Podcast Video Is Complicated But We Can't Surrender It to YouTube

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Pod News Weekly Review uses chapters so you can
skip from story to story, eventhe one about HLS video.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
The last word in podcasting news.
This is the Pod News WeeklyReview with James Cridland and
Sam Sethi.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
I'm James.

Speaker 4 (00:15):
Cridland, the editor of Pod News, and I'm Sam Sethi,
the CEO of True Fans.

Speaker 5 (00:20):
Could we put on our own awards celebrating the
funniest people, podcasts andmoments in the industry?

Speaker 3 (00:27):
Yes, he could.
Giles Gear from the GoldenLobes and the Cheerful Earful.

Speaker 6 (00:32):
Plus giving the listener more options.
It just also seems a better wayto do video, Justin.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
Jackson from the Podcast Standards Project on HLS
Video.
This podcast is sponsored byBuzzsprout with the tools,
support and community to ensureyou keep podcasting, start
podcasting, keep podcasting withbuzzsproutcom From your daily
newsletter, the Pod News WeeklyReview.

Speaker 4 (00:57):
So welcome back, James, Welcome, welcome.
You were missed.
I made a massive ricket lastweek, so apologies for no Pod
News Weekly review to everybody.
I clearly didn't plug the rightplugs in on my road and we had
massive echo so the audio wasgarbled.
So thanks to John McDermott,who was the co-host.

(01:18):
He did a fantastic job oftrying to un-echo it.
It's still a little bit weirdwhen you hear it, but I'm going
to say I said to James justbefore we came on I'm going to
edit that down and put it on PodNews Extra because I think John
had some great insights, so Idon't want to lose it all
together Very nice.

Speaker 3 (01:36):
Well, I look forward to that Now.

Speaker 4 (01:39):
I also asked one of our power supporters, david John
Clark, to do a little jinglefor me for last week's show.
I have sent that to you, james,maybe you play it.

Speaker 3 (01:49):
Yes, I've got no idea what this sounds like.
Here goes G'day listeners.

Speaker 7 (01:53):
James Cridland's out and about this week soaking up
the sun in Darwin with his famand hanging with thousands of
crocs.
So no Pod News Weekly reviewfrom him this week Fair dinkum,
he never takes a break, but he'sAh, the phone beeped.
Fuck you, megan.
Thanks a lot, monica.

Speaker 3 (02:16):
Wow.

Speaker 7 (02:18):
Oh wait, wait, All right, where's fucking airplane
mode?
I'm still recording.
This is going to be funny.
I'll send that to Sam.

Speaker 3 (02:30):
There you go.
That's what a proper Australiansounds like, exactly, and
that's why this version of thepodcast has an explicit sign
next to it.

Speaker 4 (02:41):
Thank you, David John Clark.
He sent me three clean versionsof that re-edited but.
I was just wetting myself withthe unclean edited version
Wowzers.

Speaker 3 (02:51):
Well, there's a thing , thank you.
Thank you, david, for that.
That's fair.
Dinkum mate, who said CrocodileDundee's dead hey who said that
.

Speaker 4 (03:01):
Now let's start off with some proper news.
The funding tag this has beenone that's been bubbling up.
It's been around for ages andit's sort of been ignored, but
now it's getting a lot oftraction.
James, what's happening?

Speaker 3 (03:14):
Yes, it is so a story from Supporting Cast, who have
said that NPR has recently addedsupport for the funding tag
across all of its shows.
So what it is, in case youdon't know, it's a podcasting
2.0 feature and if you put anadditional thing in your RSS
feed, it allows a button toappear in lots of great podcast

(03:36):
apps like Pocket Casts orPodcast Addict or True Fans or
AntennaPod.
You press the button and, heypresto, it's there and links you
through to, in this particularcase, their Supporting Cast page
.
Brilliant to see NPR is doingit.
Brilliant to see thatSupporting Cast is talking about
it as well.
And, you know, great forpodcasters that want to offer,

(04:00):
you know, an alternative to justhearing ads for Casper
mattresses offer an alternativeto just hearing ads for Casper
mattresses.

Speaker 4 (04:10):
Don't knock it.
I mean I've got sevenmattresses now from that.
I read the last paragraph.
The more podcasts we havechampioning podcasting 2.0, the
stronger the podcastingecosystem will be.
Let's make direct audiencesupport a core part of how shows
and creators succeed.
I couldn't agree more.
Yes.

Speaker 3 (04:23):
No, it's a really good thing and really good of
them to have published that.
There's a brand new guide abouthow the funding tag works on
podcasting2.org, includingscreenshots of different apps in
there.
There's presumably more appsthat need adding.
Sam Sethi, yes.

Speaker 4 (04:44):
Again my question of how do I edit this page.

Speaker 3 (04:46):
You edit this page.
There's a link that says editthis page.
I mean, it really couldn't havebeen any any more, don't worry
I will.

Speaker 4 (04:54):
I will be on there later.
No, I think the other part ofthis that I find interesting is
how this is.
You know, initially sites likePatreon are memberful and
supporting cast being excited byit, but also all the
complications that we've hadabout V4V and micropayments and

(05:16):
wallets has held back the directpayment model from fan to
creator, and I think this is anice interim footstep that
allows people to understand inbasic, simple language.
You know, click this button orclick this link and then put in
a in a mount you understand, notin Swahili and, hey presto, you

(05:39):
can now be giving money to yourfavourite creators.

Speaker 3 (05:42):
Yeah, now, I think I think it's a really useful thing
.
It's really easy to understand.
It's just a button to help fundthe particular podcast.
It's on this show and becauseBuzzsprout supports it, and when
you click it it will open apage for you to become a power
supporter.
I mean, it really is as simpleas that.
If you use it on the Pod NewsDaily podcast, then it opens a

(06:05):
Stripe page where you can sendus any amount of money and it is
different, clearly, tostreaming payments.
It's just another form of valuefor value, of course, but it is
a super easy one and you know,really pleased that Pocket Casts
are now, you know, have nowstuck it in, and hopefully what

(06:27):
that means is that appdevelopers understand that Apple
is not going to cut you off forhaving that particular feature
in your podcast app.
So one day perhaps we can seeOvercast putting it back.
It would be great if Overcastdid put it back, but, yeah, so
it's a good thing that morepeople should end up getting Now

(06:50):
let's move on.

Speaker 4 (06:51):
James, the Spotify people have given something back
to Nathan Gathright.
What have they returned back tohim?

Speaker 3 (06:57):
Yes, I think this is a really good move, and it's
something that I have beenquietly asking Spotify to do for
a while.
I've actually been contactingSpotify every now and again
saying are you still linking tosuch and such?
And you probably shouldn't be,because that app doesn't exist
anymore and they've made acouple of changes under the hood
, but clearly it's not a focusof theirs anymore, and so Nathan

(07:19):
Gathright, who came up withPodlink, has been given it back.
So it's a simple one link thatyou can advertise, that you can
market.
It basically allows you to openyour podcast in any platform
you like, of course, includingSpotify, but many other things
and, yes, and Nathan now hasthat back.

(07:40):
There are, I calculated, 1.7million links to Podlink on the
web, so that's great news,because it means that all of
those will keep on working,assuming that Nathan doesn't
break it, and I can't imaginethat he will.
So one of the other things thatNathan does is he also has a
number of helpful GitHub things.
One of them is links to all ofthe logos, and one of them is

(08:04):
links to how to link to aparticular podcast app directly.
And one thing just for you tobe aware of, sam he's updated
the TrueFans logo.
Now that he's seen how your iOSapp looks, he has updated it.
So it looks nice and smart inthe new thing, and so the Pod

(08:24):
News podcast pages are alreadyusing that, so that's a good
thing.

Speaker 4 (08:29):
Oh, very nice.
Thank you very much, nathan.
Now I'm glad people tell methings that I have no idea about
my own platform.
I mean again.

Speaker 5 (08:37):
I got told that it was in the app store when I
didn't even know.
Yeah it's lovely.

Speaker 4 (08:41):
I wonder what else has been happening with my app
that I have no idea about.
Who knows?
Who knows More often, who cares?
Right Now, related to this,CoHost has added new features to
its tracking tool.
What's this one about, James?

Speaker 3 (09:06):
Yeah.
So this is if you are promotingyour show CoHost has a similar
tool to Podlink and if you arepromoting your show, maybe you
have bought some advertising onBlue Sky or on Twitter I don't
know if you can buy advertisingon Blue Sky, but you know what I
mean or on Twitter or onFacebook or whatever.
You can tag those in differentways and what that will do is
that will actually tell you howmany listeners you got from
those advertising.
You know from the advertisingthat you ended up doing.

(09:26):
So.
Linkfire does something a bitlike that, but only for Apple
Podcasts, I think, but Co-hostis doing that for everything.
So that's a very cool thing, Ithink.

Speaker 4 (09:37):
Linkfire is the one I was going to ask you about.
That's the oddest platformintegration with Apple I think
in my time in the industry I'veever heard of.
It's not part of Apple, They'venot bought it, and yet it's a
third party that they use.
I don't get it.

Speaker 3 (09:53):
Yeah, I don't get it either, to be honest, but
LinkFire is.
I mean, the nice thing aboutLinkFire for music is that you
can link to a music track and itdoes all of the lookups onto
all of the music platforms andstuff like that.
What Apple have done withLinkFire, which they haven't
done with everybody else, isthey've done some integration

(10:16):
with Apple's analytics so againyou can actually see how many
proper plays you've got from theLinkFire links that you do.
I don't really understand whythat's an exclusive with
Linkfire.
I don't quite understand whythey're getting that data and no
one else is, but you know.
But I suppose it's nice, isn'tit.

Speaker 4 (10:36):
Now one other thing related to links and stuff that
I spotted.
Blue Sky have added livenotifications to the platform,
so very much like if you go toYouTube there's a bell icon.
You can click on the bell iconand basically, if there's an
update to that account, you'llget a push notification.
That's lovely and I'm veryexcited by that for one reason

(10:59):
because true fans just addedblue sky auto publishing this
week and it means that if you'reJames, for example, listening
on True Fans and you happen tolisten to this show, you can
choose to auto-publish youractivity listening activity to X
, mastern and now Blue Sky.

(11:20):
And of course, what it meansbefore is that I would then
follow james on blue sky but I'dhave to go into the app to see,
oh, james has just listened topod news weekly and I'd have to
keep going back into the app.
Now I can just put a bell iconon james's blue sky account and
anytime there's an auto updatefrom true fans or you publish

(11:42):
anything new to Blue Sky, I willget a push notification.

Speaker 3 (11:46):
Well, there we are, and, of course, blue Sky being
where the liberals are, the wetliberals, and X being where the
Nazis are.
So it covers both sides of thepolitical spectrum there.

Speaker 4 (11:59):
Well, we don't know.
Now Elon's coming back from thedark side.
It's like Luke Skywalker, youknow he nearly went to the dark
side.
It's like Luke Skywalker, youknow he nearly went to the dark
side, luke, I'm your father.
And then he's sort of come back.

Speaker 3 (12:09):
Yes, but now he's got no friends.
Oh, that's true.
Yes, I was listening to theRest Is Politics this week and
Alistair Campbell was sayingexactly that.
He's loathed by people on theprogressive side because he
helped Trump and he's nowloathed by the Trump people
because he's gone against Trump.
So I don't think he's thevehicle at all.
I would, though, like to pointout that, because I am entering

(12:31):
the United States of America thefreest country in the world
next month, I would like topoint out that I'm a fan of
everything that that countrydoes, and please don't go
reading anything into what I'vejust said about any particular
one of your fine people who livethere.
I hope that's clear.

Speaker 4 (12:51):
I will come and visit you at Alligator Architrave for
you.
Yes, exactly, moving on, we'lldo a show from there.
Yikes Right, this story here,james.
It says Thanks to Ryan Pownall,a Canadian social media
influencer, and I will let yougo from there.
Yes, what's this one about?

Speaker 3 (13:11):
So Ryan Pownall or Pownall or something.
Anyway, he is either a verystupid person or he's a very
malicious person, because whathe's done is he's launched a
podcast on our sponsors onBuzzsprout.
Person because what he's doneis he's launched a podcast on
our sponsors on Buzzsprout.
One of the brilliant thingsabout Buzzsprout is that when

(13:32):
you add a podcast there, youappear everywhere.
That's part of what Buzzsproutdoes, so you can easily get into
Apple Podcasts.
You can easily get into Spotifyand all of the other apps and,
of course, getting into ApplePodcasts essentially means that
you're getting into pretty wellevery single podcast app under
the sun, because that's how mostpodcast apps work if they're
not using the podcast index,anyway.

(13:53):
So Ryan ended up doing thatHooray hooray for being a
Buzzsprout customer and thenhired a company called Certus
DMCA.
Hired a company called CertusDMCA which apparently is an
AI-powered anti-piracy servicewhich has sent a takedown notice

(14:14):
about us to Google because wewere stupid enough to
automatically list his rathergrubby podcast.
So essentially, he has got us ablack mark with Google for
carrying what Google thinks iscopyrighted material.
Of course it's not.
It's just a podcast that we'relinking to, like how podcasts
work.

Speaker 4 (14:32):
Oh, I had to explain that to Apple, by the way, yeah.

Speaker 3 (14:34):
Oh yeah, Well, yeah, exactly Exactly.
So I ended up appealing thatcopyright strike with Google a
week ago.
Still haven't heard whether ornot my appeal has been accepted
through Google or not.
But I mean, obviously, ifenough people do that to anyone,
then Google will essentiallytake your entire domain off.
So you know, I mean, eitherhe's a malicious person doing

(15:00):
you know bad things specifically, or he's just very stupid and
doesn't understand howpodcasting works.
But I'm surprised, aftermentioning him last week, that
nobody has reached out, thatnobody has commented.
If he's a social mediainfluencer, you'd have thought
that he would be pretty good atspotting any mentions of him on

(15:22):
social media, but clearly not.
So anyway, thanks, Ryan, but nothanks, and I think, rather
unfortunately, I think he's fromCalgary, although he now lives
in LA.
So I am in due in Calgary inSeptember.
So you know, if he wants toapologise to me there, then
that's absolutely fine.

Speaker 5 (15:43):
Anyway.

Speaker 3 (15:44):
Fight, yes, fight, fight, fight.

Speaker 4 (15:48):
I know where my money is.

Speaker 5 (15:50):
Right.

Speaker 4 (15:52):
Cridland's been to the gym people.

Speaker 5 (15:54):
Yes.

Speaker 4 (15:55):
Yes, watch out, ryan.
Yes, watch out.
Anyway, now zipping over toFrance and the UK for this one.
France's podcast industry hascalled for official government
recognition for podcasting.
Yes, we've seen this in India,canada and, of course, john
Savage was asking for it inSouth Africa.

(16:16):
It says if we want podcastingto remain a diverse,
creator-driven medium, it mustbe recognised as a cultural
industry in its own right.
The organisation said in astatement following its AGM.
Creator-driven medium, it mustbe recognised as a cultural
industry in its own right.
The organisation said in astatement following its AGM.
This also follows on the backof the Audio UK asking for
something similar, james.
So is this something that,globally, all countries should

(16:37):
now be doing?

Speaker 3 (16:38):
Yeah, I didn't fully understand initially why and
Canada have been asking for thesame thing as well why this was
a thing.
But it turns out that there'stwo parts of this.
Firstly, it means tax relief,which is an important thing if
you are recognised as a corecreative industry.
So tax relief is a thing, andmovie makers, for example, get

(17:03):
that, tv makers in mostcountries get that, but podcast
makers don't, and that seems abit of a mistake.
But also, secondly, it meansthat if you are recognised, it
means that you get to helpgovernment set their policies,
which, again, the audio industryis being frozen out of in both

(17:23):
the UK, france, canada and otherplaces.
So, yeah, so it is actually areally important thing.
If you are in any of thosecountries, then both the
Canadians, the British and theFrench are certainly asking for
you to do a few things.
One of them is to contact yourMP, one of them is to sign a

(17:45):
joint letter and there arevarious other things.
I would very much push for thatbecause you know I was unaware
of what a difference it couldactually make to the industry
and it does seem a little bitweird that the Moron Box gets,
you know, ticks of you know well, this is brilliant.
This is part of our UK creativeindustry by the Moron Box.

(18:05):
Obviously, I'm in television,but for audio we don't get any
of that, and I think that thatshould probably change.
So hurrah for France, hurrahfor Audio UK in the UK, hurrah
for Canada as well, and morepower to you.
From my point of view, Now Ithink it becomes.

Speaker 4 (18:25):
I look at spotify and the music industry.
It's become so amorphous acrossthe globe.
You know, guaranteed it'staylor, swift, bruno mars, ed
sheeran.
It's the same people in everycountry.
There's no real distinction.
I think culture has been lostthrough the globalization of,
and I hope that we could keepthe cultural localisation of

(18:48):
podcasting.
That would be my hope.
Yeah, indeed, now the ComedyPodcast Festival is to expand
into the US and it's alsoreturning James to London, but
coming to your part of the worldin Melbourne.

Speaker 3 (19:02):
Yes, it's a podcast festival called Cheerful Earful.
Of course, we've just seen avery successful podcast festival
.
It's a podcast festival calledCheerful Earful.
Of course, we've just seen avery successful podcast festival
, which we'll talk about more ina few minutes.
But Cheerful Earful is, I think, three years old.
It's planning 15 days of livepodcast shows across the world
and they are in New York Cityfor the first time, which is
very exciting in partnershipwith their headline sponsor,

(19:24):
adalicious.
So you ended up talking withGiles Gere.

Speaker 4 (19:28):
I'm excited because last week was the Golden Lobes
and this week, thankfully, wehave the organiser and the
sponsor of those.
So first of all, giles Gere,director for Cheerful Earful,
hello, how are you?

Speaker 5 (19:40):
I'm very well, thank you.
I'm just about getting over theemotional and alcohol hangover
of the lobes.
But yeah, I'm well, sam.

Speaker 4 (19:47):
Excellent and Andrew Goldsmith, ceo of Adelicious,
welcome.
How are you, andrew?

Speaker 1 (19:52):
Thanks, Sam.
Yeah, very well, Thank you verymuch.
Yeah, it's a busy time of year,isn't it?
For all of us in this industry.
So, yeah, all good thanks.

Speaker 4 (20:05):
Yeah, we've got the London podcast show coming up in
two weeks, so we're all alldecamping to that, so that
should be fun.
Let's start off charles, thegolden lobes.
What are they, what were theythis week?

Speaker 5 (20:13):
and and give us some highlights from the event I mean
, yeah, the golden lobes weresort of born.
I mean, everything it was isgood to start as a pun, so they
were pun based first, but theywere born out of our podcast
festival, which is cheerfulearful.
So cheerful earful is afestival of funny podcasts.
It was born four years ago, so2022, just in a handful of

(20:34):
london pubs, and even back thenandrew and adalicious were very
kind and sort of you know,having a look at what was going
on and helping us put things on.
So it grew from a sort offour-day handful of London pubs
because there wasn't, there wasnothing in that space for comedy
podcasts or even funny podcasts.
And we do say funny podcasts.
There's lots of mental healthpodcasts, sports one, I mean.

(20:56):
Joe Marla made his sort of liveshow debut as part of the
festival a couple years ago.
So it's not out and out comedynecessarily, and they've they.
And last year the festival hadmultiple days in London and in
Melbourne as well, and then,just as they were coming to a
close, I've worked in radio andaudio and podcast for a while.
I've been on the other side ofawards.
I've always wanted to do awardsand I, from a personal point of

(21:17):
view, get a bit grumpy whenthey cost your mortgage to enter
and then you have to remortgageto then get a ticket to the
night itself and it can be a bitI don't know leave a bad taste.
I was like, well, based on ourinfrastructure of our brilliant
partners and supporters andsponsors, and also on the sort
of network of comedy podcastsfunny podcasts that we worked on

(21:38):
over the years, could we put onour own awards celebrating the
funniest people, podcasts andmoments in the industry and have
a bit of fun with it and havecategories like best blooper,
best tangent, as well as likemore proper one in inverted
commas.
And I wanted to, but I couldn'tthink of a nice name.
And then, as always, away withgood ideas, a 3am thought came

(22:00):
into my head.
I used to be bullied for thesize of my ears at school, so I
was like right, I'll reclaimthat.
And the golden lobes were bornand we put things in motion and
it literally was a series ofWhatsApps to some trusted,
creative people that I know, theguys at Podlife Awards and I.
Just really, with the lobes, itwas like we want them affordable

(22:20):
, accessible and fun, affordableto enter.
It's not 60 quid per category,it's 25 quid.
Enter as many as you want.
You know accessible.
Any genre can enter.
It's not out and out comedy.
If you're really let's, youknow, face it stagnant or boring
business podcast, but you havea hilarious blooper.
Get involved and fun, becauseputting together your best bits

(22:41):
and relishing of what you'vedone over the past 12 months
should not feel like a slog.
And when I worked in radioputting together a 15 minute
entry, it was a bit of a.
It was all this oh stress andeverything.
So we went five minutes, justdo five minutes.
The big one is 10 minutes.
Let's just do five minutes.
For all the other ones, though,and get involved, and it was a
bit of a firing a creative flairin the sky to see would anyone

(23:01):
care, would anyone get involved?
And, and people did care,people did get involved, and, as
of yet, we've had no cease anddesist from the Golden Globe.
So I think plans are alreadyafoot for next year.

Speaker 4 (23:12):
I think they feel threatened, giles, because on
the back of your event, theyannounced that they're going to
have a podcast category.
I mean, I genuinely think theycan't see you, but I think they
feel the fear and they've movedwith it.

Speaker 5 (23:24):
Yeah yeah, exactly, exactly.
And you know we were very, verylucky to have tons of.
I mean, with the festival it'salways a fantastic melting pot
of indie creators, sometimespeople doing their first ever
live shows, and big boys as well.
You know we had Lateral withTom Scott.
It's a massive, massive podcast.
It sold out the Clapham Grandlast year but had never done a

(23:44):
live show and we facilitate that.
And with the festival everyonegets the exact same ticket split
.
You know, whether you're tiny,tiny, never done a live show or
you're, we're trying to, youknow, convince big agents to get
involved, kind of thing.
And we had the amazing FrankSkinner was nominated for a
couple of awards at this year'sLoebs and he picked up the Loebs
Legend Award for services tofunny audio.
We had this Paranormal lifepicked up the biggest award,

(24:05):
which is the big ears award inbrackets, basically the funniest
show of the year, like they'rean independent show that have
been going for eight years buthave tons and tons of downloads.
So it was just this fantasticmelting pot of small creators,
big creators, producers, all atthe clapham grand raising a
glass, and we had a very, veryfun silly tongue and cheek

(24:26):
awards night.
We had a few pop-up appearancesfrom Stephen Bartlett
supposedly some people havequestioned whether it really was
him and again.
That was important on the nightwas not to just have a two,
three hour slog where lots ofnames, lots of applause.
We wanted it to be quick, funand lots of mingling and
networking time and and I'm notjust saying this because Andy's

(24:47):
on the call, but I had a reallyinteresting email from one of
the guys at this Paranormal Lifeso our winners who said we
loved that you were so, ratherthan keeping partners and any
paid for sponsors hands off, welove all of the proactive
promotion and we're going to beworking with Orthonic.
We want to pick up this.
We want to pick up that becausewe really curate the partners
we work with and we want toencourage collaboration well

(25:10):
beyond just the festival or justthe awards, because that's the
only way the industry will growyes, and while you were talking,
can I throw two names into thehat for awards, because you've
got big ears.

Speaker 4 (25:22):
But clearly there has to be the linekers.
I mean there must be an awardfor the linekers and and the
dumbo awards, they've got to bethose for the bloopers.
I mean, just you know, yeah,and I'm sure that you'll get
many other suggestions now.
On a postcard now given, giventhat the event is, was it
inaugural event or is this thesecond event?

Speaker 5 (25:42):
this was the inaugural golden lobes, yeah,
and it was from a slightly, youknow, businessy point of view.
We've got our sort of festivalin October Q4, and we wanted
something in Q2 that wascaptured the creativity, because
with a festival, with events,you know you've got one thing in
the year and then it sort ofdisappears for 10 months and
then it pops back up again.
We thought, well, we have somany hungry, funny podcasters in

(26:06):
this network gagging to do morestuff and you know, and all
partners who want to becollaborating the most.
So it was like what you know,the awards just really fitted
that of wanting to havesomething halfway through the
year before we have the festivalin october.
That just continues it and justfalls under the same brand and
keeps sort of pushing everyoneforward.
And you know we have people whohave performed at the festival

(26:27):
and got involved with the awardsor vice versa, and some people
have never heard of the festival.
But the awards are a great sortof entry point for them because
some will care more about the,the recognition.
And you know, I was just aboutto swear there, sam, I wouldn't
dare, but we, we made sure we,we offered a bucket load.
I was gonna say fuck ton.
But let's say bucket load offree stuff from all of our
partners.

(26:47):
You know free studio sessionsand onboarding.
And orthonic said you know youcan have free this, free, that
and we had.
You know all these bespokestuff.
So for 25, you know money, 25quid couldn't buy you that
normally, let alone just beingnominated for the awards.
So it's really important thatwe gave back as much as possible
and and, of course, sent out agood old Google form afterwards
and said what can we build on,what can we do better?

(27:09):
And there was some really goodfeedback already, you know, on
venues and, like you say, sam,on awards, you know there wasn't
enough, necessarily queerrepresentation, there weren't
enough.
You know women's awards and allthis kind of thing specifically
.

Speaker 4 (27:26):
So that's great, and it's already.
You know plans in motion, likeI said, for 2026, all being well
, excellent.
Now, andy, let's come to youFirst of all who are what is
Adalicious.

Speaker 1 (27:34):
Let's just get that out of the way.
Oh yeah, ok, so hopefully we'renot the best secret in the
podcast industry anymore, butjust in case there is a little
corner of the industry thatdon't know us, we are the uk's
biggest independent podcasthosting and monetization network
.
We are approaching our fifthbirthday in august, so we're

(27:55):
starting school pretty soon.
We can read, we can write, wecan talk, but we're growing very
, very quickly and I suppose oneof the best early decisions we
ever made actually was aligningwith Giles and Cheerful Earful,
because we always wanted to, youknow, say a flag in the sand
for this kind of like missedtier of podcasts.

(28:16):
You know, I suppose like thelast boys and girls in the
industry, because they're notnecessarily chart topping or
considered some of the best.
These are amazing contentcreators, an incredible group of
podcasters and creators, and wewanted to champion those and
cheer for, as giles said, theirkind of whole thing was.
We're not just about, you know,the chart toppers, we're about

(28:37):
anything and anybody in everykind of genre within that funny
space, and we just felt likeindependent, kind of festival,
independent network, justaligned and the whole content
was brilliant but, yeah, growingquickly given your
participation, is it purely amonetary participation or do you
do anything more with the eventitself, you know, does your
support extend beyond just apure monetary sponsorship?

(29:00):
it's.
I suppose we're probablyentering the fourth year this
october, giles, I think, and wetry and push it on every year.
It started as a way for us togive Cheerful Earful a step up
and make the event actuallyhappen.
What we quickly found, actuallywhen we supported year one, was
that it turned into anopportunity for us to kind of

(29:22):
represent people that we weren'talways aware of and they were
able to kind of come to us andfind us, and I think Giles has
done a very good job of findingpartners that can extend beyond
just a monetary partnership andinto something that really
genuinely gives back to eitherthe industry or to individual
creators that need a little bitof help.
So we support in every singleway we can, from marketing and

(29:42):
promoting and pushing the eventthrough to, you know, if
partners are coming through as aresult of seeing us on that, we
work with them in a very deepand meaningful way.
So we're really kind of proudof this relationship and how
it's evolved, and I can't see usever, ever not wanting to be
Giles's headline sponsor inanything that he does, and it

(30:03):
just made natural sense for usto kind of step in with the
lobes as well.

Speaker 5 (30:07):
Can I just say, sam as well.
First of all, I'd like arecording of that just to make
sure I can put that in thecontract.
That's good In perpetuity Riseeach year, exactly, exactly.
But that is really importantbecause we've all been both
sides of the coin asked formoney or asked people for know,
for sponsors and everything, andI'm deadly serious in sort of

(30:27):
doing this sort of funnybusiness of we don't just want
to slap a logo on things.
You know and I will try andspeak with any potential
partners or lapsed ones orongoing ones go, what is really
of value to you and some, someof them it is we want our logo
everywhere and that's great.
But some want to, example, hosta branded drinks during the
festival where they can inviteclients along and showcase their

(30:49):
shows, but the shows themselvesare still getting the ticket
split.
Part of the festival, that.
But for the sort of the youknow, for an Adelicious, they
are getting to bring on clientsto go look at what's going on,
kind of thing, whereas forothers they want those email
addresses or they want toproperly invite people to sample
their tools.
You know there might be a let'slet where are we on now?

(31:09):
Descript, are we?
Yeah, let's say a descript, notthem yet, but let's say a
descript.
Say we want to have access topeople.
Go, do you realize this couldbe especially those smaller or
India emerging creators?
Do you know these?
All these tools exist, you know, and so let what Orphonic's
best example, best example whereyou know we hand over those
email addresses and we properlypromote them again.
Look, if you use orphonic and Ican say from personal

(31:30):
experience I've had someonerecord what sounded, you know,
like a goldfish bowl wasabsolutely pants you pop it in
orphonic, click a button andit's good to go, so they get a
proper endorsement rather thanlogo slaps, and you know that's
that makes it much moreinteresting to me, because
commercial partners know if it'sjust a logo slap and you
disappear, you know if you justsqueeze money for no reason,
that's true.

Speaker 4 (31:50):
Now you've talked about your other event, cheerful
Earful the festival.
Give us a feel for that eventand why it's.
You know, something that peopleshould come along to yeah no
pressure, but I mean bloomingnora.

Speaker 5 (32:05):
I mean, yeah, I mean you're starting the 10 giles.
I know, I know I wouldn't, I'mnot even the best person to talk
about that, but I mean just inthe, just in the way that in the
early days, sort of andy andadalicious got it in inverted
commas and said, yeah, we seethis, we, we, we want to support
this.
We had a sort of a number oflegacy shows or older sort of
shows that did exactly the same,like pappy's birthday girls,

(32:29):
desert island dicks who are onjust now.
They, they understood what wewere going for.
We were saying, look, we wantto create a creator first
festival with a gigantic, youknow, ticket split in your favor
.
You know, for us it's, it'sjust a laugh, it's fun.
And then, equally, the bedfordembalm, who put on loads and
loads of events, got it and theywere like, can we be the

(32:49):
festival hub?
You know, they've got thisamazing, beautiful sort of 360
theater space built into the pubI would highly recommend for
any live podcast, you know, youcan have 25 to 130 people in
there.
And then upstairs you've gotsmaller rooms where we put on
our smaller shows, you know.
And then alley at the ClaphamGrand for our headline shows,
and so I can't remember whatyour question was.

(33:10):
Well, give us a flavour of it.
Yeah, the flavour is this sortof you know, I come from
professionally and sort ofpersonally, a background of
comedy and being aroundfestivals.
I love the Leicester ComedyFestival, the Fringe, in the old
days, let's say, and it waslike, well, how can we do
something like that for comedypodcasts, where the guys
performing and the peopleattending could just almost

(33:31):
tumble into each room and gowhat's going on here and here?
And, you know, discover newshows, see their favorite
podcasts live?
You know, we trusty hogs fromyear one really get it and trust
us.
And then last year, you know, wegave them a headline slot and
they sold 500 plus tickets andand that was just a lovely full
circle moment and so for us,each year it's I always say we
want to grow, we're global butgrassroots.

(33:52):
You know, this year we aregoing to New York for the first
time, so we will have Londonnine days, three days in
Melbourne, three days in NewYork.
You know, it's big boy stuff,but we're grassroots and it's
sort of just me and a team offriends, slash volunteers, slash
, you know freelancers, andwe're keeping it independent and
fun and any growth we do has tobe considerate and kind to

(34:12):
everyone as part of theecosystem.
It's not just pressing thebutton and doing growth for the
sake of it, because you willlose identity.
You know, I've seen that happenwith festivals and so for me,
the best, especially at thefinal weekend in London and you
have to come along, sam, whenyou're going, you're just
wandering around the pub andyou've got, you know, these
back-to-back of live comedypodcasts going on and especially

(34:34):
because they book their comedyfriends, you never know who's
going to be there.
In the final show of thefestival we had james acaster in
a room with 100 people.
I mean you'd be paying, youknow, again remortgaging for a
third time just to see him ontour these days, but it was
great because they all just booktheir, their friends and mates
and get them involved andthere's so much crossover.
So it's a love to be a part ofand to come watch your shows.
I mean I try as much as handover the actual run of it during

(34:55):
the week so I can just enjoymyself.
You know I did that at theLoebs last Wednesday.
I just wanted to enjoy the show.

Speaker 4 (35:00):
Yeah, I can't think of a better way of putting it
really now, if you had a magicwand, is there anything you
would want to change or dodifferently with either the
lobes or the cheerful airfieldfestival gosh?

Speaker 5 (35:12):
do you know what?
No, I can't think of, andthat's not me trying to be
humble or arrogant.
It's always been a creative,fun side hustle.
Essentially, you know, it'sbeen an experiment that has
grown.
It's just joyful to see and I'mso chuffed with where they've
grown to and especially when, onthe lobes, it was a bit like
you know, back in 2012 watchingthe Avengers assemble for the

(35:32):
first time.
We had all you know, the, ourproduction manager and our
technician, everyone that helpsout in October at the festival
came along to the Clapham Grandto help run the lobes and it was
just a really, really lovelycollaboration and I think that
sort of crossover between thepodcasters and the partners and
just people getting involved isjoyful.
So maybe a logo refresh, maybeI don't know, but I'm quite
happy with the colour scheme.

(35:52):
Or maybe I wouldn't have goneto Melbourne as much, because
then all of the profit linecompletely disappears on plane
tickets.
But again, it's just fun beingpart of it.
I mean, for example, I'm amassive fan of Aunty Donna.
I mean, aunty Donna some know,some people don't are gigantic
comedians.
You know titans in Australia.
They had a Netflix series.
They're doing a world touragain this year and they took

(36:13):
part of, you know, one of theirsort of spin-off podcasts as
part of the festival last year,and I was just an absolute giddy
child.
I couldn't believe it.
So I think it's really joyfulseeing these smaller, growing
podcasts who are so hungry forcoming back to the festival
performing again and also forthe lobes, because, as I said,
I've been there, I've been a bitcynical of radio awards and
podcast awards and you sort ofthink, oh, I didn't win, for

(36:34):
god's sake, why not?
What was it this time, you know?
And but there was just such agoodwill in the room and people
posting online say, you know, Imean I might not have won, but I
spoke to this, I spoke to I,you, I had one podcast going.
What was the name of thepodcast studio that was your
partner, and I was like, oh,podshop.
They're like, yeah, brilliant,thank you, you need to go speak
to them.
And I was like, oh, great,lovely.
You know, I've neverexperienced that before.

Speaker 4 (36:56):
Can people watch back online anywhere the lobes?
Was it recorded and is itavailable?

Speaker 5 (37:04):
Short answer, no Long answer.
No, that's my fault.
Technically they areinternational and we did have
quite a few entrants from the USand from Australia as well, and
that was some really goodfeedback we got from people.
Offers that we to improve thataccessibility.
I was quite keen on not doing itin London, but sometimes you
got to listen to your headlinesponsor and it wasn't actually
Andy, but one of his staff waslike do not do it, do not do it

(37:24):
in Leicester.
I think that was more for otherreasons, for diary reasons, but
you know I'm really keen on theclapham grand is fantastic
setup for live streams andwhatnot, and so you know, again,
I'd be keen to collaborate withsomeone to help facilitate that
, because it's really important,because you know, it's not just
a ticket to an event, is it?
It's the train tickets, thehotel, it's this is that it can
all add up, especially for thosesmaller podcasters, which why

(37:46):
we were trying to offer as manygiveaways and prizes and as much
free stuff for them as to makeit humanly sort of worthwhile
again moving forward, then.

Speaker 4 (37:57):
Where can someone find out about tickets for the
cheerful earful festival?
What's the website?

Speaker 5 (38:03):
it is cheerful, earfulcouk.
We've had a bit of a websiterefresh, which I'm pretty,
pretty proud of as well, becauseyou know it was always going to
be the festival.
And then just, and you know,and the golden lobes was a
little spin-off and then, andthen the lobes sort of slightly
I feel like they might take overthe mantle in the coming years.
They seem to be such positivefeedback to them.
So now we're trying to callourselves the unofficial

(38:24):
headquarters of funny podcasts.
So we've got the festival,we've got awards and we've got a
few other things cooking awayin the background to try and
bring podcasters and podcastfans together more, with some
meetups, mashups kind of thing,because that was a lot of
feedback as well.
This sort of mingling, I mean,I've never known it before.
We said we are not providingfood, the budget doesn't allow
it, we are not providing food.

(38:45):
If you want to disappear off at8 45, go for it.
And the mingling went on untilthe bar.
People were just kicking peopleaway and it was just so great
to see.
So for me it was a lovely and agood learning point of people
care about mingling, networking,meeting new podcasters and
other people.
And someone was saying eitherpeople was.
You know I was.
I'm fairlyverted, I need toknow who's on the tables, and

(39:08):
could you have almost somechaperones and introduce and
make you know, because peoplefind it difficult to.
I mean, look at Andy, he's a.
Look at that haircut.
He's an intimidating guy, youknow.
So sometimes you need a middleperson to go right.
This is Andy from Adeliciousand then Andy go who are you?
And this person go.
I get 200 000 weekly downloadsand andy goes wow, brilliant,
you know, welcome to the party,kind of thing sponsor abuse

(39:29):
online live.

Speaker 4 (39:31):
I've never seen it before, but it's amazing it's
relentless, yeah, yeah andrew.
If anyone wants to know moreabout adalicious, where would
they go?

Speaker 1 (39:41):
so adaliciousfm is the best thing.
A bit like giles, we had a.
We had a refresh on our website, but that was last year.
Now it looks brilliant.
But, yes, you can get us there,you can get me at andrew, at
adalicious dot fm, and we'regoing to be at the podcast show
next week.

Speaker 5 (39:55):
Got a big stand there , bigger than we had last year,
and yeah, please do, please,just give us a shout sam, I know
you've got your script because,but I do want to put on record
purely just to you know, bringit back a bit because I've
insulted andy too much, but wecould not have built cheerful,
earful to where it is withoutadlicious support and getting it
.
And I've worked in the industry.

(40:16):
You know day job and then thisas well, and it is tiring,
having to explain and re-explain, trying to bring people along
and trying to, and people go.
Who are you again and what,what?
And I've had people, potentialsponsors, who are basically
comedy podcast makers or comedypodcast whatever, and they go
well, we don't see much of async up here and I'm like it's
in the name, what don't you get,whereas Adlish has got it from

(40:37):
the sort of first syllable, notyet we get it.
And so the growth that we seeagain is always done creatively
and considerately.
But we could not have goneglobal in averted commas or done
the lobes without those guysjust getting it and sporting it.
I think that some of the showson their network now I mean
you've got the creme de la cremeof comedy podcasters and
comedians and you know FrankSkinner's sitting on there.
You've got Shag Married,annoyed, which is, you know,

(40:59):
apps have been there for thebest part of a decade now just
doing what they do, so it'sphenomenal.
Thank you, thank you.

Speaker 1 (41:03):
Giles, that's very kind of you to say.
Yeah, I mean comedy and funny.
It's a phenomenal kind ofenvironment to be in.
It puts a smile on people'sfaces quite literally.
So yeah, and thanks for theshout out, giles.

Speaker 2 (41:16):
The Pod News Weekly Review with Buzzsprout.
Start podcasting, keeppodcasting.

Speaker 4 (41:25):
James, let's zip around the world back to your
favourite people.
The BBC has quietly removed BBCSounds app from international
stores.
Why, why, why, why, James?

Speaker 3 (41:35):
Why, why, why, indeed , yes, so the BBC Sounds app is
going away on July, the 21st,for everybody outside of the UK.
That's the app that the BBCproduces, which is there for
music radio podcasts.
As they say at the front ofevery single podcast that is
going away in that voice Musicradio podcast.

Speaker 7 (41:55):
BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts, your finest
Yorkshire that is going away.

Speaker 3 (42:03):
For those of us outside of the UK, it continues
inside the UK and it turns outthat it's already been removed
from the international appstores, so you won't be able to
download that anymore.
If you are running the oldversion as I know a few people
are then it tells you to updateit for the newest version, and
then you try updating it and itsays no, you can't update this

(42:25):
anymore.
So brilliant, another triumphfrom the organisation, but still
.
But there we are.
Anyway, what happens after then?
If you want to listen toon-demand radio from the UK,
then no, you're stuffed.
You can't do that anymore.
That is now no longer availableto anybody.
You will be able to listen tolive radio, and the way you

(42:46):
listen to live radio is you look, sadly, at the new bbccom
website, bbccom slash audio.
You try and find the radiostation that you want to have
listened to, and that might beBBC Radio Berkshire or it might
be BBC Radio 2.
You don't find it in that app,you end up clicking a link
marked Audio FAQ.

(43:07):
You then end up scrolling tothe middle of that link and in
the middle of that link it willgive you direct links to the BBC
Sounds live stream website,which remains open for people
outside of the UK.
You are probably thinking now,what a bloody mess.

(43:28):
And it is a total mess.
They couldn't have made thisany worse if they possibly tried
.
There are some reasons behindit, but frankly, I think that
they could have been doing thismuch, much better, but still.
But all of that is going on.
So basically're using the thebbc sounds app.
Then, firstly, you shouldn't be, and then secondly, well, tough

(43:50):
, because it'll go away in acouple of weeks time anyway I
live here and I still don'tunderstand what the bbc is doing
anymore these days.

Speaker 4 (43:57):
But there you go.

Speaker 3 (43:57):
No, no anyway, zipping over, let's go to your
favorite place?

Speaker 4 (44:02):
yeah, I don't know if it's my favorite place.
I was, you know.
I was chucked on a train andfound and handed into Mother
Teresa's.
I don't know if it's myfavourite place, but let's go
back to India.
Yes, very weirdly.

Speaker 3 (44:13):
Sam Sethi's life story there in half a sentence.

Speaker 4 (44:18):
Oh yes.
Have you ever seen the film?

Speaker 3 (44:20):
You could make a podcast out of that, but no.
No, I'll throw it away in halfa sentence in episode 143 of
Pony's Weekly Review.

Speaker 4 (44:29):
Yeah, well, look, when the film Lion came out with
Dev Patel and Nicole Kidman, myphone went off the Richter
scale.
It's the story of your life,sam.
You, you know, abandoned andadopted.
Yeah, I said my mum wasn'tNicole Kidman, so let's move on
Now.
Anyway, back in India, theIndia Brand Equity Foundation
has been looking at India'spodcasting revolution and it

(44:51):
says it has an estimatedaudience now of 200 million plus
, which puts it third behindChina and the USA.
According to this report, $3.72billion US dollars, that is by
2030.
And I don't know.
You know we've always seenthese big numbers published in

(45:12):
the future, but again it lookslike there's some real growth.
And we talked a few minutes agoabout France, canada and the UK
asking for tax relief forpodcasting.
Well, india put in $1 billionto podcasting only what four or
five months ago we werereporting.
So you know they are putting alot of money and emphasis behind

(45:36):
podcasting.

Speaker 3 (45:37):
Yeah, no, indeed it's .
I mean, you know, I've alwaysbeen looking into India, looking
at that market and thinkingthat is a real, significant
growth market, so it's reallyinteresting to be seeing more
data coming out of that market.
I do know, by the way, thatthere will be quite a few
speakers from India speaking atRadio Days Asia and indeed

(46:01):
Podcast Day Asia, which is inJakarta in early September.
If you'd like to go by the wayto that and you are and you
might find yourself in Indonesiain early September then do drop
me an email because I may havea few tickets for you.
So you know, if you fancy acouple of days of learning about

(46:23):
radio and podcasting, thenthat's a thing.
But no good to see thatinformation coming out of the
Indian market.
There's also been moreinformation coming out of the
Canadian market as well, hasn'tthere?

Speaker 4 (46:35):
Yeah, so it says Canada reaches 39% of Canadian
adults monthly as YouTubesurpasses Spotify as the
platform of choice.
Sounds very interesting, James.
Tell me more.

Speaker 3 (46:48):
Yeah, so this is data from Signal Hill Insights.
Now, one of the difficultiesabout this is it says Canadian
monthly podcast listeners nowaccount for 39% of the
population.
That is a much smaller figurethan Edison Research's infinite
dial, which is over 50% now forthe US, for the UK, australia
and New Zealand.

(47:08):
Now, of course, it's worked outin a slightly different way and
again this kind of underlinesthe point that I keep on making,
which is let's just getinfinite dial in as many
countries as we possibly can,because that would be really
helpful to get data worked outin exactly the same way in all
of these other countries.
But so either it says that thedata is worked out exactly the
same way in all of these othercountries, but so either it says
that the data is worked outvery differently or it says that

(47:30):
podcasting is not quite thereyet in the Canadian market.
And certainly, having a look atthe differences between French
Canadian and English Canadian,there are still some clear
differences there in terms ofFrench-Canadian not quite
getting yet into the samenumbers as English-Canadian

(47:51):
shows are.
But you know, interesting takinga look at that and that data
which is available from Triton,although behind an email wall,
which I'm getting more grumpyabout and so may not even link
to that.
That data comes out at the sametime as rather sad news from
the Podcast Exchange, which was,I think, the first podcast

(48:13):
advertising agency in Canada itwas launched in 2018 and news
this week that that company isfiling for bankruptcy protection
.
So essentially, it's thechapter 11 equivalent in Canada
which allows TPX to continue tooperate, but they're under
supervision and they need tosubmit plans to restructure and

(48:35):
fix their business.
So I think I've been coveringthe podcast exchange ever since
it launched back in 2018.
So, you know, wish them all thebest, but that again, I think,
points to some of thedifficulties of podcasting in
that country.

Speaker 4 (48:52):
Yeah, and we've talked about that in the past.
You know PodNorth has talkedabout it quite often as well.
How you know, there have beenchallenges over in, and you've
talked about radio being veryfunny over there as well.

Speaker 3 (49:04):
Yes, well, it's quite a lot of.
It comes down to the concernsthat the government has that
Canadians won't just become a51st state and consume the same
media as all of the US does, andso they regulate everything
incredibly strongly, whichessentially means that it's very

(49:25):
difficult to actually operate adecent business because you
have to deal with all of theregulations.
So, really, what appears to begoing on, certainly in the
broadcast radio business, isthat the regulations that have
been put in place by thegovernment are actually killing
the business and doing theopposite of what they actually

(49:47):
want, which is more Canadiancontent out there, more Canadian
broadcasters and all of that.
So it's a very strange oldthing, but, yes, it's a bit of a
messed up area, and, of course,newspapers are doing incredibly
badly in that part of the worldas well.
So, yeah, not all good up inthe frozen north.

Speaker 4 (50:09):
Moving on, then Jobs, who's moving, and grooving
James this week.

Speaker 3 (50:13):
Well, a movement away from platform media to Crowd
Network.
Dara Kelly is Crowd Network'snew Director of Strategic and
Commercial Partnerships.
They are a big sports podcastcompany based in Manchester.
They've made a number of otherhirings as well Down here in
sunny Australia.
Nine Audio, which looks afterNine's podcasts, has unveiled

(50:35):
all kinds of new commercialleadership stuff.
The point of the changes atNine Audio, we're told by
industry analysts, is that Nine,channel Nine, the TV company,
is looking at basically sellingthe radio stations and the
podcasts to anybody that has themoney.

(50:56):
So that may well be why theyare making some very careful
changes in terms of how thatbusiness works.
And Neil Carruth, who Iremember from NPR he then moved
to Freakonomics Radio.
He's now been made generalmanager of Silver Tribe Media,
which is a company that I'm notvery familiar with, but it's a
digital media management andproduction company.

(51:17):
He's a very well-known and veryintelligent guy about
podcasting, so good to see himmoving onwards and upwards.

Speaker 4 (51:27):
Now whiz around some awards and events.
Now, friend of the show, dinaSophos and a few other people
put together CrossWires up inSheffield recently.
James, what happened?

Speaker 3 (51:37):
Yes, a brilliant, large, large podcast festival.
So this wasn't a conference, itwas a festival of lots of shows
being recorded live in front oflarge audiences.
One of the people who was therewas Michael Palin, the old
Monty Python member of MontyPython.
I mean, they're all old, aren'tthey?
But you know what I mean.

(51:57):
And he was Still alive as well,okay, that's technically useful
Still alive.
Yes, which is always handy.
He ended up reading the deletedend scene of Life of Brian.
So if you want to have a listento that, you'll find that,
because we've got it on the PodNews website in video.

Speaker 4 (52:19):
So he's not just a naughty boy then.

Speaker 3 (52:22):
So that was very good .
20,000 people is the figurethat Dino has shared in terms of
the amount of people who endedup going there.
I counted 37 different thingsthat you could buy tickets for
at the event, so it's a massive,great big podcast festival.
I think it's the biggest in theworld and nobody has yet kicked

(52:44):
up a fuss at me thinking that.
So that's probably a good thing, but good for Dino.
I think one of the nice thingsthat I liked about it is that it
was based in Sheffield.
It wasn't based in London.
It wasn't another event inLondon Based in Sheffield.
They ended up even taking overa very famous department store

(53:05):
in the centre of Sheffield, theColes Brothers store, which has
been empty and unused for quitesome time, and they ended up
taking that over for thefestival, which I thought was a
brilliant idea and, yeah, it'sjust a really good thing, the
BBC jumping to its support veryhighly.

(53:25):
So well done, dino and the restof the crew.
I thought that was a fantasticthing.

Speaker 4 (53:30):
Yeah, I'm going up to the Edinburgh Festival for the
first time this year.

Speaker 3 (53:34):
Oh, my word.

Speaker 4 (53:35):
Yeah, no, no gosh.
It was on my wife's bucket list, so we're doing it, and the
thing about it is so many shows,so many events.
I can see this event hereCrossWires, you know taking over
bigger and better over the nextfew years.
I can see this becoming evenbigger than it is this year.

Speaker 3 (53:54):
Yeah, well, I certainly hope so.
I thought it was a masterstrokeof Dino to host it away from
the capital, because I thinkthat that's really helpful and
really good that the BBC got sobehind it that quite a lot of
those events were free, so youcould, as long as you got hold
of the tickets, just turn up andaway you go.

(54:15):
So, yeah, I thought it was areally smart move and good for
them for doing that.
I wonder where the USequivalent is.
There are a few podcastfestivals, but not to this size
or this scale.
So I wonder whether somebody inthe US wants to copy that
winning formula.

Speaker 4 (54:36):
Now talking about another group that meets up in
the north of England.
Vic Turnbull has a group thatshe's been running for a number
of years called MIC's Mike'sPodcast Club, and they've got
their summer drinks coming up onJuly the 17th.
So again, if you want to go tothat, it's a great event.
Vic does a great job ofbringing the community together,

(54:56):
so well done.

Speaker 3 (54:58):
Yes, next week will you be driving up to sunny
Manchester?

Speaker 4 (55:02):
No, A, it won't be sunny there never is no, it's
Manchester.
Yeah, and it's got Oasis allover the place.
No, don't worry about that?

Speaker 3 (55:12):
A, a, a.
We've just been talking about apodcast festival.
Of course haven't we.
And here's another one, theLondon Podcast Festival, which
takes place in early September,just weirdly, just 10 minutes
from the venue of the podcastshow.
It's at King's Place, which iswhere the Guardian newspaper is

(55:35):
based, very close to King'sCross, and they've just
announced a number of big showstaking part in the 10th year for
that podcast festival.
So, yes, you should jump on nowand buy tickets for some of
that.
Acast are this year's officialpartner as well, so worth going
to, I think.

Speaker 4 (55:50):
I might try and zip along to that one.
Now, one thing that we havebeen trying to do for a little
while and I'm glad it's happenedAdam Curry is going to be at a
podcast movement this year.
Rocky Thomas, friend of theshow, one of our power
supporters, was on thePodcasting 2.0 show a couple of
weeks back and she sort ofgently nudged Adam into being on

(56:13):
stage with her, which isbrilliant.
And he's on after lunch, notduring lunch, not in a little
box, but he is on after lunch at1.30 with.
Rocky.
I still think it's not theright time slot.
I still think Adam Curry, givenwhat he invented and who he is,
should be the keynote.

(56:34):
But that's up to Dan Franks.
But I am super glad that he isnow at least going to be there
and maybe we can convince Adamto do one more presentation at
the London Podcast Show as well.

Speaker 3 (56:48):
Well, I mean, that would be good, wouldn't it?
But yes, no, wonderful news tohear that Adam is going to be at
Podcast Movement.
They've not Podcast Movementthemselves haven't actually made
that announcement quite yet,but I'm certainly looking
forward to seeing him again.
I didn't spend an awful lot oftime with him in Dallas and one
of my regrets was not being ableto go and spend an awful lot of
time with him in Dallas, andone of my regrets was not being

(57:09):
able to go and, you know, have achat with him and all of that
stuff.
So hopefully we can make thatwork on this time.
He tells me he's flying in andout on the same day, so not even
staying the night, and it'd belovely if we could convince him
just to stay one night.
Stay one night, adam.
Somebody will buy you a beer,might even be me, so that would

(57:34):
be a good thing.
But well done, rocky, in termsof doing that.
If you want to go to PodcastMovement, then you should.
It's in Dallas, in Texas, butdon't let that put you off.
And the code PODNEWS will saveyou lots of money on your ticket
, so it's well worthwhile doingthat.

Speaker 4 (57:47):
Sadly, being a brown person, I won't be coming
through customs.

Speaker 3 (57:51):
And again I have nothing but praise for the
United States of America.

Speaker 4 (57:57):
So are you taking a burner phone and an alternative
laptop?

Speaker 3 (58:00):
No, I absolutely don't need to because, as I
really need to reiterate, I havenothing but praise for the
United States of America.
Other things going on the NewYork City Web Fest is now
accepting podcasts as anofficial category.
That festival is October 3rd tothe 5th, which you should go
and take a look at.
And in Madrid in Spain,Podwoman, which is a podcasting

(58:23):
event dedicated to women inpodcasting Hurrah.
It's back for a third year, butthis time it's its first
in-person edition.
Previous years have been online.
That's taking place on Octoberthe 18th.
All kinds of things going onwith that.
There's more details if youspeak Spanish, because you'll
need to, in the Pod Newsnewsletter.

Speaker 4 (58:47):
A few other events, James, that you might want to
mention.

Speaker 3 (58:49):
Yes, a couple more Radio Days Asia, which is
happening in Jakarta inIndonesia, very early September
Contact me if you'd like to go,but it looks a bit X-y and I'll
see what I can do and Pod SummitYYC, which is happening in
mid-September in Calgary inAlberta.
I will be flying there from theUK, Looking forward to flying

(59:10):
there.
I'm flying there via Dallas,which was clearly not a mistake
because, again, let me juststress how much a fan I am of
the United States of America.
The Tech Stuff on the Pod NewsWeekly Review.
Yes, it's the stuff you'll findevery monday in the pod news
newsletter.
Here's where sam talkstechnology.
What have we got, sam?

(59:31):
Well?

Speaker 4 (59:33):
our sponsor and friends at buzzsprout announced
on buzzcast that they've gotsome new updates to their magic
mastering.
They've got a feature calledfiller killer and another
feature called power clean.
So filler killer is basicallythe removal of words, like you
know, whatever, and power cleanis the ability to use or take

(59:57):
bad recordings and removecomplex noises like chatter,
wind traffic.
I did try using it for lastweek's show.
That didn't help.
Um, they didn't have echo aswell.
It has reverb, but it didn'thelp.
And the script studio sounddidn't help.
It just made me sound like arobot.
John sounded fine, but Isounded like a robot.

(01:00:19):
So but there is a new versionand it may not have been the one
I was using last week, so, butstrangely j they haven't told
you about it yet.

Speaker 3 (01:00:27):
No, I mean, it's very good of them to announce it on
their own podcast.
Not all of us listens to theBuzzcast podcast.
Perhaps we should, but still,there we are.
It's the number one on a podroll it is, but that's great
news.
I believe under the hood it'sOrphonic, and Orphonic will be
speaking at Podcast Movement.

(01:00:48):
There is going to be aparticularly excellent session,
all about AI tools forpodcasters, and I only mentioned
that because I'm one of thepeople on that session.
So, hooray, looking forward tothat.
That should be fun.

Speaker 4 (01:01:04):
Now a bit like the funding tag.
We've talked about this tagbefore, but it's now available.
The new podcast image tag hasbeen formalised and the full
documentation is now onlineavailable.
Again, james, remind me whathas happened with this new tag.

Speaker 3 (01:01:20):
Well, there used to be a podcast images tag and that
was a bit useless.
It was basically your thumbnail, but in different sizes, didn't
necessarily fix a particularissue that most podcasters had
and, you know, at the end of theday wasn't that helpful.
What I'm very pleased to see isthat podcast index has gone.

(01:01:43):
You know what that wasn'tworking.
We are going to get rid of that.
We're going to replace it withthe podcast image tag
deliberately a different tag sothat it doesn't cause any
problems with anybody that'sstill using the images tag.
But what that enables you to dois it enables you to put
specific size artwork or indeedvideos and stuff like that, for

(01:02:07):
anybody that wants them, insideyour RSS feed.
So if True Fans wants to turnaround and say we want a banner,
we want a banner of this sizeand we would like it to be in
WebP format, then please, thenyou could absolutely do that and
that could be given to you withevery single podcast using the
podcast image tag.
Similarly, that might allowApple to take images directly

(01:02:31):
from that rather than manuallyuploading it through an Airtable
form, which is weirdly the waythat they are currently doing it
.
So all of that stuff is reallygood and well worthwhile.
I'm a little bit surprised thatit's been formalised without
any examples, or not examples,but any companies actually

(01:02:52):
deliberately asking for specificsized artwork.
I would probably have waiteduntil I'd got a True Fans or an
Apple podcast asking forspecific size artwork in there,
but nevertheless it's a superuseful thing and there's been
quite a lot of work done interms of that, so hurrah for
them.

Speaker 4 (01:03:12):
Yeah, no, well done Dave Jones for pushing that
forward.
And you know we mentionedNathan Gathright earlier about
pod links.
Well, he's also a very cleverman and he's done a visualizer,
a demo tool that you can thenupload your graphic into and
then see the different shapesand sizes and formats.

Speaker 3 (01:03:30):
So congratulations, yeah no, that is a very cool
thing, so that's lovely.
Also lovely is a brand new demofor producing the podcast
location tag.
It's not just a demo, it's a UXdemo as well.
It's an ideal way of doing itfor a user.
It uses, you know, populatesall of the OpenStreetMap ID, so

(01:03:51):
it does all of that properly,differentiates between creator
and subject, does all of thatproperly.
It even handholds you through.
Okay, this is a podcast about aplace, but where are you
recording it and where would youlike?
Would you like that piece ofinformation in there as well?
It's really nicely done.
It uses a service calledLocation IQ, which has a free

(01:04:11):
tier in it as well.
I think it's 5,000 hits per day, so it's big enough for you if
you self-host, certainly All inJavaScript.
Very nice.
Produced by Alberto Batella ofrsscom and yeah, and it's
definitely worth a peek.
You will find that linked fromthe podcasting2.org website,

(01:04:32):
along with a bunch of otherthings as well, but hurrah for
them.

Speaker 4 (01:04:36):
Now moving on another host doing some great stuff
Transistor Justin Jackson'scompany.
They have now supported the podrole.

Speaker 3 (01:04:45):
Yes, they've supported the pod role in their
podcast website, so Transistorhas the pod role.
Yes, they've supported the podrole in their podcast website,
so Transistor has supported podrole for you.
If you publish a podcast withthem, now you can see all of the
shows that you are recommendingin your podcast website on the
Transistor website, so thatlooks really smart.
Not just that, thoughTransistor is also supporting

(01:05:08):
HLS Video, which is currentlysupported by TrueFans.
What's that?
Or the Fountain Beta as well.

Speaker 4 (01:05:15):
Why is anyone shocked when we say we already do it?

Speaker 3 (01:05:22):
We need a t-shirt saying already implemented, mate
, or something like that, butanyway.
But if you are publishing again, if you're publishing with
Transistor, you're publishing ashow with Transistor you can now
support HLS video in a nicebeta way.
You ended up catching up withJustin Jackson, who is one of
the co-founders of Transistor avery bright guy and you started

(01:05:46):
off by asking him what HLS is,what it stands for, and then
later why we might need it.

Speaker 6 (01:05:55):
So HLS stands for HTTP live streaming, and
basically it breaks a media fileinto smaller chunks and
delivers those kind of a fewchunks at a time, so that
instead of downloading a wholemedia file the way that we've
traditionally done it inpodcasting, it just serves
little bits of that media file.

(01:06:16):
And it's also adaptive.
So if someone has a badinternet connection it can
downscale the media.
If it's a good internetconnection, or if you're
watching it on your big TV, itcan upscale it to 4K.
And so, technology wise, it's avery interesting technology.
It was invented by Apple.
All of the major centralizedplatforms like YouTube and

(01:06:41):
Spotify use it to deliver mediaand in fact I'm almost certain
that when Spotify was rehostingpodcast media, it was delivering
that via HLS.
And the interesting part forthose of us in the open
ecosystem is the old paradigm,for video and podcasting was

(01:07:01):
something that Apple kind ofinstituted, which is a separate
feed for video podcasts and thenyou'd have a separate feed for
your audio podcast.
So somebody like Leo Laportewould have two separate feeds
for every single show he did.
Here's the audio one and here'sthe video one.
And if you go back and look atold screenshots of iTunes and

(01:07:23):
Apple podcasts.
You can see there was aswitcher in the directory where
you could browse by all podcasts, or you could just browse video
podcasts and then browse justby audio podcasts.
So I think one big problem we'retrying to solve here is what's
a better experience is actuallyjust to have one feed, have it

(01:07:44):
audio first with the traditionalaudio enclosure we've always
used, and then, if someone wantsto switch to the video version
like oh, they're talking aboutsomething you know on the wall
they have a picture up, or Ijust want to see what they look
like they could switch to thevideo version, get that
information, switch back toaudio if they want.
Or if they're walking home ordriving home, they could get out

(01:08:07):
of the car and airplay it up totheir TV and watch it on the TV
, so giving the listener moreoptions.
And it just also seems a betterway to do video audio first.
But if you want the videoversion, it's there available in
a single feed, as creatorsdon't have to maintain multiple

(01:08:28):
feeds.
And I think that was theinteresting part for me is, from
the user experience side it'smuch better.
From the technology side it isbetter, but there are some
challenges, some obstacles we'dhave to overcome if we were
going to implement it in theopen ecosystem.

Speaker 4 (01:08:48):
Okay, so let's just take some of that, because
that's a lot of informationthere.
I'm a podcaster, I'm onTransistor and I currently take
my episode which I record andit's an MP3, in this case just
the audio and I upload it toTransistor and at some point
Transistor will support the HLSoption and I can say, maybe I
don't even need to Transistor,and at some point Transistor
will support the HLS option andI can say, maybe I don't even

(01:09:10):
need to do anything, I justupload what I give and
Transistor automaticallytranslates it into HLS, and then
apps like Fountain, true Fans,podcast Guru can then consume
that and play back the HLS.
That's the goal that's right.

Speaker 6 (01:09:28):
Yeah, if you can try this right now in true fans or
fountain there's shows thatsupport the hls video enclosure
and if you could be listeningalong and you just switch to
video right now, as long as thelength of the audio file and the
video file is the same, it'sseamless.
It'll just take whatever timecode you're at on the audio file
and just switch it to video andyou'll be able to see it right

(01:09:50):
there and you can see this videoon the podcast standards
project blog.
So, and from the podcaster'sperspective, I mean, in my mind,
the ultimate kind of best userexperience for a podcaster who
wants to do audio and video isthat they would edit their
episode, export it as a videoand then upload it to their

(01:10:15):
podcast hosting provider.
That would then get encoded asan audio file, but then it would
also get encoded as a videofile and delivered via HLS and
the alternate enclosure andlikely for, you know, youtube
and Spotify.
It would also just getsyndicated to YouTube and

(01:10:35):
Spotify.
That seems like for a podcasterwho wants to do video and it
seems like a lot of podcastersdo, and maybe we shouldn't
ignore those folks.
If they want to do video andaudio, then that seems like the
best user experience.
We just upload one file andthen sure it gets automatically
sent to YouTube andautomatically sent to Spotify,

(01:10:56):
although I do think there is alever the open system has with
Spotify in terms of themadopting something like the HLS
alternate enclosure.
But then in the open ecosystem,any app that supports this HLS
and the alternate enclosurefolks would be able to switch
between the two versions.

(01:11:17):
So it feels like kind of thebest of all worlds when I
describe it like that from theUX side, and I think it holds
the tension of power nicely aswell.
So, especially if we couldconvince a big player like Apple
to adopt it as well- and theydon't adopt it.

(01:11:37):
Well, I mean, this is somethingwe're working on at the Podcast
Standards Project.
I think, first of all, we haveto overcome some of these
challenges that I think weshould talk about.
First of all, we have toovercome some of these
challenges that I think weshould talk about, and Apple
might be part of the solution.
But, yeah, I do think havingsomeone like Apple adopt this
especially given you knowthey've stated publicly like
they want to support the openpodcast ecosystem They've been

(01:12:01):
doing this for 20 years it wouldbe great if they adopted it.
But in the meantime, our thoughtwas well, you know some of
these more nimble, smallerplayers like True Fans and
Pocket Casts, and they couldimplement this right now.
We could get some at leastproof of the concept up and
running so people can see from auser experience side, oh, this

(01:12:23):
is the vision, this is how itworks, and if you haven't
experienced it, I think youshould really try it.
And the nice thing is that thisis also an experience people
will get on YouTube music, andit's also an experience that
you'll get on Spotify right now.
So it feels like the industryis kind of aligning on this idea
that switching between an audiofirst podcast to the video

(01:12:46):
version in the same feed is theway to go.
But yeah, let we got.
We've got some significantobstacles to overcome to get
there okay.

Speaker 4 (01:12:56):
So what are those obstacles?
Because, as a host attransistor, one of the things is
you know, I've heard one of thechallenges is storage.
But actually does this, apartfrom enabling a faster deliverer
of video and making theexperience better for the user,

(01:13:16):
does it actually save you moneyas well?
Is there any real tangiblebenefit to doing this?
Because there's a lot of workrequired by the host in order to
convert everything to HLS.

Speaker 6 (01:13:29):
Yeah, there's a few challenges.
I mean, almost all the hostingproviders use outside CDNs and
we're using AWS and Cloudflareand Node and all sorts of other
providers to do theinfrastructure part of our
business.
And one of the challenges withHLS is that the big providers

(01:13:50):
who kind of offer a completepackage, like Cloudflare Stream
for example, it's very expensive.
I think James Cridland did somenumber crunching.
And he figured like for thepodcasting 2.0 show it'd be $492
a month.
For the no agenda show, the$83,000 for Cloudflare stream.

(01:14:12):
So obviously that's not doable.
Our hope is that as an openpodcast ecosystem, we can maybe
look at these costs together.
We can talk to providers andsee if we can find a good
solution.
So Soundstack has a goodsolution.

(01:14:34):
We think Cloudflare R2 might beanother solution.
It would require us to encodeour own media files and there's
some other challenges with it.
But we're looking at how couldwe bring the cost down.
And yeah, if we can't bring thecost down, then it's not doable

(01:14:54):
.
Now there's lots of flexibility.
I think some folks are like,well, the costs are too high, we
can't even think about it.
And I'm like, well, hold on,hold on, hold on.
We're just moving ahead.
We're reaching out to peopleevery day.
Hey, what do you think aboutthis?
I've got a bunch more peoplethinking about these problems
and we're just trying to bringeverybody together, all the
smart brains, and say how couldwe do this in a tangible way?

(01:15:19):
And the nice thing about an openecosystem is we can share all
that information.
For example, one creativesolution is you know a lot of
those streams that James wascalculating are coming from
Apple, and so there could be aworld where Apple helps by
caching the media on theirservers on their side and, as

(01:15:40):
long as I think Todd broughtthis up, from Blueberry, as long
as Apple gives us somethingback, as long as we get
analytics back from Apple, thatwould be a nice trade.
Is Apple would all of a suddenget this, all this video that
they could use in all sorts ofways for their premium
subscription product, for theirApple TV product.
Imagine you watch a podcast onyour Apple TV and then

(01:16:04):
afterwards it recommends, youknow, shows on Apple TV.
They could do all sorts ofthings on their side.
That I think might be a nicetrade.
So there's some creativesolutions to cost, but I think
cost is a big one.

Speaker 4 (01:16:19):
Yeah, and I think I think, from my brief
understanding of it, is, if youwere a host having to deliver an
MP4 video file today, the sizeof that could be anywhere
between 500 meg and a gig.
Let's say as an example, and ifthe user then just watches I

(01:16:42):
don't know five or 10 minutes ofthat full downloaded
deliverable, I don't know fiveor 10 minutes of that full
downloaded deliverable then thecost to the host is significant.
But the user has just actuallyjust used a small chunk of it.
That's right.
Hls is the promise, potentiallythat okay.
Well, you will only requestthat 10 minutes and therefore

(01:17:03):
the cost of delivery is only the10 minutes of video, which
might mean instead of 500 meg ora gig, we're only delivering
100 meg.
That's right.
That, hopefully, is cheaper inthe long run than having to
deliver the full 500 or one gigfile that's right, and there's a
lot more kind of underneath thehood.

Speaker 6 (01:17:23):
There's a lot of requests that you have to figure
out with HLS and more complexcaching and delivery than static
file.
So I think it's the complexitythat is raising the price right
now.
But again, one advantage of usworking on this together is that
if there's a lot of providersout there that want to be

(01:17:46):
competitive you know AWS,cloudflare there's lots of them
and we may be able to figure outa solution that you know,
figure out the complexitytogether.
But if we figure out a solutionyou're technically right, like
if you're just delivering littlechunks of video instead of the
whole progressive download andit's downloading the whole file,

(01:18:07):
then that save you.
You know there will besignificant cost savings on
bandwidth there, which isusually the big cost.
Hosting the files is one thingthe actual disk space but it's
bandwidth that ends up killingyou, and we've been used to
delivering audio files that are50 megabytes to 150 megabytes.

(01:18:27):
So the scale of this issignificantly more than anything
we've tried.
Does that mean we should nottry?
No, I think we shouldabsolutely be looking at this.
Does it mean, like a smallcompany like Transistor could do
this on our own.
No, we're too small.
But could an army of opensource advocates figure this out

(01:18:49):
?
Yeah, I think we can, I thinkit's possible.
And again, if the costs looklike it's going to be too high,
then we might have to shelve itfor a little while until the
suppliers get a little bit morecompetitive.

Speaker 4 (01:19:03):
One of the questions I have in my mind is the content
delivery network, therequirement and the cost of it.
Which is the main cost we'retalking about is because you're
delivering a large file andsomebody who's, let's say, in
Canada and the requested user inAustralia.
You don't want to have todeliver that over the global

(01:19:27):
network, so you have a localdelivery.
But actually if you'redelivering small six second, 10
second chunks of content, do youactually need the content
delivery network?
I don't know if anyone's donethe performance analysis to
determine whether that'srequired still.

Speaker 6 (01:19:44):
I think you still need something.
Yeah, I think you still needsomething.
Yeah, I think you still needsomething.
That the, the, the challenge isthat, again, we are used to
delivering small little mp3files almost always using a cdn.
And there's other reasons forusing the cdn, like even because

(01:20:06):
caching comes into play, like alot of the bandwidth savings is
when you're caching a file, andso I don't know how that works
with hls.
Actually, can you, are you stillcaching bits of that that you
know, bits of that request?
These are the things we'retrying to to figure out.
My preference would be for usto partner with, you know, a

(01:20:30):
handful of experienced platformsand for them to just give us a
really great price that wouldenable us to do this.
That's the preference.
Or partner with with, again,this could be a partnership with
Apple and Spotify to say, whydon't you guys cache the files

(01:20:51):
and then just give us analyticsback?
There's multiple ways thiscould go, and then any of the
requests from the smaller appswill be manageable.
You know those costs could bemanageable.
So, yeah, the the the technicalside.
I don't completely understand,but my guess is you'd still want
some sort of CDN, okay.

Speaker 4 (01:21:10):
Now some of the other challenges.
So you talked about storageanalytics.
Is there anything else that weneed to discuss?

Speaker 6 (01:21:19):
Well, to touch on analytics, I think analytics is
the other one that's challenging.
So even think about that.
So if I'm switching between anaudio file and a video file,
what do we count that as tworequests?
Do we count that as onedownload?
Two downloads?
We're going to have a.
We're going to have a requeston the MP3.

(01:21:41):
But as soon as they switch tothe HLS stream, that will be
another request and we also justdon't even know how to treat
HLS streams On the server side.
It's quite a bit more difficultto do analytics.
You can see the requests butfrom the IAB's perspective, for

(01:22:05):
example, that might not beenough.
Most of the, the platforms thatdo HLS streaming, all of the
analytics stuff happens on theclient side.
So they're tracking plays andpauses and you know how far
through the video you've gottenall on the client side.
Well, of course, in the openpodcast ecosystem we can't do

(01:22:28):
that.
We I don't, none of us controlwhat happens on apple or
pocketcast or any of that.
So that's actually we have onour podcast standards project
github.
We have an open discussion onthat right now.
How can we do server-sideanalytics in a reasonable way
for HLS streams?
And we've also asked the IABwhat they think, because there's

(01:22:53):
kind of two issues there.
There's the technical issue ofhow do we, how do we measure
this on the server side, andthen there's the other issue of
like, well, if people areswitching between these two.
It also brings up someinteresting transparency
questions for YouTube and forspotify, which is how are they
managing that?

Speaker 4 (01:23:11):
well, I think.
I think the challenge here islet's put out the problem.
The problem is hosts arelooking to get back analytic
data on what was actuallylistened and consumed.
Yeah, whether it was audio, wasaudio or video.
Yeah, the apps, as you say,have first party data.
So, for example, with myTrueFans hat on, we know we

(01:23:33):
measure the total listen time.
So we know when you're on audioand when you're on video and we
measure that as a single listentime metric.
Yeah, we also know percentcompleted, which is very
important as a secondary metric,because somebody like James
Cridland's Pod News Daily if allyou said was listen time was
three minutes and then Ilistened to your podcast, justin

(01:23:55):
, and I listened to 60 minuteswell, that sounds like I
listened to a lot more of yourshow, but actually I did 100% of
James and I only did 60% ofyour show right, so percent
completed is a secondary metricthat I think we need to offer.
Now, one of the things thatApple did was support for the
open podcasting 2.0 standard forthe verify tag in three, maybe

(01:24:17):
four months ago.
Yeah, and I think you and manyother hosts jumped on board and
I think I argued that, giventhat you've supported delegated
delivery, as it was called.
You implemented the verifiedtag.
You've done all the work withApple.
You've done all the work withApple.
Would it not be beholden toApple to now give you that first
party data back, right yeah, aspart of the quid pro quo?

Speaker 6 (01:24:40):
Yeah, I mean, this is something I think we should
definitely be talking about, andwe are talking about that, and
we're talking about it withSpotify.
We're talking about it withYouTube actually has an
analytics API.
So, as much as YouTube issometimes, I think, a threat to
open podcast ecosystem, some ofthe things they've offered are

(01:25:01):
very open.
You can get your analytics outof YouTube.
So I think there's aconversation to be had there.
I think this also reveals likewhere are we eventually going,
like in 10 years?
How could we imagine thislooking Well, in 10 years, maybe
everything is an HLS stream,both audio and video, and then
it becomes a lot easier todetermine when somebody is

(01:25:24):
switching.
You know, it's just like they'renot switching to the old audio
enclosure, it's just all HLS and, you know, maybe the enclosure
becomes the backup, you know,and then it's HLS first.
I think that would be ainteresting future for the open
ecosystem.
That's innovative.
That would allow us to do allsorts of other interesting

(01:25:45):
things, even for those ad techfolks listening.
You know, hls has a lot ofinteresting things there for the
folks who are excited aboutlive podcasting.
There's all sorts ofinteresting things there.
So, yeah, I think it's worthjust continuing to explore the
technology, realizing that wegot some obstacles to overcome.
I think the third obstacle,after analytics, is just

(01:26:08):
adoption.
So we've got kind of threethings happening all at once,
which is, you know, you needhosting providers to adopt it,
you need creators to actuallyuse it.
That's another open question isif we actually offer this to
creators, will they care?

Speaker 4 (01:26:29):
I don't think they need.
I actually don't think theyneed to care because I think for
them and for the user it'sirrelevant.
They know you don't say tosomebody do you know?
You're using mp3 right now?
No, I don't know, I'm using mp4.
By the way, that video was justin orbis or it was done in
vogue or whatever.
It would be right.

Speaker 6 (01:26:47):
Nobody cares yeah, I think the question and it is a
legitimate question, but so,like adam curry, his idea is
most creators are just going topost it on YouTube.
So why do we even need analternative?
And I think that's a perfectlyvalid perspective.
The momentum to YouTube ismassive, from both the consumer

(01:27:11):
side and the creator side.
However, when we've donesurveys of our creators on
Transistor and we ask them wherewould you like to publish video
, they say everywhere.
So if YouTube will take it,we'll send it there.
If Spotify will take it, we'llsend it there.
If Pocket Cast will take it, ifTrue Fans will take it, if
Apple will take it, we'll sendit there.

(01:27:31):
So most creators wantdistribution.
Most creators want to bewherever their audience is.
And if there's an additionaladvantage for a consumer, for
example, which is when I listento my video podcasts or when I
consume my video podcasts onTrue Fans, I don't get all those

(01:27:54):
annoying YouTube dynamicallyinserted ads every 10 minutes.
I don't have to pay for YouTubepremium to listen to this
podcast ad free.
I get the host read ads, whichI I'm fine with, but all these
other like dynamically insertedads that YouTube's putting in, I
don't get those.
That's an advantage that theymight enjoy and the creators

(01:28:15):
themselves might say you knowwhat?
This is just better for us.
We get our podcasts distributedmore places.
We get all sorts of additionalflexibility, like we can run our
own dynamic ads truly dynamicand put them in and take them
out the way we always have onthe audio side.
So I think adoption is a bigchallenge and it's

(01:28:37):
multi-threaded right.
Like we got to convince podcastplayers like Apple to adopt it,
we got to convince hostingproviders to offer it.
I think that'll be less of aconcern if we can figure out the
economics and if creators aredemanding it.
Like if Apple said we're doingit.

(01:28:57):
Like now you can get HLS videoon Apple podcast.
And I actually you know whatwe've also done is we've
introduced a special videopodcast app on the Apple TV and
we've we're promoting it in abig way and now everybody's
getting, you know, tons ofstreams on Apple TV.
I think that momentum would helpa lot, but we're also willing

(01:29:22):
to do with it without apple.
For now.
We're willing to move ahead andkeep exploring it, and my call
for anybody who's listeningright now is if you have ideas
on how we might do this, you cancontact us by going to
podcaststandardsorg.
There's a contact button.
There's also our GitHub islisted there and we've got some.

(01:29:44):
If you click on the HLS videoproject, you can contribute to
the conversation we're havingthere.
But we do need knowledgeablepeople.
I don't want people withopinions, I want people who have
knowledge.

Speaker 4 (01:29:59):
Enough of those people with opinions.

Speaker 6 (01:30:01):
Knowledge and actual boots on the ground experience
with these kind of technologies,who could lend us their
expertise, and I think if we cansolve these challenges, the
whole open ecosystem will bebetter for it.

Speaker 4 (01:30:16):
Yeah, it will.
And one area that we haven'ttouched on and let's just finish
on that is also live.
So we have the lit tag withinthe podcast in 2.0.
And again we're losing ground,in my humble opinion, to the
likes of YouTube, who do a verygood job today.
I don't know if you seewatch-als in Canada, but we have

(01:30:39):
a lot of those in the UK forfootball matches.
Yeah, you know, it surprised mewhen they first popped up.
You know I'm watching a singlehuman watching something else
describing what they're watching.
Yeah, and they will get ahundred thousand people watching
this person watching a match.

Speaker 6 (01:30:54):
Yes, and it's weird right, yes, I, I'm, I'm for it.
I.
I think one of the reasons Iwas excited to kind of figure
this out is if we can figure outthe cost stuff, especially then
once we can deliver videothrough hls, then doing live
stuff becomes a lot easier.

(01:31:16):
And I mean I'm recording.
I record a podcast today andwe've been recording it live the
last four episodes.
I think I've been doing livestreams ever since YouTube
started allowing you to do that.
You used to be able to do itwith Google Meets.
You used to be able to do alive stream.
It's such a great way to engagewith your audience as a
podcaster.

(01:31:36):
So, yeah, imagine you're, youopen up true fans or pocket
casts and all of a suddenthere's a little thing at the
top you probably already havethis in true fans a little thing
at the top that says you know,justin and sam are live right
now, and then you know we dohave that.

Speaker 4 (01:31:54):
Do you want to do?

Speaker 6 (01:31:55):
you have that do you want to listen live and do you
want to interact live.
Interactivity is the otherpiece.
So I'm yeah, I'm very excitedabout that idea and you know,
live has been a part ofpodcasting for a long time.
Dan Benjamin was doing it backwith five by five, lots of
really popular live accidentaltech podcast always does it live

(01:32:16):
.
It's a great way to monetizeyour podcast.
You can you premium members getaccess to live and can interact
live.
So the pieces are all there.
But to get it widely adopted,yeah, we have to figure out
these three challenges, which iscost, analytics and then
adoption.
And once we're able to do that,yeah, then live becomes just

(01:32:40):
another feature we can add,because it'll, the pipes will
all be there, the infrastructurewill all be there, the
foundation is set and we canjust build on top of that 100%
agree and I think you know oneof the people who's helping in
the community quite a lot isRocky Thomas from Soundstack,
who's doing a lot of work overthere.

Speaker 4 (01:33:02):
I think Soundstack could be one of those partners
that's nimble.
You talked about finding apartner that's nimble.
I think we might struggle withthe likes of Cloudflare or AWS,
who are generically providingCDN services, whereas Soundstack
provide a lot of podcastinginfrastructure and they own
their own infrastructure andthey also own Live 365, their

(01:33:26):
radio network, and I thinkwithin all of that they
understand what live delivery ofcontent looks like, but also
what that does with HLS.
I think my current bet ishopefully that Soundstack step
up to the mark and become thatinfrastructure element for all
of the podcast ecosystem.

Speaker 6 (01:33:46):
They're in the conversation for sure.
Yeah, and I mean there's otherkind of tricky parts like
ingress, and you know there'swhat do we call the bandwidth
agreements between providers.
So if somebody is uploadingsomething to AWS, is there a
bandwidth agreement so that youcan transfer it over to the CDN
without any cost?

(01:34:07):
There's a lot of technicalsteps in there, but, yeah,
soundstns in the podcastecosystem, independent CDNs and
hosting providers that you knoware kind of provide the
infrastructure layer.
There could be a bigopportunity there as well.

(01:34:28):
If you, if you love setting upservers, there could be an
opportunity there as well.

Speaker 4 (01:34:34):
So, yeah, so one person who's done that already
is pod two, russell Harrower.
He's set up his own CDN withhis own hosting to eliminate
that potential extra cost.
And I know Stephen Bufrom, whohelps Adam a lot, uses a third
party, much cheaper servicecalled Bunny, I believe Bunnynet
.
Yes, yeah, so you know thereare alternatives to the big

(01:34:56):
players.
I just think you know how youskin this and I think it will be
interesting.
I think somebody like yourself,who's the CEO of Transistor,
must be having those thoughtsand conversations about do we do
this ourselves?
Do we still outsource it?
What's the benefit?

Speaker 6 (01:35:12):
I think most small companies we're a six person
company Most small companieswon't do it themselves.
That is, I think it would bedifficult to be profitable.
Doing that Not impossible, I'msure it's possible, but I think
it would be difficult to beprofitable, and so I'm in favor
of whatever option is in theopen ecosystem allows these

(01:35:34):
small, independent companies tostill make a profit.
That's really one of the greatthings about the open ecosystem
is that open protocols spreadthe wealth, and one of the
reasons I've been excited aboutpodcasting from the beginning is
there's all these small littlecompanies.
You go to a podcast conference.

(01:35:55):
Who's setting up booths?
It's all these small littlecompanies.
You go to a podcast conference.
Who's setting up booths?
It's all these small littlecompanies, you know, and in
order for us to continue to be avibrant industry, we need some
alternatives, not alternatives.
We need an answer to video, weneed an answer to things like
HLS, an answer to live, and sohow are we going to get there

(01:36:20):
and how can we make sure that,you know, the open ecosystem
continues to thrive and allthese small little businesses
can also continue to exist?

Speaker 4 (01:36:29):
Justin Jackson, CEO of Transistor and also the
driving force I'll give you thatbehind PSP.
Thank you so much.
Take care, my friend.
Yeah, thank you.
There you go, Justin Jackson.
James, I need to ask you acouple of questions now, because
we're on a WhatsApp grouptogether.
Yes, yes, and you've been doingsome maths.

(01:36:50):
Your maths scared theheebie-jeebies out of me because
I think you calculated noagenda.
Adam Curry's show would be$82,000.
Is that maths correct?
Or what are we doing?
Because if it is, how does anyhost make any money in this
industry?

Speaker 3 (01:37:10):
I mean so yes, there's a lot of questions there
.
Sam Seeking answers over thisside of the water there's a lot
of questions there, sam.
Where do I start with that?
Well, I mean, I think probablythe first thing to just mention
is that there are maths involvedwith hosting HLS, and I am

(01:37:35):
still having problemsunderstanding why you and me
both then HLS, and I am stillhaving problems understanding
why you and me both then.
Not that Nathan Gathright hasgot anything more to do in this
world, but he too has beenhaving a look at the maths as
well.
It ends up being very much moreexpensive to host a file using

(01:37:57):
HLS than it is just to use atraditional CDN and to have one
download.
So the example that Nathan hasredone all of the maths because
maths and I don't always gotogether, but Nathan has redone
all of the maths to work outthat, yes, no Agenda could cost
something in the region of$82,000 if you were to host it

(01:38:21):
as an HLS stream just in audio,by the way, just as a 96k piece
of audio, if you were using atraditional CDN, it would still
cost $10,200 to host that show.
It is a very popular show, it'svery big, costs a lot.
But if you were to use a servicecalled Cloudflare R2, which is

(01:38:45):
Cloudflare's kind of competitorto Amazon S3, see what they did
there S3, r2.
Anyway, if you were to do thatwith Cloudflare R2, then
apparently it would only costyou $300 to host that show,
complete with complete in termsof HLS as well.
So we end up with this weirdsituation where HLS is

(01:39:09):
incredibly expensive to host,except with Cloudflare R2, where
they make it incredibly cheapto host Cloudflare R2, where
they make it incredibly cheap tohost.
And I can only assume that thatCloudflare R2 thing is an
introductory offer and at somepoint they will change that.
But to me, I'm still havingdifficulty understanding the

(01:39:31):
idea of turning a one Learning,one downloaded file into
essentially hundreds andhundreds of them, because that's
how HLS works and thereforecosting you much, much more as a
podcast hosting company.
All of that makes my head hurta little bit and I'm not quite
sure that I've necessarily gotan answer for that got an answer

(01:39:59):
for that no, and and theworrying things.

Speaker 4 (01:40:00):
I don't think the industry seems to come up with
an answer, because there's a lotof hosts on that whatsapp group
and nobody seemed to come upwith a clear oh.
No, james, that's why it yeah.
No, no, you've got it wrongbecause of x.
No, everyone went oh, oh, okay,is that what it is?
And the, the two parts that I Ilook at right is one is the
technical capability one andthen the financial capability.

(01:40:21):
So the technical capability issuper easy.
I think I mentioned a couple ofweeks back.
You know we've now done all ofour tests.
We can now upload audio video.
We can now do conversions intoHLS through the FFmpeg
conversion.
Very simple.
Storage isn't massive.
We can deliver that right,that's fine.

(01:40:42):
All of that is cheap as chips,not cheap as chips as in.
You know, it's costing us agreat deal.
The FFmpeg is an open sourcelibrary and the storage isn't
massive.
Okay, all of that worked.
I'm pretty sure that's whatTransistor have done.
The cost element is in the CDNdelivery because of the number

(01:41:02):
of requests that you have to do.
So if you're only making onerequest to the MP3 or the MP4,
fine.
If you're making multiplerequests, cause they're all in
six second packages.
That's when the cost goesthrough the roof.
So I I then looked at it andsaid well, actually, what does

(01:41:23):
the CDN do?
Because I understand, if you'redownloading a 128 meg audio or
maybe a one gig video, somebodyin Australia pulling it from a
London server, well, theexperience is going to be awful.
But actually the userexperience that we found without
the CDN, of testing it invarious countries where we're
just pulling six seconds withouta CDN, is actually really good

(01:41:46):
still.
And I'm questioning do I need aCDN if I'm only delivering six
second packages on a stream whenI'm not downloading a very
large file in each section?

Speaker 3 (01:41:59):
Yeah, and I think that is an absolutely right
thing to think about.
The problem comes with scale,and so the PodNews website could
very easily exist, because it'snot visited particularly often.
It could very easily existwithout a CDN at the front.
The reason why I've got a CDNin the front is firstly for

(01:42:21):
growth, but also, secondly, justto protect the server itself.
But there's absolutely noreason why I couldn't be linking
directly to my S3 bucket foraudio, for example.
That's just a static serversomewhere in the cloud and that
would be absolutely fine to linkto instead of pushing it

(01:42:43):
through the CDN.
The weird thing of the way thatAmazon costs itself is that a
CDN is actually cheaper thandoing it directly through the S3
, you know link, so you know, soyou've got that kind of side of
it as well.
But you know I mean most peoplewill want to use a CDN because

(01:43:05):
it is much faster for them andfor their users to access their
website.
Now, that isn't a problem thatwe have in the podcasting world,
because a lot of our podcastsare downloaded overnight.
So that's all fine, and eventhe podcasts that aren't.
All you need is something toload fast enough to start the

(01:43:28):
playback, and so it can be only128K connection, that's
absolutely fine.
As long as it's 128K connectionor even lower for some shows,
then that's all that you reallyneed.
So a CDN probably isn'trequired.
But on the other hand, you alsoneed to bear in mind that

(01:43:48):
you've got a web server at theother end.
In most cases that needs toscale enough to deal with many,
many people requesting filesfrom you.
And again, as soon as you turnsomething from one download,
which is all that a standard MP3is or can be, if you turn that

(01:44:08):
into a download where you've gota separate download every six
seconds, which is the way thatHLS works, then it's going to be
.
You know that adds an awful lotof stress to a web server as
well, because you know if youhave hundreds of people
downloading that show at thesame time, then that's an awful
lot of requests that your webserver is doing all of a sudden.

(01:44:31):
So all of this, you know, I justI totally get why.
Hls is a good thing for theaudience.
Automatic changing of bitrateis brilliant.
Not having to download anentire file if you're not going
to watch the entire filebrilliant.
All of this I totally get.

(01:44:51):
I just don't get the businessside at all yet.
But I'm sure I will.
But right now nobody's yetconvinced me.

Speaker 4 (01:45:02):
Well, this is.
This is where I'm questioningthe CDN capability.
It's.
It feels like this is the wayit's always done.
Therefore, we shuttle, followsuit and then I go actually in
the tests that we do and look,we're not releasing anything yet
.
So we're happy to be testingand stress testing, but actually
it works really well so far.

(01:45:24):
Now we we will, you know, keepplaying with it.
Now we might come up to abottleneck or we might hit a
brick wall.
Whichever analogy you want touse, where you know the number
of people requesting the filemeans that we can't scale or we
have to add multiple servers, inwhich case the cost model then
goes through the roof.
The reason why I questioned youon the WhatsApp group was, if

(01:45:47):
you look at our sponsor,buzzsprout, the cost of hosting
per month is somewhere between$12.99 or $18.99, depending on
what package you buy.

Speaker 3 (01:45:59):
Yeah, yeah indeed.

Speaker 4 (01:46:00):
Yeah, so this podcast , for example.
We do a podcast every week, sothat's four podcasts in a month
for $12.99, as an example.
That's the economics ofBuzzsprout, and in that $12.99,
they also have to make a profit,and so, even if they're
delivering the package throughtraditional podcasting means an

(01:46:24):
mp3 over a downloadable filethey still have to make good on
that, and I, and therefore theamount that it must be charging,
is like dollars one dollar, twodollar, three dollars if
they're going to then do fourshows and still make money at
the end of it.
So that's where I'm questioninghow do we go from $12.99

(01:46:45):
chargeable by Buzzsprout to thecustomer, the podcaster, to
$82,000 deliverable?
for a no-agenda show which noone in their world can make any
money from right.
So this is where my brain doesnfrom right.
So I don't see.
This is where my brain doesn'tget it, I just don't get it.

Speaker 3 (01:47:02):
And the answer to that is on buzzsproutcom slash
stats, where you can see all ofthe statistics for the
Buzzsprout network of shows andin there, for example, right
down at the bottom, is totalepisode downloads and what
people are getting.
So the average podcast, or themedian podcast, if we're going

(01:47:25):
to be strictly accurate, theaverage podcast on Buzzsprout
gets 27 downloads in the firstseven days, 27.
In the first seven days, 27.
So of course that's easilycoverable with a $15, $12, $19
fee and that's the averagepodcast.

(01:47:52):
This podcast gets considerablymore.
It says here that the top 5%get over 1,000 and the top 1%
get over 4,000 downloads.
We are somewhere in the middleof that, and the top 1% get over
4,000 downloads.
We are somewhere in the middleof that, and you know so that's
kind of one side that actuallyit's a bit of a gamble, and all
podcast apps hosting companieswork in this way.
They gamble that you will notbe as successful, as a no agenda

(01:48:17):
is to make sure that they canafford to actually host you.
Or they charge you in adifferent way captivate charges
on a per download basis, forexample and so actually the more
successful you become, the moreit costs.
Potentially that's an easierway of charging.
So there's that on one side.
And then on the other side,every single podcast hosting
company has in their terms andconditions something that

(01:48:40):
basically says if you get bigenough, then we will move you
onto a pro plan and we willexpect you to be paying
significantly more.
And the Buzz Sprout terms andconditions include that,
although I should say not justbecause they're our sponsor, but
it's really clear what you endup needing to hit in order to

(01:49:01):
trigger that.
Libsyn, as another example, alsohas that clause, but gives no
numbers at all.
It just says you know, if wefeel like we need to, then we'll
ask you to pay for Libsyn Pro,ask you to pay for Libsyn Pro.
So at least our sponsor isdoing things the right way and

(01:49:22):
is actually saying if it's morethan 500 gig a month, for
example, then we're going tocharge you extra.
So at the end of all of thisyeah, it's all of this
complication where we've endedup as a podcast hosting industry
by having a flat fee and thenon the other side, turning
around and saying we're nevergoing to increase our prices,
because can you name a podcasthosting company that has

(01:49:43):
increased its hosting prices inthe last 10, 15 years?
I certainly can't.
So everybody has kept theirhosting prices down.
At some point we will need tostart having that conversation
of putting podcast hostingprices up, and that's going to
be an interesting one.

Speaker 4 (01:49:59):
Yeah, I mean we have seen actually just one fountain
blue, which was the amalgamationof fountain and RSS blue.
They changed their $5 a monthfor hosting music to $50 a month
for hosting music, and Iobviously you and I've heard
from various people about that,but I think you know that is

(01:50:21):
more of a fair usage becausethey're trying to limit their
risk right.
They're going into a marketspace where they're uncertain
about what the usage will be.
So go high begin with and thenmaybe bring it down.
I don't know if that's whattheir plan is or they're going
to go even higher.
Who knows, right?
But hello, oscar, keep askingthis.

(01:50:43):
Come on the show.

Speaker 3 (01:50:44):
But I think, to be fair to them, they are offering
something different, their movefrom RSS Blue to Fountain Blue
or Fountain as a podcast host.
They are offering differentthings in there.
It's not quite the same.
It's not the same as putting upthe prices, but for somebody
that's been on Libsyn, onBuzzsprout, on RSScom fora

(01:51:10):
number of years, they're stillpaying the same price.
Yet inflation has significantlyeaten into the profits on there
.
Of course there's been savingsmade in terms of bandwidth,
prices and all that kind ofstuff, but even so.
So I'm surprised and you hearevery so often when I listen to
the new media show with Todd, heis forever talking about that

(01:51:34):
and forever saying nobody elseis putting up their prices, so
we can't yet, and all that kindof stuff, get your owncom.
But I think you know from thatpoint of view, at some stage
there will need to be that goingon.
But of course, if Spotify stillcontinues to offer everything
for free anyway, kind of,where's the future there?

Speaker 4 (01:51:56):
Well, yeah, I mean, look, if we take a step back
last bits on this, I guess youknow we've been bemoaning the
fact that there's no videosupport really within the
hosting community and we'veceded that to YouTube and a
little bit to Spotify.
So the conversation at theLondon Podcast Show with the

(01:52:16):
Podcast Standards Group was allabout you know, how can we do it
, how can we deliver around it,and adding an HLS type MP4
converted stream into thealternative enclosure was sort
of yeah, that's the way weshould do it.
And then, of course, as yousaid, james, the cost model is
now, you know, is this effective?
And I think you've said in thepast and I think this is one

(01:52:45):
thing we also have to be awareof is Spotify using video as a
loss leader?
Ie, it is costing them a ton ofmoney but they don't need to
reveal it.
And is YouTube, as part ofAlphabet, stroke Google doing
the same, because they've neverreleased independently whether
they're profitable or not?

Speaker 3 (01:52:55):
Yeah, I mean you know certainly YouTube and Netflix
and some other companies youwould imagine Spotify as well
have done an awful lot of workon their network to make sure
that it doesn't cost anybody alot of money to serve their.
You know the media which is onthere.
So typically, if you go to anISP and that might be you know

(01:53:17):
BT in the UK or it might beTelstra here in Australia hidden
away in one of their servers,one of their server rooms is a
great big rack from Netflix andthere's another one from YouTube
with a ton of media on there,so that Telstra or BT or whoever
it is doesn't have to pay forthe interconnect fees to

(01:53:40):
download all of that bandwidthfrom somewhere else and, more to
the point, norda's Netflix orYouTube.
So we're seeing an awful lot ofthat going on.
Now that obviously doesn'texist in the podcasting world,
but you would assume that fromNetflix's point of view, from
YouTube's point of view, theyhave spent an inordinate amount

(01:54:00):
of money in making sure thattheir bandwidth bills are as low
as possible.

Speaker 4 (01:54:06):
Well, I've thrown the problem over to Soundstack, the
Rocky Thomas, because they'rethe CDM provider that we're
talking to, and I've said look,I want to be able to deliver HLS
video and audio andmulti-bandwidth, and I want it.
If you want to use your CDN,and here's the cost model, come
back to me and tell me howthat's affected.

Speaker 3 (01:54:27):
Tell me if it works at all.

Speaker 4 (01:54:29):
Yeah, and if you can't make it work, then let's
not bother, right yeah.
But I've thrown the problemover to her to see what the
problem is.

Speaker 3 (01:54:38):
Yeah, I think it'll be really interesting.
I mean, certainly, when I wasworking at Virgin Radio, to just
sort of round this off, we werea relatively popular radio
station online.
We were a preset in MicrosoftWindows Media Player, if you
remember that I do, yeah, and wewere one of, I think, five
presets and our station wasthere as a preset, which was

(01:54:58):
astonishing for every single newWindows customer.
So we had a lot of downloads ora lot of streaming hosting
companies across the world intoplaces where internet service

(01:55:21):
providers already were.
So Telehouse in London is onegood example.
There are equivalents in placeslike New York, frankfurt and so
on and that ended up being much, much cheaper for us because
all of a sudden we were cuttingour bandwidth bills down because
because, essentially, we had adirect link between us and the

(01:55:42):
ISP.
So that was super helpful.
And maybe there's.
I mean, there are probably lawsagainst it, but maybe there is
something to be said for thePodcast Standards Project to
actually go.
Well, we will do, we will payfor that metal, we will put that
metal in various places and asa member of the Podcast

(01:56:05):
Standards Project, you getaccess to those media.
You know media proxies, I don'tknow, I mean, maybe that's a,
you know, a step forward.
But yeah, it's going to beinteresting to take a look and I
think I just think that there'sa lot to look at in terms of
video and HLS.
But, on the other side, reallyimportant that we do it because

(01:56:28):
if we end up just seeding videopodcasting which everybody tells
us is the future, which isanother topic but if we end up
seeding video podcasting toYouTube and Spotify, that's bad
news for the podcast industry asa whole in the future and I
think we should be very carefulof you know about doing that.

Speaker 4 (01:56:48):
Now related to this, podpage has announced that it
supports HLS podcasts as well.
But Podpage I just want to add,do something that with my back,
with my true fans hat on thatwe do, which is an interesting
that the rest of industry hasn'tpicked up on.
So both pod page and ourselvesuse the youtube playlist as an

(01:57:09):
option within our rss feeds.
So, for example, you go intoyoutube, you go to the podcast
tab, you go down and you clickon the share button and that
will give you the playlist urlfor youtube.
You cut and paste that into podpage or true fans and now we
are playing back the youtubevideo within the app and it's

(01:57:32):
hosted by youtube and it's notbreaking their terms of service
because it's part of what theyallow you to do.
So there are ways short termlike that, and I know, when I
came out with that about a yearand a half ago, the vitriol that
I got- oh that's a hack, that'sno, that doesn't work.

(01:57:52):
Oh why would you do that?
But in the interim I haven'theard anyone come up with a
better solution yet.
And if the HLS video is goingto cost us 82,000 for a show and
no one can do the maths to makeit economically viable, then
somebody better come up with abetter idea.

Speaker 3 (01:58:08):
No, indeed, and interestingly enough I have
today asked somebody at Googleis there a programmatic way to
link a podcast to YouTube?
Because right now I cannot finda way to programmatically find
a playlist ID for a podcast.

Speaker 4 (01:58:27):
No, there isn't one.

Speaker 3 (01:58:28):
So you know that would be really helpful because
you know at the end of the dayyou can get any podcast you like
into YouTube Music becauseYouTube Music is an RSS app, but
you certainly can't in terms ofYouTube Main, and so from that
point of view, I mean, obviouslyYouTube Main earns YouTube a
ton of money, whereas playingback a podcast through an RSS

(01:58:50):
link in YouTube Music isn'tgoing to earn YouTube anything.
So hopefully they can findsomething there that might
actually work hopefully they canfind something there that might
actually work.

Speaker 4 (01:59:00):
Now, moving on, we were talking about the podcast
standards project, which just injackson at transistors heading
up along with a lot of otherpeople.
They've certified a number ofnew apps.
So the anytime player is nowcertified as a new app and
you've also got some hosts thathave been certified iona, pod
home, pod 2, alley 2.
They've all been certified, andit just reminds me I forgot to

(01:59:20):
mention Pod2, when you weretalking about putting your own
metal in place.
They've built their own CDN andglobally rolled that out.

Speaker 3 (01:59:28):
Well, of course you have, but if you've only got
five shows, you can do what youlike.
I get that.
I get that.

Speaker 4 (01:59:35):
But I think, I think you know again, it'll be
interesting to compare andcontrast.
Yes, they've got to grow thenumber of users.
But I was asked the other daywhat is the certification, James
, and why do you have it?
So maybe you can tell me.

Speaker 3 (01:59:50):
Well and it's an interesting question that you
bring up so their certification.
At the moment, the PodcastStandards Project supports this
tag, which is fine, but I don'tthink that that's enough, and so
I've actually been having aconversation with Justin saying
it's not just a conversationaround does it support the
podcast location tag?
Strictly speaking?
For example, if you support thepodcast location tag, you can

(02:00:13):
just put a name of somewhere ina location tag and that's it.
You don't have to worry aboutgeotags.
You don't have to worry aboutgeotags, you don't have to worry
about the open street map ID,any of that kind of stuff.
But that's not best practice.
It's filling a tag with sometext and that's not particularly
helpful.
So my suggestion is that thecertification criteria for the

(02:00:37):
podcast standards project shouldideally be best practice rather
than just supports it.
And so, to give you an example,you are currently certified if
you support the transcript tag,but one way of supporting the
transcript tag is just to dump awebsite address into the

(02:00:57):
podcast transcript tag.
Now, that's supporting the tag,but it's a really crappy user
experience, isn't it?
So the ideal would be you needto support well, you must
support VTT files and ideallyyou support SRT files as well if
you want to, but those are thetwo formats.

(02:01:18):
Out of all of the other thingsthat you can do with that tag,
that should be the best practicesupport.
But anyway, at the moment, ifyou are a, you know you can
become a certified player, acertified host if you in
inverted commas support thosetags, and I'm hoping that that
gets a little bit squished in inthe future to supporting best

(02:01:42):
practice.
I do think that that's betterthan the Podcasting 2.0
Certified tag, which,essentially, if you want a
Podcasting 2.0 Certified icon onyour website, then the way of
doing that is to download it andput it there.
There's absolutely no checkswhatsoever in terms of that.

(02:02:03):
I'm not sure that that's a planeither.
So you know so, but you knowbaby steps, as they say.
And, by the way, I wouldsuggest that any of their apps,
if they're supporting thepodcast transcript tag, they're
going to support it properly,and so I don't think it would

(02:02:23):
actually make too much of adifference.
It might make a few differencesto some of the hosting
companies, but I don't think interms of the players, and that's
one of the important things.

Speaker 4 (02:02:29):
Yeah, I mean the podcast index.
Again, slight frustration forme is we've supported nearly
every tag, have you?
You haven't mentioned this.
No, I don't like to sort ofmention it.
It's one of those things that.
I like to keep you know quietand under my T-shirt, but one of
the frustrating things is,again, medium equals.

(02:02:52):
And you look on the PodcastIndex app and everything says
Medium equals.
Oh, everyone supports that.
And then I go well, okay, whatabout medium equals audio book
or medium equals course, right?
No, and so there's nogranularity on the tags, and I
think that's what you're sayingwith the certification as well,

(02:03:12):
and I think we need to reviewhow I mean it's yeah, I totally
agree.

Speaker 3 (02:03:19):
Agree, and I think you know I I've been saying for
a long, long time that the thedefinitions, that the
specifications that we have areway too open and that causes
problems if you're a developeractually trying to code for them
.
I mean the podcast socialinteract tag, you know it's just
to support that properly, youwould need to support the

(02:03:41):
Twitter API that doesn't existanymore, plus the Blue Sky API,
plus the Matrix API, plus theMastodon API, plus the dot, dot,
dot, dot dot, and it's justlike you know, we need a best
practice and I think that'swhere the Podcast Standards
Project comes into all of this,to make that easier.

Speaker 2 (02:04:00):
Boostergram, boostergram, boostergram, super,
super comments, zaps, fan mail,fan mail, super chats and email
.
Our favourite time of the week,it's the Pod News Weekly Review
Inbox.
Inbox.

Speaker 3 (02:04:29):
Oh, it's this time of the show.
Yes, so many different ways toget in touch with us Fan mail by
using the link in our shownotes, super comments on True
Fans, boosts everywhere else, oremail, and we share the money
that we make.
We are so three boosts, two ofwhich came in a week ago, one
from Bruce the ugly quackingduck sending us a row of ducks
saying thanks for another fineepisode.
I hope you both enjoy makingnew episodes.
73s.
I think Sam didn't necessarilyenjoy making last week's.

(02:04:52):
Well, I guess.
Yes, david sends us 304 satsusing true fans.
About the argument for oragainst video podcasts I started
a podcast, the audio kind beingthe ideal, but I have always
made the video recordingavailable on youtube because I
record in video.
My son explained it greatly inthat you'll get different fans

(02:05:16):
on the video version, sothat's's a bonus.
So let's make it an audiopodcast with a video copy.
That shouldn't lose thecredibility of podcasts, surely?
Totally agree with you, david,absolutely agree.
Yes, a podcast is something foryour ears when your eyes are
busy.
That doesn't mean that youdon't add video to it.

(02:05:36):
If you don't want to, it'sabsolutely fine.
But it's audio first, so tick.

Speaker 4 (02:05:42):
Are you taking those bumper stickers to America,
because I think you could sellout on those?

Speaker 3 (02:05:47):
I mean, yes, I think that will be a winner.
Do you know, maybe I should dothat.
You've just got me thinking.
I bought some stickers forsomething the other day.
We have a very cute dog, right?
Yes, yes.
And so I've got some stickersthat I give to kids if they've

(02:06:07):
plucked up the courage to patour dog and their parents are
around.
Can you add that part?
Then I say yes, I thought I'dbetter add that.
Then I say yes, I thought I'dbetter add that.
Then I say, would you like asticker?
And I ask the parents wouldthey like a sticker?
And the parents look at me alittle bit quizzically and then

(02:06:29):
I hand over a sticker and it'sgot Daisy's little face on it
and some wording that says Igave Daisy a pat.
And these stickers areeverywhere.
It's very, very funny.
So now I know how easy it is tobuy stickers.
Maybe, maybe I should do that.
Maybe that's a plan I don'thave at the moment at least I
don't have a stand at podcastmovement this time around but

(02:06:50):
maybe that's a plan just for abig bumper sticker saying
something for your ears whenyour eyes are busy.

Speaker 4 (02:06:54):
Yes, and people can come up to you and get it.
That's it.

Speaker 3 (02:06:57):
Yeah, I think it's a plan.
Let's do it.
Okay, excellent, one more boost.
You can read this one.
It's the one at the top.

Speaker 4 (02:07:06):
Yes, this is from Justin Jackson.
1832 sats from True Fans.
He said am I doing this right?
This is my first super commenton the topic of video.
Yes, well done.
At Transistor, our surveys ofcreators indicate that they want
to do video and distribute iteverywhere.
This could mean YouTube,spotify, truefans, apple, et

(02:07:28):
cetera.
Yes, first of all,congratulations, justin.
Thank you for using supercomments.
I hope you found them reallyeasy.
That number 1832 will mean thathe would have done it in a fiat
currency and we would havetranslated it into sats, unless
that 1832 means something inCanada Other than that?
Yeah, look, you know, it iswhat we've just talked about.

(02:07:48):
Can we get the financial modelto work?
And if we can, then let's dovideo.
If we can't, we then have tojust say it's down to YouTube.

Speaker 3 (02:08:02):
Yes, no, I think that makes a bunch of sense.
That was probably $3 Canadianor that sort of thing, or $2.50
Canadian, something like that.
But yes, and I know that Justinis trying to get Apple
interested and engaged in thevideo conversation, as they
should be.
So I think he's doing a verygood job and he's got very good

(02:08:22):
taste in shirts.
Let me just tell you very goodtaste in shirts.
Thank you to our tremendous 20,those people who help us every
single week by pressing thefunding button and giving us
some actual money every singlemonth.
Those include Neil Velio, Iinclude Rocky Thomas, who we've

(02:08:44):
mentioned earlier, and alsoinclude Ralph Estep Jr, our
latest.
Thank you so much for doingthat.
You can join them if you likeweeklypodnewsnet, if you get
value from this show, and thenyou can give us value back, like
that, or you can share thisshow with your friends.
That would be a good thing.
So what's happened for you thisweek, sam?
Have you been?

(02:09:05):
Have you been walking still?

Speaker 4 (02:09:06):
yes, another leg of the thames walk.
We're nearly there.
Uh, two legs well, I mean,another leg will help, won't it?
Yeah, I put two legs to go.
Then I realized that that'sjust not the pun intended, but
yes, we've got, we've got one.
We might do one this weekend,but it's going to be 31 degrees
and so we're umming and ahhing.
But other than that, yeah, I'mstill enjoying that god getting

(02:09:30):
the google app store.
I beta for true fans what aaver.
So I've had to buy an Androidphone something I never thought
I'd do then register it with mydeveloper account.
Then we have to run a beta for12 weeks before we can actually
get the published to App Store.
I thought Apple was going to bethe hard one.

(02:09:51):
Yeah, no, you have to run aclosed beta for 12 weeks and you
have to have a minimum of 12people in the beta as well is.

Speaker 3 (02:10:01):
That is that why the google app store is full of such
excellent apps that aren'trubbish at all, and oh, no, wait
, no, that's not the case is it?

Speaker 4 (02:10:10):
well, that's what I thought.
I thought I thought it wasgoing to be.
You know, literally the ios one.
We did, we published it, it wasreviewed, it came back a couple
of times about I don't knowthree, four days.
We updated it a couple of timesand then, boom there it was To
my surprise, as we all know, andthe Google App Store?

(02:10:31):
No, you have to do this, thenthat, then this, and so, yeah,
finally, finally, we have nowgot the beta out and I'm going
to be sending out beta invites.
You're on the list.

Speaker 3 (02:10:39):
Yeah, I'll have to turn the Android phone on then.

Speaker 4 (02:10:42):
Yeah well, I mean, you know I've turned one on,
it'll be turned off in a minute.
I just registered it and thenthat's it.
Really, what did you buy?
It was a Samsung, yes, ah okay,yeah, nothing too flash, cheap
as chips, but you know it's whatit had to be.
And then the other thing I justnoticed, and it's obviously not
directly related to podcasting,but OpenAI has announced

(02:11:03):
they're going to release a webbrowser to challenge Google
Chrome.
I thought, ooh, first timewe're seeing some real
competition in the market.

Speaker 3 (02:11:11):
I will lay a bet to you that OpenAI's browser will
be based on Chromium.
Yes, so essentially it isGoogle Chrome.
Yes, it is, it's aChromium-based browser.
There you go, I win that one.
How ridiculous.
So it's Chromium, which isbasically Google's code anyway,

(02:11:32):
which still has tons of hooksinto Google.
I discover yes, so well,brilliant, well done OpenAI,
another triumph.

Speaker 4 (02:11:41):
When you've got hundreds of billions, you can do
what you like with it.

Speaker 3 (02:11:44):
Yes, Well, yes, exactly.
Well, I won't be getting that.
So what's happened for you,james?
Well, funnily enough, youmentioned browsers.
I've been using a veryexcellent browser for the last
year or so, called Orion, but Iended up junking it because it's

(02:12:05):
just not quite working yet, andit particularly isn't working
when you look at things like thenew Apple beta, where it just
simply doesn't work.
Anyway, it turns out thatVivaldi is a very excellent
thing and is worth a play.
So if you are looking for a newbrowser that is de-Googled,
doesn't have Google stuff inthere unless you want it to and
that is very movable, verypersonalisable, then I would
recommend that.

(02:12:26):
So that's a thing.
And I also, I think I'vemanaged to get something on
LinkedIn, sam, which is actuallytrending, which is very
exciting, which is a email thatI was sent bless, from somebody
who was trying to put I think,trying to put their client
forward for this very show.
And yes, and so a lovely emailcoming from Stephanie Luna, who

(02:12:51):
doesn't actually exist onLinkedIn, so I'm a little bit
dubious as to whether or not sheactually exists, but but anyway
, she apparently represents theinventor of the only global
patented cure for erectiledysfunction which is nice, you
know.

Speaker 4 (02:13:06):
I was asking why she reached out to you and not me,
but there you go I think itmight be quite hard for her
guest to come on.

Speaker 3 (02:13:16):
Hey, oh, there you go .
Anyway, let me say again thisis the only global patented cure
, not a device, not a cream, nota prescription or a Band-Aid.
I wouldn't use a Band-Aid forthat.
To be honest, it's aregenerative cure with a 97%
success rate.
After carefully reviewing yourpodcast, she goes on it just

(02:13:41):
made sense to me to reach out inregards to the possibility of
this doctor being a guest onyour podcast.
And then she adds I haveattached a couple of interviews
for your viewing.
It's a podcast, so anyway.
So my response to her was onesentence I'm curious how
carefully you reviewed ourpodcast.

(02:14:02):
No response, so anyway thankyou very much.

Speaker 4 (02:14:05):
I was going to say which podcasting Tito O tagged.
Does this fit into?

Speaker 3 (02:14:09):
Yes, Anyway, thank you.
A person who represents Dr Nickor whatever the doctor was
called, yes, but we will not bebooking that person onto this
show.

Speaker 4 (02:14:23):
Maybe the podcast images tag.
Good job.

Speaker 3 (02:14:28):
That one doesn't exist anymore, and that's it for
this week.
All of our podcast storiestaken from the PodNews Daily
newsletter at podnewsnet.

Speaker 4 (02:14:37):
You can support this show by streaming sats, you give
us feedback using thebuzzsprout fan mail link in our
show notes and you can send us asuper comment or a boost or,
better still, become a powersupporter like the noteworthy 20
no, what we call them the, the,the nice 20.
I don't know what we decided onjames the terrific, the
terrific 20.

Speaker 3 (02:14:57):
I can't remember what we decided on.
We did.

Speaker 4 (02:14:58):
It's so long ago, weeklypodnewsnet.

Speaker 3 (02:15:02):
Yes, and our music is from TM Studios.
Our voiceover mostly, is SheilaD.
Our audio is recorded usingClean Feed, we edit with
Hindenburg and we're hosted andsponsored by Buzzsprout.
Start podcasting.
Keep podcasting atbuzzsproutcom Get updated every
day.
Subscribe to our newsletter atpodnewsnet.

Speaker 5 (02:15:24):
Tell your friends and grow the show and support us,
and support us.
The Pod News Weekly Review willreturn next week.
Keep listening.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

24/7 News: The Latest

Crime Junkie

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Podcast Video Is Complicated But We Can't Surrender It to YouTube

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Stuff You Should Know

24/7 News: The Latest

Crime Junkie

All Episodes

Podcast Video Is Complicated But We Can't Surrender It to YouTube

Stuff You Should Know