Spotify's financials, and its $100mn podcast payout

Episode Transcript
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James Cridland (00:00):
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It's Friday, the 2nd of May2025.

Announcer (00:12):
The last word in podcasting news.
This is the Pod News WeeklyReview with James Cridland and
Sam Sethi.

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

I'm James Criddon, the editor of Pod News,
and I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO ofTrue Fans In the chapters.
Today, spotify report theirquarter one financial updates
but was it any good?
They also say that they've paidout $100 million to podcasters
in the first quarter of thisyear.
Also, youtube's ad revenuejumps 10% and Himalaya
reportedly to be acquired byTencent Music for $2.4 billion.

(00:49):
This podcast is sponsored byBuzzsprout, with the tools,
support and community to ensureyou keep podcasting, start
podcasting, keep podcasting withbuzzsproutcom.
From your daily newsletter, thePod News Weekly Review.

Sam Sethi (01:04):
Now, james, I'm just going to say it straight up play
the jingle.
It's Spotify heavy this week.
Now it's time for more newsabout Spotify.
Oh good.
If you've got chapters and youdon't want to hear about Spotify
, skip ahead.
But other than that, we've gotto start off, james, with the
Spotify Q1 revenue.
Now it looks on the surfacethat it's very good 12% growth

(01:28):
in premium subscribers.
Monthly active users are up 15%growth in total revenue.
Is that how you read it?
It's a good quarter.

Yeah, I think it is a good quarter.
I mean it's a good quarter forpodcasting, but a good quarter
overall for Spotify and for thatproduct as well.
So, yes, I mean I thought itwas interesting that Daniel Ek
basically didn't really want tosay very much about the quarter
and instead used his preparedcomments to talk about increased

(01:56):
economic uncertainty in theworld and how Spotify will
probably deal OK with that,because everybody needs music,
don't they?
And also said which I thoughtwas interesting and I thought
that you might have seen thatinteresting as well around the
company's app development.
They've done an awful lot ofwork with their apps, which

(02:17):
means that they can now add newfeatures to their apps six times
faster than they've been ableto in the past.
But they were talking aboutSpotify having individual apps
on more than a thousand surfacesnow, which must be incredibly
complicated to keep all of thoseup to date.

Sam Sethi (02:35):
Yeah, look, one of Spotify's, I think, secret
sources not so secret, really isthat they are on everything and
everywhere, unlike Apple or anyothers, and I think that's
what's given them the you knowthe, the economic or unique
advantages that they have,because if you start a playlist
on your desktop and then it's onyour mobile, oh, you get to

(02:56):
your car, it's there.
I mean, they've just done adeal with um, a gaming company,
haven haven't they?
So they've just announced thatyou'll be able to use your
Spotify on EA Sports, a new FC.
Can you tell I'm not a gamer?
Can you tell he says readingwords that don't seem to make

(03:18):
any sense to me at all.
But allegedly, you can now inAustralia, the test bed for
everything.
But allegedly, you can now, inAustralia, the testbed for
everything, and Saudi Arabia,you can now play music and
podcasts on your EA Sports FCconsole.
Now, that's just an example ofwhere they're extending the
reach of Spotify to make surethat people just use them as the

(03:40):
singular platform.
I think their other big pushthat they announced their CTO
was on the call was their pushinto AI, and we'll talk about
that a little bit later on.
But I do think there's a problemin them hills at Spotify HQ as
well, james.
I don't think it's all rosy.
They missed significantly.

(04:00):
So they increased the number ofpaid subscribers, which I
thought was great, but theymissed their quarterly numbers.
They were significantly belowwhat they told the number of
paid subscribers, which Ithought was great, but they
missed their quarterly numbers.
They were significantly belowwhat they told the market.
And when you dig deeper into it, it looks like it was due to
employee-related taxes.
Now we've seen Spotify has hadto do significant cost-cutting

(04:20):
in the last couple of years inorder to get to profitability
and keep it there, and I thinkwe're going to see either
another big cut in employeenumbers or there's going to be
an increase in pricing.

Yeah, well, I guess.
I mean, it depends really howmuch pressure Daniel Ek is going
to be under in terms of whetheror not he has to continue
increasing profit, or whetherthe amount of profit that
they're making, which is morethan a billion dollars in just a
quarter, is enough for themarket.

(04:57):
I mean, that amount of profitenables them to do all kinds of
exciting things in the future,so perhaps that's going to be
enough.
But yes, yes, nope not enough,james.

Sam Sethi (05:09):
The market, on the announcement of the Q1 report,
dropped the share price by 8%,and that tells you everything
that the market was upset withSpotify for missing their
expected quarter returns.
You can't tell the market.
I'm going to hit a number andthey're not hit it.
They do not like that.
Secondly, the underlying netprofitability of the business is

(05:32):
not strong.
They lost a 39% year on year.
So it tells you that therevenue they're generating is
not significantly stable enoughyear on year and that's why the
market reacted with a shareprice drop.
Now Daniel's talking it big up.
He's talking about a billionusers.
He's talking about again this6X speeding up of platforms.

(05:55):
He's talking about how they cansee and this was the
significant part, james.
There's two bits.
One was they are going to do aprice hike.
So in europe and latin america,but not in their biggest market
, the usa, they are going toincrease it by a euro, um, or
you know, not, not, not amassive amount, but I think I've

(06:19):
talked about it on this showbefore.
There is a price elasticity.
There is a point at whichgrowth in user numbers paid
subscribers will snap, becausethere will be a point people say
no, I can't do that, and sodaniel has announced in that um,
you know financial report thatthey're looking at variable
pricing.
I still believe there will bemore segmentation.

(06:40):
He and I think the opportunityin pricing is big.
So Daniel sees that there is away that he can go higher with
the pricing for certain people.
Maybe they've talked about thissuper fan product.
They've talked about a superpremier tier.
You know he talks about havingconcert tickets in there, high
fidelity audio, ai powered remixfeatures.

(07:03):
So he's certainly going to beraising the bar above the $19.99
, I think.
But they also need to come downto match what I think YouTube
did, which I thought was areally aggressive position
against Spotify with YouTubeLite, with $7.99 for music and
podcasts and ad free.
I think they really wentstraight to Spotify's heart and

(07:26):
said look, come on, play in oursame field at $7.99.
Spotify's looked and gone.
Jesus, how do we get down tothat level?
Because you know, if I've gotmusic and I've got podcasts I
want to listen to and I can doit at $7.99, ad-free, why
wouldn't I switch?

Well, indeed, and I think actually you've got
sort of two sides of this.
Spotify is its own company, itneeds to be profitable, it needs
to be making enough money,Whereas YouTube is kind of the
same to a degree, but of courseit's part of Alphabet, part of
Google, and so therefore itdoesn't necessarily need to be

(08:05):
its own profit centre if itdoesn't have to be.
And certainly that's the casewhen it comes to Apple, and
Apple Music is a pretty big dealand that has pricing that
starts at $6 a month forstudents, $7 a month for
individuals in the US, and ifit's $11 a month or $12 a month,

(08:29):
depending on what the currentprice is, but if it's that price
in the US for Apple Music, wellSpotify isn't going to be able
to turn around and say you knowwhat?
We're going to be moreexpensive, because you need a
differentiator, and I'm not surenecessarily that there is one.

Sam Sethi (08:51):
Yeah, and that's their biggest problem.
I joke about Netflix and youknow, but but at some point I
genuinely believe Netflix hastalked about in recent weeks
about getting into podcasts andyou say you know it's cheap
content for them to be able tofill the back channel if they
want with attention you couldyeah, I mean you could argue

(09:13):
that obviously Netflix has anawful lot of material which is
theirs, and theirs alone, whichyou can't get anywhere else.

Apple TV Plus has as well, but that, of course
, is a different product.
When you look at Spotify, well,they used to have quite a lot
of exclusive podcast content.
They don't anymore, and soactually they've kind of given
that particular thing away inorder to chase the ad dollar.
Well, now that policy may comeback to hurt them, because they

(09:45):
don't actually have anythingparticularly different that is
not available on any otherplatform.
You look at all of the musicthat they've got Well, that's
music that Apple Music has, thatYouTube Music has.
You look at the podcasts Well,that's podcasts that
particularly that Apple podcastshave access to.
So, therefore, there's noactual differentiator there,

(10:10):
other than Spotify's algorithms.
And how much would you miss,you know, the Discovery Weekly
thing, how much would you misssome of the more popular Spotify
playlists?
And I suppose that's the thingthat Spotify really now needs to
be competing on features,because it can't compete on
content.

Sam Sethi (10:31):
Yeah, and I think you know we've said it before
without music, is Spotify a goodpodcast app?
Generally, we think no.
So those catalogues, as yourightly say, are available
everywhere.
I think it comes back down toSpotify everywhere as an app is
a unique selling point to me andI think some of the ai work

(10:51):
they're doing is reallyinteresting.
But again, will that have ashort-term unique value but then
again be caught by the rest ofthe market?
I suspect that will be the case.
So they have the problem thatwhen you're in the market you
have to continually get higherand higher um profitability.
It's not a, it's good enough tohave got to a billion, aren't

(11:14):
we clever?
Yes, you are very clever, but Ithink you may have read.
Um daniel talked about 1billion paid subscribers.
Is what he sees now as his goal, not 200.
He was talking about 100million.
When they reached 100 millionsubscribers.
He thought that was amazingwhen they started at the 1

(11:35):
million mark and now he's at the260 odd million and he's now
talking about 1 billion.
So I think they know that theyhave to go.
It's a volume game and it's across-platform game for them.
You're right, they haven't gotthat uniqueness and I suspect if
they don't and the share pricebecomes a problem and it starts

(11:56):
dipping it hasn't.
It's gone up massively.
It's 150% above where it waslast year.
But if it does drop and itcontinues to drop, then they
become in play for anacquisition and that may be
their exit out.

Well, it'll be interesting to see what happens
with Music Pro, which, of course, is still coming, but that is a
premium version of Spotifywhere you get better sound, you
get early access to concerttickets, ai powered remix
features, all that kind of stuff.
So interesting to see whathappens there and whether or not
that will actually be theticket into earning more cash

(12:31):
for Spotify on that side in themarket.
Things like YouTube Music,which is actually seemingly
growing quite fast, and, ofcourse, apple Music that has the
benefit of actually being onthe device that you have bought,
and you get a three month freetrial with every iPhone that you

(12:56):
buy.
So that's still a prettyimpressive thing as well.

Sam Sethi (13:01):
So it'll be fascinating to see what happens
there impressive thing as well,so it'll be fascinating to see
what happens there.
Now, talking of Apple, I sawyesterday they announced or
there was an announcement thatApple have willfully violated
the 2021 injunction that cameout of Epic Games case.
Judge Rogers said basicallythat the Apple vice president,

(13:25):
alex Roman, outright lied to thecourt about the Apple 27% levy
and she basically wants to allowsoftware developers to link to
their websites inside of youriPhone app for customers to make
purchase.
So Spotify want this, clearly,micro Me wants it and, at the

(13:49):
end of the day, I think Apple isunder a lot of pressure to
remove their 30% tax.
I think this is a ruling thatwe should be watching, because
if they lose that, I think againkeeping it in the Spotify news,
I think Spotify will be doingcartwheels, because then they
can really push hard on in-apppurchase.

Yeah, so if you use Spotify and you go into
Spotify's account system on youriPhone and you want to change
the account that you'recurrently with, then it just
basically says you can't do thison the phone.
We know it's frustrating andthat's literally all it says.
It doesn't say you can go tothe website, because they're not

(14:30):
even allowed to say that.
So they will be delighted toend up seeing that.
Now John Gruber, who writes ablog about Apple at
daringfireballnet he'sessentially writtena blog post
this week basically saying thatTim Cook should resign and
resign now.

Sam Sethi (14:50):
Somebody who agrees with me.

That Phil Schiller is the man of the
moment.
He comes across as Apple's solevoice of reason, fairness and
honesty in that entire rulingand basically, you know, you can
read between the lines, butwhat John Gruber is essentially
saying is look, you know, TimCook, it's probably if he was

(15:14):
able to retire now then he wouldleave in a positive light.
But if he stays with thatcompany for another year, then
he may be leaving in a slightlyless than positive light.
But if he stays with thatcompany for another year, then
he may be leaving in a slightlyless than positive light.
And that, from a fanboy likeGruber, is quite a thing.
So yeah, it's quite aninteresting piece that he has

(15:37):
ended up writing.

Sam Sethi (15:39):
Yeah, gruber wrote, equally being the big fanboy
that he is a couple of weeksback about how AI was a complete
miss by Apple and that they hadfundamentally hoodwinked
everyone with the last demos.
They did because Appleintelligence doesn't exist and
won't exist for another 12, 18months, probably in the form
that they demoed.
And again, I call Tim Cook theSteve Barmer of his day.

(16:03):
He's missed every bigtechnology search, ai, cars,
podcasting.

Yes, he's kind of a slightly less animated
Steve Barmer, isn't he?
In terms of that, now, I mean,the final paragraph of Judge
Yvonne Gonzalez-Rogers isabsolutely fascinating.
She basically says Applewillfully chose not to comply
with this court's injunction.

(16:33):
It did so with the expressintent to create new
anti-competitive barriers whichwould, by design and in effect,
maintain a valued revenue stream, a revenue stream previously
found to be anti-competitive.
That it thought this courtwould tolerate such
insubordination was a grossmiscalculation.
As always, the cover-up made itworse For this court.

(16:56):
There is no second bite at theapple, yikes.

Sam Sethi (17:02):
So yes quite a thing, tim hello, is that Mr Trump?
Mr trump, yes, please removethe federal judge.
Please remove the federal judge.
That's the only way I thinkit'll happen now, um, going back
to spotify, james, um, theymade what on the surface was a
substantial announcement thatthey had paid out 100 million to

(17:26):
podcasters and I was like, wow,that sounds really really good.
Again, you have to dig belowthe level of the PR announcement
, because actually a lot of thatmoney went to Joe Rogan and to
Alex at Call Her Daddy, and sothey haven't broken out how much
they actually paid for thisSpotify partner program.

No, and, to be fair, that's not what they were
there, you know, to end up doing.
But yes, they absolutely didn'tnecessarily share that amount
of money, so that $100 millionit's still a large amount of
money for one quarter it's alarge amount of money.
So that $100 million it's stilla large amount of money for one
quarter.
It's a large amount of moneythat they have shared with

(18:10):
podcasters in some way, shape orform.
Apple never releases anyfinancials around how much money
it pays to podcasters, but youcan imagine that it's not going
to be $100 million.
And similarly, it is difficult,though, knowing whether or not
this money includes all ofMegaphone.
Does it include all ofMegaphone?

(18:30):
I mean, I guess it might do.
It's certainly Spotify video,but it's other things as well
and, as you so rightly say, itdoes include things like Joe
Rogan.
It does include all kinds ofother things as well.
Now, to be fair, they were openabout that.
They did say no, you know, itisn't just video when they

(18:54):
actually sent the announcementout.
But yes, $100 million just inthe first quarter is a pretty
impressive number.

Sam Sethi (19:06):
I think they're playing on the attention
deficient users that we all are.
That don't read the fullarticle.
So if I read the articleheadline Spotify 100 million in
Q1 to podcasters, that's allpeople will take away from it.
They will walk away going wow,it's really successful this
Spotify videoify video, isn't itwow?

(19:27):
Yeah and they won't look at theunderlying numbers, and that's
the problem, and I think it'sslightly disingenuous as a title
or a headline and that, to befair, is why it wasn't the
number one story in the pod newsnewsletter.

It was number two and um it, it basically got
two sentences.
The second sentence sayingthat's both ad-based revenue and
from the Spotify partnerprogramme.
The company haven't split outthe two, which is worthwhile
mentioning.
Also worthwhile mentioning whatthe number one story was that
day from the UK and this iswhere the conversation around

(20:03):
video and audio ends up being abit complicated and not
particularly helpful, becausethe IAB in the UK said that
podcast advertising only grew by8% last year.
It grew 23% the year before, soonly grew by 8% last year, but

(20:25):
that number only accounts foraudio podcast ads.
The video display ad category,which includes video podcasts,
grew by 20% year on year.
So what you can see from thatheadline is podcast advertising
growth slows, which isn'tnecessarily the case because,
for whatever reason, they'vechosen in the UK to define

(20:45):
podcasting by audio advertising.
So you know again, it's one ofthe perils of being too narrow
in terms of what you say apodcast is, and that will
inevitably mean that you justget lower figures.

Sam Sethi (21:00):
The last bit of info relates to that audio video
balance is that sonderstrom, whois the I think it's a cto over
at spotify um, said that videogrowth on the platform.
We've seen a 44 year-on-yeargrowth in time spent with video,
specifically gen z, and I canunderstand that, given the
edison research reports we'veread, where you know the younger

(21:23):
generation will have a videoplaying in the background and
then, you know, leave it playingas opposed to just a pure audio
podcast.
So again, you know we've got tolook at the underlying trend
and that trend seems to be avideo element for the Gen Z are

(21:43):
very keen to watch occasionally,even if it's just two talking
heads.

Yeah, and you know, and, as I say again, of
course consumption of videopodcasting is up on Spotify year
on year because there are morevideo podcasts on Spotify.
The number of active monthlyvideo podcasts have increased by
28% year on year.
So if you add more videopodcasts into the platform, of

(22:09):
course you're going to get moreconsumption of those shows.
So I do find the consumptionconversations that Spotify are
having.
I understand why they're doingit, because they want to try and
encourage more publishers to beon Spotify and do video.

(22:31):
So I understand why they'redoing it, but I mean, to me it's
just bleedingly obvious, isn'tit?
If you add more video onto aplayback platform, you're going
to get more consumption of it.
I don't really see why that'san exciting thing to put in a
press release, but that'sclearly, you know, spotify's
what Spotify is doing.

Sam Sethi (22:52):
Moving on, sorry lads and ladies, one more element of
Spotify.
They announced something new,james, called Trending Charts.
Tell me more.

They did so.
All of the podcast charts thatwe've seen from Spotify so far
have been just normal podcastcharts that are due to total
consumption on the platform.
So Joe Rogan has almost alwaysbeen number one.
It's a bit boring and all of asudden they have finally decided
no, we're going to have atrending podcast chart as well.

(23:21):
So that is essentially verysimilar to the Apple podcast
charts, because the Applepodcast chart is just trending,
so it doesn't you know, itdoesn't really show you the most
popular podcasts out there.
It shows you trending ones,ones which are all of a sudden
getting listened to a lot morethan they normally are.

(23:42):
So that means that if you arethere talking to clients and
bragging about the great podcastthat you have edited, well,
this is good news, because nowSpotify has a chart that will
probably allow you to end updoing that, because if you're
doing a brand new launch, itshould be relatively easy to get
to the top of Spotify'strending podcast charts.

(24:03):
They've got a ton of thosewhich are at the Spotify podcast
charts website.
You can also download the JSONif you're clever and you know
where to look, and there's oneof those charts trending charts
for every single country whichis nice.
How would they?
I was just curious.

Sam Sethi (24:19):
I looked at the JSON form and that's great that
they've done that.
That's actually one of thebetter things that they've done
recently.
I was just curious.
I looked at the JSON form andthat's great that they've done
that.
That's actually one of thebetter things that they've done
recently, I think.
But I was curious as to how didthey curate the country?
Because is it purely the JoeRogan in the UK, irrelevant to

(24:40):
it being a US?
It's just users in the UK.

Yeah, it's consumption from the country, so
they know which country you'relistening in, and so, therefore,
that is the trending chart thatthey're actually giving.

Sam Sethi (24:53):
I was.
Thank you for clarifying thatfor me, james, because I was
thinking that there must be someway that they've got a country
tag.

You know, benjamin Bellamy and I were
looking for a country tag in thepodcasting 2.0 namespace last
year, but sadly that has notmorphed into a tag.

(25:20):
So if you want to use the brandnew podcast location tag, which
went live this week, that allowsyou to both say where you are
as well as where the subject ofthe podcast is.
So if we're both in the UK butwe're doing a show about the
Eiffel Tower, then we can putthe fact that we're in the UK

(25:42):
and that the show is about theEiffel Tower, the fact that
we're in the UK and that theshow is about the Eiffel Tower.
But just for you well, notreally just for you, but there
is a country code in there, soyou don't have to pass the
latlon, you don't have to go offto OpenStreetMap and take a
look at the ID.
You can just literally use thatcountry tag.
It is in the spec as a highlyrecommended, which means that

(26:05):
some people will ignore it, buthopefully that won't be the case
for people who are doing itproperly, and that essentially
means that you can yes, you canautomatically get that
information straight from thepodcast RSS feed.
Hooray, finally thank you.

Sam Sethi (26:21):
Thank you, yes, because we already have that
field in TrueFans but we have tomanually update that.

Yes and nobody wants that, so that is now
available.
The new podcast location tagspecification is in the GitHub
and you'll also, I guess, by now, find it at podcasting2.org.

Sam Sethi (26:45):
Well, we'll go and have a look at that later today.
Now, moving on James YouTube.
We've mentioned them briefly.
Of course you can't not.
Their ad revenue jumped 10%,but is that in podcasting or is
that across the board forAlphabet?

Well, what is YouTube?
Is YouTube podcasting?
Is YouTube something else?
Who knows?
There was a piece only yesterdayfrom the founder of Mediaite,
dan Abrams, who was saying whatis YouTube?
Well, it's really clear YouTubeis now television.

(27:22):
That's what YouTube is YouTube.
Well, it's really clear,youtube is now television.
That's what YouTube is, whichis handy, because what does that
mean?
Does that mean that YouTuberevenue is all television?
Now, who knows?
But anyway, yes, I mean that istotal ad revenue from YouTube.
It's a 10.3% year-over-yearincrease.
Just worthwhile mentioning it'syear-over-year, not

(27:43):
quarter-over-quarter.
Don't know what thequarter-over-quarter figure is,
but that's basically where weare.
And YouTube, in terms ofYouTube Premium and YouTube
Music, I did mention that it'sgrowing really fast.
Well, they have seen 100million year over year increase
in terms of those paidsubscribers, so that's a pretty

(28:05):
big number, albeit it's up to125 million now, so much smaller
still than Spotify.
But all of that is interesting.
Youtube itself is the biggesttelevision platform in the US
now easily, and apparently it'sexpected to overtake Disney by

(28:27):
the end of the year as theworld's largest media company,
with a worth of $500 billion.
Do you know, sam, where Disneymakes most of their money?

Sam Sethi (28:39):
I'm guessing theme parks and boats.

You are absolutely correct, it's theme
parks, and particularly it'sfood at theme parks and boats.
You are absolutely correct,it's theme parks, and
particularly it's food at themeparks, which they totally rake
the money in for.
I learned this on the Rest isEntertainment podcast, which is
a brilliant, brilliant podcast.
But yes, it's things like thecheaper end of their food in

(29:02):
theme parks is the thing thatmakes all of their money and the
films and stuff like that paleinto insignificance.
Once you actually start havinga look at the money that they
make from selling burgers attheme parks, it's the most
astonishing thing.
Well, on a similar theme, wheredoes McDonald's make most of
their money?

(29:22):
Oh, real estate.
Exactly yes.

Sam Sethi (29:25):
It's not a food company, it's a real estate real
estate company.

We've been listening to the same shows.

Sam Sethi (29:31):
Yes, I loved the angle that you talked about
there, with YouTube being thenew TV, and I think what I find
YouTube and podcasters arefinding by creating channels is
they can create that direct tofan reach and it's democratizing

(29:54):
TV.
That's basically how I see it.
So in the past there weregatekeepers ABC, nbc, bbc, itv,
whatever you want to call themwho had expensive distribution
mechanisms that nobody couldreally afford to get into, and
now you can create your ownYouTube TV channel and play it
back on your big screen at homeand you have very little cost of

(30:16):
entry.
I think that's one significantand I know you're going to hate
this Um cause.
For me, I think podcasting isthe new radio.
I think, whether it's on demandor live, I think again, we can
get around the gatekeepers, thebig globals, the um bowers, who
have dab networks and you haveto spend twenty five thousand

(30:37):
dollars a year, you know, onjust getting transmission
networks.
You can now go direct to fanwith your own podcast and
whether you want to do it liveor on demand and include music
you look at live 365 or you lookat adam with booster ground
balls those type of shows willbecome more common, I think.
Um, I guess we have licensingissues still.

(30:59):
But you know, if we canovercome that one big gatekeeper
, then I think you will see.
If we can overcome that one biggatekeeper, then I think you
will see podcasts on the newradio Listen to you saying
direct to fandom.

Direct to fandom .
It's almost as if you've beentalking to investors this week.
Direct to fandom On messageAlways on message mate, listen
to you.
The one thing I would say onthat is that if you look at
total audio consumed, forexample, then total audio

(31:39):
consumed AM FM radio is stilltwo thirds 66% of all audio that
is consumed.
Podcasts 10%, that's all.
It's even less in the UK.
So I don't disagree thatpodcasts are an incredibly
important part of the medialandscape, but replacing radio
they are not, at least not yet.

Sam Sethi (31:56):
Not yet and I think we've got technology barriers
that we have to make better.
You know you get in a car andyou can flick between radio
stations.
You can't I think this is thetom webster thing you can't
flick between podcasters quick.
But I think we're going to talkabout later on in the show um,
a new platform that has come up,you know, which is very similar

(32:16):
to radio garden.
So I think we will see um, theuis and the interfaces changing
that make it easier to changebetween various podcasts.
It could be an AI interface, anagent-based interface.
But you know, I think you'reright now it's still a small
percentage of radio as a podcastmedium, but I think that number

(32:41):
will switch.

I think that number will grow and I think
also new and different ways ofgetting into that content is
important, as you say, and Ithink you know.
The new podcast location tag isdefinitely one of those things,
because all of a sudden you aregetting rid of the paradigm of
looking for a show and you'restarting the whole paradigm of

(33:02):
looking for a place and startyour listening, and that should
be a really interesting time.
But anyway, we will see wherewe are.

Sam Sethi (33:13):
James, can we whiz around the world?
I think there's quite a bigstory coming out of China,
something to do with Himalaya.

There is a massive story.
So Himalaya, which is spelt inChina with an X but pronounced
Himalaya.
So I've been told that isreportedly to be acquired by
Tencent Music for $2.4 billion.
Now you might remember, firstly, spotify buying Anka.
Anka is similar to Himalaya inthat it is a podcast hosting

(33:43):
company that has its own app, asAnor did, that allows you to
record into there.
Spotify bought Anchor only afew years ago for 140 million,
and this is Tencent buyingHimalaya for 2.4 billion, which
is an astonishing change.
So you've got that sort of side, but I mean Himalaya.

(34:05):
I mean it's a big old company.
It's an astonishing change.
So you've got that sort of side, but I mean Himalaya.
I mean it's a big old company.
It's got more than 300 millionmonthly active users easily but
it's had quite the history aswell.

Sam Sethi (34:19):
Yeah, I mean I wasn't around.
You were when they were toutingvarious numbers in the US about
how they're going to grow, soI'll defer to you James because
you were there, I wasn't.

Yes, it was astonishing.
It was the first podcastmovement that I went to and
Himalaya was splashing the cashout there because they had said
that they had spent $100 millionon a US expansion in 2019.
They said that to me.
I printed that as a pressrelease, because it's a press
release.
More recently, people turnedaround and said where did that

(34:55):
$100 million go, and was thatactually $100 million ever spent
?
And the answer is no.
No, it wasn't.
It was a very nice lookingpress release.
That's about as far as it got.
The company tried to get ontothe New York Stock Exchange, but
it didn't because the Chinesegovernment told them no.
So the company then decided toget onto the Hong Kong Stock

(35:18):
Exchange, but for whateverreason, that hasn't also
happened.
But I mean, the mostinteresting sort of part of all
of this was a chap called PeterVinser.
Now, peter Vinser was a veryhigh profile employee of
Himalaya in the US.
He owned Himalaya Studios andmade the headlines in June 2021

(35:41):
with a long and complicatedstory one of Ashikarman's last
pieces for the Verge Essentiallyall kinds of shenanigans going
on, with Peter Vinser hiring ahouse or something, and this is
where people would go forparties and also would go to

(36:04):
record shows and everythinglooked a little bit murky and
stuff.
Peter Vintzer denied that therewas anything bad going on, of
course, as he would expect, andI thought I wonder where he is
now.
So the company is calledNotorious LLC that he now runs.
It's not part of Himalayaanymore, and I was just curious

(36:25):
what is Notorious LLC doing?
Well, it hasn't posted onsocials for the last five months
, and one of its last posts,really weirdly, was a picture of
Peter Vinser dressed asSuperman, which I have no
concept of why or you know whatthe thinking is there, but
anyway.
So I'm sure he's doing well.

(36:47):
So he's one of these chaps thatseems to fall on his feet all
the time.
So, yes, gosh, what a thing.

Sam Sethi (36:56):
The ultimate statement fake it until you sell
it.
Then, I guess, is the answerhere really.

Yes, yes.
Well, you can say that Icouldn't possibly comment.
Well, I just did.

Sam Sethi (37:06):
Now there is a bigger element for me in this, which
is Tencent buying Himalayasounds very similar, as you said
, to the Spotify anchor.
If Tencent can turn themselvesinto a multi-content platform
not just music, but they moveinto other areas this is Spotify

(37:29):
right.
So this is now a massivechallenger to Spotify's growth
market, because that's wherethey've seen the biggest growth
in the Far East.
If the Far East then switchesand says actually thank you very
much, spotify, but this Tencent, which is much more in our
local backyard, we're going togo and use that instead of you,

(37:49):
I think Spotify has a real bigproblem.

Yeah no, I agree , I agree.
Certainly, if somebody in Chinais doing this properly, lots of
people in that part of theworld.
So, yes, worthwhile taking apeek at world.
So, yes, worthwhile taking apeek at.
Interestingly, I spent thefirst meeting this week planning
Radio Days Asia, which ishappening in early September in

(38:14):
Jakarta.
No, she went to her own accordand so that's going to be good
and I'm looking forward totaking part in that.
But that will have speakersfrom the podcast industry right
across Asia.
It's the first one that I'm notrunning and it's quite
interesting in that there is alot of Asian podcast companies

(38:37):
who will be speaking there as aresult, so very much looking
forward to that.
Radiodaysasiacom is where to gofor more of that.
Shall we go to exciting Canada?

Sam Sethi (38:50):
Yes, congratulations, mr Carney, well done.

Yes, former boss of the Bank of England, so it
can't be all bad so alsohappening in Canada.
Quite apart from that is BBCStudios have done another one of
their deals.
This is a partnership with thePodcast Exchange in Canada.
Quite apart from that is BBCStudios have done another one of
their deals.
This is a partnership with thePodcast Exchange in Canada.
If you go back to previous PodNews Weekly reviews, you'll find
an interview with Perry Bellfrom the Podcast Exchange.

(39:16):
Tpx will be the BBC's exclusivethird-party advertising
reseller for BBC podcasts in thecountry, so congratulations to
them.
Also, congratulations toGoalhanger, celebrating hitting
one billion streams of itscontent in the UK.
The company says it's thebiggest independent podcast
producer outside the US, whichis quite a claim, but I think

(39:36):
it's probably a claim which iscorrect.
I can't think of any otherswhich are going to be as big.
So congratulations to them.

Sam Sethi (39:42):
Can I ask a question?
Yes, why did they use the wordstreams in the headline and not
plays or downloads?
Because, yes, you say thereisn't anything called a stream
yes, I I still say that.

Um, I don't know why they said streams.
I'm assuming that they meankind of plays, um, but of course
, a play isn't necessarily adownload, and what they've done
here is to be clear why they'venot used the word download is
that it is both download numbersand YouTube play numbers.
So what is a download plus aplay?

(40:18):
Well, it's not really a play,is it?
So therefore, it's not really alisten either.
Um, so therefore it's notreally a listen either.
So it's a thing, isn't it?

Sam Sethi (40:27):
Um 1 billion things of its content.
So I suppose they're usingsomething like streams to
hopefully cover I'm not tryingto, you know rain on their
parade.
I think it's amazing if they'vegot to 1 billion, whatever's.
Yeah.

But again when I think yeah yeah, I just.

Sam Sethi (40:45):
I just very critical of pr announcements and when you
dig below the surface of themyou suddenly find that the
headline sounds great butactually the reality of the
numbers or whatever needs to bewell and this is one of the one
of the reasons why we need um, astandard method of measurement.

Because if YouTube has a thing called a
play, which they've neveractually said what it is, and
then Spotify has a thing calleda play, which is different, if
you're hosting with Spotify, ifyou're just looking at Spotify's
numbers, they don't have a playat all.
Then you have a look at Apple,which has its own definition of
play, which is how many timesyour finger may have brushed

(41:28):
against the play button.
You know, it's all a bit of amess, so it'd be nice if we had
something a little bit more, alittle bit better for that.
Down to Australia, tritonDigital releasing a programmatic
advertising update forAustralia.
Stroth impressions haveincreased year on year by 160%,

(41:50):
it says, although, interestingly, podcast listeners have only
grown 26%.
So if podcast listeners haveonly grown 26%, that must mean
that podcast listeners arelistening to loads more ads than
they were this time last year,because, you know, 160 divided

(42:11):
by 26 is over six.
So podcast listeners arehearing more than six times the
ads that they were hearing lastyear.
That seems to be what thatfigure says, possibly.

Sam Sethi (42:22):
It doesn't pass my sniff test, but anyway, yes it's
possibly a little bitconcerning.

The other interesting thing on that is
that live streaming becauseTriton also measure that live
streaming listeners have onlyincreased 1.3%, which I think
actually means that livestreaming audience has actually
gone down, because there's morethan 1.3% more people in this
country than there were a yearago.
So I'm curious about that andcurious about what that means

(42:54):
for the future of live streamingversus podcasts.

Sam Sethi (42:58):
I go back to.
I think we have not helpedourselves in this industry.
We see, still so.
You know, rsscom friends of theshow implemented live item tag
support but didn't provide aserver.
So when you go to rsscom, yougo to the dashboard, you fill in
the field.
That's not easy in terms of um.

(43:21):
You know what's this field,what's that field?
Yes, start and end times prettyeasy.
But then they give you thisconvoluted method of having to
go here to go and get a server.
You sign up somewhere else.
You then copy that url overyada yada, so you know it's not
going to get out of the world ofgeeks.
You then go to other companiesand you go, oh, have you got a

(43:43):
live capability?
Well, we sort of have.
If you look at blueberry or um,it's just a mess.
And and you go, oh, have yougot a live capability?
Well, we sort of have.
If you look at blueberry or um,it's just a mess.
And then you go and Iinterviewed um gotham rajan and
from hub, who told me thatbasically, a couple of years ago
they had everything in hls, um,but there wasn't any apps that
supported it.
So they turned that off andthey went backward.

(44:05):
And again.
It's just, you know, theindustry is not doing itself any
favours.
We know from the biggest hoststhey're not providing live
capabilities and it's still downto a very small geeky group who
jump through all the technicalhoops in order to get a live
podcast.

Now, it's certainly an interesting area,
that, so I thought that that wasinteresting to take a peek.
Of course, live streaming ofcourse also includes, you know,
live listening to radio stationsas well, which is the vast
majority of that, but yeah, Doesthis also this Triton report.

Sam Sethi (44:41):
Does this include live streaming from Substack
from YouTube report?
Does this include livestreaming from substack, um from
youtube?
Because, or you know, becauseriverside and um streamyard have
made it very easy to go live toother web platforms like
linkedin or facebook, andyoutube have made it super
simple, and actually substackhave made it super simple as

(45:02):
well.
So does this include data fromthem?
Because I suspect it doesn'tand therefore the number would
be much higher.

I suspect it doesn't, but I also suspect that
that wouldn't necessarily meanthat the number would be much
higher.
I suspect that what this islooking at is streaming of, you
know, radio stations, of Nova FMand you know and Smooth FM and
all of that sort of thing,rather than anything more than
that.
But that's where the majorityof the audience is still, I'm

(45:30):
afraid.
So that's probably where itgoes.
But, yeah, interesting to watchat least what Triton is saying
there.

Sam Sethi (45:42):
Now, lastly, you had a report you published from
YouGov James about podcastlistening across different
countries.

The interesting thing is there appears to be a
lot of audience for podcasters,a lot of audience for podcasts

(46:11):
in Asia.
Mixed results in Europe,slightly below average numbers
in the US.
Now, this is according toYouGov.
They've done their data in adifferent way than many other
places, but that does seem tocorrelate, a little bit at least
, with information that we doknow from Edison's Infinite Dial
, where Australia gets higherfigures than the US does for

(46:36):
quite a lot of audio consumption.
So I thought it's interestingdata.
Doubtless flawed, the last timethat YouGov produced some data
I think they ended up puttingone Asian country in Europe for
some reason.
So I'm sure that there's anentertaining flaw to be found

(46:57):
all over again this time.
But certainly, yeah, someuseful data in terms of where
podcast consumption happens.

Sam Sethi (47:05):
Let's move on James People in terms of where podcast
consumption happens.
Let's move on James People injobs.
Who's moving and grooving?

Well, molly D'Amelie, who I saw at
Evolutions working at Acast, shesaid that she was going and I

(47:39):
said where are you going?
And she said I can't say, can'tsay.
Anyway, she has started her own.
Remember is the big supergroupin the UK.
Basically it's Platform Mediaplus, listen plus Goldhawk, all
in one.
So that's a pretty good dealfrom Susie, so congratulations
to her.
And somebody else has leftSpotify Liz Gately, who was head

(48:05):
of development for originals atSpotify Studios.
She'd been with Spotify for sixyears.
She's left Spotify.
She's launching Damsel Media,which is a production company
focused on Gen Z, and she willbe using her six years of
experience making podcasts forSpotify.
By not making podcasts, damselMedia will be making TV and a

(48:30):
little bit of video, I wouldguess, but that's essentially
what Damsel Media will be making.
So another big media exec frombefore times leaving Spotify and
going off to do something else,which is presumably what Bill
Simmons would have done hadSpotify not told him to stay.

Sam Sethi (48:54):
Well, let's move on Awards and events.
James, Anything happening?

Yes, so the London podcast show is just
about, I believe, to reveal itsentire schedule, so that should
be good, or schedule, if youprefer it that way, so that
should be good to take a peek at.
You can still buy tickets.
Some of the tickets are soldout, but some of them aren't.
You can use the code PODNEWS10to see if you can save yourself

(49:20):
some money.
You can on selected passes.
Here's the thing If you'recoming to the podcast show from
outside of the UK, because ofyour excellent government, sam,
foreigners now need to pay 16quid, and rightly so.

Sam Sethi (49:36):
Keep them out Bugger off.

To come into the UK.
It's a thing called anelectronic travel authorization.
It's like the thing that wehave to pay when we're going
into the US.
It's exactly the same exceptours, or rather yours, just
costs 16 quid.
You buy it directly from the UKgovernment, so if the website

(49:59):
that you're buying it fromdoesn't end govuk, then you're
buying it from the wrong place.
I saw one person sharing a linkon LinkedIn to a different
company that would charge youthe equivalent of £120 to get
hold of one of these travelauthorisations, which is madness

(50:19):
.
So, yes, so don't do that.
Just go directly to the UKgovernment's website.
But you will need that beforeyou get on the plane, otherwise
you won't get in.
So that's important.

Sam Sethi (50:31):
But you know the country's bankrupt, so £16 is
going to help us massively, soplease do it yes.

I mean obviously it will, so that'll be a good
thing.
Other things going on this timenext week is Radio Day's North
America, which is happening inToronto in Canada.
If you are listening in Torontoin Canada and if you know where
to buy beer, then I will bevery happy to help you with that
experience.
Drop me an email, james, atcredland.

Sam Sethi (50:57):
Thanks, Sharing and caring.
Sharing and caring.

That's all going on.
Also, the New Zealand PodcastSummit less than two weeks away,
it's in central Auckland.
It's a good day I went a coupleof years ago and worthwhile.
They even feed you, they giveyou lunch and morning and
afternoon tea, apparently.
And the Independent PodcastAwards are currently open for
entry.
You might remember Emma was onthe show a couple of weeks ago.

(51:22):
There's also the IndependentForum too.
That's happening on June, the16th and the last day to enter
JAR Audio's Emerging Women inPodcasting Pilot Competition.
Well, you've missed it.
So tough on that.

Sam Sethi (51:40):
But yes, lots of things going on in this part of
the world.
Now there's a couple ofanniversaries that I thought
were worth noting.
Friends of yours, they startedthe British Podcast Awards eight
years ago today.
Yes.

Matt and Matt, matt and Matt the two Matts
Podcast Matts, matt Deegan andMatt Hill, put on the first
British Podcast Awards and, mygoodness, it was one of those
side projects that Matt excelsin which really exploded, so
congratulations to him.
Eight years ago so there's athing that company is now owned

(52:13):
by Haymarket and is a verydifferent award ceremony, but
perhaps it's grown up, as theindustry has as well.
And also, you've also mentionedanother anniversary, which was
this week as well.
What's that anniversary, sam?

Sam Sethi (52:32):
Yeah, yes, 2003,.
This week, Apple introduced theiTunes Store, its digital
marketplace for music downloads.
It didn't support podcastsuntil June 2005.
And then, of course, it gave itstandalone mobile app in 2012.
But yeah, thinking back, 2003was when it first came out with

(52:56):
the Apple iTunes Store.

Indeed, first came out in the US, I seem to
remember, because I think the UKtook a little bit longer to
launch.
But, yes, quite a thing.
The iTunes Store I rememberbuying a Mac pretty well, 2003,
2004, I think, and very excitingit was too.
But also, yes, totally made myhead hurt.

(53:20):
But, yes, so that's been goingfor what?
Over 22 years now, somethinglike that.

Sam Sethi (53:28):
Yes, there's a thing I think I've still got an iPod
somewhere in my drawer of oldgadgets, and even a Nano
somewhere in there as well.
The Tech Stuff on the Pod NewsWeekly Review.

Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday
in the Pod News newsletter.
Here's where Sam talkstechnology.
What's going on, Sam?

Sam Sethi (53:48):
Well, friend of the show, Benjamin Bellamy, has
launched a new product calledPodlibra.
Now, that product used to existin another guise.
He's just taken the name andturned it into an open-source,
privacy-first desktop app forediting podcasts.
And again, that sounds like avery interesting idea.

(54:08):
What's in the product, james?

Yes, so it does all kinds of things.
You know, everything from noisereduction and multi-track audio
editing and mixing and all ofthat kind of stuff, to
transcriptions, chapter editingand also a publish button which
allows you to publish all overthe place, including your own
static website or, you know,castapod, or all of those sorts

(54:32):
of things.
It's got a plugin system aswell, which is quite smart.
Now, my understanding of thisis this is Vaporware.
At the moment it doesn't exist,but Benjamin has funding from
NLNet to start work on it.
I know that he's been talkingabout it for a while.
Actually so exciting to see itbeing announced but I don't

(54:55):
think you can go and downloadthis particular app yet, can you
?

Sam Sethi (55:00):
No, I tried, I thought, oh exciting, I'll go
and play with it, because thething that stood out for me was
the music insertion and audiomixing.
Now Stephen B, one of thewonderful geeks in the podcast
2.0 community, has a tool thathe created for Adam Curry
specifically to allow him to doaudio and music mixing for his

(55:23):
own shows, to create sort ofthat radio show thing, but, more
importantly, to allow people todo wallet switching.
So the more technical elementof being able to stream sats to
Adam's Booster Ground Ball show,but then when the artist played
, the payments would switch tothe artist's wallet and then

(55:44):
switch back to Adam and switchback to artists.
And I was just curious whenhe's got music insertion and
audio mixing, will he then takeit further?
But again, as you said, maybeit's not quite ready.
It's a bit vaporware-ish at themoment.

Yeah, but I mean it will be, and I think you
know the fact that it producesall of the correct metadata.
It understands ID3, itunderstands RSS, it understands
Podcasting 2.0, all of that kindof stuff.
It's essentially at least itlooks to me to be the simple,
straightforward podcastgeneration tool that Anchor used

(56:19):
to be, and perhaps this mightbe a replacement for that.
So worthwhile taking a look at,but obviously it's very early
days.
But congratulations to him forgetting the funding for that.
Hindenburg has changed itstranscription tool a little bit.
You use this, so tell me more,I do.

(56:42):
Yes, so now its transcriptiontool works with 99 transcription
languages and, if you, youshould have received an update
earlier on in the week to makesure that your transcription
keeps working, which I alwaysthink is a little bit of
shorthand, for we've changed ourtranscription tool.

(57:04):
I think that's basically what'sgoing on there.
So, yes, so you need to bemaking sure that you're running
the very latest version ofHindenburg.
If you're a Mac user, it's muchfaster as well, and what I
understand from Nick at the teamis that they are doing a fair
amount of pretty quickiterations on that transcription

(57:27):
tool to make it even better,which is nice.
If you want to have a play withHindenburg.
It's the software that we editthis particular show on, or that
I edit this particular show on,and it's very good.
If you want to have a play withit, then there's a link for a
free three-month trial and 30%off the final version that

(57:51):
you'll find by just searching inPod News for Hindenburg.
So there's a thing.

Sam Sethi (57:58):
PocketCast has launched automatically generated
transcripts for Plus and Patronmembers.
Now, this sounds very good.
James, Tell me more about thisone.

It does, yes, so they support the podcast
transcript tool, so you will seethe transcripts for this show
in all versions of Pocket Casts.
But if you are trying to listento a show which doesn't have
transcripts, which doesn'tproduce them because they don't
care about you, then PocketCasts does care about you and
they will automatically generatetranscripts if you are a paid

(58:28):
user of Pocket Casts, which Ithink is exactly the right way
of doing it.
So well done to them.
That just adds more goodreasons why you should be using
that independent podcast app.

Sam Sethi (58:42):
It is again, I think, the right way.
I think apps now are going tohave to start to look at what
features will be free and whatfeatures will be pro, and I
think, again, it's going to be away to generate revenue,
certainly, but also a way todifferentiate yourself between
the other apps.

Indeed.
No, you're absolutely right.
Castos.
They have done somethinginteresting in terms of adding
one-click podcast distribution,so they've added the Apple
Podcasts one-click button.
If you are making a show, it'snot yet in Apple Podcasts, you
can press that button and awayit goes, goes.

(59:22):
They've also added in theirSpotify, amazon Music, pocket
Casts, overcast, podcast AddictPlayer FM and Podchaser, and
it's literally one button, isthe idea, and it submits to all
of those, which is great.
One of the questions that I hadfor Craig Hewitt, who's the
founder of Castos, is why notPodcast Index?
And he said oh, I thoughtPodcast Index just got it from

(59:46):
Apple Podcasts.
It doesn't.
Podcast Index is its own thingand doesn't just steal things
from Apple Podcasts.
So there is a simple,straightforward API to do that,
and my understanding is thatthat will be done relatively
quickly, so it'll go to nineinstead.
So that's a good thing.

(01:00:07):
Truefans, though, isn't on thatlist.

Sam Sethi (01:00:12):
No, and rightly so.
Right now, we are building aTrueFans API.
You asked me a few weeks backwhy we're doing it, and this is
one of the reasons we want to bea listed directory for you know
, places like Castos to nowinclude us, and the only way
that will happen is if we have adirect API that they can

(01:00:32):
publish to.
So, yes, that's what we'reworking on.
Now confusion reigns in mylittle head.
Podcast page has introduced anew dashboard page and I
instantly went pod page yes.
And then I looked at it andwent no, this isn't pod page,
this is another one calledpodcast page.
So confusion what is podcastpage, James?

James Cridland (01:00:52):
Well, podcast page is much like pod page in
that it is a website for yourpodcast.
So pod page is one, podcastpage is another.
They both have blue UIs.
I have to say I wish one ofthem would change colour,

(01:01:15):
Because I'm as confused as therest of them.
But the fact that you've gotthe same pretty well the same
name, but also the same colour,which is white on blue for both
of them or blue on white, I'mkind of there thinking it's very
complicated.
I would love to see theirsupport inboxes.
I've tried to log in and Isimply can't log in.

(01:01:38):
Well, that's because you'retrying to log in to our
competitor.
So, yes, very difficult, butyes.
So Podcast Page, which is theother one, has added automated
AI transcripts and AI-based pageeditor Good.
And AI-generated SEO metadatatools, Again, all good.

(01:02:00):
But if that floats your boat,then you'll find that at the
podcast page website, not podpage.

Sam Sethi (01:02:08):
Now I recall why I changed my name from pod fans to
true fans.
Yes, but, but, but, but, but,but, but, yes, yes, exactly.
Yes, now OP3, friend of theshow, john Spurlock.
What's he been up to?

Well, he's been up to nothing.
Oh, that's true.
Literally nothing, Actually.

Sam Sethi (01:02:25):
I just read my own notes and went nothing to do
with John directly, but it'susing his data.

There we go.

Sam Sethi (01:02:30):
Let's try that again okay, you you want me to start
again, do you?
No, no, I can.
I can.
I'll reintroduce it, or we canleave this in and just have it
as a funny edit.
Who knows, right?
Um?
Moving on then, james um yesop3 what's going on there?

nothing, but I'll tell you but I'll tell you
what op3.
I'll tell you what op3 doeshave, though.
It has a live feed, and thatlive feed is showing what people
are listening to right now, andit's always had this as part of
the standard OP3 live data thatit offers.
It's very useful for debuggingand for other things, but one

(01:03:13):
coder and I don't know what thecoder's called, but one coder
has created a website calledEarport, and what Earport does
is it plots every listener whois listening to an OP3 measured
podcast right now and plots themall on a map and you can dive

(01:03:37):
into the map.
And plots them all on a map andyou can dive into the map.
You can find out exactly whatpeople are listening to and you
can click the little dot andlisten to the same podcast that
they're listening to right now,which is very cool.

Sam Sethi (01:03:48):
I thought it was really cool.
Yeah, and also they're usingOpenStreetMap, which will make
you happy, james.

Hooray, as they should, as they should.

Sam Sethi (01:03:58):
Which reminded me this when I looked at it,
reminded me of Radio Garden ifyou've well, I know you've heard
of it, but if other people haveheard of it which was the
ability to go to see what radiostations are playing anywhere in
the world and just click on anyof the dots and you'd listen to
that radio station, which wasreally cool as well Indeed,
which was very cool.

There used to be a version of Radio Garden that
wasn't Radio Garden where youcould listen to a radio station
while you were being drivenaround that city.
So you had video of drivingaround in Sydney, for example,
and you could hear that you werein a car, but what was playing

(01:04:39):
on the radio was live, you knowtwo-day FM or something, which
was such a good thing.
So you really felt that youwere there.
It's the most amazing thing.
I mean, it no longer exists,hasn't existed for years and
years and years.
But yes, so this is kind ofvaguely similar, but it's
looking at the listeners,everybody who is listening out
there vaguely similar, but it'slooking at the listeners,

(01:05:00):
everybody who is listening outthere.

Sam Sethi (01:05:03):
And yeah, and you can just press the button and away
you go.
So, moving on, james Headliner,friend of the show, has just
released a new tool called MostReplayed.
It highlights sections ofYouTube videos and also the most
often skipped.
It's great, therefore, for youto create shareable clips when
you know where listeners arelistening most or where they're
listening least.
I know that Diary of a CEO usesan internal tool very similar

(01:05:26):
with their own user testing,where they find where people
listen most to their podcast andthen they clip those bits up
and publish that as thehighlight reel.
And again, I think whatHeadline has done is taken that
same similar concept and lookedat where people are listening to
the YouTube videos that theypublish and then gone you know

(01:05:46):
what.
This is the bit where mostpeople played.
I would maybe turn that into aclip and I think that's a really
clever tool.

Yeah, it's really smart and there are a
number of these little clues,little tells, where you can
actually pick out the bits ofshows that people enjoy the most
.
I know a few radio stationswhich are monitoring the volume
control on your phone.
So as you're listening to ashow, you will turn up the

(01:06:16):
volume control if you reallyenjoy.
It is the theory, and actuallythat seems to work quite well as
well.
So you end up with some reallyobvious cues in terms of what
the best bit of that show wasthat you might wish to share for
later.

Sam Sethi (01:06:32):
Now you had a report about a company called Deepcast
that has launched a new servicecalled DeepChat.
What's this one, james?

Yes, deepchat is quite neat.
It is an AI knowledge bot, soyou can basically go and chat to
a podcast.
You can chat to this one if youlike and you can ask that
podcast.
You know something, so you canask the Pod News Weekly Review,
for example.
You can ask us what's thedefinition of a podcast and it

(01:06:58):
comes back and it says well, welistened to a few of these
episodes and this is what itsays a podcast is, which is
really nice.
It's quite a nice, you know,essentially an LLM which is just
trained on our transcripts butseems to work quite nicely.
So if you want to give it a gowith this very show, then you

(01:07:20):
can absolutely do that.
You'll find the link isavailable in the Pod News
website.

Sam Sethi (01:07:25):
So, james, this isn't new, though.
Somebody's done this before,haven't they?

Yes, they had.
A couple of years ago.
There was a company called Dexaand you'd go to Jordan
Harbinger's website, for example, and you would say what was the
coupon code for AthleticsGreens and it would tell you
what the coupon code was or whatis the best way to relax in the
evening, and it would tell youyou know what type of I don't
know cannabis to smoke orwhatever, but whatever it was,

(01:07:53):
and that was a pretty good tool,but it was fearsomely,
fearsomely expensive.
And I think the interestingthing about DeepCast is that
this is a tool which isavailable now and the pricing is
much, much, much cheaper.
So, you know and I think itjust sort of highlights the you
know, the advances in AI and howmuch you know it's just easier

(01:08:17):
to do all of this kind of thing.

Sam Sethi (01:08:19):
Yes, yeah, and I think it's.
Also.
I think the value of thetranscript is going up
exponentially.
I think people are beginning tounderstand that there's gold
there in them hills.
I've called it audio mining andI think what we are seeing now
you know, we talked about PocketCasts, adding transcripts.
We've talked about other peoplehaving it as default within the

(01:08:41):
app itself or the host bringingit in, and I think now that you
can do that and then put youknow AI to work on extracting I
know, for example, snipped outof Switzerland, you know allows
you to highlight books orlocations mentioned in the audio
and then have an affiliate linkout.
And again, I think this isanother great way of being able

(01:09:04):
to analyze the data.

Um, yeah, I think it's going to be exciting.

Sam Sethi (01:09:10):
Now, uh, we talked about Spotify earlier, um, and
how they think that AI is goingto be a massive market
opportunity for them, andthey've just come out with their
AI playlists.
Now, they've had that before,they've been testing it, but the
new announcement is thatthey've recently rolled out in

(01:09:31):
beta to over 40 markets.
I'm not really a big fan of theAI playlist yet.
It's a bit like the music one,where you get to the end of your
playlist and then it starts toadd other music that's similar
in genre, and now they'veswitched that off and they've
gone to an AI one.
I don't believe it works withpodcasting yet.

(01:09:53):
But again, gustav Sonderström,their CTO, basically, was saying
that AI is driving productivity, and I quite like I don't know
if you've played with it yettheir DJ X I know you've met him
.

I have yes.

Sam Sethi (01:10:09):
I don't know if you use it.
I've sort of got over the oh,that's exciting to the oh, this
is really dull now.
Moment, where I've realised allit's doing is taking my
playlist and just putting avoice wrapper around it and
making it sound exciting bysaying now I'm going to play you
something from 2022 that youreally loved and you know that
cheesy element that comes out.

(01:10:31):
But again, I thought it wasinitially very exciting to
listen to the back catalogue ofmy playlist and I think I guess
AI is going to have a biggerpart in Spotify.

Yeah, I guess.
So I mean, this is very much AIdriven in terms of it works out
your listening habits and itdoesn't present it, but it plays
you songs that it thinks rightnow you will enjoy.
Clearly, you have differentmusic tastes at nine o'clock at
night than you do at seven inthe morning, and so that's one

(01:11:04):
of the things that this AIplaylist will deal with.
It's very much copying YouTube,I have to say.
Youtube has had these sorts oftools for quite some time Now.
Youtube has added an AIgenerated sort of a playlist
generation tool, but YouTube,you know, always has a ton of

(01:11:28):
individual playlists that it hasworked out that you might be
interested in right now.
So, um, yeah, it's lots of thissort of AI uh stuff going on.
Um in both of these uh tools,and quite rightly, because they
need to compete.
This is, as we were sayingearlier, this is the thing to um

(01:11:49):
to compete on, because theycan't compete on the content.

Sam Sethi (01:11:53):
Yeah, and I do think you know we're not even halfway
through the year, so let's notdo the review of 2025 yet, but I
think you know I think we will,at the end of the year, be
talking about how much AI hasbeen now included.
You know, if they extended thisto include AI playlists for
podcasts, I think that would bereally useful for the industry

(01:12:15):
that we're in.
You know Meta launched a newapp called Meta AI.
You know they've had it inWhatsApp.
They've included it in otherplatforms.
It now works cross-platformacross all of their devices and
on their glasses, so you can seehow they're pushing AI.
Duo Lingo.
You know.
Obviously you know learningyour French or Italian or

(01:12:38):
whatever.
You're learning your chinese.
I think you were learningchinese at one point, james um.
Again, they've announced thatthey're going ai first and
they're not hiring any morepeople, and they've announced
that they also had 40 or 50 newlanguage versions out recently.
Where you've got agentic AIinterfaces.
I just I'm fascinated by whatwas initially an AI skeptic in

(01:13:01):
me.
I think.
Now I can see how the data canbe reused and repurposed and
brought to the surface muchquicker, and for the user
interface to actually then giveus the value, rather than us
having to manually createplaylists or check out comments
or whatever it may be.
I think AI is going to have amuch bigger role.

Well, there's certainly something there.
I mean, I have to say I'menjoying using the Carghy search
engine, because the Carghysearch engine doesn't give you
AI unless you ask for it, but italso has access.
Every user now has access topretty well all of the big AI

(01:13:46):
LLMs so you can play around witheach one.
You can find out what they'reall good at.
They're all included in yoursubscription and that's a fine
thing.
And there's a really good sortof quick answer thing now in the
Kagi search engine which youcan just press and it answers

(01:14:06):
the question for you.
You know, it goes off and doesall of the research and answers
that particular thing for you inmuch the same way that Google
does, but seemingly in a muchbetter, more focused way.
So I think there's definitelysomething to do there in terms
of playing around with, you know, with AI tools and seeing what

(01:14:30):
those AI tools can do for you,or at least you know algorithms
such as that.

Sam Sethi (01:14:36):
I've got a presentation that I've been
approved for at the Londonpodcast show, which I've titled
the future of podcasting, orpodcasting 3.0.
And I'll be demoing TrueFan'sAI integration, both with
transcripts and also our new AIuser interface.

So come along if you fancy that Fancy.
That sounds fun.

Sam Sethi (01:15:00):
Now the last bit of AI.
I didn't mean to, but it doesrelate to podcasting.
Google's AI podcast maker, theNotebook LLM, is now available
in over 50 languages.
So again, google doubling downon that feature.

Announcer (01:15:16):
Boostergram, boostergram, boostergram.
Super Super comments, zaps, fanmail.
Fan mail doubling down on thatfeature.

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, orboosts everywhere else, or email
or whatever, and Sam and Ishare the money that we make as
well.
We've got three boosts or supercomments.
Well, two boosts, one supercomment, don't we?

Sam Sethi (01:15:51):
Yes, well, that's fine.
I mean, look, you know I'm notcalled Podfans.
I don't want to be in the samegame now.
So a boost from where wouldthat be?
Just podcast guru 222 fromBruce the ugly quacking duck.
Mic match sounds reallyinteresting.

(01:16:12):
Thanks for the episode 73.
Yes, thanks.
Yes, mic match does.
I think I was more excited bythe extended different versions
of mic match, which would be umI don't know what they would be
called, but people match and umuh advertising match.
They're not the names, but theidea of using the same

(01:16:33):
technology to find editors orprogram uh producers or whatever
within the podcast industrysounded really more exciting to
me than guest matching, whichhas, you know, been done, seen
before, I think.

Yes, yes, it's a ton of all of this tools, which
is quite nice.
I'm trying to work out whetherit's 73 or whether it's 73.
Do you think it's?
73, or is it 73?

Sam Sethi (01:17:03):
There's no space between them.
No, I'm going 73.
There's no space.
If it was 73,.
Yeah, if it was 73, there'd bea space.

Yes, okay, well.
Well there we are then.
Thank you, bruce, a kind of you, and thank you for boosting
Adam and Dave's show as well.
I hear you there every singleweek as well.
Seth 1,060 sats from True Fans.
Yay, I'm intrigued by Netflixand podcasting.
Seth says Another place to getyour show out to the masses if

(01:17:32):
you're popular enough and doingvideo.
Yes, indeed.
Or, if you look at it the otherway, another stupid content
provider who will give anotherlarge company free content
without that large companypaying for it.
Sounds like a good plan to me.
Anyway, thank you, 1,060 satsfrom true fans.

Sam Sethi (01:17:55):
And now we have one well, a satchel of richards.
I think it's called one one,one, one from fountain.
It's silas on and silas onlinux, or linux however you want
to say it.
Maybe there's something Imissed, but in my testing the
default video element in abrowser and player, I am using

(01:18:16):
constrain to partial content ofjust a video file if the server
returns status 206.
Don't know what it takes for aserver to do that, though, but
it can, and then we havealternative enclosures that can
have multiple resolutions.
Sure, just putting one file inthe standard enclosure is bad.
It's not the fault of rss.

(01:18:38):
I so the background to this wasjames and I slightly disagreed.
Um, I'm a big well, you knowwe're allowed to occasionally,
um, but I I'm a big advocate ofthe alternative enclosure tag.
James, obviously, is aproponent of the location tag,
so if we were going to bechampions, that would probably
be my tag, and I certainlybelieve that video as an

(01:19:03):
alternative enclosure within therss should be used.
Again, we talked about howpodcasting doesn't do itself any
favors with live broadcasting,live audio, and again, I think
we're not doing ourselves anyfavors with video.
Video, we've ceded that toSpotify and YouTube, but I think
we can use it with thealternative enclosure.

(01:19:23):
I don't quite understand whatthe 206 is, but if Silas is
saying, look, he thinks that thealternative enclosure can be
the place to put a video link,which is all it would be, then
I'm 100% with him.

Well, there we are.
Yes, the whole, the whole vexedthing about video in RSS.
I think video in RSS worksabsolutely perfectly as a method
of getting a video file into athird party platform, which that
third party party platform canthen stream.
I think that would work thebest for everybody and that's

(01:20:04):
probably the plan.
But yes, it's a conversationthat will run and run.
I would have thought it's seventhrees, by the way, seven
threes Best regards seven threes, according to Reddit, and
Reddit has never been wrong.
Thank you also so much to ourexcellent 18.
These are people who spendactual money on us every single

(01:20:28):
month.
Thank you for doing that.
You can join them and becomethe 19th person to support us
weeklypodnewsnet.
We do that with our sponsor,buzzsprout, that makes that
facility available to us.
On our podcast page that you'llfind that Buzzsprout runs.
Weeklypodnewsnet is where to go, and thank you to Cameron Mould

(01:20:53):
, to Marshall Brown, mattMedeiros, mike Hamilton, dave
Jackson, rachel Corbett, cyJobling, david Marzell, jim
James Rocky, thomas, neil Velio,ms Eileen Smith, claire
Waite-Brown, john McDermott,james Burt, the late bloomer
actor, brian Ensminger and StarTempest for your very kind

(01:21:14):
support.
So what's been happening foryou this week, sam?

Sam Sethi (01:21:16):
Well, first of all, I have to give you a massive
thank you.
Um, uh.
We launched creators, which isa new uh podcast aimed at well,
as it says on the tin, creators,but we're aiming it at people
who went to the event, uni podfest.
I went up there with claireweight brown, who does the show
with me, and and I realised youand I, james, talk in the future

(01:21:40):
, we talk about five years fromthose people.
They would not understand PodNews Weekly from day one, minute
one.
They're still using Audacityfor editing, they're still
asking what is a length of show,what's the best mic?
They are a very different breedof podcaster and I think
Creators is a show that we'reaiming at those people to help

(01:22:02):
them understand how they can,you know, implement podcasting
2.0 into their podcast but alsomonetize, and again, we have to
take it way back.
But the big thank you to you,james, is you included our
trailer, which was, you know,very kind and had a massive
effect as well.
We had over 500 people on thefirst episode download it.

Very good, excellent.
Yes, I think we delivered 609downloads to your trailer in the
new podcastsnet website and, ofcourse, we slotted it into the
main pod news daily.
So imagine the amount of peoplein Malaysia and Indonesia that
you are currently getting, yes,big in Asia.

Sam Sethi (01:22:45):
That's it.
That's what I've always wantedto be yes big in Asia.
Now we are also using inchapters something that I've
wanted to try.
So we and I don't know if thisis going to work long term, but
what we've done is we feature apodcast, independent creator, um
, and we then switch the walletto them.

(01:23:07):
So we add them to our guestsplits and then we switch the
wallet to them and then when wehave the music person, we switch
it to them.
So we're trying to use or eatour own dog food, and I've
always wanted to do walletswitching and uh and use it with
chapters, so we're trying that.
So, yeah, that's one thing.
We're trying to use or eat ourown dog food, and I've always
wanted to do wallet switchingand uh and use it with chapters,
so we're trying that.
So, yeah, that's one thingwe're doing at the moment.

Very cool, and you've also done um withdrawal
of sats back to a fiat currency.
Uh, other car mates are alsoavailable.
Um that's.
That's something that apps Ithought allowed, but not back
into a fiat currency, intopounds or euros or dollars.

Sam Sethi (01:23:45):
Yeah, without naming names.
I've checked.
Other apps allow you towithdraw funds to Lightning
wallets and that's fine.
So if you want to put yourmoney back into Strike or into
one of the other wallets, so ifyou want to put your money back
into Strike or into one of theother wallets, then you can, and
then Strike will deal with theconversion from the SATs back to
your local currency.

(01:24:06):
So they are enabling you to putthe money back into a wallet,
but you can't then do itdirectly.
What we've done is allowed outof TrueFans directly to put your
money straight into your creditcard or bank account or
whatever you've set up on Stripewith a P.
So one-click withdrawal out ofTrueFans.

Very nice, very cool.
Good for funding the fandom.
Have I got that right?
Indeed?

Sam Sethi (01:24:32):
Yes, Thank you very much.
Yes, put those teeth back in incase.
So, james, what's happened foryou?
Well, I should say what'shappened for me is I've had wall
to wall Cridland.
So what's happened to you?

Yes, I've been on all kinds of shows.
I've been on the latest versionof Mike's to Millions, as well
as In and Around Podcasting theone with those jingles in and
around podcasting the one withthose jingles.
So that's been fun.
I'm on a video with StephenRobles at the moment, which you
can see on the Riverside websiteas well, talking about hints

(01:25:09):
and tips to grow your podcastaudience, which I think was make
a trailer.
I think that's what I said, butthat would.
That was recorded at podcastmovement evolutions.
Uh, a couple of um a couple ofweeks ago now, and I was on the
bbc, bbc radio 4 um as well astalking about radio casting.

(01:25:29):
There were you no, although Iwas introduced as the editor of
pod news, so you know you takesyour money, you pay your choice,
anyway.
So that was fun.
If you want to hear that, it'sonly three minutes long and
you'll find the audio is on myblog, jamescridlandnet slash
blog, and you can go huntingthat.

(01:25:52):
So that is a nice thing.
What I'm also doing is I'mpacking for Toronto.
I'm not packing I haven'tstarted packing, obviously but
I'm flying to Toronto on Sundayvia Hong Kong because it ends up
being cheapest for someinexplicable reason.
So I'm doing that, lookingforward to doing that, and

(01:26:14):
mostly my week this week hasbeen moving web servers.
There's a web server that runsa website that I run called
mediainfo, which I've run for 25years, probably even more than
that, and anyway, that websiteis yes, it's a little bit old,
and I last updated the operatingsystem that that website runs

(01:26:37):
on in, I don't know probablyeight years ago, and so, as a
result, I couldn't even connectto it because the thing was
basically saying, no, it's justtoo old to even connect to, and
I thought, what with all of the4chan conversations going on, I
thought I better update it tothe latest operating system.
That would be at least abenefit.
So I've ended up doing that andI've only broken one thing so

(01:26:59):
far, so that's okay.

Sam Sethi (01:27:01):
Get on that flight and leave the servers alone.
They're okay.

And that's it for this week.
All of our podcast storiestaken from the PodNews Daily
newsletter at podnewsnet.

Sam Sethi (01:27:12):
You can support this show by streaming sats.
You can give us feedback usingthe Buzzsprout fan mail link in
our show notes.
You can send us a super commentor boost or become a power
supporter like the excellent 18.
I wonder who's going to be the19 um at weeklypodnewsnet wow,
80s reference there.

Yes, although uh obviously uh a reference from
this week, because it's the 50thanniversary of the Vietnam War
this week.

Sam Sethi (01:27:41):
Wow, yes, there you go.

Our music is from TM Studios.
Our voiceover is Sheila D,apart from the thing at the
beginning saying that we usechapters, which is just an AI
voice from 11 Labs, sorry.
Our audio is recorded usingClean Feed, we edit with
Hindenburg and we're hosted andsponsored by Buzzsprout.
Start podcasting, keeppodcasting.
Get updated every day.
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(01:28:09):
Tell your friends and grow theshow and support us.
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