Spotify video - we speak to Maya Prohovnik; plus Crossed Wires and podcast consumption - Podnews Weekly Review

Episode Transcript
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James Cridland (00:00):
Just before we begin this week, this is a long
show for a long holiday weekend.
You've got chapters.
I would recommend you use them.
It's Friday, the 18th of April2025.

Announcer (00:13):
The last word in podcasting news.
This is the Pod News WeeklyReview with James Cridland and
Sam Sethi.

I'm.

Sam Sethi (00:21):
James Cridland, the editor of Pod News, and I'm Sam
Sethi, the CEO of True Fans.

Maya Prohovnik (00:27):
I really think we can change this conversation
to talk about how video is anoptional and additive layer
Spotify's Maja Prohovnik onvideo in Spotify Plus.

John Spurlock (00:36):
SPC stands for standard podcast consumption,
john.

Spurlock talks about sharing the data from
podcast apps and it was an eventand they want it to be with
other podcast listeners.
Dino Sofos on the.
John Spurlock talks aboutsharing the data from podcast
apps and.

Dino Sofos (00:45):
It was an event and they want it to be with other
podcast listeners.
Dino.

Sofos on the CrossWires podcast festival.
Also in the chapters todayYouTube's new AI tools for video
and podcasts, spotify investingover a million dollars to grow
its catalogue of non-Englishaudiobooks in Europe, and
women's podcast listenership hastripled in 10 years.
This podcast is sponsored byBuzzsprout, with the tools,

(01:11):
support and community to ensureyou keep podcasting.
Start podcasting.
Keep podcasting withbuzzsproutcom.
From your daily newsletter, thePod News Weekly Review.

Sam Sethi (01:23):
James, let's kick the show off, then.
Right, who said this?
James?
No clear audience gain.
Unvetted, untested and unprovenproprietary metrics Sounds
pretty heavy.
Who said that?

Yeah, and it was a pretty heavy piece.
This was Sounds Profitable'sBrian Barletta writing a piece
on video on Spotify.
Brian Barletta writing a pieceon video on Spotify.
And he went on to say in itscurrent state, I urge the
podcast industry not to takepart in Spotify video and
streaming audio as it stands tohave a massive and long term,
and streaming audio as it standsto have a massive and long term

(02:00):
negative revenue andreputational impact for those
involved.
Crikey, he didn't really holdback, did he in terms of some of
the claims that he was makingin that piece.
Did you get to read it, Sam?

Sam Sethi (02:15):
I did yeah, basically , it's not going to splinters in
his backside, is it?
He's not sitting on the fenceon this one?
No, now why has Brian come outwith this sort of really
critical statement of Spotify?
What's irked him?

I think he's been nervous about Spotify and
video for some time.
It's not always been the mostclear thing that when you upload
, for example, when you uploadvideo to Spotify, then it'll use
the audio from that video filefor everyone, regardless of
whether or not they listen onvideo or on audio.

(02:53):
There's, you know, so there's abunch of information there
which you know clearly issomething that needs to be clear
.
But I think it's also, you know, it shows the nervousness I
think that there is,particularly in the advertising
community around video, becausevideo in both Spotify and in

(03:14):
YouTube, does break quite a lotof the ways that we earn money
from podcasting, and I think youknow Brian's piece is very
emblematic of that that actually, you know there is real
nervousness out there.

Sam Sethi (03:31):
You say we.
Who's the royal?
We?
Because clearly, if you're acreator on YouTube and Spotify,
you're still earning revenue.
So who's the royal?
We?
Who's not earning revenue?

So I mean the royal we who's not earning
revenue is if you are using, forexample, programmatic
advertising.
So if you have ads that you saywill be back for a break and
then, in different parts of theworld, people hear different
advertising which somebody isgoing to tell me is not
programmatic but it's dynamic,or whatever that type of

(04:06):
advertising is.
You know what I mean?
Yes, If you're using that typeof advertising, which I'm going
to call programmatic, just forfun, targeted advertising
perhaps, then all of that goesaway.
If you're on Spotify and you'reusing video, and all that, by
the way, goes away if you're onYouTube as well.
Brian also points out that youlose analytics and attribution

(04:28):
prefix URLs and there is also abit of a sticky thing in terms
of revenue when you're lookingat IAB certified downloads,
which Spotify doesn't provideyou with, versus, obviously, the
I IB certified downloads whichyou might get from your own
podcast hosting company.

(04:48):
So there's a bit of a concernthere, I think, from Brian, but
it's most definitely a very youknow, a very combative article.

Sam Sethi (05:00):
Now look, I did look at my podcast tab within my
Spotify app and actually I haveto be honest and say, james, it
is super cool, as somebody whobuilds an app and who has a UI,
the way they've implemented theintegration between audio and
video.
So when you scroll down, it'svery much a single column, you

(05:23):
get the cover art, but if thereis a video element to that
podcast, it bleeds the videostraight through.
So you're watching the videotrailer or you're watching the
start of the video and then youcan keep scrolling down and if
it's just audio, it'll play anaudio, and I think the speed of
the way that the video bleedsthrough, I think the way that
the UI for the customer works,is really cool, and that may be

(05:46):
because they do require you toupload the video to their
servers and their CDM, whichthey can serve, as opposed to
relying on it coming from athird-party host.

Yes, I agree, and I think that there is
definite benefits in terms ofuser experience in the way that
Spotify does video to the waythat, you know, other
independent podcast platforms dovideo of grabbing it from the
individual podcast host invarying qualities and in codecs

(06:17):
as well.
So I think yeah, I thinkSpotify is actually focusing on
the audience and I think quite alot of the conversation that we
hear in the podcast space ispeople focusing a little bit too
much on the business andfocusing a little bit too much
on the way that things havealways been.
But I think certainly there'snothing wrong with having an

(06:37):
article which points out inrelative clarity what you are
giving up when you upload videoonto Spotify, given that, you
know, in many parts of the worldit's 50, 60, 70% of all podcast
consumption.
You just need to be aware, ifyou are going to upload a video

(07:00):
of the things, that it willactually break for you, even if
your audience is just listeningto the audio.

Sam Sethi (07:05):
I think I was reading the business journal from you
and you have a chart in thereand you were highlighting the
fact that Acast, adobe, amazon,audioboom everyone's shares were
dropping like a rock, but theone company that stood out at
the bottom was Spotify and eventhen, when everyone else in the

(07:25):
market was dropping, saw a 6.2%increase in their share price.
And it says something that themarket thinks their strategy,
maybe for video, maybe foraudiobooks, which we'll talk
about shortly, but the overallprofitability of Spotify and
their strategy seems the marketlikes them it does.

It seems the market's in love with what
Spotify is doing right now.
I mean a sea of red, as you say.
If you get the podcast businessjournal email every single week
, it shows you the 30-daychanges in the stock market.
Right now it's a sea of red foreveryone.
Audio boom down 34%.
Acast down 16%.
Spotify up 6% the only companywhich isn't down in the last 30

(08:06):
days, and I think that saysquite a lot in terms of how the
company has done.
I suppose what will be helpfulfor us now is to learn a little
bit more about how Spotify videoworks, and probably the right
person to talk to is at Spotify,the head of podcast product.
I spoke with Maya ProhovnikWell tomorrow, as we record this

(08:28):
, I've got no idea what she'sgoing to say, but I thought I
would get in touch and firstly,I asked her how she thought
Spotify video was going.

It's going great and I'm so happy you were able
to be at that event.
We were happy to have you there, as you know, I mean, we're
seeing a lot of excitement fromSpotify users about video, so
I'll give you a couple statsthat we're very excited about.
One is that since last year,we're seeing users have
increased by 44% how muchthey're looking at Spotify,

(08:58):
which I think is reallyinteresting, like they're
actually using it in theforeground.
We've also seen that if youlook at the top 20 video
podcasts, for example, who havesigned up for the Spotify
partner program, they're seeingan average of 24% growth on
Spotify in terms of theiraudience.
So we're really happy, both interms of the offering we've been
able to bring to users, butalso in the outcome that we're

(09:21):
seeing for creators.
It just feels very positive,and we're still super early.

In the podcast that this is going into.
Sam I know because I recordedit last night is very excited
about the new video view thatyou get when you're scrolling
through your shows.
That's a brand new thing, isn'tit?

It is, and I was actually going to ask you why
this podcast isn't video, james,at least this episode.

I know Well, at least this episode, frankly,
should have been, shouldn't it.

I know I'll try to convince you by the end of
this episode.

We'll see if you're excited about video, that
would have been a clever plan.

You know you called out some of the new
experiences we have in Spotify,and this is one of the things
we're really excited about and,I think, really contributing to
that audience growth for um, forvideo shows.
There are all these new ways toget in front of audiences on
Spotify, um, and while we're notlimiting those experiences to
video shows, you can clearly seethat you get a lot more

(10:16):
evaluation information whenthere are visuals, um and so, uh
, I think that is really helpingkind of get users closer to
what the content is of anepisode.
We're always trying to think ofnew ways to make podcast
discovery better, and so thisfeels really like a step in the
right direction.

Yeah, it's certainly in terms of getting
new people to consume yourpodcast.
It certainly seems as if it'sone in terms of that.
I've been carrying some storiesabout companies that have moved
from audio to video and they'vemade a bit of a thing that they
weren't earning as much.

(10:51):
How is it working in terms ofthe revenue that creators are
getting?

Yeah, Well, maybe I mean, if it's okay with
you, maybe we can step backfirst and just talk about our
video strategy, how SPP works,Cause I think there is like I
want to make sure that thefoundation is clear.
Okay, great, so.
So let's do that, and then I'mhappy to get into the revenue
piece.
So I'll just start with.
Video is not new on Spotify.
This is not something wesuddenly added.

(11:18):
We've had video catalog onSpotify for five or six years, I
think, since 2019.
But there's a couple of thingsthat have shifted that I know
you're very intimately aware of.
One is that the demand frompodcast audiences for video is,
I would say, undeniable at thispoint.
We've all seen that thedefinition of podcast has
expanded.
We see that now the vastmajority of users expect and

(11:42):
prefer podcasts to have a videooption, and more and more of
them are actually consuming thatcontent in the foreground.
So I think it's it is happeningto the podcast industry.
It maybe has already happened,so I think that is one of the
things that's new in the pastfew years.
The other thing that's new isthis Spotify partner program.
So we've we've had video on theplatform for a long time.

(12:02):
We haven't had a great way tosort of like, um, to monetize
video and to optimize for video,and so this is the piece that
that we're really excited aboutand that I want to make sure
people understand.
The reason that we did this isbecause, you know, spotify is
primarily a premium subscriptionbusiness and we saw this
opportunity to both improve theexperience for our subscribers
right Like now, when you watchum a video podcast as a Spotify

(12:26):
subscriber, you don't have to beinterrupted by ads, which is
really nice.
But the other exciting piece ofthis is that we're able to give
creators a direct cut of thatpremium engagement, that revenue
and spoiler.
I'll go through the details,but, like, what we're actually
seeing is that for almost allshows who have switched from
audio to video, they're makingmore total revenue.
So I'll pause there, but that'slike at a high level.

(12:48):
That's why we're doing video.
That's how the Spotify partnerprogram works.
Any questions there?

before I go into the revenue piece, yeah, I'm
curious as to how payments work,and is there a you know
qualifying amount of a video towatch?
Um, I do a five minute longshow every day.
Should that be?
Should that be a 50 minuteslong?
Well, I earn more money thatway.
How does it work from thatpoint of view?

Yeah, I mean, I think what's cool is with um
because you're being paiddirectly for engagement that
works.
Whether your show is fiveminutes long or five hours long,
you're paid for the totalengagement that you're getting
on Spotify.
So it's a very clear kind oftransparent model.
Cool.

Is there any sort of detail in terms of how
much money goes into that?
So if you're a Spotify premiumsubscriber, there's some money
that goes into a pot that thengets shared out?
Is that?
Is that basically how it works?

It's.
I would think of it more asit's a it's direct engagement,
it's direct revenue based on theamount of engagement you get.
Um, and so we you know this isactually not a secret we surface
this for creators in Spotify,for creators, after they sign up
for this Um.
So if and when you do try theSpotify partner program, you can
just log in and see exactlywhat's happening with your show.
But I think again, I would, Iwould love to zoom out and go

(14:10):
back to talk about total revenue, because this is the question
we keep getting from people islike how much money will I make
from premium?
What is the exact RPM inpremium?
And I think that really missesthe bigger picture, because the
the landscape for podcastmonetization, as you know, is
very complicated and the realityis that you have to look at how
all of this stuff workstogether.

(14:30):
And that is really like thething that I'm most excited to
talk to you about today and tryto dispel some of these
misunderstandings or like piecesof concern that people have
about the program.

Okay, cause we've talked a lot about video,
but obviously this has an impacton audio as well, I guess
Spotify partner program doesthat do both video monetization
and audio monetization.

Yeah, so basically, if you, if you opt
into Spotify partner program,you are able to monetize both
your video and your audiocontent.
We only pay out premium video,premium revenue for video
content, though.

And that has recently expanded to nine new
countries, including Ireland andNew Zealand.
Now, I thought, that that wasjust good for creators in those
countries, because they can nowsign up if they're eligible, but
it does sound as if it meansmore money for creators in
places like the US and the UK aswell.

(15:26):
So, if I've understood thisright, whenever the Spotify
Partner Program is expanded tomore countries, every eligible
creator is earning more from theaudience in those countries as
well.
Is that how that works?

Exactly, and it obviously depends how much of
your audience is in each ofthose markets Exactly.
And it obviously depends howmuch of your audience is in each
of those markets, but there area number of shows that have
large audiences outside of theUS or outside of these initial
SPP markets.
So that is you are correct.
That is a big part of why we'reso excited about the expansion.

Yeah, and so expanding both to additional
English speaking countries ifyou can claim that people in New
Zealand speak English, but alsoI'm Australian, I can say that
but also in terms of expandingto other countries as well, and
my guess is that that's going toexpand a little bit further, I

(16:16):
suppose.
One of the questions that I dohave and it's possibly a rude
question, but if you've gotSpotify Premium, you get videos
that are uninterrupted by ads.
Why would advertisers only wantto reach people who can't
afford to pay for SpotifyPremium?

Oh, I think that's a really interesting way
to frame the question.
So I think what advertiserscare about at the end of the day
is reaching as many audiences,as many people as possible, and
maybe this is a good opportunityto kind of like step back and
talk about the whole revenuepicture here, because the way
that SPP works, so just to kindof go through how it works on

(16:54):
every platform where yourpodcast is available I'll start
with off platform like how thisworks on your RSS feed.
So the short answer there is itworks just like it does today.
Right, we still aredistributing that content over
RSS.
It is monetized with DAI,dynamic ad insertion, as it is
today.
Nothing changes In Spotify free.
You're still able to run dynamicads, but they're delivered

(17:17):
through SAI, streaming adinsertion, which is our
on-platform equivalent of DAI.
But so you're still able toreach Spotify free audiences and
use dynamic ads there.
With Spotify premium, what youcan do, even if you have video
content, is you can bake insponsorships, and so what's
really cool there is that if youhave an advertising campaign
that spans dynamic ads and bakedin sponsorships, you are still

(17:40):
reaching the same audiences onSpotify.
And because we have the ability, there's some improvements that
we're working on now, but wehave the ability to actually
measure audiences who areexperiencing those baked-in
sponsorships.
You can imagine a situationwhere advertisers actually are
able to reach those premiumaudiences, publishers are able

(18:01):
to sell those sponsorships at apremium price and so, you like,
the benefit is there for thecreator and for the advertisers.
So I think, like we, we oftenget this question of like people
are so nervous about quote um,we're not on video, but I'm
putting quotes up um losingaccess to Spotify premium users.
That's really not the case.
Um, and this is part of whywe're so excited about baked in

(18:22):
sponsorships, and we've seenthat this is a really exciting
piece of the puzzle forpublishers who are open to
experimenting with that.
It can actually be a way forthis revenue to be additive for
you, as opposed to just thinkingabout what you're quote losing
when you switch to video.

So baked in is clearly one thing, but you do
lose dynamic ad insertion.
You lose vast ads.
If I've understood it, youcan't use third-party analytics
with prefix URLs either, so faras I understand it from one of
the articles that I've readrecently.

Well.
So I think let's break thatdown because I think I want to
start with, we certainly dounderstand and agree with the
importance of ad measurement,third-party attribution and
being able to give a consistentand a full picture to
advertisers.
So that's really important tous and we are, as I said, we're,
working on ways to fill some ofthe gaps that you mentioned.

(19:17):
I'm excited to share moreinformation when we can, but I
just want to start with.
We acknowledge that gap, we seeit, we agree with the problem
and so we're working on that.
I do want to talk about thewhole picture here.
So when we talk about losingsomething, I really think we can

(19:37):
change this conversation totalk about how video is an
optional and additive layer toyour existing audio podcast
strategy is an optional andadditive layer to your existing
audio podcast strategy.
So if you think about whathappens when you turn video on
on Spotify which you should notdo if you are not making video
content, I would not recommendthat but if you are already
making video content and youwant to experiment with
monetizing it on Spotify, firstthink about most shows.

(20:02):
The vast majority do not have ahundred percent sell through
rates.
Maybe a couple do, but the vastmajority of them are not
selling through a hundredpercent of their inventory.
So one thing that immediatelyhappens when you do this and you
stop trying to fill premiuminventory is you're able to more
effectively fill the inventorythat you have available on
Spotify free and across your RSSfeed.
So that's one calculation thatI think sometimes people miss

(20:23):
the reality of Um.
And then, as I said before,what actually happens in total
is that um for almost every show, premium video revenue matches
or exceeds the payouts from thedynamic ads that you were
running previously in Spotifypremium.
So the picture that I want topaint for you is like let's
imagine a world where nothingelse changes, except that you

(20:43):
are now delivering video insteadof audio to Spotify.
We are confident saying thatthe vast majority of shows
almost all of them that we'veseen make roughly the same
amount of money from thattransition.
So premium video revenue paysout as effectively as your
dynamic ads do.
There's a lot of variables andfactors here depending on the
show, so there's a little overunder, but think of that as

(21:03):
roughly equivalent to whatyou're making today.
But what actually happens isthat two additional things
happen as a result of switchingto video, and one, as I
mentioned, is you can startselling those baked in premium
sponsorships for Spotify premium, and a lot of publishers are
already starting to do thistoday with video that they have
on other platforms or withSpotify.
These can be sold at higherpremium rates and, as I said,

(21:25):
they still enable you to reachthat same audience on Spotify
premium.
So overall and again I think wehave some work to do on
measurement and attribution butoverall you're still reaching
the same audiences.
You have these sponsorships athigher premiums, so you're
actually getting some additiverevenue there.
And then the other thing thathappens as a result is that
audiences grow directly andmeaningfully as a result of

(21:50):
switching from audio to video.
So you and I talked about someof these new features on Spotify
that make video perform better.
So we're seeing that videoepisodes, you know, all else
being equal, convert and retainusers better than audio only.
But it's also because we havethese new surfaces where Spotify
is able to really like, letthat shine and get you right in
front of those users, and so Imentioned this at the top.

(22:12):
But we have all of these greatsuccess stories now and I'll
just point again to like the ofthe top 20 video podcasts on
Spotify.
They've seen an average acrossall of them of 24% audience
growth as a direct result ofswitching to video.
So this is why like it's so it'sit's so hard for me to sort of
have this debate of like what doI lose when I switch to video.
I really think that's the wrongway to look at the big picture,

(22:34):
and I also just want toreiterate we are not forcing
anyone into this.
This is an optional thing thatI would recommend if you are
already making video content orif you're thinking about
expanding to video.
If you are in that bucket, Ithink you're going to be
thrilled by the outcome of SPP.
If you're an audio only show, Ithink there are all kinds of or
you know, or a primarily audioshow.
There are operationalchallenges.

(22:56):
There are um.
There are some gaps with um,with reporting back to
advertisers that we need to fillUm.
So I think the the reality isthis is a new program for us.
We're really thrilled with howit's going.
We think there's a ton of roomfor improvement in the future.
But the true answer is thatalmost everyone who is using
this program today are reallyhappy with what it means for

(23:17):
their revenue.
So I think we just have to, asan industry, I think we have to
get comfortable with talkingabout this in less black and
white terms, because you knowI'm happy to talk to you about
why video doesn't make senseover RSS, like, I've been down
that road many times, but itjust doesn't.
It's not the right solution forvideo, and I want all of us as
an industry to focus less on howwe can squeeze video into the

(23:42):
standards that we're currentlyused to and more how we can lean
into video and make sure thatpeople who are making video can
reach as many audiences aspossible and can make as much
money as possible, and that'sreally what we're focused on.

Now there's a company called Flightcast, which
is owned by Stephen Bartlett.
That calls itself the firstvideo podcast host, which is
very exciting, and interestingly, they have an API which allows
them to upload video directlyinto Spotify.
So there's no logging intoSpotify for creators and
uploading video themselves.

(24:15):
Is video upload going to beavailable to other podcast
hosting companies soon, or isthis a special because it's
Stephen Bartlett?

Well, we do love Stephen Bartlett, but we we
fundamentally we do believe thatcreators should be able to
distribute and monetize theircontent on Spotify, regardless
of where they're hosted.
This works today for audio.
We would love for it to workwith video.
The reality is there's just alot of technical work that we
have to do to make this possible.
So we have to make sure thatthe right infrastructure is in
place and you know it's not doneyet and we also have to make

(24:45):
sure that incentives are alignedwith hosting providers.
So we're really excited aboutit.
We do believe in that as a goaland we're in.
You know, we're talking to anumber of partners and
publishers about how we can worktogether with them on this.
So, again, we're excited toshare more when the time is
right, but, as you've noted, yes, that is already in the works

(25:07):
with Flycast.

Yeah, and I think you know certainly you can
argue very strongly thatsticking video into RSS feeds, I
mean it's technically possiblebut it's not a great user
experience.

Exactly.

So yeah, definitely go with that.
You've said that video isn'tfor everyone.
Who is really succeeding invideo?
Do you have any sort of demosof who is consuming video?
Are there particular showswhich are working better than
others?

I mean it's hard to say, because I think that,
again, everyone who has startedusing video is pretty happy with
how it's going.
I guess I don't I don't want tocall it anyone in particular,
cause I don't think we're seeingthat there's a specific
category or a specific showthat's working better, um, but
uh, yeah, I w.
I would just say generally, um,we're seeing a lot of
excitement from users aboutconsuming video, um, and I think

(25:59):
what's really interesting islike, obviously, we're looking
at video podcasts, but thereality is that Spotify users
are starting to look for moreand more video on Spotify, and
so what I get really excitedabout is just seeing what else
is going to make sense on ourplatform.
I don't really know where thatline is going to be, but users
are telling us increasingly thatthey are expecting more types

(26:20):
of video on Spotify.

Finally, you've got a bigger family, so
congratulations for that.
Does being a new mom give youany time to find new podcasts to
have listened to?

Oh my God, what a hard pivot to motherhood.
This is also why my brain onlyworks at 50%, because I just had
a baby five months ago.
So hopefully the things I'msaying are making sense, but I
have a small amount of free time.
I you know, I listened topodcasts when I'm in the car and
I certainly am always gettingsolicited and unsolicited

(26:56):
podcast recommendations frompeople I'm sure you are, but you
haven't necessarily found any,any new ones.

You see that that was a really easy one to
say.
Oh, there's this show from theRinger.

I will actually Let me plug my current favorite
show.
I'm actually really into thenew Amy Poehler show.
Have you seen it?
I haven't.
I haven't.
Oh, it's so good.
It's called Good Hang and it'sextremely wholesome and very
funny, as you would expect fromAmy Poehler, but I really love
her whole pitch, for the show isjust to give people an

(27:25):
opportunity to, like, forgetabout everything that's going on
in the world and just have fun.
And so, as a new mom, assomeone who is sort of in a
constant state of busyness andstress, it is really nice to
just watch her and her comedianfriends get goofy.
And I say watch, because I'mactually watching it as a video
podcast, but you can of coursealso listen to it in the
background.
Hooray, and that's a ringershow, isn't it?

Yes, yes, a fine Spotify company, and are you
still doing your shows as well?

I am.
I have, I think you know I havea few shows in varying states
of of uh activeness, the onethat I'm still doing very
actively.
My husband and I do it together.
Uh, it is about being newparents.
So we started at four-ish yearsago when we had our son, uh,
and we have continued using itto complain about how hard it is
to be a parent of smallchildren.
Um, it's, if people areinterested.

(28:18):
It's called the end of theworld as we know it.
Um, and it is sometimesdepressing, but we try to keep
it into everything else.
If people do have questions,what's the best way of getting

(28:56):
those answered?
Yeah, absolutely, and I know alot of people do have questions,
and I just want to say, as Imentioned, we're working with a
ton of people throughout theindustry our partners, many
publishers, many hostingplatforms.
We are interested in talking toeveryone about how we can make
this work with the industry andwhat gaps people are seeing that
they'd like us to address.
So I would love for people toreach out.
If they want to have thatdiscussion, I would say so.

(29:16):
If you're a show on Spotify andyou have a partner manager,
obviously reach out to them.
They are ready.
They have all the sameinformation I have.
They're really eager to talk topeople about this.
If you don't have a partnermanager, you can reach out to us
through support channels oneither Spotify for Creators or
Megaphone, and I think this isclear.
But, just to clarify, you canuse Spotify for Creators even if
you are hosted somewhere else,so it's still a great portal for

(29:39):
you into many of the featuresthat Spotify has to offer.
And then, as always, people arealso welcome to reach out to me
.
I'm Maya Fish on most socialmedia platforms and I love
talking about this stuff, soalways happy to have those
conversations.

Very cool.
Thank you so much for talkingabout it with us.

Yeah, and thank you so much just for the
opportunity.
I think you know we it's alwaysso great to get to talk to
other people in the industry whoare thinking about these
challenges, and so we welcomethe questions, we welcome the
discussion and we reallyappreciate your kind of
attention to detail on this andthinking about what this can
look like for the future of theindustry.

Announcer (30:13):
The Pod News Weekly Review with Buzzsprout.
Start podcasting, keeppodcasting.

Sam Sethi (30:21):
Now one thing I would say Brian might be worried
about advertising and the lackof programmatic ads in Spotify,
but we hear also all the timefrom hosts who say, yeah, and
this is not good, we don't likeSpotify, we don't like YouTube,
they're taking our content, butyou know, and we're not getting
any data back, we're not havingany information, there's no pass

(30:46):
through.
And yet I don't believe onehost is brave enough to stop
distributing to Spotify orYouTube their RSS feeds.

Are they?
There is one host which hasbeen brave enough to not put
their podcast onto Spotify,their official podcast, and of
course, that one host isBuzzsprout, our sponsor.
You can't listen to theBuzzcast podcast on Spotify.

Buzzsprout (31:15):
I think we were in Spotify for a little while, and
I think there was a point atwhich we agreed that this is
just feeling too hostile to openpodcasting and we don't want to
be there anymore, and I thinkwe took ourselves out.
That's how I remember it.
So maybe I'm right, maybe I'mnot.
This is our thing.
We are podcasters, we work fora podcasting company, we are

(31:35):
trying to influence thepodcasting ecosystem.
This is our home and it's nowbeing changed to be more like
the rest of the web.
And so, yes, there's plenty ofproblems around the web, and
some of the exact same type ofproblem, even worse and yet it's
not all right, all here yet,and so we're not going to be the

(31:58):
ones to change it.
Like, no, daniel is not goingto call us and actually try to
get Buzzcast into Spotify, butit's still principled.
It's not moral, but it isprincipled to say, look, we
don't like this and so we're notgoing to participate in it.
It probably won't matter to,except for like 300 people who
would like to use Spotify astheir main app and they don't

(32:19):
really want to listen, and nowthey don't want to listen to
Buzzcast.

That's okay, but they don't feel that it is
right for Buzzsprout users as awhole for them to cut off
Spotify.
But certainly their own contentisn't there, which I think says
quite a lot.
But yes, I totally agree.
That's basically it.

(32:42):
That's as far as you get.
No other podcast host hasturned around and said you know
what we're not going to play.
And actually, when you have alook at the numbers I mean
numbers that I shared on theevolutions stage in the Pod News
newsletter a couple of weeksago showing how big Spotify is
in some of these countries,particularly South America you

(33:05):
know no one in their right mindswould pull off Spotify.
So I don't think that'snecessarily the issue.
I think the issue is more anissue around concern about what
video does to the audioexperience.

Sam Sethi (33:20):
William Shakespeare had something to say on this,
james.
He said the host doth protesttoo much, so yes, Well, there
you go.
Moving on, james, then let'shave a look.
Spotify still.
Ashley Carman, friend of theshow, has a report covering
Spotify music takedowns.
What's she had to say, james?

Yeah, so this is nothing particularly new.
Spotify has always removed theuse of commercial music in
podcasts, and it used to be thecase that, regardless of what
license you had, they would justremove it, because it was
easier for them just to removethe whole thing.

(34:01):
You know and Ashley has coveredthe fact that Spotify is doing
a lot of music takedowns rightnow, and I think that that's
probably the right thing forSpotify to end up doing.
Having said that, there was onething that I was able to get a
little bit more information onfrom our friends at Spotify, as
clearly we've got the friends atSpotify these days, if you have

(34:24):
commercial music in your shownow, then you get eight days to
prove the fact that you havecorrectly licensed that music
and or to argue the case thatit's fair use or whatever it
might be.
There is also an appealsprocess in there as well, so
that's super helpful, and I'veheard Todd Cochran and other
people in the past saying thatthey get tons of relatively

(34:48):
automated takedowns every singleweek from podcasters using
copyrighted music from Spotify.

Sam Sethi (34:54):
Michael the audiobook market is a significant market.
It's an $8.7 billion market andSpotify are leaning heavily
into it.
They've just invested another 1million euros, or $1.1 million,

(35:16):
to increase production ofaudiobooks in non-English
languages.
What are they up to?

I think they've realised that actually it's
quite difficult and quiteexpensive to make audiobooks,
and certainly in non-Englishlanguage.
There, frankly, isn't thecatalogue out there, and they
want more books to be availablein their app.
They can see that being a wayof retaining paid subscribers.

(35:47):
So I think what they'rebasically going is we don't have
enough books in France, wedon't have enough books in
Holland.
I mean, you know, in theNetherlands, how many audio
books are there really going tobe made in Dutch?
So actually sticking some moneybehind that.
Some of it is going to be AI,some of it is not, some of it's

(36:09):
going to be real human beings.
But according to Spotify, lessthan 3% of French language books
are currently available inaudio format.
20,000 books available inFrance, for example, 20,000
audio books, so not very many.
And similarly, you know Dutchaudio books.

(36:29):
I mean, it's tiny 15,000 audiobooks in that country.
So yeah, so they can.
Certainly.
If they pile a little bit ofmoney in there, then, who knows,
that might help that.

Sam Sethi (36:43):
Daniel X said one of my favourite things about
working at Spotify is to see andlearn from users' behaviour to
see what we can develop better.
And just a few years ago, wenoticed that publishers and fans
in Germany were uploadingpodcasts and audiobooks to
Spotify, which really got usthinking about innovation in
this space.
So they've now rolled it outnot only into France and Germany

(37:04):
, but they've also gone intoAustria, switzerland and little
old Liechtenstein.
Yes, americans, please look itup on a map.

It does exist.

Sam Sethi (37:15):
But he's very excited about one feature which I
thought was very funny.
Check out our resume points soyou can pick up right where you
left off.
That's the killer feature.

I'm sure that the PR person that crafted that
quote for Daniel is very excitedabout that particular thing,
but, yes, you know, audiobooksare really interesting.
I have to say, though, we didcover a story this week around
one of the potential things thatSpotify diving into audiobooks

(37:45):
has changed, and that's that ifyou have a podcast which is
essentially an audiobook soyou're reading out public domain
stories, for example, or you'rereading out works for which the
podcaster has the rights for,for which the podcaster has the

(38:10):
rights for then you will not getinto Spotify's Span advertising
tool at all.
They will turn around and theysay it's against our
monetization policies, you can'tearn any money from these
audiobook-like podcasts, andperhaps the right way for you to
earn money is to actuallyrelease it as an audio book
properly, which is interesting.
So, um, uh, so that's based on,uh, a particular podcast, um

(38:32):
publisher who, who came to us,who actually acquired a big show
, um, but was unable to turn itinto money, slightly
embarrassingly, um, because, uh,spotify turned around and said
no, it's not, it's not a part of, not part of the deal.
So I thought that was reallyinteresting as well.

Sam Sethi (38:51):
Yeah, I struggle.
I'll be honest to say what'sthe difference sometimes between
an audiobook and a podcast.
So when we talk to Ivo Terror afriend of the show about some
true crimes and he will say,well, that's a true, will say,
well, that's an a true crimeaudio book and that's a true
crime podcast, and I'm like,well, they sound the same to me.
It's somebody reading a storyabout a conversation or a

(39:14):
thriller.
It's not a interview formatpodcast like this and I can't
see the difference.
But is it because they've got apublisher that it makes it an
audiobook?
Is it because it's?
I don't know what makes thedifference.

Well, yeah, exactly who knows?
But it's clearly it's adifferent user experience
sometimes in apps and thingslike that.
So perhaps that's part of that,Duncan.

Sam Sethi (39:37):
Bruce of Spotify, who clearly works within their
audiobook department, whateverit's called.
He mentioned something which Ijust picked up the last part of
it.
We're working on integratingsupplementary materials like
maps or diagrams.
We're also doing pre-ordercountdown pages, which they've
done for music and albums for awhile, and we're using our

(39:58):
algorithmic recommendationsystem in order to guide users
to audio books they love.
So they're trying to make itmuch more like music discovery
or podcast discovery.
But it's the integratedsupplementary materials and I
just wonder how they're doingthat.
Is it going to be like ane-book, Is it going to be
whatever?
So quite interesting to seewhat they'll do with that.

Yeah, indeed, and by the way, he is based in
the UK.
He's director of AudiobookPartnerships and Licensing, used
to work for Penguin RandomHouse and before that, Pearson,
so he's a man who knows a thingor two about books.

Sam Sethi (40:34):
And you mentioned that some of those books may be
AI narrated using their Partner11 labs, which you've used in
the past, by the way.
Haven't you, or at leastWondercraft, used them as well?
Again, just a little snippet ofwhat he said.
We clearly label AI-narratedcontent and again, I'm thinking
okay, we've talked about an AIlabel for Podcasting 2.0 in the

(40:54):
past, but we haven't really gota clear idea of what we should
do.
Maybe we should look here,maybe, indeed Now, james, there
was a report out this week fromSiriusXM Media and Edison
Research.

What was this one about?
Yes, this was good news aboutwomen's podcast listenerships.
It's tripled in 10 years.
According to the results, 45%of all women in the US are
monthly listeners.
52% consume podcasts in someform, so good numbers in terms
of that.

(41:33):
I would sort of also say onthat that female podcast
listenership is less than male,so we still need to bear that in
mind, and there are clearly,you know, issues, of course,
with some of the content whichis available on shows.

(41:54):
But yeah, you know it was agood looking audio report.
I'm looking forward to readingthe entire thing, which I
believe you can get from theSiriusXM media website.

Sam Sethi (42:08):
So good news if you're trying to attract women,
I think it is great news, andI'm curious as to what content
men are listening to and women.
Are we following stereotypicallines?
You know, men it's technology,it's cars, it's whatever.
And is it women talking aboutmotherhood and maternity and

(42:31):
those?
And I hope it's not, but Isuspect that that will be the
delineation between the type ofcontent that men are listening
to and women are listening to.

Yeah, it is From all of the research that I have
seen on that you know it doesfollow what you would kind of
expect True crime, of course,doing very well for women as
well here and seeing where theopportunities are.

(43:03):
Female podcast consumers, thedata says, skew younger, they
have higher incomes and highereducation levels.
So again, just worthwhilebearing in mind that there's
real opportunity there 52% ofwomen aged 18 plus consuming

(43:24):
podcasts monthly, whether it'saudio or video.
So there's some good numberscoming out of that.

Sam Sethi (43:27):
I'd like to say one of our goals, james, for this
podcast has been to get morefemale voices, and I think we're
doing pretty well so far for2025.
In the first few months thatwe've been broadcasting, we've
had Annalisa Nielsen, we've hadChloe Straw, megan Lazarevic,
rocky Thomas and Emma Turner, soI think and, of course, maya

(43:49):
Prohovnik from today.

So I think we are actually trending more
towards women guests right nowthan we are men, maybe two old
men talking about not that I'mcalling you old Sam, but two old
men talking about this is notthe right thing.

Sam Sethi (44:05):
I'd just like to say James black, don't crack.
We're good, Moving on.

As I'm saying, in a conference in Canada in a
couple of weeks' time I'msupposed to be there talking
about the future of radio and Iam appearing alongside another
white man who is even older andhas even more white hair than I
do and it's just like why are wetalking to 55-year-old men

(44:32):
about what the future is goingto be?
Surely talking to some youngerpeople might be helpful, but
anyway, talking about women inpodcasts, interesting to see
that Goalhanger, which is thelargest independent podcast
company in the UK and possiblyeven the world.
They are to release a brand newshow or have released a brand

(44:54):
new show.
It's called the Rest IsFootball Daily Brightness.
It's being hosted by Englandwomen footballers, millie Bright
and Rachel Daly.
I thought this was interestingfor two reasons.
Firstly, obviously, it's a showelevating England women
footballers to the same heightsas male footballers, which is a

(45:16):
good thing.
But also, secondly, this is abrand extension.
Now, brand extensions are a bigdeal in terms of the radio
industry in the UK.
If you have a look at Heart,which is a radio station aimed
at 30-something women, there isalso Heart 80s and Heart
Christmas and Heart 70s and lotsof additional Heart brand

(45:40):
extensions which they sell asone whole, and similarly, we're
seeing brand extensionsbeginning to happen now in terms
of podcasts.
So the Rest Is Politics had,the Rest Is Politics US, which
is a US version, and now we'reseeing the Rest Is Football
having a female version, theRest Is Football Daily
Brightness.
I think it's a reallyinteresting trend in podcasting

(46:03):
and I'm curious to see whetheror not we will see more brand
extensions in that way in thefuture from other large shows.
You know I mean Joe Rogan hecould very easily do a brand
extension, um, doing something alittle bit different.

Sam Sethi (46:17):
You know the Joe Rogan diet or no, no, I want to
hear the female, joanna Rogan.

Joanna Rogan oh dear, Moving on.

Moving on.

Sam Sethi (46:33):
ACAST.
Acast has partnered with asupercast to offer paid
subscription tools.
What's this about?

This is basically Now.
This is interesting.
I thought that ACAST alreadydid this with a product that
they had called Acast Plus.
It seems to have quietly goneaway.
And instead, Acast has partneredwith Supercast so that you can
sell your listeners access toexclusive audio and video
content, ad-free feeds, theability to engage with other

(47:02):
fans, all of that kind of stuff,and they're using Supercast to
do that, which means that theywill get into Spotify and get
into other platforms as well.
So an interesting move fromAcast in terms of that.
But certainly Supercast andSupporting Cast appear to be
doing really well at the momentin terms of signing up clients
and everything else.

Sam Sethi (47:23):
I think Patreon can be added to that list.
I think they're another companythat has extended that.
We've talked about Spotify'sSOA, Spotify Open Access, the
closed access model.

And, by the way, you mentioned Patreon.
Patreon only yesterdayannounced live video, which is
to roll out in the next fewmonths.
So, um, creators can go livethrough the web or via the
patreon mobile app.
Um and um, that, I'm sure, willbe a tremendous boon, uh, to
the porn industry, I think also,I hope patreon doesn't become

(47:59):
only patreon I have a feelingthat it already is in some way
in some places clearly haven'tgot a membership, then right,
but uh, but yes, so, um, sothere's a bunch of that kind of
stuff going on.
supercast is interesting, by theway, and if you look at uh,
supercast's uh payment, um, uh,charges, charges then they

(48:23):
charge essentially 60 cents, so$0.6 for each subscriber.
They don't charge any Apple fee, obviously, and all of that.
So all of that is quite nice.

Sam Sethi (48:39):
I think this is the get round the Apple, isn't it?
Do the payment off platform andthen tokenize it on platform
into an ios app.

So yeah, that's the only way around apple I
think you could well be rightand I think it's interesting
seeing this week pocket castsbeginning to support the podcast
funding tag um, because that isgreat.
So if you're listening to thisshow in Pocket Casts, because
our sponsor, Buzzsprout,supports the podcast funding tag
, you will see it's a littlepicture of a dollar coin which

(49:12):
you can click on and, um, youcan become a um, a weekly
supporter, um through there.
So that's a pretty cool thingand I would imagine, given that
Pocket Cast has got that throughApple's app checks, I would
imagine that that opens that upfor other podcast companies to

(49:35):
also do that.
Shh, don't mention it.

Sam Sethi (49:38):
Apple haven't noticed Shh.

Well, I don't know, because I think if you
were to follow, for example,that same link from the Pod News
Daily podcast, then it wouldtake you to Patreon, but of
course it would open the Patreonmobile app and Apple will get
30% of any money that peoplepledge the Pod News Daily

(50:01):
podcast through Patreon, the PodNews Daily podcast through
Patreon.
So I think, actually, thatApple does pretty well out of it
.
If Patreon has an app, if otherpeople have apps, then Apple
still gets their 30%.
So I think it's a good thingfor Apple.

(50:21):
Actually, I think Apple couldearn quite substantially out of
that.

Sam Sethi (50:25):
Yeah, the other thing I've noticed is a trend with
Substack, patreon, membethal anduh, supercast and others, that
they are becoming, I think,really interesting creator
platforms, because if you lookat substack, you know they do
blogging, they do, um, livevideo podcasting.

(50:49):
You look at patreon, same thingnow.
Only I actually think these arethe platforms that I'm really
keen to look at in 2025.
Because I think, as I said lastweek, there's a move away from
free to quality paid content,and I think the quality paid
content to get around the Appleis going to be these super apps,

(51:11):
whatever they want to callthemselves, and I think these
are the ones that I think weshould be watching closely to
see how they're creating content, commerce and community
together in one place.

Indeed, I completely agree.
Let's go around the world veryquickly.
Podcast One in the US has seenvideo views surge 218% year over
year, and I looked at that andI thought, oh wow, spotify and
YouTube are going well.
Well, actually no, becausethey're posting on more places,
aren't they?
Sam?

Sam Sethi (51:42):
Yeah, look, we just said it, they're posting on
Rumble, which I don't reallytake any notice of, substack and
Patreon, and so I think we areaffixed to YouTube and Spotify.
But actually, as I just said,we need to look broader and I
think that video is going to bemuch more common across other
platforms as well.

Now in terms of awards and events.
Many congratulations to Twit,who we would give an award to
for celebrating 20 years ofpodcasting, leo Laporte posting
only the other day about that.
So many congratulations forthat.
But Crossed Wires, which is apodcast festival, has named a

(52:28):
brand new person, greg James,who is a podcaster but also
presents the BBC Radio 1Breakfast Show.
You caught up with Dino Sofosfrom Crossed Wires and the first
thing you asked him is what isthe Crossed Wires podcast
festival?

Dino Sofos (52:46):
Alongside a couple of my friends Alice Levine, the
host of my Dad Wrote a Porno,british Scandal, and another
friend of mine, james O'Hara,who founded various events such
as Tramlines Festival, also uphere in Sheffield, and runs a
daytime club night called DayFever.
We all went for a long walk anda pint and as you know, sam,

(53:06):
the best ideas are formed overpints.
And we were talking about thisgrowth of live podcasts and just
if you think, over the pastyear or two, the shows we've
seen Parenting Hell selling outtwo nights at the o2, restless
politics selling out the o2shows going on uk tours alice
levine herself has done like aworld tour with my dad, wrote a

(53:28):
porno.
Sydney opera house, new yorkdid a whole us tour on that and
we were saying that there's lotsof events, the sort of events
that you and I go to, sam, wherewe sit in windowless rooms
talking about CPM rates.
That is a kind of like businessis booming there.
You know there are lots ofthose events all around the
world where we have a whale of atime and you know everyone's

(53:49):
wearing lanyards and it's great,but there isn't something
really big and ambitious forfans of podcasts, for listeners,
and ambitious for fans ofpodcasts, for listeners, and we
just thought there's a huge gapin the market there.
So let's create something.
What is the Edinburgh Festivalfor podcasts?
What is the kind of theGlastonbury for podcasts?
And we started talking todifferent podcasters around it

(54:11):
going would you be up for,hypothetically speaking, would
you be up for doing something?
And the resounding answer wasyes.
There's a huge gap in themarket for this Because we all
know that listening to podcastsis a very solitary experience.
You listen on your headphones athome or the dog walk, but
actually what we're seeing withpodcasts and you know this
better than anyone is thecommunities around shows and

(54:33):
people subscribing and wantingto get closer to the hosts, but
then also wanting to share thekind of in-jokes with other
podcast listeners, and that'swhat we see at live shows.
So, for example, recently wedid a couple of live shows with
Miss Me, with Lily Allen andKeita Oliver at Hackney Empire
Stalled out in minutes andpeople wanted to come and have a

(54:54):
party.
They weren't there to listen toa kind of like boring Q&A.
They were getting out of theirseats when we were playing music
.
They were dressed up for thenight.
It was an event and they wantedto be with other podcast
listeners, so we wanted to tapinto that basically.
So the first festival was lastyear and we sort of didn't
really know what to expect.

(55:14):
But we had some huge names signup had katherine ryan, we had
romesh ranga nathan, we haddanny robbins and uncanny, we
had adam buxton, the king ofpodcasts.
Um, and what was great is itwasn't just go and see a show go
home, there were after parties.
We even had our own beer brewedfor the podcast.

(55:37):
Do you know what it was called?

Sam Sethi (55:38):
no podcast okay, less , less of the alcohol and walks
on that one please but it wasyou know.

Dino Sofos (55:48):
So we'll come on to talk about greg james.
But greg james was one of thepodcasters who came up and he
really got in amongst it.
He was there kind of like, youknow, meeting the fans, chatting
to them in the bar.
Afterwards we had a couple ofreally great late night parties
where you looked around andthere was like five different
podcast hosts and then justloads of listeners and everybody

(56:08):
connecting and it's just such aspecial.
You know, when you're at thestart of something new and you
feel like this is really, reallyspecial.
And there were some industrypeople there who just come to
watch, you know, and be part ofit.
And so Wondery and Amazon Musicsponsored our first year.
So we had a lot of guys fromthe BBC there and everybody was
just like, wow, this is special,nothing else like this exists

(56:29):
and we really want to come againnext year.
So you know, when you launchsomething and everybody starts
talking about the next one,you're like, oh right, I'm glad
you've assumed there's a nextone.
So Greg came on.
He came last year.
He really, really enjoyed itand he said I want to come again
.
And Alice James and I juststarted talking to each other

(56:52):
and going well, should we see ifGreg wants to come in on board
in a more official capacity.
So we approached him, sat downwith him and he said 100% yes,
I'm all over it.
This is really exciting.
I want to help grow it over thenext few years and see what
this thing can become.
So he's now joined, he's aco-owner of the company, he is
creative director and he'salready getting to work on

(57:15):
booking some of the amazinglineup that we have this year.
So this year.
So the dates are 4th to the 6thof july in sheffield and we'll
come on to why sheffield in abit.
And we've got, you know, help.
I texted my boss.
We've got dish with nickgrimshaw and angela hartnett.
Um, we've got no such thing asa fish.

(57:35):
Uh, richard herring, pa CBrunson.
So the Flight Studio guys havecome on board Loads of BBC shows
and we'll come on to talk aboutthat.
Any international shows inthere?
Dino, yes, so well, I'd say,paul C Brunson, we need to talk.
Is an international show.
No Such Thing as a Fish,massive international audience
there.

(57:55):
So I mean, look, it's a UKfestival, right?

Sam Sethi (57:58):
No, that's fine.
I just wondered whether theinternationals had rung you up
and said hey, dino, I heardabout your festival.
Can we come and rock up to it?

Dino Sofos (58:04):
Well, it's really interesting.
And there is a future in whichwho says that CrossWise has to
be a UK event forever?
And I think what's amazingabout podcasting is if you look
at podcast charts in differentcountries, they are completely
different.
If you go to the australianchart or the irish chart or the
us chart, there are a few likesimilar shows, like joe rogan,

(58:25):
whatever.
But if we were to do an eventin a different country, it would
be the same ethos and the samespirit, but it would be a
completely different lineup,which I think is really exciting
.
Um, that's why music festivalsactually differ, because
actually, pretty much you lookthat could be the same lineup
for Glastonbury, right?
So, yeah, back bigger andbetter this year.
Some amazing sponsors soAudible have come on board.

(58:47):
They're going to be sponsoringour main venue actually, wondery
are back on board and there'ssome more sponsors which I can't
announce just yet, but they'rereally really big ones.
And then you know the whySheffield question which a lot
of people ask.
Look, it's an incredible city,fourth largest city in the UK
and it's got some amazing venues.
And I think the thing about thevenues and what we really like

(59:09):
about it, it's an it's anincredibly small footprint.
So we've got the crucible.
The world snooker championshipsare happening in the crucible
over the next couple of weeks.
It's an incredibly intimatevenue thousand cap.
We've also got Sheffield CityHall, which is an amazing art
deco big venue which is over2,000.
So we've got some really perfectsize venues for podcasts which

(59:30):
aren't too big, allow us to putbig acts on, but I still feel
intimate and they're all withina stone's throw of each other.
So you really create that kindof it's a city festival but
you're not having to get intaxis.
So it's that model which isgreat.
And it's also great to be inthe middle of the country.
So Sheffield's about as farsouth in Yorkshire as you can
get.
So people from Scotland cancome to us, people from

(59:51):
Manchester can come across thePennines.
40% this is a really great statwhich I hadn't really
appreciated until I startedtalking to people who run
festivals how unusual it is.
But over 40% of people camefrom outside South Yorkshire for
the festival and that's veryhigh.
So we had a lot of peopletravelling from London making a
weekend of it Again just to takepart in that community of

(01:00:15):
podcasts.
We're really pleased with itand we're in the growth phase.
Definitely it's only year two,but we're really excited about
what this could become.

Sam Sethi (01:00:28):
I think, as you said, you've identified a market
opportunity.
I think people, after COVID,are desperate for connection in
real world.
I think people want somethingdifferent.
We've all done the gigs, we'veall done the comedy scene.
Podcasting is growing.
It is content, commerce andcommunity and that community
element.
It's funny, as you said, peoplelisten solitary to a podcast
without realising that thousandsof other people are listening

(01:00:49):
to the same podcast and thenwhen they get together, it's
that parasocial moment of oh, Iremember when Lily said that, I
remember when they said that onthat show and that show, right,
and it's that fan-to-fanconnection.
So, as you said, let's focus onthe Sheffield thing.
If I wanted to get tickets,where would I go?

Dino Sofos (01:01:06):
So through our website, crossedwireslive, so
it's crossed C-R-O-S-S-E-D wiresas you normally spell it,
dotlive, so that's our website.
You can also find us on socialchannels and we've kept it
really simple.
We basically let people buy aticket for an individual show so
you can come and see one showif you like.

(01:01:27):
You can come and see 10 showsif you like, so there isn't a
festival ticket.
And then also alongside theticketed shows, there is an
amazing free fringe, and we areI can't say too much yet, but
we're going to be taking over aniconic building in Sheffield.
One of our partners, who we areyet to announce, is coming on
board in a very big way and ishelping us program an amazing

(01:01:49):
weekend of free stuff.
So you can buy tickets to oneshow or two shows and then fill
your weekend with after partiesmeet and greets and free fringe
events as well, and in thefringe there will be a mixture
of, I guess, panels wherepodcasters talk about you know
how they made their show andQ&As and things like that.
But the big events like Help, ISexted my Boss at Sheffield

(01:02:11):
City Hall or no Such Thing as aFish those are ticketed shows
that you can buy a ticket for onour website?
Now, in fact, no, as a fish.
Those are ticketed shows thatyou can buy a ticket for on our
website.
Now, in fact, no, sorry, help Isex.

John Spurlock (01:02:21):
My boss has already sold out.

All right, that's what's fascinating.
Demand for stuff is huge thatsold out within a couple of days
and it's festival programmers.
Because I'm not an eventsperson, I'm new to this and I
really underestimated when wesort of came up with this idea
and we were like, yeah, we'll doit, it's going to be great.
I had underestimated the stress, the amount of work involved in

(01:02:42):
putting on events.
Oh my god, it is.
You know, you think launching apodcast is stressful?

Sam Sethi (01:02:48):
no, no not comparatively.

No, it's, it's crazy .
It's just that thing of like ofgetting people to part with
hard-earned money and turn upsomewhere is just such a
different level of ask to clickon my feed and listen to my
podcast, right?
So you have to really like,offer something great and unique
and, as you say, kind ofsomething different, and I think
that's what we really try to dowith Crosswise.

(01:03:11):
It's not just come and see ashow, get the train home bye-bye
, it's how can we make a realweekend of it?
So people want to spend thewhole time here and be part of
something amazing and also theshows that we put on.
So last year, alice and gregdid a show we sort of made up on
the hoof, called now that'swhat I call podcasting, which

(01:03:31):
was their journeys in podcasting.
Now that's not a show thatthey'll probably ever do again,
but it was great and everybodywho was in the room really loved
it.
It was off the cuff.
It was, you know, funny,unprepared.
It was a bit of jeopardy in it.

Sam Sethi (01:03:45):
Oh, I just had an idea based on that.
Go on.
So I think you could takereally famous hosts from
different shows and mix them upand put them into a one-off show
you've hit the nail on the head.

That's what we're doing.
So one of our taglines for thefestival in our posters and
shout out.
By the way, if people haven'tseen our branding, we're really
proud of it.
One of our friends, called NickDeacon has done the branding
and the posters are just sostriking.
The imagery and the graphics isreally amazing.
He's done such a great job withit and great job with it.

(01:04:19):
And one of our strap lines wastangle chats and that idea of
like people from differentpodcasts coming together, and
that's something we really wantto do Because, again, it's
something you had to be therefor, that had to be their moment
, not just something that we canrepeat.
And actually I think that's thegreat thing about live podcasts
as well, as people aren'tnecessarily putting them on
their RSS feeds, which I thinkis great, because actually
sometimes listening to a livepodcast, I don't know if you

(01:04:39):
find it.
When you listen to it in a feed, I'm not really that into it,
to be honest, because I feellike it's a bit of like you had
to be there.

Sam Sethi (01:04:47):
Yeah, you've got FOMO as well.

You've got FOMO right, so I really like that
idea of no the.
If you look at something likeHelp, I Sexted my Boss it's not
just two people on stage havinga chat, and I think actually
we're getting past that now.
I think the people expect a lotmore and that's what we're
learning.
If they're paying, you know, 35quid a ticket, if you come and
see some of those big arenashows, it's way more.

(01:05:10):
People expect a show.
They don't want just two peoplehaving an unscripted chat.

Sam Sethi (01:05:20):
So I think the bar has been raised for what people
expect and that's what they getwhen they come to Crosswise.
But would you also consider orare you considering, having
online tickets?
So you've said you know, Help,I Sex, my Boss is sold out and
people are going.
Oh, but I really want to goDino, I really want to see that.
Would there be a secondarymarket for people to be able to
watch it from home with anonline ticket?

Sam, you're such an entrepreneur and that's a great,
great question and not one thatwe've addressed yet, purely
because we're just focusing onit's year two and we're just
focusing on creating somethingwhere people want to be together
.
You talked about it earlier andwe want to create something
that is in person.
We're in a city that isn'texpensive to stay if you want to
come.

(01:05:58):
It's not expensive to get atrain here.
We want to make it asaccessible as possible.
Last year we had the Guardiandid a free show, tortoise did a
free show, the Brown Girls do ittoo, from the BBC did a free
show.
So it's sort of free eventsthat you would pay for, and
that's the ethos of our fringe.
So we don't want it to just belike anybody can just pitch up
and do a podcast.

(01:06:18):
It's actually really reallygreat stuff that you pay for,
and I think that's different toa lot of other festivals.
So we want to make somethingthat, even if you can't afford,
even if you're like a student inBarnsley and you can't afford
30 quid for a ticket, but youwant to come and be part of it,
you absolutely can, and I thinkone of the great things as well.
You know, this is not anindustry festival, right, we're

(01:06:39):
really clear about that.
But we have a lot of industryhere and we have a lot of
creators here and we had astudio as part of our fringe
where Steve Lamac and some ofthe university students
volunteers were just kind ofrecording chats with the
podcasters who were there.
So Steve Lamac went into thestudio, greg was involved, and

(01:07:00):
we had these two young lads whoturned up from Barnsley.
They were doing a podcast fortheir college and it was
actually really moving becausethey came to the festival and
all of a sudden they weregetting Greg James to record
jingles for their show.
Now, there's absolutely nochance that those lads would be
able to afford to go down toLondon to an industry event,

(01:07:21):
right, pay a ticket and get thataccess, and what CostWise
provided was something on theirdoorstep.
And actually the next day wecame back and they were in the
podcast studio because theyobviously just felt like they
could come and use it, which wasamazing to see and Greg's
really, really passionate about.
This is just inspiring the nextgeneration of podcasters.
And we know, don't we, thatwe've got a huge problem in the

(01:07:44):
media industry as a whole withdiversity and accessibility and
how people who don't live inLondon or the Southeast get
access and get thoseopportunities.
So that's something we reallywant to do.
We want to show people and alsoit's not just about being a
host, and I think that's what'sreally interesting about this
live podcast scene, as kind ofthe music industry is dying on
its arse and music venues areclosing.

(01:08:06):
Those people who've gottransferable skills, who are
sound engineers, who were, youknow, roadies all of those jobs.
If you see one of those bigpodcast shows, it's like a gig,
right, it is so.
So there are so many jobs thatare opening up in this live
podcast space and it's great tobe able to show people like
there is a whole industry herethat's booming and there are

(01:08:27):
opportunities.

Sam Sethi (01:08:28):
Look, dino, remind everyone else one last time date
, venue and tickets.

So we are taking over the city of Sheffield from
the 4th to the 6th of July, soit's the first weekend in July.
We are going to have an amazinglineup.
The acts that we've announcedso far include Tailenders with
Greg James, dish, nick Grimshawand Angela Hartnett.
No Such Thing as a Fish Help ISexted my Boss, richard Herring,

(01:08:55):
secret Mum Club.
Not the Top 20 football podcast.
I could go on, but I won't headto our website, crossedwireslive
, to see the full line up.
Sign up on our mailing list.
You will be the first to hearwhen tickets drop.
And if you're listening to thisand you're in the industry and
you're just curious, come andbook a hotel room.
Drop me a line.
We would love to welcome you,and there'll be lots of industry

(01:09:17):
people here as well.
One of the things that was justso memorable from last year was
with chris bourne from wondryand some of the bbc guys, and
they were going to see theirshows, like the shows that they
commission, and it was justfascinating.
They weren't looking at thestage, they were looking at the
crowd going aha, this is wholistens to our show.

(01:09:38):
Fascinating, just to see thewhites of the eyes of the
audience that are actuallypaying 30 odd quid to come out
and see a show.
That is your next leveldedicated fan, and it was just
so interesting.
So, from an industry point ofview, if you fancy it, drop us a
line.
We'd love to welcome you inSheffield this summer.

Sam Sethi (01:09:56):
Nice, Dino.
Look forward to seeing you inLondon as well at the London
Podcast Show.
And I'd hope me and my wifewill make it up this year to the
crosswires.
I'd love to come up.

Please do, mate.
We'll have a lovely pint ofpodcast waiting for you.

Sam Sethi (01:10:09):
See you soon, mate.

Announcer (01:10:11):
Cheers mate.
The Tech Stuff on the Pod NewsWeekly Review.

James Cridland (01:10:19):
Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday
in the Pod News newsletter.
Here's where Sam talkstechnology.
What's going on in tech, Sam?

Sam Sethi (01:10:25):
First of all, a big congratulations to Daniel J
Lewis, who we interviewed backin December Blimey, december
2024.
If you want to know more aboutpodgagement, he's spent an age
importing six years of chartrankings has achieved it now he
says it's the most detailedcharts and ranking provider for
podcasting.
Um, it's fully internationaland nearly 34 000 charts from

(01:10:49):
apple podcast and spotify.
So I haven't seen it.
Uh, probably you should go andhave a little nose around.
If I'm allowed to have you hada look at all James.

I haven't dived into it, but I know that you
know Daniel has worked very hardon that, and you know quite a
lot of the other services thatsay that they will give you
chart data actually don't knowthat there's really any other
countries out there other thanthe US.
So the fact that Podgagementhas got all of the international

(01:11:22):
charts data from all of thecharts and there are a lot of
them for both Apple Podcasts andfor Spotify is, I think, really
impressive, so that's anexcellent thing.
Podcasts we just mentioned it,but it's worthwhile mentioning
again.
They're now supporting thepodcast funding feature.
That's now supported by well,it's supported by a ton of

(01:11:43):
podcast hosting companiesBuzzsprout, our sponsor,
blueberry, captivate, rsscom,transistor and many others.
You can also see the bigsupport button in Podnew's
podcast pages as well, which ispretty cool.
How popular is the podcastfunding tag, sam Well?

Sam Sethi (01:12:04):
according to our friend John Spurlock, over
66,000 podcasts are using thefunding tag.
It's the second most populartag after the transcript tag.
Now, that's quite interestingbecause that's John's data.
I assume that's through OP3,james that he's pulling that.
I'm not quite interestingbecause that's John's data.
I assume that's through OP3,james that he's pulling that.
I'm not quite sure how he'sgetting the data.

I think he's getting that directly from the
podcast index.
Okay, so yeah, but that'slooking really good, isn't it?

Sam Sethi (01:12:31):
Yeah, and I had a look at PodEngine, who also have
a similar page where they dostats on the number of tags that
are supported and thepopularity of it's an open, free
page.
They've done an analysis of633,000 podcasts.
I look at some of the data andI go, oh, not sure, because

(01:12:53):
locked is the most popular andwe know that locked is not even
really used by many people.
It may be in there because hostshope it Locked is the most
popular and we know that Lockedis not even really used by many
people.

It may be in there because hosts hope it
Locked is the most used.
I wouldn't necessarily say it'sthe most popular.
Locked and Gooid are the mostused Podcast funding.
According to this, it's atnumber four, just below Podcast,
Medium.
But I suppose Locked, Gooot andMedium are all totally
automatic and they don't requireanything from a podcaster,

(01:13:23):
whereas podcast funding clearlydoes.
So.
That's the thing.

Sam Sethi (01:13:28):
Now, you did ask earlier would other apps join in
the game of adding funding totheir app?
And you mentioned Overcast.
I'm afraid to tell you JamesMarco has said a big no.
He said there's no safety innumbers with Apple's IAP demands
, at least not until you're thesize of an Uber or Meta.

(01:13:50):
The entire market of podcastapps outside of Apple and
Spotify is peanuts to Apple.
They'd crush us all without asecond thought.
God he's hopeful If the thoughtwe weren't giving them a cent
they deserve.
So any chance of Overcast, yourfavourite podcast app, actually
adding the funding tag.
Well, you now know from thecreator that's a fat no.

Yes, although Overcast did actually roll out
the funding tag before thefunding tag was even a thing.
They looked through for Patreonand Buy Me A Coffee URLs and
added those as a support, thispodcast link.
Marco then took that link outfor two reasons Firstly, because
he was worried about Apple andwhat Apple would actually say

(01:14:38):
but by the looks of it, hasnever actually had that
conversation with Apple but also, secondly, very few people were
using it.
I think more people would beusing it now because I think it
is more visible everywhere.
So I'm still hopeful that Marcodoes try to put it back in.

(01:14:59):
It's not a complicated thing toput in.
But you know, one personresponded to Marco saying are
you OK?
Hon, you might need a therapist, apple is.
Another person has said youknow that.

(01:15:19):
You know Tim Cook is the worstthing to happen to Apple, and
blah, blah, blah.
So you know there's a lot ofthat going on.
But I think when you have a lookat who supports the funding tag
now, podcast Addicts which Iknow isn't available on Apple
but nevertheless supports itCast-O-Matic, podcast Guru
you've got Pocket Casts now.
You know it is a growing thingand of course Apple Podcasts

(01:15:47):
kind of supports it.
Anyway in terms of links, if wewere to link to our Patreon
from our description, it wouldappear there.
So you know, so it's kind ofsupported, but not overtly.
So I think we should just keepon pushing and see what happens.
But anyway, we will see whathappens there.

Sam Sethi (01:16:06):
Now a little bit of news from YouTube.
Nothing major, but they'veadded a new AI tool to generate
free background music for videosand podcasts.
We were talking about musicfrom Spotify licensed music
earlier.
One of the things that they didsay, though, in it was they're
building in a music remixer thatlets you restyle popular songs

(01:16:27):
to add to your shorts.
Again, I wonder how they'regoing to do this with licensing.

Yes, I mean, you know AI and licensing always
interesting, spotify, of course,adding something quite similar.

Sam Sethi (01:16:41):
So Now again I can see a lot of podcasters looking

(01:17:02):
at AI based search, I can see alot of companies like Spotify
and YouTube doing the same thing, and it's interesting to see
Netflix has now moved into thatspace as well.
You can get it, james, if youwant.
If you've got a Netflix license, you can use it in Australia
and New Zealand on the iOS appalready, but the rest of the
world we?

have to wait.
There you go.
One of the benefits of livingin Australia, one of the many
benefits.

Sam Sethi (01:17:29):
Now let's whiz around some of the apps.
What's Antenapod doing, james?

Oh, antenapod is doing something interesting.
It has a new feature.
This is a podcast app forAndroid.
It's a great replacement forGoogle Podcasts, if you like the
simplicity of that.
It now has a feature aroundcomments.
If the podcast is supportingthe social interact tag in one

(01:17:55):
particular flavour, then therewill be a comments button and
you can click on that and itwill go to that particular root
message and you can leave acomment there.
So the beginning of a way ofachieving cross app comments,
which is nice.
Now it doesn't work withActivityPub, so, as of yesterday

(01:18:19):
, you will find both Blue Skyand ActivityPub social interact
links in the Pod News daily RSSfeed.

Sam Sethi (01:18:31):
I haven't got a cheers or applause button, but I
would if I could.

Hooray, yes, if I could Hooray yes.
So yes, and you know, the morethat I am, you know, looking at
Blue Sky and everything else,the more that I'm thinking, yeah
, I don't know, don't know aboutthat.

Sam Sethi (01:18:47):
Yes, well, there was a big hoo-ha yesterday.
I'm liking A big hoo-ha, yes.

Yeah, I know Exactly.
I mean all of that Turkishstuff, wasn't it?
Yeah, Turkey takedowns, Turkeytakedowns.
Yes.
Yes, ah, christmas, yes.
So from that point of view,very exciting to see AntennaPod
doing that.
But also please, if you wouldlike to comment on any of the
news stories that you hear inthe Pod News Daily podcast, then

(01:19:16):
use those buttons or similarand leave messages on Mastodon
there.
That would be a good thing.
What else is going on?
Fountain?
I'm sure are doing somethingexciting.
Don't tell me they're doingsomething with AI, are they?
Okay, I won't Move on.

Sam Sethi (01:19:31):
Yes, they are doing something with AI.
I can't say what.
What?
No, I can't.
I'll tell you off air.
But I can't tell you on air.
Oh, I see.
Yes, no, I spoke to Nick andyou know some of those Chinese
walls are not allowed to haveuntil they want to officially
announce.
But yes, they're working onsome AI stuff.
So that's very excitingSnippets that you can pick up.

(01:19:53):
Podverse we know Mitch isworking on a rebuild and
hopefully it's coming soon.
Um, he was, um, uh boosting onthe um podcasting to the o show,
which means that he's risen hishead above the parapet and he's
coming out to play again.
So that's good news.
And also, somebody who's beenoff the scene for a while is

(01:20:13):
martin from podfriend, and heposted about Podfriend 3 coming
soon.

So yes, yes, which is very excellent.
Martin always comes up withsome really nice ideas in terms
of UX.
I'm looking forward to seeingthat.
Now, many podcast apps, likethose ones that we've just
mentioned, have consumption dataon the shows that their
listeners consume.
Truefans, of course, as well,does Things like total followers
on that app listens, evencompletion data as well, but all

(01:20:43):
of that data doesn't come backto podcast creators, partially
because there's no standardmechanism to do so no standard
mechanism, at least, in terms ofdoing that automatically.
So, of course, you can log into all kinds of dashboards the
Spotify dashboard, the TrueFanscreators dashboard and various

(01:21:06):
other things but there's noautomatic way of getting that in
.
So there's a new proposal outthere from John Spurlock the
excellent John Spurlock.
It's nothing to do with OP3.
It's completely separate.
It's called Standard PodcastConsumption or SPC, and it aims
to hopefully fix all of that.
Sam, you've talked with John,haven't you?

Sam Sethi (01:21:28):
Yes, I reached out to John and I wanted to find out
more about what SPC is, so Istarted off with asking him what
is SPC?

So SPC is basically the result of several
conversations that I had at therecent Podcast Movement
Evolutions conference and someother conversation I've been
having, and it seems to be inthe zeitgeist recently that, hey
, some of the apps actuallyprovide portals so that
podcasters can view what's goingon in the app for their

(01:21:59):
podcasts.
I always like to just thinkabout, as a canonical example,
the Apple Podcast Connect, so apodcaster could go and log in
see not just the downloads thatthey get on the server side, but
then also what the app onlyknows, so listens and followers
and how long the listenerlistens to their podcast.
And this is actually incrediblyuseful to the podcast.

(01:22:19):
They get a bit more informationabout how they're doing, at
least for listeners to that app,and that's great because it's
kind of like the podcaster putstheir work out into the world
and they allow all these apps toinclude it for free usually,
and this is one way for the appto say oh, like you want to be
in this app because we'reshowing you all this great

(01:22:40):
information.
Sometimes that can drive howyou do your show, but even not,
at least there's some signal outthere that people are listening
and you're doing a good job.
So it's a lot of work for appsto construct these portals.
You can imagine you need awhole team to do this, and it's
hard work collecting thesemetrics and then displaying them
, and that works for apps of aparticular size.

(01:23:01):
But it would be nice if any appcould give this information or
make it available to podcastersin a simple way, even without
doing a portal.
So just something where thehigh level aggregate numbers
could be communicated withouthaving to do a portal or without
having to do a lot of extrawork.

(01:23:22):
There's been a lot of proposalson how to do this.
Most of them, I feel, have notthought about the app's point of
view.
If you think about it, the appsare the one collecting this
information, and it's hard workdeveloping an app, and really we
ought to make whatever standardwe do here as easy as possible
to do for an app, right To fitinto their busy schedule and

(01:23:45):
something that they can getstarted on right away, and so
the idea of SPC.

Sam Sethi (01:23:49):
What does SPC stand for?
Let's get that out of the wayfirst.

SPC stands for Standard Podcast Consumption, so
it's an open standard to definefive standard consumption
metrics.
And so this is probably whatwill be interesting for most of
your listeners, not only theapps.
So hosts, listeners, podcasters, what are the kinds of things

(01:24:13):
if we had to ask for a handful,what would be the most impactful
metrics to collect and displayto podcasters?
And so, again, this is wherethe conversations come into play
and like, what if we can askfor this?
But you know what, if we cancalculate this based off of that
?
So really, I think part of thisproject is defining those

(01:24:35):
metrics.
And so, if you go to the spec,there's a link off of livewireio
slash SPC.
It links to a one pager thatanyone can read.
But I think the reallyimportant thing here is the
metrics themselves.
So, really, there's two metricsat the show level and then
there's three metrics at theepisode level, and again, these

(01:24:56):
are aggregate metrics.
This is not like.
I don't know if you rememberthe rad initiative from back in
the day from NPR.
That was like you know, at thisparticular point we send all
these WebEx.
It's nothing like that.
These are numbers, these areaggregate numbers.
So this is you have 354followers.
This isn't this particularlistener at this location listen

(01:25:18):
to this episode.
That's not at this level at all.
The idea of this is to go bigand to say any app, any existing
app today could implement thiswithout waiting for anything on
the server side and withoutchanging really anything that
the podcast apps are alreadydoing.
So a lot of these apps arealready computing this sort of

(01:25:39):
thing internally and it's just amatter of let's get on the same
page and define a mechanism forhow to make them accessible to
hosts.
So, again, it's probablyworthwhile to go over the
metrics if you want to just sayand everyone, think about them.
The two shore level metrics arefollower count.
So this is something that Ithink we all know what a

(01:25:59):
follower is at this point.
It's basically what used to becalled in the old days a
subscriber, but it's somethingthat a person that's listening
to a podcasting app has actuallymade a particular interest in a
particular show, whether that'sfor auto downloading or for
notifications.
It's basically a way to callout like this listener is
interested in hearing from thisshow and again, this is

(01:26:21):
something at the show level.
The second metric is all-timetotal listeners, and so it's
like this is a number thatalways goes up and to the right,
so it's like how many listenshave you gotten on this show, or
how many all-time listeners?

Sam Sethi (01:26:36):
ah, hang on.
I just want to be clear on that, because the word listen,
listens and listeners are twodifferent metrics in my head
correct?

so so listener is a person, right?

Sam Sethi (01:26:48):
yeah, a person listens a person could have
multiple listens to a singleepisode.
So yes, I was just trying to beclear.
Exactly what are you referringto?
Listener?

so at the show level listeners.
So it's like how many listenersare coming to your show over
time, and this is just one bigall-time metric.
Okay, now where things getinteresting is at the episode
level.
And again, if something isaggregatable at the episode
level, you could create showlevel metrics based off of these
as well.

(01:27:20):
But there's basically threedefined standard metrics at the
episode level.
One is episode level dailylistens, and so again, that's a
listen in this standard isdefined as anything greater than
one second.
Episode level all time listenercount.
Again, it's very similar to theshow level listener count, but

(01:27:41):
since those can't be aggregated,this needs to be defined at the
episode level as well.
And then, probably the mostimportant metric, which is
something that came out of a lotof conversations that I would
not have expected, is thelistener histogram at the
episode level.
And so what this is.
This is not you know what aparticular listener does, but

(01:28:02):
it's basically among alllisteners, those nice charts
that you kind of see on YouTubeor Apple, where you see a
hundred percent of the listenersstart out with an episode and
then it's sort of falls off overtime.
So 90% fall off at minute two,then 50% fall off by the time it
gets halfway through, et cetera.

(01:28:22):
And again, these are aggregatenumbers.
This is just a hundred percent,90%, 50% at a at a one minute
resolution.
What's great about this metricis that not only the app knows
this, so this is like all newinformation to the podcaster.
The podcaster would love toknow this information, but it
also can be used to calculatethings like listen time.
So listen time is a metric thatI know a lot of people are

(01:28:45):
talking about, but you canactually compute that via
listens and the histogram.
The other thing is streams.
So some apps actually define astream as greater than 60
seconds, that sort of thing.
But if you have these episodelevel histograms, that also
falls out right, because you cansee oh you know, this dropped
off after minute two, that sortof thing.

(01:29:06):
So this again, the wholeintention of this spec is to be
as simple as possible for theapps, and so any redundant
metric was kind of thrown out.
It's like we want the minimalamount, so you have to do the
minimum amount of work.
And again, all of these areoptional, so the app can choose
to ignore the ones they don'twant to provide.

(01:29:26):
But those are the five we'reasking for to start out.

Sam Sethi (01:29:29):
Okay, so I'm going to play slightly devil's advocate
for a minute and just take twosteps back as well.
Minute and just take two stepsback as well.
So Dan Meisner from Bumper wasone of the first people I recall
talking about listen time andpercent completed as two vital
metrics, because a three minutepodcast like James Cridland's
Pod News Daily, you could say Ilisten to only seven minutes a

(01:29:52):
week, but actually that could bea hundred percent of each show.
So as opposed to seven minutesof Pod News Weekly, which might
only be 10% of each show, so asopposed to seven minutes of Pod
News Weekly, which might only be10% of the show.
So percent completed is anequally important metric.
Now Dan Bumper then managed toget his clients to give him
access to Apple Connect, spotifyConnect I think it's called

(01:30:13):
YouTube's dashboard and throughsome mechanism they've created a
dashboard for clients toaggregate that first party data
using the metrics and very muchthe ones that you described, and
so they've done a non-standard,non-industry, open a method,
but they've done a bumper methodto get that first party data

(01:30:35):
into an aggregated dashboard,which is great for the client,
but it's singular because eachindividual client has to give
Bumper the informationindividually to allow them to
access their account.
So it's not scalable, and so Ithink what you're trying to do
is answer that question.
I think Dan Granger, fromOxford Road as well, was asking

(01:30:55):
for this similar first partydata standardization of metric
data so that it could beaggregated somewhere to allow
them to then for whether it'sadvertising purposes or for
creator purposes give them somefirst party data metrics.
So I can see where you've comefrom, I can see what you're

(01:31:16):
asking for and I can see thevalue in what it would do.
If you're a creator on manyapps, you've already got that in
your siloed app.
That's the problem.
Why would the app want to givethat data to a third party like
a host or an analytics service,when fundamentally, that first

(01:31:40):
party data is the gold dust thatthe app has on what that
creator did in their app, andmaybe they might make that a
chargeable service, which is theonly revenue that they might
have.
So I get the reason why peoplewant that data, but can you give
me a reason why the apps wouldrelease that data?

I think the question sort of answers itself.
And why does Apple?

Sam Sethi (01:32:04):
release this information, but it doesn't.
Actually it doesn't.
No, it gives it to creators,but it doesn't give it to hosts,
and I've long argued that, withdelegated delivery from hosts
supporting Apple and doing allthe hard work, apple doesn't
need that data.
They don't do advertising, theydon't have a need to retain
that data, unlike YouTube orSpotify.

(01:32:24):
And Apple should release thatdata because they actually don't
charge for that either, as youjust correctly said, but they
don't release it.
Spotify and YouTube, I can'timagine, will release it.
So we're not going to reallytalk about them because I don't
think whatever we do in theindustry is going to get them to
open the door to their closedplatform.

(01:32:45):
But I'm talking about some ofthe podcasting 2.0 apps.
I'm talking about some of theovercasts and the pocketcasts
and people like that.
Isn't this the data that givesthem some economic value that
they want to then share with thecreators directly, rather than
allow it to be aggregated intothe host?
And that's?
I'm just playing devil'sadvocate, because I think that's

(01:33:06):
going to be one of the biggestthings that app developers will
say why should I give you thisdata when actually that's the
data I?

want.
It's probably worth gettinginto the mechanism at this point
.
Actually, it basically wasinspired by what the app
Overcast already does today.
So Overcast, you know it's notreally a podcast 2.0.
It doesn't really implement anyof those standards but for the
longest time Overcast has sent,every time it fetches, every
time it server fetches thepodcast feed, it will send how

(01:33:37):
many followers that particularshow has on their platform.
This is something not everyoneknows and the host could show
this information and some do.
But that's actually a veryelegant way to do things and I
think it is probably born out ofthe fact that the developer of
Overcast is a podcaster, right,so he's aware of the value that

(01:34:02):
any information that's comingout of how your show is doing is
available.
I would say to the podcaster Iwould leave hosting companies,
analytics companies, becausethat quickly gets into sort of
their interest.
But I'm really defining astandard here for the podcaster.
So this approach scales to, yes, if you have a hosting company
as a podcaster, but it alsoscales down to if you're

(01:34:24):
self-hosting your feed, ifyou're putting it on S3, this
particular spec still works.
Basically, the way it works isinstead of sending the followers
directly inside of the useragent, like Overcast does.
It just sends back a URL,that's kind of a secret URL.
Then the podcaster can go outand query followers and all of
these other standard metrics,forever going forward.

(01:34:46):
So it's kind of nice in that itrequires no new work from the
app's point of view.
The app, yes, it needs tocollect the metrics.
But if you think about some ofthe other approaches that have
been proposed, they proposemaking daily calls for every
single podcast in theirdirectory, which is, if you, to
implement one new API endpointon their server.

(01:35:07):
So they say apipocketcastcomslash, spc.
That's the endpoint that anypodcaster can go and get their

(01:35:28):
metrics.
But they need to know the keyand that key is sent in the user
agent.
That's basically it.
That's the entire spec.
The hard part is having all theapps actually creating the
metrics in the same way andmaking them available via the
standard endpoint.
And what's cool about this isthe existing portals.
They don't have to change theirportal to support this.

(01:35:50):
This is just a very high levelsingle kind of computer to
computer call that is like inaddition to.
So this doesn't mean anyexisting app like Apple and
Spotify, which could actuallyimplement this spec very easily.
They don't have to change theirportals, they just need to
implement this one API endpoint.
The benefits of a standardendpoint, then and it really

(01:36:13):
benefits kind of the long tailpodcast apps is that each host
doesn't have to create a pointto point integration, so they
don't have to scrape Apple'swebsite and Spotify's website,
which is what folks are doingnow, but they can just implement
one SPC integration than anyapp, large or small.
You know the app that peopleare working on in the garage,

(01:36:34):
they automatically get includedin this, and that's kind of the
benefit of podcasting right Isthat there are thousands of apps
.
Each show has a differentbreakdown of where their
listeners listen, but thismechanism doesn't require
meetings back and forth.
It basically is just like usingthe calls that the apps are
already making.
So in that sense, it should bea very simple lift for apps, and

(01:36:56):
especially apps like TrueFans.
You actually keep track of,even at a lower level.
You keep track of like thislistener does this and
publishing that, like at thesocial layer.
It would be very easy for youto do this.
In addition to right and again,these are high level aggregate
numbers.
This is not meant to replaceanything.
It's really in addition to.
The other thing is it's inaddition to downloads.

(01:37:18):
So downloads everyone knowsabout downloads at this point
and their pros and cons, butthat's something that can be
measured on the server side.
This is something that'scompletely self-reported and
that needs to be sanity checked.
Still against the downloads.
So the download is still veryimportant in this world.
This is just new informationthat all the apps are collecting
now but not really makingavailable, and the problem to be

(01:37:40):
solved here is how to make thatavailable in a standard and
simple way.

Sam Sethi (01:37:49):
Yeah, and I think I pinged you and said look, having
read the spec, given the factwe have all that data, making it
available at the meta level,which is what you're asking for,
is a pretty much a no brainer.
And making that available tothe host, related to the podcast
that we're collecting the dataon, again is a no brainer
because you've got an SPCendpoint so that they can then
talk to that endpoint and theninterrogate the podcast that

(01:38:12):
they're hosting for theinformation.
I think in my head there are acouple of things I might try.
One is certainly to allow thecreator to give permission for
that data to be collected, soit's a opt-in rather than an
opt-out model.
And then the other one that Iwould probably be looking for is

(01:38:33):
if we are giving this data forfree back to the host.
Maybe there's some preferentialco-marketing that we could do
together.
But that's just from me as aCEO of an app trying to improve.

Yes, exactly, exactly.
I see the business wheelspinning there, sam.
But really this is more aboutmore high level, like there's
actually a self-marketing aspectto it.
You know, there's even folksthat aren't listening to pod
news here.
They will learn about SPCAbecause of the mechanism itself.
So they'll see these useragents coming in with a URL and
say, oh, what's this?
Click on it.

(01:39:06):
Oh, this is nice, right, I lovethese metrics.
This is great.
So there's kind of a niceself-marketing aspect to this
that the podcaster immediatelysees the benefit, and that's the
whole point of this.
And the podcaster itself has agood feeling about having their
work presented in that app, andthat's really the whole point of
this.
You asked why an app would dothis.

(01:39:26):
It's to give their app the bestlight, right?
The best reputation forpodcasters.

Sam Sethi (01:39:33):
Yeah, and I think you know taking my CEO of TrueFans
hat off and putting a more of anevangelist stroke pod news hat
on.
I think you know taking my CEOof TrueFans hat off and putting
more of an evangelist stroke podnews hat on.
I think the right place forthis to be aggregated is at the
host level, because the host hasa holistic view of all the apps
.
So, for example, yes, downtonmight implement it, podcast Guru

(01:39:56):
, podverse, podfriend, pocketCasts, but the host of that one
podcast which is now distributedto all of those apps, if there
was an SPC endpoint, could bringall the data back from those
apps into one analyticsdashboard to give the creator
that total overview, not thatsiloed overview just from one

(01:40:17):
app, which is what we wouldprovide only to them.
We would only give them a truefans view of the world, which is
what spotify, apple and youtubedo.
And that may be not enough.
And I do think the right placeis at the host, where they can
give you that bird's eye view ofwhere your listeners are spread

(01:40:37):
across multiple apps and wherethe engagement may be highest on
one of the apps or whatever.
That will help create usimmensely.

I think you said it really well.
I couldn't say it any betterthan that.
Actually, the hosts in thisworld right, let's say apps
start using this mechanism andmake their API endpoint
available.
The work is actually put ontothe host to do the aggregation,
and to me that makes senseBecause, like you just said,
it's like that is the value thatthey're bringing to the
podcaster.
They can ignore these metricsas well, so the nice thing is
the app is not making any newwork that is not being used, so

(01:41:10):
the host can call this endpointevery year if they want.
They could not call it, or theycould call it every day.
It depends on what they want todo, and there's batching built
in so that they can requestmetrics for more than one show
at a time.
That's something that was builtinto the spec, so I encourage
everyone to go read it, and Ithink, if you're an app
developer, this is somethingthat you could do relatively
easily.
The only requirement is thatyou have to have a server, right

(01:41:34):
, you have to have somethingthat can host an API, and with
serverless platforms you can dothat as well.
But most good apps will have afeed server that's crawling all
the feeds, and that's alsonecessary.
For this, it's worth callingout again that there's nothing
listener-specific in this.
So if I'm the podcast app andI'm requesting audio, that's

(01:41:55):
where a lot of analytics aredone today.
That's where the analyticsprefixes can see this.
That is not being modified inthis, so that can still work the
same way it does today.
So no need to change the client.
The only thing that the app hasto do is add this SPC endpoint
and then, when they server fetchthe RSS feeds for every
podcaster, send the particularuser agent.

(01:42:17):
So just to be clear, there's nolistener IP leakage anywhere
here.
And what's nice about that?
We talk about the developmentwork, but there's also policy
work involved in some of thesechanges.
We wouldn't want a spec thatcaused everyone to create
massive changes to theirexisting privacy policies.
And what's nice about this is,if you look at most apps'
privacy policies, they alreadyinclude this.

(01:42:39):
They already include even ifyou look at Overcast, for
example, hey, we createaggregate listening stats,
non-identifying aggregatenumbers based on each show, and
that sort of makes sense.
That's not compromising thelistener's privacy.
But those are the high-levelinformation that we collect and
that's all this does.
It just makes that available tothe podcaster itself.

Sam Sethi (01:42:58):
That we collect, and that's all this does.
It just makes that available tothe podcaster itself.
I think, as you said, easy toimplement, pretty quick because
the apps have got the data.
I think we're going to try it.
I did mention that to you in anemail.
So where is the proposal interms of finality?
Is it something that we canstart to use against and start
to get case study examples out,or should we wait for more peer

(01:43:21):
review before we start to getour teeth into it?

I would say it's an open idea and it's out there.
It's a single page so anyonecan read through it.
I'd love to have somediscussions about it.
I've been talking about it forquite some time now, in private,
but then also in public.
I'd love to get the feedbackfrom public, but you could
definitely start this.
If you're an intrepid appdeveloper, you could start doing
this today.
One thing I didn't mention thatyou can probably tell, but it

(01:43:45):
does not require any new RSSfeed tags on the server side.
So this does not require anynew namespaces or any changes to
your feed contents at all.
So that's kind of.
Another benefit of this is thatapps don't need to wait for
podcasters to implement this.
They can start sending thiswhenever they implement it
themselves.
And again, like I said, withthe self-marketing aspect of it,

(01:44:08):
podcasters are going to startto see this in their logs and be
like oh, what's this?
Oh, interesting, let me GoogleSPC.
Oh, this is great.
The specific feedback I'd loveto get is, again, those standard
metrics, because we'd like tohave a world where the apps are
doing this work to collect thesemetrics.
It'd be nice to have a verycrisp definition of yep.
We've all agreed, these aregood metrics to collect, and so

(01:44:29):
that's where I could see I'dwant a little bit of feedback,
but you could definitely, ifyou're collecting these already,
you could definitely implementthis today without any major
changes.

Sam Sethi (01:44:38):
I have an expression which is called go ugly early,
which is just get on with it andthat's how I do it.
So I think we will just go uglyearly.
We will try it and we will seewhat the feedback is, because
that's the best way to iterate.
Now, the one caveat I will putin there and I think it's only
because I think it's going torequire a lot more work is the

(01:44:59):
histogram element.
I think the other metrics thatyou mentioned are simple, easy,
quick, aggregated numbers.
I think the histogram issomething that we would have to
then try and put that together,because that's high value.
I get it, but it's alsosomething we haven't done
ourselves yet.
Now we capture that data weirdlyalready because we do a per

(01:45:20):
second billing because of what Icall remote items and wallet
switching or value time splits,whichever word you want to pick.
We have to track shows likeAdam Curry's Booster Grand Ball
or when he does a switch to anaudio artist and then a switch
back to himself for the walletpayments.
So we already do a per secondbilling.
So I'm pretty sure we've gotall the data anyway.

(01:45:42):
I just think how we put it intoan array will be the next
challenge.
But that's the minor challenge,I think.

That's the fun part, right, Sam?

Sam Sethi (01:45:51):
Yeah, Now where do you see this going, John?
I mean, have you extrapolatedin your mind where you might
want to see this go next?

Well, I think it's fairly self-contained.
I would love to see, like youwere mentioning, early adopters
for the app side, because, again, if we have apps actually
presenting these, then you couldimagine a standard connector
that hosts could use to connectto it.
But it's so simple, they couldjust write it once themselves.
I'd love to see some hostsactually integrate it.
But that's sort of step two.
Step one is apps.

(01:46:20):
I've already had a bunch ofconversations with the apps that
are possibly targeted by this,but I would love anyone to get
in touch if they have anyquestions or anything about it.

Sam Sethi (01:46:34):
But that's really where it's going is just like
telling apps about it andgetting their feedback on it as
well.
So one of the things we werelooking at as I said, there were
a number of people been lookingat this the performance tag and
benjamin benami and we werelooking at something around the
verify tag.
So I'm very keen for podcastingto the oh apps to implement the
verify tag.
I've been trying to do this fortwo years and apple then came
in and simply told the hosts todo it and they all fell in line,

(01:46:55):
which is wonderful.
I wish we could do that, butthey all implemented the verify
tag with the txt tag and so nowthey all know how to do it.
It's very easy to replicate.
So that's step one.
Step two we've been asked tocreate a true fans api so that
people can post directly to ourdirectory um for feedback, which

(01:47:16):
then opens up the door for usto provide more data.
So I will very happily do spcas a level where we will just
look at partner hosts that willwork with us um and then you
know quid pro quos, hopefully,from there in terms of marketing
.
But I think there's anotherlevel which is then I don't know
if you've spent any time withit.
It's something I am veryexcited.

(01:47:38):
The next layer, because youmentioned that you know most

(01:48:02):
apps TrueFans included have moredata than the ones that you
mentioned more metrics, andwhether we then could have that
data sent back to those hostswho want even greater detail.
But that's a payment modelBecause, as I said, the data
that we have as apps first partydata is really the only really
usp that we have, and if we thenjust give away that for free,

(01:48:26):
we've lost our usp.
I think that's going to bewhere we are.
So I think level one from themetrics you've described, I
think we should all implement.
But level two may be acharitable model.
If hosts really want that databecause they see value in it,
then maybe they need to pay forit, or creators pay for it to be
aggregated in their hosts.
I don't know how that will work.

I can see that as a possibility.
Spotify today gives you veryrich demographics and that sort
of information, and that's notsomething that this standard
provides.
I like the way that youdescribe it as a deeper level,
right.
So the SPC are just thestandard five metrics, very high
level numbers only.
And then, yes, there's hostsand apps can work on possibly

(01:49:07):
additional payload fields right.
So you could say we have aspecial mechanism to go deeper.
But again, the idea with thisspec is to kind of go above a
level than the newer apps.
It's like every podcast app, sothis is going really wide here.
So any app that's out theretoday or that in the future
doesn't even know about any ofthese new standards can just

(01:49:28):
implement this particular spec.
It has no dependencies on aparticular namespace or any
other tags.

Sam Sethi (01:49:34):
Nice, John, remind everyone where can they go again
to find it if they want to readit.

So I have a link on the Livewire site.
So it's livewireio slash SPC.

Sam Sethi (01:49:45):
John Spurlock.
Thank you so much for puttingthis together and if you want to
give John some feedback, go andhave a little read of the one
pager, which makes it nice,handy and quick to read.
And yeah, john, I'm sure you'relooking forward to getting
feedback from the community.

All right, thanks , sam.
Always great to be here.

And you, mate.
See you soon.
The very excellent JohnSpurlock there talking about
standard podcast consumption.
What's your thoughts now thatyou've heard John talking about
it?

Sam Sethi (01:50:10):
So I'm going to have a couple of hats on here I'm
going to put oh here we go.
Well, no, I've got to because Isit on both sides of the fence,
and so, with my PodNews, hat on,with my support for Podcasting
2.0, I see the problem.
We talked about Dan Grangertalking about something called
an open podcast protocol.

(01:50:30):
We've heard from Dan Meisner,who's scraping data for their
customers from the dashboards ofApple, spotify and YouTube.
So we know that the problemexists and this is an
interesting solution,potentially to get lightweight
metadata which is nonspecific toan individual, so no breaking

(01:50:50):
of personal privacy, which iscritical.
And on that side of it, I thinkgreat and yes, all the apps
have it.
We have that data.
You can see it in our shownotes, james, in the graphic
I've left, but I'm sure everyother app has, you know, total
listens, times, total followers,et cetera.
The problem I've got is why.

(01:51:14):
It's not what or how, it's why.
Why would the apps do this?
Now, with my pod news hat onand and loving podcasting 2.0,
I'm like, for the greater goodof the ecosystem, for the, the
counterweight to spotify, appleand youtube, and I go.
Absolutely that's what weshould do.
And then I sit with my truefans, hat on and I go, but that

(01:51:36):
is the unique, identifiable datathat we could maybe create a
pro account for, or charge usersto see the dashboard, right,
and if I just give that away forfree, then what have I done?
Now, it's not that the creators,because you said right at the
beginning you said the creatorsdon't get that data.
The creators do get that data.

(01:51:57):
They don't get it aggregated.
What the hosts want is thatdata because all they have is
download data.
They don't have first partydata.
And to enhance their analytics,they want first party data To
address the advertisers.
Creators want a holistic viewof first-party data and it
should again, with my PodNewshat on, it should sit with the

(01:52:20):
host and not just with the apps,because Buzzsprout, for example
, right, this podcast is onmultiple apps, but if all they
got was, or all we got was, theview from one app, app, we
wouldn't know holistically howmany people listen to this, how
many follow it, uh, etc.
So we do need it aggregated atthe host level.

(01:52:43):
So I've got two hats.
One is a business hat and oneis a technical hat, and the
technical hat says yes, Iunderstand what john's done.
It's a lightweight metadataaggregation to the host level
which gives us a way of lookingat more than just downloads as a
number, which is said is wrongbecause it's not a listen.
So we'd have one step forwardwith how many followers maybe

(01:53:04):
that's a better metric foradvertisers and then later on
how many listens and actuallythe histogram element of
actually where people listened.
So I can see it all.
But I can also see from theapp's point of view.
Why are we giving this away forfree?
I don't get it.

Yeah, and I think this is where the idea
falls over, in that you know ifit costs someone to.
You know if it costs somebody,I don't know two weeks worth of
engineering time to produce thisAPI.
Who's earning out of that?

(01:53:40):
What is the benefit in terms ofdoing that work, rather than
making the player better ormaking your search better?
Making your search better thereis some benefit in terms of
being nice to the creators thatyou have on your platform, but
that's kind of as much of abenefit there.

(01:54:01):
So, yeah, I think I cancertainly see that.
I think the nice thing aboutJohn's SPC proposal is that it
doesn't need any fiddling aroundwith RSS feeds and it is by
design, totally, firstly,privacy, you know respecting,
but also, secondly, by design.

(01:54:22):
The only people who can seethis data are the hosting
companies.
Because of the way that itworks, it's a very clever system
that we can all start usingtoday and, in fact, overcast has
been doing this for the lastfive, six, seven years.
If you look at your RSS feedserver logs, then you can

(01:54:46):
actually see in there how manyfollowers you have on Overcast.
That's all that Overcast givesyou.
It doesn't give you anythingelse, but just sort of seeing.
That is actually quite useful,but the only people who can see
that are your hosts.
And I had somebody saying oh,that's brilliant, I'd love to
find out how many followers I'vegot on Overcast.
And I said well, you're hostingwith Megaphone, so you need to

(01:55:14):
talk to Megaphone.
So that's about as far as itgoes, but I do think it's a
really neat tool.
Again, it comes back to well,who's going to pay to put this
kind of information into thepodcast apps?
Who is going to end up doingthat?
And then you've got on theother side.
You've got that some podcastapps will want to inflate their
numbers so that podcasters talkabout their podcast apps more,

(01:55:39):
and so you've got a whole newsort of certification side here,
because all you're getting backis whatever that particular
podcast app thinks is a play,and that again begins to get a
little bit concerning.
So I think it's a really niceidea from John.
I'm just you know, and I wouldlove to see it taken up

(01:56:02):
absolutely love to see it takenup, but I just can't see right
now anybody beginning to beparticularly excited,
particularly when, of course,70% of all podcast plays are
with Apple and with Spotify,neither of whom, sadly, would
look at this spec and actuallywork out how that works.

Sam Sethi (01:56:24):
Yeah, I mean, I've argued long and hard that Apple
don't need this data.
They don't use it foradvertising purposes.
They could give delegateddelivery hosts who support them
a quid pro quo and give thisdata back to them, but they
won't.
So that's a shame.
Spotify won't.
It's gold dust to them, sothey're not going to do it, and

(01:56:46):
nor is YouTube, so,unfortunately, I had said to
John that you know, look, Iwould look at at it, but I would
do it on a business level deal.
Now, what I what I mentioned wasI would approach a host as a
partner and say look, I'll giveyou these four or five bits of
metadata, but in exchange, youwill add us to the verify tag,

(01:57:08):
you will promote us as adestination point app on your
website and in return, we willgive you the data.
Now, I haven't done that withanyone yet, but that's the sort
of thing I would look at.
So it wouldn't be a chargeableelement, but it'd be a scratch
my back, you scratch your backtype exchange business deal.
That would be the startingpoint for me.

Yeah, no, indeed , indeed, it's going to be
really interesting seeingwhether or not this goes
anywhere.
I have to say there are acouple of related proposals out
there.
Russell Harraway is doingsomething called the Performance
Tag which I simply don'tunderstand, so I can't really
comment on.
But Benjamin Bellamy I loveBenjamin, I think he's really,

(01:57:51):
really good.
He's come up with somethingwhich he is calling privacy
first, accurate audio analytics.
It's not privacy first, itleaks the IP address of the
listener and it's not accuratebecause it could say anything.
And I've told Benjamin this andI don't think he's very happy
with me in telling him this,don't think he's very happy with

(01:58:13):
me in telling him this.
But, um, you know.
So, looking at where um,looking at where John has come,
at this, I think what John isreally good at doing is really
cleverly thinking about theproblem, thinking about a
solution, um, and working out areally good way of of achieving
that.
And I think, like any greatengineer, the issue isn't the

(01:58:36):
technical way that he has donethat.
The issue is more around thepolitics and the business side.
And you know, I think from thatpoint of view it's a real shame
because I would really like tosee SPC, you know, working well.
I've sent it to a number ofpeople saying I think this is
really good.
Why don't you have a look atthis?
I mean, you know, one way ofthinking about it is could it be

(01:59:00):
that some of the larger podcastnetworks who want this data, or
indeed the Podcast StandardsProject, actually sponsor this
feature to be added to some ofthe larger podcast apps?
Is that something that we canactually get?

(01:59:20):
You know, we would really likeit if you would put SPC into
this app and we will give you 10grand if you do it.

Sam Sethi (01:59:29):
Yeah, I mean, look it's value for value.
If you really want this data,how much do you value it?
Give it to the apps as somesort of value and there you go.
Yeah, I can't say I expect thePSP to do it and I can't say I
expect it's going to happen froman individual host offering
that, but you never know.

Well, anyway, moving on, moving on James yes,
there were a few other tinylittle things which I thought
were quite cool PodPace, whichis a new tool for podcast speech
normalisation.
Did you take a peek at this,Sam?

Sam Sethi (02:00:04):
No, no, I thought my speech was normal already, so I
didn't think I needed it.

So what this does is it actually analyses
speaker words per minute.
So, for example, if I speakmuch faster than Sam does, you
could put this show into PodPaceand tell it to slow me down to
the same speed as Sam or speedme up to the same, to speed Sam

(02:00:29):
up to the same speed as me, andit would automatically do that.
That's how this technologywould actually work.
I think it's quite neat.
I'm sure that it would notsound particularly brilliant,
but it's a really interestingidea.
And you know, as I keep onsaying, the only reason really
why I use Overcast over anyother podcast app is the

(02:00:50):
playback engine.
And if the playback engine isas good in other podcast apps
and Pocket Casts comes close,then I will move over there,
because 99.5% of all of the timespent in a podcast app is
listening to a podcast, yet wespend probably 10% of the time

(02:01:10):
on the actual playback engine,if that.
So anyway, I thought the podpace was interesting.
It's worth a peek.
What's the website address?
Oh, it's a complicated GitHubthing so you can ignore that,
but yes, worth a peek.
Also in there, just veryquickly Faircamp version 1.3.

(02:01:31):
Faircamp is kind of likeBandcamp, a way for you to sell
your music, but you can hostyour music on a serverless web
server, so you can very quicklydo that.
What's the phrase I'm lookingfor?
Static server alternative.
That's what I'm actuallylooking forward to.
That's what I'm meaning to say.

(02:01:52):
So Faircamp has been just amusic service.
It now includes full supportfor hosting podcasts as well.
So all you need is statichosting somewhere and you can do
that.
I thought that was aninteresting idea and I'm
surprised that there aren't morestatic server podcast hosting

(02:02:12):
tools out there.
You could probably build onequite easily using Hugo.
And finally, aaron McQuaid hasproduced something which is
quite nice.
It will produce a podcast appfor any podcast and you can
install it on your phone.
It's a PWA, which I think isquite neat.
You're doing something similarto that, aren't you?

Sam Sethi (02:02:35):
We are.
But I mean again, let's nottalk about true fans right now,
let's keep it out.
I've been told and warned thatI should keep my true fans part
to the end, not by you.
Just to hasten to add it wasn'tyou, have you?
Have you?
Yeah?
Well, okay, it was John.
Okay, I'll throw him under thebus.
No, and look, you know, I havethat tightrope walk between

(02:03:00):
talking about the industry andtalking about my own app.

I think that's absolutely fair enough.
Yeah Well, let's talk aboutTrue Fans in just a little bit.
What's this about Albie?
Do I really Well?
Yeah, just uh, in just a littlebit.
Um, what's this about albie?
Do we?
Do I really well?
Yeah, no, I had a good.
Do I still care about?

Sam Sethi (02:03:16):
yes, yes, yes, you should, because it still works.
I mean much the um, you knowbelief that it doesn't.
It does um.
The albie hub is not for endusers, it is for apps, it is for
podcast networks.
I've got sub accounts on my hubfor Sam a get all be um for a
wallet if I want it.
So it does work.
It's just so, so complex to theextent that even I had to ring

(02:03:40):
up Moritz that walked me throughcreating a sub account because
I was in fear of deleting thewrong thing or not adding the
right thing.
And even when he walked methrough, I still was like
clicking buttons with no ideawhat I was doing.
Um worked it strangely, allworks um, but they saturn, if
you remember, was one of theirdevelopment platforms that we
used to use in the early days tolook at.

Uh, all of these different boosts and things.

Sam Sethi (02:04:05):
Yeah, yeah, um, they have sent an email out, I guess,
to everybody.
I got one which said because itsaid hi there so clearly
personalised which is, if theydon't get a million sats a month
in contributions from people,they're going to close Saturn
down.
So there you go.

Yeah, well, you know, I suppose, I suppose
that's one way of doing it,isn't it?

Sam Sethi (02:04:28):
Well, they do it with the Albie hub.
I mean, they charge you anumber of sats to keep your hub
up and you know, if you want tohave a hub, that's what it costs
you.
Um, I think they're saying,look, I don't think anyone's
using it.
We're not developing it.
Does anyone really want it?
Here's the.
You know the amount we need tokeep the lights on.
If nobody meets that amount,well, let's turn the lights off.
I did learn one thing though,this week, which we are playing

(02:04:51):
with and it's a good thing forthe industry, which is the Albi
API, allows me to look at all ofthe transactions from Podverse
Podcast Guru Podfriend.
Anyone who's using the Albi API, the Saturn API, which is using
that same Albi API, shows everytransaction, and so what you

(02:05:14):
can do as a developer is usethat API and we're going to do
that to try and pull back boosts.
So cross-app comments from paidcomments are available through
Saturn or through the Olby API,and we might then be able to
show those within TrueFans, andother apps could do the same
with us, but non-paid comments,no, that won't be available

(02:05:38):
through the Albi API.

Announcer (02:05:41):
Boostergram Super comments, zaps, fan mail, super
chats and email.
Our favourite time of the week,it's the Pod News Weekly Review
Inbox.

Yes, so many different ways to get in touch
with us Fan mail by using thelink in our show notes or super
comments on True Fans, or Boostseverywhere else, or email, and
we share any money that we make,equally, sam and I.
So thank you to all of thepeople who have sent in boosts
and stuff, and we have had someboosts, which is excellent.
I've got them in front of me.

(02:06:13):
Sam doesn't, so thank you, neilVelio.
10 out of 10 for the SpiceGirls reference featuring three
UK podcast companies merging.
I'd have given you 11 out of 10if you had opted for Three is
Family from Dana Dawson fromDana Dawson Wow, okay, obscure,

(02:06:38):
obscure, I've never heard that?
No, nor have I.
Three is Family from DanaDawson.
Never heard it before.
Anyway, thank you for that,neil.
Lyceum.
A bag of Richards 1,111 sats.
Sam, did you say Haribo's?
I did.
You did say Haribo's last week.

(02:06:59):
It was founded in Germany in1920.
The candy brand is very popularin Scandinavia.
I tell you what the candy brandis very popular everywhere,
including in the US, so Haribodoes particularly well.
So, including in the US, soHaribo does particularly well.
But the types of stuff that youcan get differ between each
country.
I've noticed Not that I likethat sort of thing, lyceum.

(02:07:21):
Thank you, silas, on Linux.
A row of ducks.
Double two, double two sats.
I have lifetime gold on theirline as well.
Get you, except it is gold whenyou don't crash and your
lifetime continues.
I only take 16 euro flightswith Ryanair, oh, dear, due to
giving all of my other money toyou.
Hooray, fully planned andbooked transport and stay for

(02:07:45):
the podcast show Cheers.
He says Well, that's excellent.
So thank you for doing that,seth.
503 sats.
Keep up the good work.
Reporting.
I love the banter between youtwo.
Your interviews are top notch.
Sam, your interviews are topnotch.

Sam Sethi (02:08:00):
Hang on, you were about to do one, so he might
have meant you as well.

Oh, yes, I mean that interview with Maya that
I'm doing tomorrow morning atseven o'clock.
That's going to be brilliant.
Double espresso, you'll be fine.
Thank you, seth, for that.
Double two, double, two satsfrom Bruce the ugly quacking
duck.
Thanks for the extra 73.
Well, thank you so much.
A friendly note to a fellowsuper fan.

(02:08:26):
This is Lyceum, but he'swanting to send a friendly note
to the late Bloomer actor,crikey.
Time to take the starship andhave a space flight to the top
of the leaderboard Game on 1701saps.

Sam Sethi (02:08:40):
I know exactly what that reference is.
So he's basically using theTrue Fans leaderboard.
He's top of it at the momentand he's pushing for.
David Clark to come and get hisleadership off.

Yes, there you go.
This is how this is the benefitof gamification.
It is I'm beginning to.
I'm beginning to get whatyou're doing after all.
So thank you, thank God you areCause I haven't Thank you to
all of those people sending usboosts or super comments or
whatever it is that you call.
What do you call them?
On Super comments?
Sending us boosts or supercomments or whatever it is that

(02:09:15):
you call.
What do you call them?
On super comments?
Yeah, super comments.
There you go.
Thank you for those muchappreciated.
You can use true fans if youlike to send us some super
comments on there.
You can also click that linkyou'll find in our show notes to
send us a fan mail through oursponsor, buzzsprout.
They make those fan mail linksavailable to everybody and it's
a super easy way.
If you're listening on yourmobile phone, it'll just open up

(02:09:36):
your text app and give you alocal number to text to and it
comes to us, which is very cool.
So, yes, worth a peekbuzzsproutcom for that.
And thank you also to our powersupporters, weeklypodnewsnet 18
excellent people who are allgiving us actual money.
That, and thank you also to ourpower supporters,
weeklypodnewsnet 18 excellentpeople who are all giving us

(02:09:56):
actual money every single weekor so.
We should spend some moneygiving people beer in London.
So I think that's what we'regoing to do.
We are, but anyway, thank youso much to Star Tempest, to
Brian Entsminger, david JohnClark, james Burt, john
McDermott, clare Waight-Brown,ms Eileen Smith, the

(02:10:16):
aforementioned Neil Velio, alsoRocky Thomas, jim James, david
Marzell, cy Jobling, rachelCorbett, Dave Jackson, mike
Hamilton, matt Medeiros,marshall Brown and Cameron Moll
All excellent people.
Thank you for doing that Muchappreciated.

Sam Sethi (02:10:32):
James Burt did a very posh gig Just one of our
obviously our power supporters.
Yes, he did a podcast at thevery posh London venue, the
Decant Group, and with CatherineRyan a brand new podcast with
Catherine Ryan and Chisora andJean but I don't know who they
are, but Catherine Ryan is avery famous Canadian comedian

(02:10:55):
over here now.
And it's very well done.
So, yes, congratulations toJames.

Excellent.
Many congratulations, JamesHurrah.

Sam Sethi (02:11:03):
Hurrah.
Now what have we done?
Very quickly, then.
We've added one clickwithdrawal for sats to creators.
So when you get money in yourcreator's dashboard on true fans
, you can now take your moneystraight out via apple pay or
google straight into your stripeaccount that you set up and yep

(02:11:24):
there, it is one click, verycool, very nice.
Uh, the other thing we addedwas a feature that I've wanted
called paid chapters, so you canhave a freemium episode but
make one chapter within thatepisode paid to unlock it.
So, yes, oh, okay.

Does that work with OpenRSS, or do I have to
log into the TrueFans?

Sam Sethi (02:11:49):
No, we haven't made it a secure RSS capability yet.
So, look, if you wanted tocheat, you go around the back,
you get the MP3 and you get awaywith it.
But we're just trying to put inthe first part of it, which is
look, if you want to, thecreator's saying look, this
content's a little bit morevaluable, please give me a bit
of money to unlock it.
If you do, it will unlock.

(02:12:10):
Obviously you can cheat rightnow.
We to unlock it.
If you do, it will unlock,obviously you can cheat right
now.
We may turn that into a securetokenized chapter, but we
haven't done that yet.

Yeah, and so the way of, as a creator, saying
that this particular chapter isgoing to be paid for, can I do
that through RSS, or do I haveto do that through?

Sam Sethi (02:12:28):
Not yet.

I'm going to propose it into the GitHub as a
idea but obviously seeing isbelieving, so we've only done it
in the Creators Dashboard.
So you go in the back end ofthe Creators Dashboard.

(02:12:49):
You see from your RSS, all ofyour of.
It's a man called Geomapper andwhat he does is he fairly often
in his YouTube channel.
He will be sent a picture Maybeit's a picture of your
grandfather from 1910.
And he's there on a motorbikesomewhere in the world and you

(02:13:14):
want to find out where thatphotograph was taken.
Well, gio Gessa is his name andhe will find out where that
photograph was taken.
And the way that he has beendoing it up until now is he's
been looking at things and goingI think this is in Italy,
somewhere.
I'll go and I'll take a lookand very laboriously goes
through Google Maps looking for,you know, it looks like a river

(02:13:37):
and it looks as if it's thisbig and blah, blah, blah and so
all of that.
Anyway, I was watching him doingthis last week and he was doing
this for yet another photographthat he has been sent in and it
was somewhere that he knew wasin Italy, because the person
told him but that's as much asthey knew and he used

(02:13:59):
OpenStreetMap to say I can see acity wall in this picture.
We're also very close to ariver.
So he went to OpenStreetMap andhe said show me all city walls
in Italy which are 500 metres orless away from a river.

(02:14:23):
So he did that particular,really tight query onto
OpenStreetMap and very quicklyfound out exactly where that
photograph was taken, the realpower of OpenStreetMap and what
you can do with the data inOpenStreetMap, and that's the
power that I'm hoping to getinto the podcast location tag.

(02:14:45):
You knew that there wassomething about podcasting in
this, didn't you?
Yes, mad, rambling about and Ifound my grandfather, said James
and I found my grandfather, no,so this is why I've been very
excited about the podcastlocation tag, because I think
that there is definitelysomething there in terms of
unleashing the power ofOpenStreetMap and the nominative

(02:15:09):
API that it has access to andall of that sort of thing.
With that in mind, theOpenStreetMap IDs are proposed
as part of the podcast locationtag.
There are lots of people thathave been using Google Maps,
though, because it's relativelygood.
It's a production-ready systemand you can very easily get lat

(02:15:32):
lons, but you can't obviouslyget anything more than that.
After all of that, sam, interms of Google Maps and
OpenStreetMap, where are you?
Because you've been usingGoogle Maps, haven't you?

Sam Sethi (02:15:45):
We have, and after your berating and cajoling and
whatever other words I can thinkof berating and cajoling and
whatever other words I can thinkof, yes, we are moving across
to open street maps.
Our goal and it has been for awhile is to allow us to plot on

(02:16:05):
a map the location of podcastcreators and then to allow us to
then filter that by category.
So initially it might be tellme all the podcasters in
Brisbane.
Now tell me all the podcasts inBrisbane who talk about
technology and and uh podcastingas an example, and then it
would show you those.
Um.

(02:16:25):
I I'm hoping that if we can makethis work, it will be
beneficial to people who want todo in real life meetups for
people who are podcasters,because it can be a lonely um
podcasting thing.
You know, sat in front of yourmic if you're a solo podcaster.
So again, sometimes we areseeing a lot more meetups.
Actually, I think we've talkedabout in the past where people

(02:16:47):
are doing those meetups and so Ithink they're good.
And also, I remember you showedme a very cool app sadly closed
down called mapsfm and um,we've worked out how to put the
cover art instead of the uh pin,you know, the normal red pin or
whatever you would have.
So anytime you look at the map,it will now show you the cover
art of the podcast, um, and thenwe're going to add the

(02:17:09):
filtering capability around that.
But yeah, I think it's a niceway to go forward.

I think one of the things that Mapsfm did which
I thought was a really cleveridea, was it showed you a map of
any podcast that was about awinery in this particular region
and you know.
And again, all of that ispossible with OpenStreetMaps.
None of that is possible withjust LatLons, because you don't

(02:17:35):
know what the point is.
But as soon as you know thatthis is a winery, then all of a
sudden you can plot these thingson a map as shows as a winery
Probably not brilliant forpodcast apps but probably really
good for different ways intopodcasting, and I think that's
the reason why I'm so excitedabout it.
So really good to hear that youare moving away from Google

(02:17:58):
Maps and moving intoOpenStreetMap on there as well.
Finally, you've got a newpodcast.

Sam Sethi (02:18:04):
It says yes, it's in relation to.
I can't talk about TrueFans, sowhere can I talk about it?
No, we launched fan zone, whichwas a podcast with me and
claire weight brown to talkabout how to use true fans and
it's a, you know, step-by-stepguide to each feature and
function and we've got three orfour series of those in the can.

(02:18:26):
Um, but I didn't have anywherewhere I just wanted to riff
about what we'd done this weekand what's going on and
highlight maybe a podcast of theweek, music of the week, super
fan of the week, maybe talkabout some industry stuff at a
higher level that relates totrue fans, not like we do here.

(02:18:48):
And so just to make it somethinglike a three or four minute.
You know, I don't know how long, I don't know how long we'll
see.
Three or four minutes isprobably half an hour in reality
, but whatever length it is, Iremember I said to you, james,
would you like to do a half hourpodcast called Pod News Weekly
Review?
So here we are with a half hourPod News Weekly Review.

(02:19:10):
So when I set three or fourminutes, uh, I'm I'm probably
underestimating dramatically,but we'll see.
So claire's going to be myco-host on that one as well.
Um, for the bad person that Iam, I haven't really come up
with any ingenious name for itso far.

So the two on the chopping block are currently
true fans weekly review or samtalks, true fans, um, and
probably neither of those, but Iquite like yes, yes, but uh,
but certainly something which isa bit less structured, a bit
more open and maybe a little bitmore around the nuts and bolts
of actually running a podcastapp would be very useful.

(02:19:48):
Um, or a podcast platform wouldbe very useful to a lot of
people, I'm sure.
Well, you have to tell us whenit's out um go and submit it to
newpodcastsnet and you can makesure that it's in the pod news
newsletter, maybe and we have towork out the day we so.

Sam Sethi (02:20:05):
We've decided we're going to drop it on a monday
because it's so crowded on afriday and a thursday.
So nobody wants that, nobodywants that.
Nobody wants that.
Come on, James.
What's happened for you?
What's?

been going on Well.
So, firstly, I'm supposed tohave been on holiday for the
last two weeks, so if pod newshas looked a little bit thinner
than normal, hopefully it hasn't, but if it has, then that's the
reason why.
But still, there we are A fewthings that I've been trying to
do which have nothing to do withpodcasting, but anyway, you

(02:20:36):
know, vaguely interesting, Isuppose.
One of them is I've been payingfor a very nice RSS reader now
for many years, calledInnoReader.
In fact, I started paying forthat in 2014.
So I've been paying for it forover 10 years.
Anyway, that runs out, I think,next week, and I thought I

(02:20:59):
wonder if I can just self-hostan RSS reader.
And it turns out that I can.
There's a really good onecalled Fresh RSS.
It turns out that podcasting'sAdam Curry uses that, so it must
be good.
So I'm now hosting my owninstance of that on one of the
boxes that I have, which is nice.
It's a very old fashioned box.

(02:21:20):
I need to rebuild it and moveit up to the latest spec, but
anyway, so that's super good.
So it's been quite fun to havea play around with that.
If anybody has any othersuggestions in terms of a decent
RSS reader, then that would begood.
One that is free, that I canuse.

(02:21:40):
That would be a lovely thing.
I tried to move away Sam fromGmail last week.
How?

Sam Sethi (02:21:47):
do you think?

that went.

Sam Sethi (02:21:49):
Handcuffs, golden handcuffs.
Not a chance, it was, it was.

I mean so Handcuffs, golden handcuffs, not
a chance it was, it was I mean.
So I did it technically, movedaway from Gmail, had my own IMAP
accounts and everything else.
That was really easy.
No, you know, nobody saw anybounced email and everything
else.
I use a service calledforwardemailnet that gets all of

(02:22:12):
my emails anyway, so that wasreally good.
But then I was just reallystruggling Because everybody's
using webmail these days, all ofthe actual programs that people
use for email.
They're all rubbish.
You've got Apple Mail, which iskind of the best of a bad bunch

(02:22:35):
.
But Apple Mail, I discovered,had some bugs in its IMAP
functionality, which wasbrilliant.
So you would mark a mail asread and it would disappear and
then reappear two minutesafterwards for some reason.
And you'd try again and it woulddisappear and reappear two
minutes afterwards, for somereason, and you'd try again and

(02:22:55):
it would disappear and then itwould reappear, but it would
only do that if it was infolders, and it was just a
nightmare.
So, yeah, so I'm back with.
I use a desktop app calledMimeStream, which is a brilliant
, brilliant app, but it onlyworks with Gmail.
So if you're a fan of gmail, um, but you don't want to use the

(02:23:15):
web for it and you want to usean actual program, mime stream
is brilliant and I just simplycould not move away from it.

Sam Sethi (02:23:22):
so, um, I've tried, and and I've failed okay, so
you're there for life, we'rethere for life, are we?

I'm clearly there in Gmail for life.
I've got two Gmail accounts.
One of them are paid for one,one of them are free one, which
are both in this app, and that'sabout as far as I go.

Sam Sethi (02:23:42):
Right, here's a shocker for you, james.
Go on, how many unread mailshave you got in your Gmail
account?

Oh well, yes, at the moment.
Well, I've tried really hardover the last couple of weeks,
but then, of course, I've beenon holiday.
Currently, I've got 3,438unread pieces of email in my
inbox.

Sam Sethi (02:24:02):
I've got 4,429.

There you go, although I would say that in my
important box, important box, inmy important box, I have 18 000
um and I also have wow, I alsohave an automatic um, uh label.
Um, and the automatic label isstuff that comes in that I
automatically just throw inthere and that has 12 500 unread

(02:24:28):
emails.
Make it stop, uh.
So, yes, it's stop.
So, yes, email is just such anightmare.
One of the things genuinelythat I think you could get
incredibly rich by doing is tobe an email trainer and to go
around large, large companiesand train people on how to use

(02:24:49):
email.
I'm clearly not the person forthat, but, um, but you know,
training people on how to sendemail and send email, uh, you
know, correctly and politely, um, I think would be amazing the
amount of money that you couldsave large corporations.
When I was at the BBC, I think Igot 180 emails a day, um, and

(02:25:11):
it was all internal emails andit was all you know bullshit
copy somebody important, becauseyou know I want to cover myself
if I'm making a change.
You know what I mean.
It was all that.
I'm sure that would be anincredibly rich field for
somebody.
I don't want to do it becauseit sounds boring as anything,

(02:25:34):
but I'm sure that you'd beincredibly rich if you were that
person to fix email in largecompanies.
That'd be an amazing thing.

Sam Sethi (02:25:44):
No, I don't think inbox zero is ever going to be
something you or I ever achievein my lifetime anyway.

No, I don't think it's a thing.
The final thing is so myparents are over from the UK and
one of the things that I didjust before they came over is I
bought myself something which,for some reason, you can only
buy in the UK and the US and youcan't buy here in Australia,
and that's a Google Titan key.
So this is a thing that youplug into your computer and you

(02:26:15):
can't log on to an accountwithout it.
So my two Google accounts arelocked with this Titan key, so I
have to have the key with me ona what's the word I'm looking
for?

On a key ring.

Yeah, on a key ring, and if I don't have the
key with me then I can'tactually log into my account.
The Google Titan key is clever.
It's got some NFC in it, it'sgot various other things but
really, really good and I'mreally surprised that Google
isn't selling that in mostcountries.

Sam Sethi (02:26:55):
I can only assume it's a legal thing.
People lose them.
Do they Is that why we used tohave it in Netscape.
They used to give us thislittle key thing with a number
on it.
Yeah, the RSA number, and thenwe'd have to plug that in before
we could get into Netscape Mail.
And God knows how many peopleforgot it at home, left it at

(02:27:16):
their mother's, didn't have it.

blah, blah, blah , no sorry, yeah, yeah, you put
that onto your.
I had that at the BBC and youput that onto your lanyard.
So you need your ID card inorder to get into the building,
and so, therefore, you also needthe RSA key fob to get into

(02:27:39):
your email.
Yes, gosh, that was a time.
I don't miss that.
Anyway, quite enough of that.
That's it for this week.

Sam Sethi (02:27:51):
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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Spotify video - we speak to Maya Prohovnik; plus Crossed Wires and podcast consumption