Spotify Supremium, Acast Plus Access, and Listener Habits

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
James Cridland (00:00):
It's Friday, the 23rd of June 2023.

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

I'm James Cridland, the editor of Pod News
, back here at home in Australia.

Sam Sethi (00:17):
And I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO of PodFans.

In the chapters today.
Finally, Spotify bring outtheir Supremium tier.
But what's new?
Why didn't Spotify podcasts payme?
Someone asks what's new withSpotify's redesigned desktop app
.
Why were Prince Harry andMeghan Markle called effing
grifters by a Spotify exec?
Language warning for later.
Apple announces enhanced searchwith new categories.

(00:40):
Acast launches Acast PlusAccess.
And is Facebook really thefourth biggest podcast platform?
No, This podcast is sponsoredand hosted by Buzzsprout.
Last week, 3,163 people starteda podcast with Buzzsprout.
Podcast hosting made easy withpowerful tools and remarkable
customer support.
And now AI to help you publishyour show and buy Pod News Live

(01:04):
in London this September.
Tickets are available now atpodnewsnet slash live.

Jingle (01:09):
From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly
Review.

Sam Sethi (01:14):
So, James, let's kick it off with a couple of thank
yous.
First of all, Skypearlsbury,thank you so much for standing
in for me While I was awayremancing the wife earning some
brownie points.
It's Stratford watching a bitof Shakespeare and trying not to
fall asleep.
All three things were achieved,Wow.
Can't say that was the mostthrilling night of my life.

(01:37):
But there you go.
But other than that, thank youalso to everyone who came to the
podcast live in Manchester.
It was great to see you all andespecially thank you to Mark
Asquith for a wonderful review.
If you haven't heard it, checkit out on the podcast
accelerator This latest episode.
Thank you, mark.
Spotify adds to premium tier.

(01:58):
Yes, well done, very nicelittle play Friend of the show,
ashley Carmen, has said thatshe's scooped that Spotify is
planning to add a new high tierpremium price that's coming this
month, allegedly, and basicallyall I can see James from it is
they're adding high fidelityaudio, which they've been
promising for two years, andit's finally here.

(02:19):
So what else is new about thiswonderful new tier that we're
all going to pay for?

Well, it's Spotify Hi-Fi and it's expanded
access to audio books.
Apparently, subscribers will begiven a specific number of free
hours or titles per month, andthe first thing I would say is
high fidelity audio.
Almost everybody does not care.

(02:43):
Knowing what I know from theradio business, you know if
audio is good enough quality,then audio is good enough
quality.
So there's really no point inspending more, and certainly
nobody's going to spend any morefor that.
So presumably it's just anaudio book play, i'm guessing.
But yeah, interestingly though,debuting in overseas markets
before launching in the US,which is weird.

Sam Sethi (03:06):
Well, i think that's more a case of if it screws up,
hey, no one's going to knowabout it in the US, that's fine
by us.

That might well be it Might well be it.

Sam Sethi (03:16):
But I don't think this will get Spotify to
profitability, which is reallywhat it's all about.
I mean, the 200 people droppedand all the exclusives
disappearing left, right andCharlie.
They won't get to profitabilityby adding a pound per
subscriber, if they get even, asyou just said, a few percent of
their existing subscribers toupgrade.

Yeah, yeah.
No, i don't think there's goingto be any particular excitement
there.
I think it's just keeping upwith the Joneses.
Obviously, apple has a losslessplan, amazon has a lossless
plan as well, or at least ahigh-fi plan, as of course, does
Tidal and various other things.
So I think it's just a case ofkeeping up with the Joneses and

(03:56):
giving fewer reasons for peopleto walk away.

Sam Sethi (03:59):
The price elasticity of this deal is greater than one
, which means they can't reallyincrease the price because
customers will abandon ship andgo elsewhere.
So they haven't really got alot of flexibility on the price.
They couldn't really stick itup by three or four pounds or
three or four dollars, so theyare a little bit tied into just
keeping up with the Joneses, theAmazons and the Apples.

(04:20):
A friend of the show, ericNewsom, said it brilliantly.
He said they've spent a billiondollars to become a-cast.
I thought that was very funnywhen I read that.
Wow.
But yeah, i mean, look, theystill haven't got their
audiobooks deal sorted out.
Eric is chargeable, but again,it's such a high percentage of

(04:43):
goes to companies.
Would they not considerchanging their model?
Their fixed-cost subscriptionmodel, which is what this is,
needs to go to a variable model?
Would they not charge forpodcasts?
I mean that seems an obviousthing to move to where you can
then get more money.
I mean, look at Netflix, jamesright, you pay your subscription
, you get loads of free stuff,but anything that's high quality

(05:05):
, like a new film, or you'realways paying a little bit extra
.
You're always nudging you topay.
Oh yeah, but that's the newfilm, so you can pay $15.99 for
that one if you want it early,couldn't they?

do that with podcasting?
I mean they could, but they'vejust essentially done deals with
lots of people to basically say, no, we're not going to do
exclusives anymore.
So if they start wanting to doexclusives now, then that would
be a real about face.
I mean, the Trevor Noahannouncement that they made
earlier on in the week is not anexclusive, and it said that in
the second paragraph of thepress release that this is going

(05:38):
to be available across allplatforms.
So I can't see them turningaround and wanting to charge
extra for some of those shows.
It could just be that the musicservice on Spotify is the thing
that they have to have, is thething that keeps people paying
their $9.99 a month or howevermuch it is, and then the

(06:02):
podcasts are the thing thatearns their money through the
advertising model, in the sameway that a cast is earning money
and then in the same way thatother people are earning money,
and the benefit the Spotify hasis it's got both on platform
consumption and off platformconsumption through the Spotify
audience network on things likeApple podcasts and pocket casts

(06:25):
and everything else.
So perhaps actually podcastingis the white knight riding in to
save podcasting's world.

Sam Sethi (06:33):
Well, let's see what happens.
We'll see the pickup of thisnew deal when it comes out.
Now, spotify didn't pay me.
Not me, james, not you, andit's certainly not a statement
from the Sussexes either.
That's coming up later.
Allegedly, a Redditor claimsthat Spotify aka while it was
anchored didn't pay him the $700he was owed and they shut down

(06:55):
his podcast.
And yeah, now did you read thestory on this one?

Yeah, well, he was owed.
he or her was owed over $700.
He wasn't able to withdraw themoney, so he emailed customer
support and asked what the issuewas, and basically they spend a
month or so trying tounderstand why this bloke
couldn't take out his $700.

(07:21):
And then, all of a sudden, thepodcast was shut down And all he
got was an email saying pleasebe advised, anchor has a policy
to terminate inappropriatecircumstances, the accounts of
repeat infringers.
Best regards anchor, which isinteresting.
So there are a few things thatkind of make me a little bit

(07:43):
confused by this.
Firstly, they're talking aboutanchor, and anchor hasn't
actually existed since February,but also, secondly, the bloke
who posted this onto Reddit.
He was asked what's yourpodcast then?
And he basically doesn't wantto say So yeah, okay, so it's

(08:05):
not A few red flags there.
Yeah, there's a fair amount ofred flags there, i do notice in
the comments.
Congratulations on getting thiscomplaint mentioned in today's
pod news.
I saw that as well, which isalways entertaining.
But yeah, so you never quiteknow with any of these stories.

(08:26):
I'm sure that every singlepodcast company has some bad
stories such as this.
But yeah, that's about as faras it goes.
I guess.

Sam Sethi (08:34):
Yeah, i normally wouldn't talk about this story
actually myself either, becauseI think it is a molehill turned
into a mountain, but it is agood example of that.
You know, people are stillallowing themselves to be paid
by third party gateway keepers.
This is my pitch.
People have to start to learnabout value for value.

(08:57):
It does exist.
Micro payments are simple.
You can get an Orbi wallet.
It is a direct pay to peer topeer payment And so, in that
sense, if this was a true $700,yes, spotify could have kept 10%
.
He would have had the moneydirectly in his wallet.
There would be no issue.
And I still believe.
I think and we keep seeingstories about advertising.

(09:20):
You know, in one hand it'sgrowing, but we're seeing all
these layoffs.
Prices don't seem to work.
I still think people haven'twoken up to value for value yet,
and this is just a good exampleof where, if it was a value for
value solution, it'd have themoney in his wallet by now.

Well, yes, potentially, although of course,
people do like to keep hold oftheir money, and you know, and
only pay when they absolutelyhave to.
So I'm not necessarily sure thatthat would fix that.
I mean, the real issue here isthat you know it's a third party
, as you say, and the fact thatyou know his podcast is on

(09:56):
anchor and or Spotify forpodcasting, as it is now, and
you know it's basically up tothem.
And if they want to turn aroundand just mysteriously terminate
your entire account for somereason And, by the way, reasons
that you know he's asked, youknow, tell me how I broke the

(10:17):
rules, and they've never comeback to him, apparently, and you
can see that happening withother things.
I mean, you know, all of mybusiness is done on a Google
account And Google could, ifthey wanted to, tomorrow, cancel
my account for whatever reasonthey wanted to and essentially
bankrupt my company.
That's quite a risk, i think,but it's a risk that I would

(10:40):
imagine that most of us areactually dealing with, the fact
that You know so much of ourstuff is held on other services
and other platforms.
So perhaps that's one wake-upcall and perhaps we should all
be self hosting, although crikey, self hosting email is not for
the, you know not not foranybody.

Sam Sethi (11:00):
Really, not everything needs to get yeah,
not everything.
Now Spotify staying with themfor a few seconds.
Spotify redesigned theirdesktop app.
I had a quick look at it.
Have you seen it, james?

I haven't seen it because I don't I don't use
Spotify that much, so but youknow, yeah, it looks nice.
They've added a few things.
I mean, what they basically haddone is they had completely
ignored That desktop app formany years.
So it's nice to see that theyhave, you know, given it a lick
of paint, added some newfeatures in there.

(11:32):
I can't see the quite fancything that used to be in there
about what your friends arelistening to, which only used to
appear in The desktop app, butI don't know if it's still there
It is.

Sam Sethi (11:43):
Yeah, i thought I'd check in and see what happens.
So, down the right hand columnused to be what your friends are
listening to and connect toFacebook not that anyone uses
Facebook and The that's stillthere.
So what happens is, if you'relistening to music or podcasts,
the right hand column will nowgive you Metadata about what
you're listening to.
But if you then decide to go tosettings and turn on What my

(12:07):
friends are listening to, thatright hand column of metadata
about music and podcastdisappears and it gets replaced.
So, yeah, the right hand columnbasically has just become a
changeable column depending onwhat you wanted to show right,
right.

Well, there we are.
I don't know how many peopleuse the desktop app.
I would imagine that it's quitepopular at work with
programmers and stuff like that,but yeah, but I don't know how
many people use that, andcertainly how many people use it
.
A desktop app to listen toPodcasts is quite another thing,
isn't it?

Sam Sethi (12:41):
Now here's the title from Bill Simmons Prince Harry
and Meghan Markle are calledeffing grifters by the Spotify
exec after their 20 millionarchetype Podcasts act.
Why did he call?

them that, james ?
Well, why would he call themthat?
Here's.
Here's a little clip of him, ofhim saying that, and I've
edited out a vowel So you'llnever guess what the word was.
You do a lot of business dealsa lot of negotiations I do.

Jingle (13:07):
I wish I'd been involved in the Megan and Harry leave
Spotify negotiation.
The fucking grifters that's thepodcast.

We should have lunch with them.
Yes, oh, that was the versionwhere I didn't edit.
Yeah, there you go.
Why a senior exec for Spotifyis Allowed to just shoot his
mouth off in this way, heavenonly knows.
But because Spotify and theSussexes Both said on Thursday

(13:37):
night that they have mutuallyagreed to part ways and they
said very positive things abouteach other in The conversation.
And then you have Bill SimmonsPopping up over the weekend
shooting his mouth off, it seems.
It seems as if there's oneUnprofessional person here, and
it's not Megan Markle, it's Billbloody Simmons, to be honest.

Sam Sethi (13:56):
Yeah, i guess when you've got 200 million in your
bank account and you've had afew beers, you don't really care
what's being said.

I guess not.
So yeah, and he then goes on tosay I've got to get drunk one
night and tell the story of thezoom I had with Harry's trying
to help him with a podcast idea.
It's one of my best stories, imean I suppose you know he's
there, he's producing a podcastfor himself.
He wants to make that podcastas exciting as he can possibly.
I was more interested, though,with the other story, which was

(14:25):
Will Page, friend of the show,former chief economist at
Spotify, who indeed I saw lastweek.
It turned out that I was on thesame plane as he was, so I
managed to catch a lift intotown with him, which was very
kind, but anyway, he was on BBCRadio 4's The World Tonight and
he ended up saying this Harryand Meghan earned more than

(14:48):
Blinding Lights, which was bythe fantastic Canadian Bander
weekend, and there's the moststreamed song ever on Spotify,
which is not bad for 12 hourswork.
So I'm just fascinated by this.
The Harry and Meghan haveearned more than the most
streamed song ever on theplatform, which I think goes to
tell you that there's somethingnot quite right in how Dawn

(15:11):
Ostroff and that crew Ended updoing their weird and wonderful
podcast deals.

Sam Sethi (15:17):
Yeah, i mean the 200 million or whatever it is, to
Joe Rogan and all these otherdeals.
Wow, i suppose if you've got abillion the way What was Richard
Brunson said, you know how tomake a million out of airline.
Start with a billion and workyour way down.
That's what they're doing withSpotify.

There's that going on.
There's also Joe Rogan manyCongratulations who's published
episode two thousand of hispodcast and Only this week has
been laying into scientistsabout vaccinations and
everything else and being aStupid idiot.
What an unpleasant man that manis Really.

(15:56):
You couldn't ask for a worseperson.
And if Bill Simmons isembarrassed to be sharing
Spotify with with Prince Harry,why the hell isn't he
embarrassed about sharingSpotify with somebody that that
thinks that science is a badthing?
A dreadful, horrible man.
So many congratulations, joeRogan, reaching two thousand

(16:18):
shows of your hate-filledpodcast.
Many Congratulations anyway.
Moving on, spotify has alsoannounced.
Spotify, of course, a companythat made 200 people redundant
two weeks ago Is it?
can they have a thing calledSpotify Beach and a big
announcement that Trevor NoahHas a new podcast, a new Spotify

(16:41):
original podcast, not not anexclusive, as we were saying
earlier.
He made that announcement withDaniel Eck.
Also, at the Spotify Beach,there was the host of call me
daddy, alex Cooper, who wastalking about the art of great
interviews, which must have beenabsolutely thrilling for the
advertising people.

(17:02):
But there you go.
So that was on the SpotifyBeach.
Meanwhile, iheart Media, whichhas also made a ton of people
redundant this year they hadParis Hilton DJing an official
after party on the iHeart yacht,promoting a new podcast called
the history of the world'sgreatest nightclubs.
The world has gone mad, sam Theworld has gone mad.

Sam Sethi (17:25):
So no chance for us to go to Cannes next year.

No, The world has gone.
absolutely mad I was asked if Iwas going to Cannes this year.
No, why on earth would I begoing to Cannes?
What would I want to be goingto Cannes for, with all of these
dreadful people there?
No, no.

Sam Sethi (17:43):
Okay, that's a no.
Then You heard it here first,folks There will not be a pod
news live from Cannes next year.
Well, yeah, anyway, anyway,let's move on Moving on.
Yes, that's enough Spotify forone week.
Apple announced they'veenhanced their search with new
subcategories.
So Apple have enhanced theirsearch.

(18:04):
They've added ninesubcategories, recommendations
and language searches in selectcountries.
James, tell me more about this.

All it basically is is it's some additional
fields appearing in the searchtab on the Apple Podcasts app,
so you can now more easily go inand find shows about mental
health or shows aboutrelationships and so on and so
forth, which is all very nice.
You can also, in some markets,look at shows in other languages

(18:34):
, so you know.
So that's handy if your app isin one language but you actually
speak a bunch of others as well.
So here in Australia, forexample, there's a bunch of
different languages that you canenjoy.
It's marked podcasts bylanguage And you can go diving

(18:55):
in there, and I can choose fromArabic, chinese, hindi, italian,
spanish and Vietnamese, whichall makes sense for this market.
I didn't know you could speakall those languages.
I speak none of those languages,but nevertheless, that's all
quite nice, but, yes, so that'sbasically it.
Of course, ios 17 has launchedits first beta developers build

(19:19):
this week as well.
Now, my iPhone 8 isn't gettingit at the moment.
I don't know whether that'sbecause it's an iPhone 8 and
it'll never get it.
It'll never get it.

Sam Sethi (19:28):
You're off the list.
Am I off the list now?

Jingle (19:29):
You're below the line now.

Sam Sethi (19:31):
Really officially Yes you're below the line
officially.
Well, there you go.
I think there's a point atwhich you might have to upgrade
eventually.

It's not a phone that I use that much, because
you know, obviously I use a realphone, but you know it's still
weird.

Sam Sethi (19:44):
Well, you've had all these features for about two
years on Android, haven't you?

Yeah, well, yeah , exactly exactly.
Including support for episodeimages and the support for
episode images at the moment inthe new iOS 17 version of Apple
Podcast is looking really,really nice.
Now, apple gets very upset ifyou start talking about the beta
version, because we're notsupposed to, but all I'd say is

(20:09):
make sure that you've got yourepisode artwork.
If I have a hint and tip foryou is, make sure it's a nice
image and any text that you haveis in the top half of the image
, because the bottom half of theimage may be overwritten by
other stuff on the ApplePodcasts app.
So just saying But, yeah, butit's looking quite smart and

(20:34):
cool, so it'll be nice to seethat once it's out of beta and
we can talk about it a littlebit more.

Sam Sethi (20:38):
So this is a genuine question Do I have to update my
categories in Apple now to theseadditional new subcategories?

Yeah, no, there's nothing additional that
anybody needs to do.
It's just purely that thesesubcategories are now being
treated in the Apple Podcastsapp as more important categories
, if you like, so they're justappearing in a few more places.
It also means that they get newnoteworthy shows, they get

(21:06):
shows of the month, you know allthat kind of stuff, so almost
as if they've been elevated toreal categories within the app.
So there's nothing for anybodyto end up doing.
What it might mean is that ifyour show fits into those
subcategories rather better thanin the main category, then you
might get some benefit out ofthat.

(21:27):
But that's about as far as itgoes.

Sam Sethi (21:29):
Now this explore podcast by language.
It says creators can specifythe language for their podcast
using Apple Podcast Connect, viaall, via RSS, using the hosting
provider.
Is this a new field withinpodcast Connect so that you're
stating your language?

No, it's not.
It's not a new field And it'sthe field which has existed ever
since Dave Weiner invented RSS,or at least Dave Weiner worked
on RSS for podcasting.
So, yes, it's a language fieldwhich most podcast, most
podcasters will set, sometimesnot correctly, but nevertheless,

(22:09):
most past, most podcasters willset.
So I think it's a, lang, l, a,n, g and it's right at the top,
but I could be wrong.
So I'm just going to doublecheck and see if I can see where
it is language.
It is just a simple language,and so the pod news daily is in

(22:29):
English, en.
But you can probably select endash gb, which would be ours,
which would be English, british,british English, correct,
correct English, yes, so, yes,so there's nothing new in that,
and in fact the podcast indexhas been supporting that

(22:50):
language tag and has beeningesting that language tag into
the podcast index data as well.
So if you wanted to buildsomething that only searches
German language podcasts, thenknock yourself out, because you
can already do that with thepodcast index.
Hmm.

Sam Sethi (23:06):
Now a cast.
Christina Brenton has said thatprogrammatic ads are vital for
podcasting.
She said on Steve and aGoldstein podcast this week,
only 13% of a cast current audioads are transacted
programmatically.
What's she mean, james?
I don't unpack that for me.

Well, so she is saying and you will be able to
read this interview in full inthe podcast business journal
this week She is basicallysaying look, not very many
advertisers are buyingprogrammatically right now.
So quite a lot of advertisersare going into the A cast
catalog and saying, oh well, Iwould like to buy, you know pod,

(23:46):
save the UK, or I would like tobuy the rest is politics or
whatever it might be.
I hope that both of those are Acasts.
I think they are, But you knowwhat I mean.
And so what she is basicallysaying is stop stop doing that
and buy podcasts based onprogrammatic tools instead by by
podcasts that you know.

(24:07):
If you, if you're looking forpodcasts that are talking about
politics, then by podcast thatare talking about politics.
Don't go in there and cherrypick the individual shows that
you actually want And that, andthat, of course, will help them
in terms of monetizing the longtail And that'll help, you know,
smaller shows get more moneybecause, of course, then they

(24:29):
can actually be sold a lotbetter.
So at the moment, I wassurprised at seeing that only
13% of shows ad buys are beingdone on a programmatic way
within a cast, And you can seethat there's real opportunity
for them to boost that and togrow that a little bit more.

(24:52):
Hence the conversation thatChristiana had with Steven
Goldstein earlier on.

Sam Sethi (24:57):
Moving on, then This one I had to take a double take
on.
You reported on Westwood One,and Signal Hill Insights have
released data suggesting that.
Wait for it.
The fourth largest podcastplatform is Facebook.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong,but didn't they close Facebook
podcasts about two years ago?

Yes, Facebook doesn't have a podcast player.
So the question was so the waythat this data was produced is
they asked 608 weekly podcastconsumers which of the following
places do you use the most toaccess the podcasts you listen
to?
And the fourth largest podcastplatform that came back from

(25:41):
that question was Facebook.
Now what the researchers arebasically saying here is that
actually they've probablyanswered it.
Where do you see promotion forthe podcast that you listen to?
They're probably followingpeople on podcasts that they
really enjoy And maybe thatreminds them to go and listen to
the podcast, and blah, blah,blah.

(26:03):
But I think this reallyhighlights to me that quite a
lot of the survey research thatyou see out there is just
nonsense, Because if you'reasking people which of these
places do you use to access thepodcast you listen to, they're
responding with something thatdoesn't even play podcasts.

(26:24):
Then I think, yeah, you canreally look at quite a lot of
these surveys and go.
Are they telling us anythingthat might be actually true here
or not?
Signal Hill Insights greatcompany.
They put together an awful lotof really good survey data.
Westwood One reports on a lotof this survey data and they're

(26:48):
also very, very good as well,But what I'd say on this is that
it does show the problems aboutliving on survey data and why
I'm much more interested insupporting things like OP3.
I'm much more interested insupporting, you know, PodTrack
and the Triton Rankers and allof this kind of stuff Basically

(27:09):
data that is coming out of logfiles, not what people reckon
they're doing, because, as isvery clear from this, it's just
nonsense.

Sam Sethi (27:18):
As Henry Ford would say, they just want faster
horses.
Now, moving on, mags Creative,which is based out of London,
has signed a deal with CAA whichwill enable them to identify
adaptations across film, tvpublishing and live
entertainment based on thestudio's podcast IP.
Friend of the show.

(27:38):
Hannah Russell, who runs MagsCreative, probably will be able
to tell us more about this Jamesat our PodNews Live in London,
because she will be one of ourguests.

Indeed, yes, and I'm very much looking forward
to hearing from her at ourbusiness podcasting networking
event.
Podnewsnet slash live is whereto get tickets.
But this is the sort of thingwhere a large company, a large
talent organization CAA will behelping them understand.

(28:11):
You know what they can be doingacross film and TV and
publishing and liveentertainment based on the shows
that Mags Creative have beenworking on And it's really good
to see.
I mean, that's a smallindependent podcast production
company based in London run bywomen.

(28:34):
It's a good story for the UKand for women-run organizations
and all of that.
So many congratulations to them.
I look forward to learning alittle bit more.

Sam Sethi (28:46):
Let's have a whiz around the world.
James, Let's do that.

Yes, let's, and we'll start in Germany.
German podcasts have earned $42million US dollars from podcast
advertising in 2022.
But according to Fern Uni,which has conducted a study into
what type of podcastadvertising works best, the
conclusion is ads work better ifthey're related to the subject

(29:10):
matter of the podcast.
There's a big Did somebody getpaid for that?
There's a big, massive surprise.

Sam Sethi (29:16):
I was going to say DER the obvious conclusion to a
report.

Yeah, but it's nice to see that.
I mean, it's backing up a hunch, i think, and backing up
something that seems obvious.
So it's nice to actually seethat there's some science behind
that.
So you know, that's probablynot a bad plan really.
In Portugal there's a newbranded podcast company.

(29:43):
It seems all of the rage at themoment.
It's called ZECO PodcastCreative Agency And it's run by
a consultancy called Widecom Andhere in Australia a very
perplexing thing which I wish Icould give you more information
on, but I really don'tunderstand it.
We have two very largecommercial radio companies here.

(30:04):
One of them is called SCA, usedto stand for Southern
Cross-Ostereo, now it officiallystands for Nothing And one of
them is called ARN Media.
Arn stands for Australian RadioNetwork right And ARN Media,
which is the number two in themarket, has bought 14.7% of SCA,

(30:25):
the number one in the marketAnd actually it's bought as much
as it possibly can becausemedia ownership laws are pretty
fierce here and they are notallowed to own more than 15% of
the shares because otherwisethey have to go out and sell an
awful lot of radio licenses.
So why you would get the numbertwo buying as much as it

(30:45):
possibly can into the number oneradio broadcaster and, indeed,
podcast maker.
Heaven alone knows, but still,there you go.
Why is it interesting in termsof podcasting?
Because SCA owns Listener andARN owns the I Heart Podcast
Network Australia, both of whomare number one in the podcast

(31:06):
ranker weirdly, number one fordifferent things.
So, yeah, i wish I understoodwhy they were doing.
It Seems a bit of a weird thingto basically spend your money
in a company that you'recompeting with, but perhaps they
know something about mediaownership laws that we don't.
But, however, it's working.
interesting to end up seeingSorry.

Sam Sethi (31:26):
You say there's a.
You've got media laws downthere, Doesn't Rupert Murdoch
just own every newspaper down inAustralia?

I mean you're saying that as if it's a joke,
but in Queensland Rupert Murdochgenuinely owns every single
newspaper that isn't a newspaperthat is published in Queensland
which isn't published by RupertMurdoch.
But apparently that's fine.
But you're only allowed to owntwo FM radio stations in one

(31:53):
particular area.
So yeah, i don't reallyunderstand why the rules are
different in terms of broadcastto in terms of papers.
Well, i kind of do, becauseit's a finite amount of public
spectrum, i suppose.
But yes, you know blah, blah,blah.
So yeah, so who knows what'sgoing on there?

(32:16):
but quite interesting anyway.

Sam Sethi (32:19):
Maybe we should interview somebody from one of
those two companies to find out.
But anyway, moving on, goodluck with that.
Now you pay your money, you getyour reports right.
So Nielsen has released itsaudio today report, which says
that Americans use broadcastradio, podcasts, streaming
satellite, and it claims comedyis the most popular podcast

(32:41):
genre.
And then you go to Pew Researchand they will tell you in the
USA the most top-ranked podcastsare true crime.
And if you go to Republicanstates in the USA it says true
crime is the most popular James.
What is it?
Is it true crime?
comedy?
but clearly not news.
What's the most popular genre?

Well, i'm not sure that I care particularly
much, but yeah, i would thinkthat most of the research that
I've seen suggests that truecrime is the most popular.
Now, of course, some of this iswhat again?
what do you call most popular?
Is it the most listeners, themost downloads?

(33:21):
Because those are different.
So what's going on there?
Who knows?
But the Pew Research data talksabout top-ranked podcasts.
I queried how did you work outtop-ranked podcasts?
And they said, well, we had alook at the Apple podcast charts
.
Oh, brilliant, because ofcourse that, yes, it's

(33:41):
top-ranked, which meansabsolutely nothing at all, but
it certainly doesn't meantop-downloaded or top-listens to
, because that's not what theApple podcast charts measure.
So I kind of queried thevalidity of much of the Pew
Research data.
Apparently, they've usedpodchaser data and various other
things as well.
That's all fine.

(34:02):
Not quite sure how Nielsenworked out their data in terms
of audio today.
Nielsen's very strange becausethey've released this audio
today data And I said so whereis it on the website then, so I
can link people to it?
And they said, oh, it's not onthe website.

(34:24):
So, yeah, so you can't actuallydo that.
And I'm there thinking, well,how, why, what?
None of that makes an awful lotof sense.
But anyway, their data I'vejust looked it up comes from the
Nielsen-Scarborough PodcastBuying Power Study, which is a
whole year's worth of databetween May 22 to May 23.

(34:48):
And they say that in May 2023,there were 28 million listeners
to comedy and 23 millionlisteners to news podcasts.
So, yeah, say what you thinkabout all of that, but that's
basically how they've workedthat out.

(35:08):
I would suggest to you thatNielsen-Scarborough Podcast
Buying Power is a study in thesame way that we were talking a
little bit earlier about thatstudy with Signal Hill Insights
and Westwood One, and I'm notnecessarily sure that that's
particularly helpful.
But anyway, still, there you go.

Sam Sethi (35:27):
Yeah, the last one on these reports is found in
Friends of the Shows.
Why is found in?
you're an advisor, you can tellus all the answers now, james.
Why is found in putting outRepublican States Preferred True
Kind Podcast and News Podcast?
Now, it doesn't surprise methat right-wing Republican red
states love fake news.
Sorry, fox News, but why isfound?

in putting out Why would found in be interested
in this?
It's very niche.
Yes, i asked that question andI said what a weird press
release to be sending out.
And also they haven't put yourlogo on the graphics, so you're
not going to get the benefit outof it.
And Nick from Fountain turnedaround to me and said oh yeah,
this is just a piece of SEO.
So it's literally a piece ofSEO work.

(36:10):
Well, if work, then in Goddardcoverage To find people stupid
enough to link to thatparticular story and also credit
fountain.

Sam Sethi (36:19):
So I've fallen for that, and then haven't I Well,
and then I've added it.
So, well done, nick, you've gotus both then Yeah exactly In
jobs, lots of entertainingpeople and moves.

David Mayer Roberts has been appointed as
board advisor to 1860, which isa branded podcast production
company based in Bristol in theUK.
It's lush good.
Lush S C P R, which is theowner of LAist Studios, is
making 21 people redundant.
That's 10% of the staff.
They, of course, own radiostations as well.

(36:55):
They blame two things which Ithought was interesting Firstly,
softness in the advertisingbusiness, which doesn't come as
any surprise to anybody, butalso a pullback of promotional
efforts by Hollywood Studiosamid the writer's strike.
So the writer's strike isactually having difficulties for
the whole creative economy now,which seems a bit of an own

(37:17):
goal, but still, there we go.
Barry Spinkle and Giann Berryhave been promoted to co-heads
of Pineapple Street Studios.
Lots of changes in order.
See the other co-founder ofPineapple Street, max Linsky,
has now been named SeniorPodcast Strategist for Audit's

(37:37):
podcast division, and there isalso a job going at Spotify if
you'd like to work for them.
I mean, they've just made 200people redundant, so what could
possibly go wrong?
Anyway, it's senior editor.
Audio books in London.
They are growing theirworld-class audio book editorial
team, they say, looking forindividuals who can connect

(37:58):
amazing stories with just theright moods, moments and genres
to listeners who will love them.
That's all very exciting.
Anyway, if you're looking for ajob, pod News has podcasting
jobs across the industry andacross the world.
They're free to post as well.
It just takes two minutes.
Podnewsnet slash jobs The techstuff.

Jingle (38:17):
Tech stuff On the Pod News Weekly Review.

Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday
in the Pod News newsletter.
Here's where we do all of thetech talk.
What's first in your great biglong list, Sam?

Sam Sethi (38:30):
It's the bit I love.
Now I sort of snip it fromSophia Chapman, who works for
SimpleCast.
It said SimpleCast now supportsthe podcast TXT element.
Now that's one of theprerequisites to be a member of
the podcast standards group.
And I thought, oh, now I don'treally talk about SimpleCast
much.
I sort of they exist but wenever really touch upon them,

(38:51):
bit like Libsyn.
And it just piqued my interest.
So I reached out to her andyeah, they are getting involved
in the podcast namespace.
So this is their first entry, iguess.

Yes, so the podcast text element is a useful
tool when you're claimingthings.
I know that you have a realissue with the podcast text
thing Pointless.
And you want something thatalso works.
Oh, look at this.
You have an announcement tomake.

Sam Sethi (39:20):
Yes, i, basically have been talking to various
CTOs of hosting companies sayinglook, can we please put in
something like podcast, verifyand actually do an OAuth model,
which I think you talked abouttwo, maybe three years ago.
It could be.

Yes, this was my idea for how to claim a podcast
was to use something verysimilar to OAuth.
Yeah, absolutely.

Sam Sethi (39:47):
Now I understand why Adam gets frustrated when he
says why isn't anyoneimplementing cross app comments?
Well, i am getting reallyfrustrated because hosts don't
care.
Right, hosts have got theclient and he signed up or she
signed up.
But for app providers I did ityesterday with somebody I said,
right, claim your podcast.

(40:07):
And we had to go through thisstupid loop of going back and
forth of them putting in theiremail, back in, resubmitting
their RSS feed, blah, blah, blah, and it took forever and it's
not going to scale.
So I am personally going todonate £1,000 to the favorite
charity of any podcast host whoimplements it first, because if

(40:28):
it doesn't get done by justpleading, i'll do it with bare
raw money and bribery.
That's what I'm saying.
So if you're a podcast host andyou're the first to implement
something called podcast verifyand you can work with me, i'll
give you £1,000 for yourfavorite charity.

Well, there's a thing.
Yes, I noticed in some of theconversations in the GitHub how
many people are just basicallyturning around and saying, well,
we're not going to be doinganything with our author because
it's far too complicated.
So it's just, you know, andthat was the reason, the

(41:04):
original reason why it waskicked out.
It's not It's because, oh, itsounds a bit too complicated, We
don't want to end up doing that, And it's so not complicated,
but still, there we go.
That's the way of these things,And again I keep on saying
firstly, this is the thing thatthe do you remember that podcast

(41:27):
standards thing I do vaguely.
The podcast standards projectthat basically made some form of
announcement And we've heardabsolutely not a thing from them
ever since.
We've heard nothing in terms ofanything that they're working
on.
Pocketcast still hasn't joinedthem.
We've heard absolutely nothing.

(41:48):
What a complete waste of time.
That was Utter, utter, completewaste of time.
I regret giving them any oxygenof PR, because you know what a
complete waste of time that was,so that's entirely useless.
But it's that sort of body.
If you know, if that sort ofbody ever got going, that would

(42:12):
be the body to basically bepushing as many of their members
as possible to get going withsome sort of easy way for
podcasters to be able to claimtheir shows.
I'm currently doing exactlythat with the podcast business
journals spotlight podcast,which currently is with somebody

(42:33):
else on Apple podcasts, and Inow need to go into Apple
podcasts and try and convincethem to transfer that over to me
.
It's a mess, but clearly, sincenobody cares about that sort of
thing, it's frustrating.
So I wish you all of the luckand I hope that you lose a
thousand dollars Quite happilyTo a good charity, because that

(42:55):
would be a good step.

Sam Sethi (42:57):
I mean I won't go into who, but you know very nice
person and I worked veryclosely.
We got 90% or 95% down the roadof getting this working, and
then I've just not heard fromthem since.
And basically, it's a field inthe RSS.
There's a unique URL.
The user clicks a button on mysite.
It goes back to the host.

(43:17):
They verify that it's theirclient.
That then does a URI redirectback to me.
Job done 30 seconds.
That is it.
It's a game changer for us asan industry as well, because you
think of how complex it is todo Apple connect or get your
podcast into other directories.
This could be a really simpleway for people to claim their

(43:39):
podcasts.
I mean, i know Fountain shouldbe around this.
I know all of the other appproviders Podverse, podfriend
would love this, but I don'tthink it's a priority for hosts,
unfortunately, and so I'm goingto have to use Bribery and
Corruption as the only means.
Now, moving on a new datawebsite that you wrote about,
called podcastdataorg.

(43:59):
What is podcastdataorg, james?

Well, that is from Benjamin Bellamy.
We mentioned it a few weeks ago.
It's now got all of the data inthere And it basically allows
people to query podcast indexdata and produce some nice
graphs from it.
So I very, very quicklyproduced a nice graph showing
the average episode length ofall podcasts by different

(44:23):
languages, and it turns out thatHindi and Chinese shows are
really short and shows inSerbian and Bulgarian are, on
average, five times longer, sowhich I thought was quite
interesting.
But yeah, if you want to have agood play around with some data
around podcasting, thenpodcastdataorg is the place to
go.

Sam Sethi (44:43):
Now there's a new website, james, that's going to
be launched, calledcanipodcastcom.
Now let me explain.
Caniuse is a well-known websitefor developers to understand
HTML features and functions thatcan be used on various browsers
And, i think, on this podcast.

(45:03):
Over a number of years I'vewondered why don't we have
something similar for podcastingwhere I can look up very
quickly hostex feature, i don'tknow person tag or location tag.
Do they support it?
Don't they support it?
Just a very simple, quickvisual.
Well, i'm glad to say thatDaniel J Lewis and myself are

(45:25):
going to put this one togethernow, when we've just launched
the holding page.
So if you're interested in it,go over there to canipodcastcom,
put in your email and we'll letyou know when we've got the
grid ready, and that's whatwe're going to do.
Whether you call it the wall offame or the wall of shame or
you just call it a visual grid,i don't really care.
I've been calling for this, soeventually, forget about it.

(45:45):
We're going to do it ourselves.

Well, yeah indeed, And maybe there's
something that Pod news can behelping with in terms of some of
that as well indeed now.

Sam Sethi (45:55):
Congrats to Rob Brinley.
He's become a partner at.
He's got a new partnership withStreamy odd, a platform I
really like as well.
He's doing a lot of video stuffwith his 100 TV and, yeah, i
mean Streamy odd are pushingforward very strongly with their
integrations with YouTube,linkedin, twitter, tiktok and
various other reels such asInstagram and Yeah I just

(46:19):
thought I'd give him a quick hattip and Vidcon, which I
wouldn't go to, but Vidcon is inAnaheim and it's on now, so all
the video Streaming world isover there at the moment.

Yes, indeed, now It's time for a drink, because
we're going to mention AI drink.
Can podcast AI really help meand you save time and energy?
This was a good blog post thatwe linked to a couple of days
ago in the pod news newsletter,clare weight Brown.
I tested five AI platforms thatcan write show notes, social
media captions and more.
Of course, buzz sprouts Can dothat with its co-host platform,

(46:56):
which we are currently using onthis very show, since they're a
sponsor.
But there were four morePodcast marketing AI, cast magic
podium and swell AI.
She missed out cap show anyway.
She put the audio file ontofive platforms and has reviewed
them in a table, and which onedid Clare like best Sam.

Sam Sethi (47:18):
Annoyingly, a little bit of each is what she came up
with as her conclusion, and shesaid none of them are completely
perfect for me.
But again, if you want to seeher review and it is a very
detailed review She's got adropbox grid Or a file that gets
downloaded from dropbox and itgoes through in detail all the
features and functions of eachof those AI platforms.

Yes, which is a fantastic thing.
Let's look at some events andstuff coming up.
A podcast movement in Denver isthe next big thing, of course.
August the 21st to the 24th.
They announced 50 new sessionsyesterday for podcast movement
2023.
I'm going.

(47:59):
I'm moderating a panel.
I could moderate more if youfancy any.
You know white, middle-aged menModerating a panel.
If you don't, if you don't haveenough of those, then that
would be a fine and dandy thing,but I will certainly see you
there in September.
Podcast day Asia has beenannounced in Kuala Lumpur, in
Malaysia, on September the 6th.
I'll be there as well.
You will be able to see peoplelike pod beans, norma Jean

(48:24):
Belenke, pod news writer GuanJin-Yoh.
I'm sure he's delighted atbeing called pod news writer.
He runs a podcast network inSingapore.
It does a very good job of that.
I'll also be speaking there aswell.
It's going to be a whole dayfocused on podcasting.
It's part of radio days Asia,which is a larger conference in

(48:44):
some fancy hotel in the middleof KL.
So, looking forward to that,there's the London podcast
festival, september the 7th tothe 17th In King's Place.
If you want to go and see liveshows getting recorded, the
Arkansas podcast festival ishappening at the beginning of
September in Arkansas, in LittleRock, and it's starting with a

(49:05):
podcast pitch contest.
But the exciting ones to talkabout are pod news live in
London on the 27th of September,podnewsnet slash live to get
your tickets for that, lots ofgreat speakers including Ross
Adams from ACAST and many otherpeople, and the British podcast
award for the podcast On thenext day, september the 28th.

(49:28):
Those are happening in London,in the UK as well, and it'd be
fantastic for you to come alongfor those.
And there's more events, bothpaid for and free, at podnews
virtual events or events in aplace with people.
And if you're organizingsomething, tell the world about
it.
It's free to be listed atpodnewsnet slash events.

Jingle (49:50):
Podnewsnet slash events Boostergram corner corner corner
on the podnews weekly review.

Yes, it's our favorite time of the week Large
amounts of money sent throughBoostergrams It's not mentioned
small amounts of money anymore,lest I get the rough of Adam
Curry.
Lots of nice and excitingboosts.
So thank you for those.
What have we got here, sam Well?

Sam Sethi (50:16):
I don't know who Martin is, but he says hooray
for James and sent us 10,000 sat.
So I don't know if that's yourbrother, i don't know if that's
your brother-in-law, i don'tknow who that is.

But hooray for.

Sam Sethi (50:26):
James, that's all I'll say hooray for James.

I know Martin Moritzson perhaps Oh that would
make sense.
Yes, Yes, that would make sense,wouldn't it?
Thank you very much, martin,for that.
Nathan Gathright says I wasasking where he wrote me some
wonderful code A while ago whichI have forgotten about, and I
had no idea how to get hold ofit.
Anyway, he sent us a row ofducks and said you'll find the

(50:50):
code you're looking for here onhis GitHub, which is very nice.
So it's a Python script tomanipulate the output of
whispercpp into the podcast namespace, jason Spec, so hurrah.
So, who knows, i might do alittle bit of work on that.
May I just say, though, thatApple have been fiddling around

(51:12):
with Keynote, and Keynote nolonger exports files that are
named correctly, which is very,very, very annoying.
So they look as if they'renamed correctly in the Finder,
but when you have a look on aterminal window then it's got
question marks in the file nameand it's broken all of my
scripts, and I'm quite irritatedby it.

(51:33):
So, in case you're wonderingwhy at the moment there are no
images on the press releasesthat are covered in the pod
newsletter, the reason why isthat Apple broke something, so
it just works.
Anyway, very annoying, daveJones, 21,112 sats that's a big

(51:59):
rush boost.
Why do people focus on the microof micro payments?
when somebody sends in fivedollars in a boost, it's
denigrated a small.
Here we go again.
But when somebody subscribesfor five dollars on Patreon,
that's somehow different.
Why do people focus on themicro of micro payments?
this is because I mentionedthis time last week, sam to Sky,

(52:23):
that a booster ground was asmall amount of money.
I was desperately trying toavoid the phrase tip right and
desperately trying to avoid that, and so I said I said small
amount of money.
And yeah, why do I mean?
I find it, i find it strange onthe other side, that the

(52:43):
podcasting 2.0 podcast basicallywhisks through oh, $50 from so
and so $5 from so and so $5 fromso and so, and then spends an
awful lot of time reading outsomebody's row of row of ducks
boostergram.
I find that just as perplexing,but still I just leave it to

(53:06):
mine, the wrong.

Sam Sethi (53:07):
No, no, i just leave it.
I mean, at the end of the day,i think we are all trying to
make people understand what satsare, and I guess we could just
call it sats instead of micropayments and then just move on.

I think, yeah, whatever yeah, i mean, if we
call it sats, then nobody willunderstand what we're talking
about.
So if that's the preferred planno, i have no idea then I would
humbly suggest that's the wrongplan.
Golly, i'm grumpy this week,aren't I not?
not totally, it seems.
It seems.

Sam Sethi (53:36):
I missed a hell of a show last week.
I know I heard it, but I can'tremember much about it.
From this for James saying allor six a handful of times.
What a mouthful.
I tried to give you 69 sats,says the old podcast Justin, but
it wouldn't allow me, so hesent us 699 sats.
Now I clearly have no idea.

(53:57):
I'm going to have to go backand listen to last week's show
with Sky because I can'tremember you doing this yes, i'm
not sure I could remember medoing that as well, but I must
have done it.

Thank you, the optimal living daily podcast,
justin.
Yes, yes, thank you for that.
I can't remember.
Oh, yes, no, there was a.
There was a.
There was something about oralsex, wasn't there?
I'm trying to remember.
Yes, yes, there was somethingabout I.
As for yes, who knows?
anyway, moving on quickly, daveJones, ai and data dust.

(54:31):
Exclamation mark 10 000 sats,any idea?

Sam Sethi (54:34):
no, i guess we were talking about various AI things,
and I think he's just callingit pointless.
I think he doesn't really thinkthe AI thing is very useful.

Yes, anyway yes, quite possibly.
Anyway, thank you very much forthat small amount of money,
dave, and I'm Kevin Finn from,and Kevin Finn from Buzzsprout
50 000 sats, that's more like it.
Thank you, kevin.
Congratulations on pod newslive.
Well, thank you, yes, it was agreat event.
We thoroughly enjoyed it.

(55:05):
One of our mistakes was not tohave recorded any of it.
Don't, just so we'll put my handup for that one we'll have
learned for next time, but no,it was a really good event.
The next pod news live, ofcourse, happening at the end of
September in London stillhaven't booked mayor playing
tickets.
Should probably do that.
Pod newsnet slash live is theplace to go and buy those

(55:27):
tickets, and if you get valuefrom what we do the pod news
weekly review is separate frompod news, as in fact, pod news
live is, sam, and I shareeverything from it.
We really appreciate yoursupport as well, so we can
continue making this.
You can become a powersupporter at weeklypodnewsnet,
as indeed Kevin has as well, oryou can support us with sats by

(55:51):
hitting your boost button, andthat's also a lovely thing, so
you can go and do that too witha brand new podcast app.
Podnewsnet slash new podcastapps will help you find a new
app.
Oh, we should probably saythank you to those people who
are power supporters throughweeklypodnewsnet, which includes

(56:13):
Dave Jones three dollars,that's a lot of money, dave.
Thank you very much.
Also Matt Medeiros, marshallBrown, cameron Moll and Nick
Ivanov as well those are justsome of them and Kevin Finn, who
are all giving us an amount ofmoney every single month.

(56:34):
So thank you so much for that.
You can join them as well.
Weeklypodnewsnet Sam.
What's happening for you thisweek?

Sam Sethi (56:44):
I'm battling with this tag called the value time
split.
Yes, it is very, verychallenging, but I've got my
head around it.
They didn't make it as easy asI thought they could have made
it, but hey, it works.
Except Stephen B, who has gotsovereign feeds, has a secret a
web socket.

(57:05):
So if you want to do value timesplits to the live lit shows,
good luck.
I haven't found out a way to dothat yet, but we've got value
time split working now in therecorded shows, so that's the
main thing.
And, of course, as you heardearly I haven't seen it well for
the, for the three people thatare going to use it, it's going

(57:26):
to be fantastic, but for theother thing is yeah, as I said
earlier, i'm trying to convinceHoast to implement, and the
reason why I'm not calling itpodcast authorised James,
because we Brits spell it withan S and the Americans spell it
with a Z.
No way should that be used,right.

You rightly point that out.
So, yes, i think that thatmakes a bunch of sense.
And yes, i mean I triedlistening to the podcasting 2.0
show live last week while I wasin a bus on the way to the
airport in Toronto And I verymuch enjoyed that.

(58:07):
Although the device that I wastrying to listen to I could
listen to exactly five minutesbefore the memory filled up and
the whole thing froze And I hadto start all over again.
And on the third time of doingthat I got a little bit grumpy
and I sent a message to theauthors of that particular app
and I said can't you make abetter app that doesn't crash?

(58:27):
So still so, maybe they mightbe doing that.
Have you listened to any goodpodcasts over the last couple of
weeks?

Sam Sethi (58:38):
Yeah, i actually two really good ones.
I would highly recommend peopletake some time.
Today, kieran from the meremortals friend of the show, has
put out a great podcast calledpodcasting 2.0 and value for
value, delivering on the promiseof Bitcoin.
He's done it as a YouTube andalso as a podcast.
I watched it on YouTube becauseI sat down with my laptop and

(59:00):
he's done a full history of fromthe beginning of podcasting all
the way through to what thecurrent trends are.
Well done, kieran, really greatjob on that one.
And Daniel J Lewis has done aninterview with Deidre Tishen,
the CEO and founder of Capshow,talking about everything you
need to know about podcasting2.0.
And for many people who are,you know, early adopters and

(59:23):
geeks, probably not going tolearn anything, but it's a great
introductory explanation forthe next set of people who need
to understand about podcasting2.0 and value for value.
So another good job worthlistening to.
Very good.
Now, james, what's happened foryou, apart from sitting in bus
stops, getting angry and being alittle bit grumpy?
What?

else.
Well, yes, i quite often I willdo a trip report if I'm flying.
It keeps me sane, and you canread the latest ones of those on
my personal website, which isJamesCridlandnet.
If you want to go and have apeek at that JamesCridlandnet,

(01:00:03):
you'll find the all of theexcitement about traveling over
to Canada and then over to theUK and then back to Canada and
then back home again.
As a result, i sort of poweredthrough, trying to ignore any
jet lag, but I have to tell youthat last night I was in bed at
seven o'clock and I slept allthe way through till seven

(01:00:25):
o'clock this morning.
So possibly that was a bit of amistake, but I did.
When I landed on Sunday morningat about seven o'clock, got
here to the house at about eighto'clock to find out that
someone, mentioning no names,had managed to block the kitchen

(01:00:46):
sink so successfully that I wasunable to unblock it with any
of the equipment that I had, iwent to the local DIY store, got
some equipment to unblock itthat failed, had to call out the
emergency plumber.
Even they couldn't even manageto unblock it in the first hour

(01:01:07):
And, yes, so ended up spending$2,300 out blocking.
Yes, now that's Australiandollars, so that's about £1.20.
But nevertheless that was anawful lot of money.
That's a big baller.
Yes, that's definitely a bigballer, which reminds me I need

(01:01:28):
to do something about that aswell.
But, yes, so that was all fun.
So I've very much been enjoyingthat.
I've been putting somefinishing touches to a super
secret thing that we'relaunching for pod news in
September at pod news live,which we'll be able to share a

(01:01:49):
little bit more detail aboutthen And all of next week.
I've got a.
I've got a coding week where Ican actually sit and the rest of
the family are away So I canactually sit and do some proper
coding And I'm going to be doingall kinds of entertaining,
drifting of stuff and making itall work an awful lot better

(01:02:09):
hopefully.
So that's going to be fun, butthat's it for this week.

Sam Sethi (01:02:15):
You can ask James and I questions using email to
weekly at podnewsnet or send usa booster grab for feedback.
If your podcast app doesn'tsupport boosting, grab a new app
from podnewsnet forward slashnew podcast apps.

James Cridland (01:02:29):
Yes, our music is from Studio Dragonfly, our
voiceover is Sheila Dee andwe're hosted and sponsored by
Buzzsprout.
Podcast hosting made easy getupdated every day.

Jingle (01:02:40):
Subscribe to our newsletter at podnewsnet tell
your friends and grow the showand support us and support us.
The podnews weekly review willreturn next week.
Keep listening.

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