01:07:19):
He continues conceptually,converting fiat money to sats is
no different to me purchasingtokens at a fair to use with the
various vendors.
I have said this in the past.
I go booth to booth andexchange tokens for something of
value.
At the end of the day, Thevendors are able to easily
exchange the tokens they receivefor fiat money.
Completely agree.

(01:07:40):
I think that talking aboutBitcoin, talking about sats,
scares 95% of people away Andyou get people like Adam Curry
going.
But it's decentralized and it'snobody's in control And there's
somebody who's you know,gatekeeper and all of that.

Sam Sethi (01:07:57):
That's absolutely fine, you're going to get us so
kicked off.

We're used to that.
We're used to that When we goand we go to the local corner
shop and we want to buy a coffeeor something, we use a Visa
card.
It's not the world's hardestthing.
Yes, there are problems inkeeping a certain amount of
money hidden away for a user tospend, but it just worries me

(01:08:25):
that we are talking aboutBitcoin and sats as if it's
Bitcoin and sats Yay, it's justthe function of sending money to
people.
That's the whole thing.

Sam Sethi (01:08:37):
Yeah, i'll take the other side of that.
I mean, look, you know, youcould say, well, don't talk
about URLs and HTTP and WWW andjust call it a link or whatever.
It's vocabulary.
People just have to get used tothe vocabulary And once they're
used to it it becomes secondnature.
You know, if my 93 year oldfather-in-law can zoom through

(01:08:58):
COVID and understand how to doit?
you know, it's just a learningcurve And I think People will is
just, a lot of people arefeeling nervous because it's not
going as fast or as far as wehoped or as quick, and therefore
, well, if it's not gettingquick enough, let's find another
way of doing it, let's saysomething else quickly, because
that might help us.
And I'm just.
I think we should stick to ourguns.

(01:09:19):
That's my opinion.
It's maybe different to others.

Yes, well, we will see Dave Jones, another
10,000 sat.
Thank you, dave.
Very kind of you.
Dave was talking about my planfor some coding time last week.
that never really happened.
I had the same experience thisweek.
James my family was out of townall week says Dave and I plan
to get hundreds of lines of codewritten.
How many lines of code did Iactually write?
about 50?

(01:09:43):
Yes, i know exactly the thingyou have to be in the, in the
space for writing code.
I ended up getting very excitedlast night and writing all
kinds of things And redoing thefooter on the pod news website
and all kinds of things, becauseall of a sudden I thought,
right, that's what I can do.
I've done pod news for the day,that's what I should be doing.
But, yeah, never really sort ofhappened.

(01:10:05):
So yes, i'm glad that you'vespotted that as something from.

Sam Sethi (01:10:08):
Kyren as well.
Yeah, i'm working on theeducation with the value for
value podcast season threestarting next week, Delayed due
to some of those pains we'retalking about, but I'm doing the
annoying stuff so that otherswon't have to.
Yeah, he's done a brilliantvideo and audio.
I watched the video and he'sshrinking the one I watched down
.
I highly recommend people goand watch it.

(01:10:31):
It will explain what value forvalue is in a very simple,
logical way.

Yeah, which is a good thing.
So thank you, kyren, if you getvalue from what we do.
The pod news weekly review isseparate from pod news.
Sam and I share everything fromit.
We really appreciate yoursupport.
You have two ways of supportingus either with that easy to
understand visa card or mastercard or American Express Pop
along to weekly dot pod newsnet.

(01:10:56):
You can support us with as muchas you like in there And it's a
regular support, weekly dot podnewsnet.
Or you can support us with Satsby hitting the boost button in
your podcast app or juststreaming Sats.
That's all cool.
If you don't have one of thosepod news dot net, slash new
podcast apps will help you finda new app.

(01:11:17):
Now, what's happened for youthis week, sam?

Sam Sethi (01:11:20):
Well, not too much, but one of the things that I did
really enjoy listening to isTwitter episode 934, because Leo
has finally started tounderstand that micro payments
might be the way to save himself, because one hour 21 minutes,
that's all I tell you to listento.
You don't have to listen to all.

(01:11:41):
They have a whole conversationearlier about the you know
Twitter's API charging, redditAPI charging, advertising
failing, subscriptions notworking.
One percent of his listenersonly paid to go into his private
mass, not into discord.
And then one of the guests saidwell, hey, have you heard of
this thing called micro payments?

(01:12:02):
And, of course, leo immediatelypoo poo said oh, that's just
Bitcoin.
You know that doesn't work.
Oh, it's all corrupt, but theypersist in the conversation,
totally getting it wrong.
By the way, he was the blindleading the blind in the
conversation.
Oh yeah, you get these superfans who do boosts and they
score $500.
And it's just awful to listento, but you can see the pennies

(01:12:24):
beginning to drop and they'rebeginning to realise that the
advertising model won't besustainable going forward And
subscriptions do not work period, end of conversation And so
they need to find a new way ofdoing.
And then they open up theconversation.
I thought that was interestingabout newspapers and the
original way that RSS and blogswere done And could you pay for

(01:12:47):
articles on a per article, andso it was a good conversation in
the centre.
I finally think they'rebeginning to say, oh, is there
another model out there?
And this is what I mean aboutit's taking time, but I think
the pennies are beginning todrop.

You haven't been on any podcast yourself, have
you recently?

Sam Sethi (01:13:03):
Well, you know, it's nice to be asked.
If anyone wants to ask me.
I occasionally have an opinion,but this time I was on RSScom's
podcasting 101 show with AshleyGrant And she was asking me
about pod fans.
So thank you very much fordoing that.
Now, james, what's happened foryou this week?

Well, i was on national TV, which is very
exciting, from this very officeon the ABC.
I said do you want me to gointo the studios?
You know, i'm in, i'm only 20minutes away by bus.
And they said, no, we don'thave access to any studios for
this sort of thing, mate, and soyou can just do it on your, on
your zoom.
So, yes, so it was very niceAnd like I was there, it was

(01:13:46):
like there.
So yes, so what was quite funnyis I bought all of the, the
fancy shelves and things on theon the Monday or the Tuesday and
cut them down and and installedthem and everything else And
then by Friday, there I wasdoing a podcast in front of the

(01:14:06):
fancy shelves with the books onthe you know, and all of that.
So that was all good.
I've also been on a fewpodcasts which should appear any
minute now.
So that's all nice And yeah,just sort of hard at work, as
ever, really.
And you're away next week, Areyou not?

Sam Sethi (01:14:25):
Yes, i'm on a dog holiday, it's to be clear.
So I'm down in Cornwall, inPads, though.
Very nice, excellent.
So have you found a guest?

co-host.
Yes, i can tell you who thatguest is.
Exclusively That guest, becausewe don't have enough middle
aged white men.
That guest will be Rob Greenley.

Sam Sethi (01:14:47):
Is he finally split up with Todd, then Is he coming
over to us then?

Is that a permanent replacement, maybe,
maybe.
This is the plan, see ya, solooking forward for Rob being
our guest this time next week.
We'll see how tight we can.
We can get it, but Rob will bea good man, so that should be
good fun, and we'll talk to youin a couple of weeks time.

(01:15:13):
Indeed, i enjoy your doggingholiday.
Thanks, and that's it for thisweek.

Sam Sethi (01:15:19):
You can ask James and I questions using email to
weeklyapppodnewsnet.
No one ever has a, no one everwill, but we keep asking.
There's been.

One email Has there.

Sam Sethi (01:15:27):
We have had one email So we're no longer email
virgins.
That's excellent.

Right, but anyway, our music is from Studio
Dragonfly.
Our voiceover is Sheila D.
We're hosted and sponsored byBuzz Prout.
Podcast hosting made easy Getupdated every day.
Subscribe to our newsletter atpodnewsnet.

Sam Sethi (01:15:46):
Tell your friends and grow the show.

John W Gibbons (01:15:48):
And support us And support us The.
Pod News Weekly Review willreturn next week.
Keep listening.

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